Previously unreleased court documents have revealed that the police chief who led the raid of the Marion County Record did so after a reporter allegedly impersonated another person or otherwise lied while accessing the driving records of local business owner Kari Newell.
However, reporter Phyllis Zorn; the editor and publisher of the Record Eric Meyer; and the lawyer for the newspaper, Bernie Rhodes, have all stated that no laws were broken when the reporter conducted her search for Newell’s information.
Rhodes shared previously unreleased copies of the affidavits used in the raid with the Associated Press. Those documents indicate that the raid was carried out specifically because Zorn accessed Newell’s driving record.
Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody wrote in the affidavit that the Department of Revenue told him the records were accessed by both Zorn and “someone using the name ‘Kari Newell.’” When Cody reached out to Newell to confirm this, he was told that someone had stolen the restaurant owner’s identity.
The Associated Press also reported that the records in question are typically confidential, but there are a limited number of ways to access them. An individual can access their own records on the Department of Revenue’s website with their name, driver’s license number and date of birth.
Zorn has stated that the Department of Revenue told her how to use the website to obtain records. When asked if she used Newell’s name to get the businesswoman’s information, Zorn replied, “My response is I went to a Kansas Department of Revenue website and that’s where I got the information. Not to my knowledge was anything illegal or wrong.”
As of Sunday, to obtain these records on the Kansas Department of Revenue site, you have to fill out fields asking for “Your Kansas Driver’s License Number,” “Your First Name,” “Your Last Name” and “Your Date of Birth.”
The newspaper’s lawyer has insisted Zorn did not commit identity theft during this process. The reporter already had Newell’s driver’s license number and her birthday after an anonymous source sent the information in.
Ultimately, the Record decided not to publish the information gleaned from Newell’s driving record.
It’s possible that the raid conducted by the Marion County Police Department violated both federal and state law. The raid might also have been responsible for the death of Joan Meyer, the paper’s co-owner and editor/publisher Eric Meyer’s mother.
