“It’s done, bud. It’s done. I killed them, I killed them both.”
Those are the words Glynn County Police Lt. Cory Sasser spoke to his son in June, just after killing two people, and shortly before killing himself.
His son, Bryce Sasser, has now been charged in the case, and fired from his job as an officer with the Brunswick Police Department.
The Sasser case rocked the small coastal Georgia communities where the surviving family lives. It also frequently tripped on Georgia’s thin blue line, since Cory Sasser was an officer who had already been in serious trouble with the law.
Prior to the June double-murder suicide, Sasser had been involved in a domestic dispute with his wife, for which he was arrested. He was arrested again days later, following a 9-hour SWAT standoff and a felony arrest for attempting to assault an officer. Despite violating his bond in the domestic incident, a Glynn County judge granted him bond again.
The fact that he wasn’t behind bars when the murders occurred has raised questions about whether Sasser’s badge offered protection.
Questions about complicity were also an early focus of District Attorney Jackie Johnson. A day after the murders, she sent a letter to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation asking it to determine if charges should be filed against anyone who was “a party to the crime.”
A detailed timeline just released by investigators shows that Cory Sasser reached out to dozens of law enforcement officers in the hours and minutes before he killed his estranged wife and her boyfriend. Those contacts included calls and texts to police officers in McIntosh County, Glynn County and the town of Darien. None of those calls amounted to complicity, investigators say, and none of the officers provided material help to Sasser.
But investigators did find that his son, former officer Bryce Sasser acted recklessly, by allowing his father access to guns after a court ordered he give them up. Bryce was fired Thursday by the Brunswick Police Department, the same day he was charged with Reckless Conduct, a misdemeanor.
An extensive timeline in the case also shows that Sasser paid for his cremation and funeral in the hours before the murders.
The District Attorney announced yesterday that she would make all documents from the investigative file in this case public record.
First Coast News has requested those documents and will report new information as it becomes available.
TIMELINE OF SASSER INCIDENTS:
May 13 -- domestic dispute between Sasser and his wife
May 17 – nine-hour armed standoff with SWAT, Sasser assaults officers
May 18 – Sasser arrested
May 23 – Sasser released on bond
June 26 – Sasser court appearance, threatens wife at a restaurant
June 28 – Sasser kills wife, her boyfriend and himself