{"id":718827,"date":"2026-06-22T08:17:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T08:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/718827\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T08:17:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T08:17:14","slug":"raid-on-marion-county-record-told-in-documentary-seized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/718827\/","title":{"rendered":"Raid On Marion County Record Told In Documentary ‘Seized’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tA 98-year-old woman dead, a small town\u2019s reputation in tatters, and 1st and 4th Amendment protections put to the test. That\u2019s the outcome of a disastrous police raid on the Marion County Record<\/a> in August 2023.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe story of the raid on the newspaper in Marion, Kansas and the national uproar it triggered is told in the documentary Seized<\/a>, which just screened at the Bentonville Film Festival<\/a> in Arkansas after holding its world premiere in January at Sundance (the title comes from the headline \u201cSeized\u2026 but not silenced\u201d that bannered the Marion County Record after the raid). Director Sharon Liese<\/a> is based in the Kansas City, KS area about two hours from Marion and headed to the town of 1,900 people after news broke of the incident.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNormally\u2026 I don\u2019t do something that\u2019s right out there in the zeitgeist that big because I don\u2019t want to get into the scrum with other filmmakers who are trying to tell the story,\u201d Liese explained at a Q&A after the Bentonville screening. \u201cThis one, I was a little bit hesitant, but since it was so close to my house\u2026 I knew that other people couldn\u2019t get to them as easily, so I just drove there and then met Eric [Meyer, Marion County Record publisher]. And Eric being the consummate newspaperman that he is, he was like, \u2018You got here first, you get the scoop.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Marion<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMarion County Record publisher-editor Eric Meyer, left, sits next to reporter Deb Gruver at the city council meeting press table in Marion, Kansas.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChase Castor for The Washington Post via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tLiese begins the documentary by establishing the strong characters entangled in the raid and its aftermath, among them Meyer and his nonagenarian mother, Joan Meyer; Dave Mayfield, the Marion mayor at the time of the raid; current Mayor Mike Powers; local business owner Kari Newell; Newell\u2019s ex-best friend Pam Maag; Gideon Cody, the Marion police chief in 2023 who conducted the raid on the newspaper office and on the home of Eric Meyer and his mom; reporter Deb Gruver and several other newspaper employees who had their cell phones and computers seized by law enforcement, and young reporter Finn Hartnett, who started with the Marion County Record after the raid.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe wanted it to be told like the way people tell each other a story,\u201d Liese said of how she structured the film. \u201cYou don\u2019t tell everything linearly and it\u2019s like, \u2018Well, wait, you have to know this before. Let me tell you a little bit about Pam [Maag] before I tell you [more] about it.\u2019 And so, the history of the tension between the newspaper and the community was really important\u2026 to be able to get into the story of how the raids happened, because it\u2019s not something you can explain in 90 seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBattle lines had been drawn in the community well before the raid, between supporters of Meyer and his newspaper\u2019s journalistic and investigative function and some local residents who found Meyer obnoxious and felt he used his publication to settle personal scores. Getting key figures from both sides to participate in the film became a major challenge for Liese and her producers.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Producer<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tProducer Paul Matyasovsky<\/a> and director Sharon Liese attend the Bentonville Film Festival Awards Ceremony on June 20, 2026 in Bentonville, Arkansas.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJason Davis\/Getty Images for Bentonville Film Festival<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI emailed [Mayor Mike Powers] and said, \u2018We want you to give your perspective,\u2019\u201d producer Paul Matyasovsky recounted at the Q&A. \u201cAt first, he was, \u2018No way, I\u2019m tired of cameras and being interviewed,\u2019 and so forth. And we just kind of worked our way through it and I met with him, just the two of us. We talked. I kind of gave him our point of view of where we were trying to come into the story, that it wasn\u2019t meant to be a hagiography of Eric Meyer or that Eric somehow had creative control \u2014 which was a rumor that had spread through town and was really hard for us to dispel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMatyasovsky added, \u201cBut once Mike Powers agreed to participate, he\u2019s so respected amongst most of the people in Marion, the rest of the dominoes kind of fell from there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Kari<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tKari Newell, former owner of a restaurant and coffeeshop in Marion, is questioned during an Oct. 15, 2025 haring about how former Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody instructed her to delete text messages between them.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPool photo by Travis Heying\/Wichita Eagle<\/p>\n

\n\tThe raid appears to have been triggered by a complaint from Kari Newell \u2013 the local business owner-restaurateur \u2013 that someone had illegally obtained her past driving record, which included a DUI charge, and provided it to the Marion County Record. The newspaper didn\u2019t publish that information initially but notified the local police department about the tip it had received. Chief Cody, who apparently was romantically involved with Newell, took up the case and went to the local district attorney with it. The D.A. then got a judge to sign a search warrant. Got all that?<\/p>\n

\n\tSome elements of the dispute remain less than crystal clear, but what is certain is that Chief Cody\u2019s actions eventually cost him his job. More tragically, 98-year-old Joan Meyer, Marion County Record co-owner, who was at home when the police showed up to seize computers and cell phones (they even tried to get hers), became so upset over the intrusion that it adversely affected her health, and she died the next day.<\/p>\n

\n\t(Chris Mercer, who helped law enforcement serve the warrant on Joan and Eric Meyer, approached the filmmakers late in production, wishing to tell his side of the story. Notes producer Paul Matyasovsky, \u201cWhen [Mercer] says [in the interview], \u2018I got it worse than the guy who lost his mother,\u2019 that\u2019s pretty hard to hear for most people. But that being said, the effect that it had on him is interesting and I think worthwhile hearing. And what an audience watching [the film] does with that is up to them.\u201d).<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"(L-R)<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t(L-R) Marion County Record publisher Eric Meyer, director Sharon Liese, and Marion County Record reporter Finn Hartnett attend the \u2018Seized\u2019 world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25, 2026 in Park City, Utah.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNeilson Barnard\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tSeized won the Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary Film at the Florida Film Festival, along with being nominated for the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary at Sundance. It screened earlier this month at DC\/DOX and has also played at the True\/False festival in Columbia, MO, Full Frame in Durham, NC, the Lighthouse International Film Festival in New Jersey, the Martha\u2019s Vineyard Film Festival and many other festivals. Along with Liese and Matyasovsky, the film is produced by Sasha Alpert.<\/p>\n

\n\tDeadline understands HBO has acquired the documentary, although it hasn\u2019t officially released that news. With all the compelling characters in the real-life drama and the important constitutional issues raised by the law enforcement overreach, a fictionalized adaptation seems like a natural. Liese concurs, and even has a potential director-producer in mind, an Oscar winner who has taken on many fact-based stories, from Vice to The Big Short. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe have the deck already,\u201d Liese said at the Q&A. \u201cAdam McKay, are you out there?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 98-year-old woman dead, a small town\u2019s reputation in tatters, and 1st and 4th Amendment protections put to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":718828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[309576,88,309577,206,309578,268186,309579],"class_list":["post-718827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-bentonville-film-festival","tag-entertainment","tag-marion-county-record","tag-movies","tag-paul-matyasovsky","tag-seized","tag-sharon-liese"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=718827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/718828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}