This story talks about domestic violence. Get help by texting "start" to the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 88788 or call 800-799-7233.
SALINA, Kansas — Shawn Koch still remembers all the trips she took to the Salina police station to report that her soon-to-be ex-husband was threatening her.
Shawn's relationship ended messy and she filed a protection order to prevent her ex, Christopher L. Koch, from contacting her. But Christopher ignored the court ruling.
"I'm saying to you there will be damage done today," Christopher said in an email. "I'm still making my rounds, but there will be damage done. If you want to test me, then test me."
From August 2024 until this spring, Shawn estimates she got well over 1,000 total emails, text messages and voicemails from him.
One email had a photo of a dead body. The body laid in a pool of blood with deep gashes across the face and a hole in the side of the head.
"This was the last person that made me chase them," the email said just above the picture. "Don't make me chase you."
Shawn reported all this to the police. She handed over her phone, forwarded the threatening messages and made multiple reports.
Yet police took months to arrest Christopher. All the while he sent more emails threatening Shawn:
- Saying he knew where she lived.
- Claiming that he was tracking her car with an AirTag.
- Threatening to call her employer.
- Sharing nude photos of her online without her consent.
- Making flyers with her phone number and address to post online saying she would do sexual acts for money.
"I'm gonna torture you," Christopher wrote in an email months after the initial police reports. "I'm gonna put you through pure … hell. I'm gonna try to cleanse you … (while) you're sitting there suffering (in) all that pain, I'm going to pour gas on you and (light) you on (fire) — the cremation part for the burning … that you deserve. … I'll be in town tomorrow. I look forward to meeting you."
Christopher was eventually charged with more than 180 counts for various crimes.
But the Saline County district attorney's office gave him a plea deal that knocked it down to three counts of stalking — a plea deal so bad the prosecutor who made the offer was fired.
Shawn worries Christopher won't spend a minute in jail.
"I did everything they asked me. I got a (protection order). I moved. I went into hiding. I didn't tell anybody where I was," she said.
Despite all the threats, Christopher was offered bond while awaiting trial and was able to get out.
"The price on me, on my life, on my head, is $3,000" for Christopher's bond, Shawn said. "That's all they put … to protect me from somebody who has threatened to kill me."
The case may seem like a series of unique failures by the criminal justice system, but experts who spoke with The Beacon said it shows common themes of police investigations. Survivors feel the system doesn't protect them, they don't feel listened to, and dealing with police and prosecutors can create its own headaches.
Case history
Christopher has criminal charges in multiple counties involving two victims. The bulk of the charges are in Saline County on accusations of threatening Shawn, violating a protection order, stalking and sharing pornographic photos of her on the internet without her consent.
Christopher is also charged with drug possession and perjury in Allen County, and he is facing additional charges for threatening a friend of Shawn's in Ellis County. Christopher had a previous conviction for violating a protection order.
Christopher and Shawn's relationship ended in August 2024 after about two decades. The final few years were toxic. Shawn alleged Christopher would hit her. Both alleged the other had an affair.
She tried to tough out the abuse. Christopher had a good-paying job and they were raising children together, but eventually she couldn't take it anymore.
In August 2024, Christopher wouldn't stop hitting Shawn even as she tried to leave, Shawn said. She grabbed a weapon — she said to defend herself — but her oldest daughter tried to wrestle the gun from her. The weapon went off. Nobody was hurt, but Shawn was arrested for child endangerment.
That charge meant Christopher was first given custody of the children. There's now a foster care case and the children were moved to different homes.
Christopher, in an interview with The Beacon, has a different account of that night. He said Shawn and their daughter started arguing. He was sick of them yelling and was planning on leaving the house to calm down. He went back inside to grab a debit card. Christopher said that's when Shawn and their daughter were wrestling over a gun.
Christopher said he also grabbed the gun to prevent his daughter from being shot and it went off.
Regardless of the differing versions of events, Shawn moved out. The threatening messages started the day she moved out. She was arrested in late August.
A temporary protection order was issued against Christopher in September when Shawn lived in Goddard. She moved to Salina in October, the same month a permanent protection order was granted. Shawn began saving the threatening emails in November and Salina police started their investigation in December.
Christopher denies the allegations against him. He said Shawn is the one threatening to kill him and she paid a hacker to get into his phone. Notably, the threatening emails to Shawn came from a variety of emails with differing names. Shawn said that is Christopher using fake accounts, but Christopher said that wasn't him.
Christopher said he only messaged Shawn asking her to leave him alone.
The Humboldt Police Department investigated the hacking claims and filed no charges. They did say Christopher asked to borrow his daughters' phones, but they weren't sure for what. The Salina Police Department said they reviewed digital communications and can track down IP addresses.
Salina Police Department Capt. James Feldman said he's confident Christopher sent the harassing messages — otherwise he wouldn't have been charged.
The investigation
The Goddard Police Department was another agency that could have arrested Christopher but didn't. Goddard police said there was a lack of evidence to prosecute or Shawn declined to pursue charges — something Shawn disagrees with.
She lived in Salina during much of the harassment. Feldman said Salina police were able to download the contents of Shawn's phone to start looking through the messages.
Her email was already filling up by then. One email from December listed the home addresses of close family members and warned that all their lives will be miserable going forward.
Another December email said he was madder than he has ever been.
"Quite honestly it scares the s*** out of me because all I do all day long is sit in this room and think about how I'm gonna cause you the same f****** amount of pain you caused me," Christopher said over email in December. "Then I think about all the motherf****** that I'm gonna have to hurt … It's just f****** scary. I don't f****** know what's gonna f****** happen. I just know at some point I've gotta let it out."
Feldman said his agency took this case seriously, but there were so many messages to comb through that it took months to investigate. But Christopher kept harassing her as police looked through the emails.
In January, a message from Christopher's email said anyone she dates will get tired of him constantly interrupting their lives.
"You know (protection orders) don't work," he said over email. "You know court orders don't work."
In February, an email using the name James Ray said Shawn needed to stop commenting on social media posts from other men, or "I'll cut your f****** head off and send it to your family. The situation you are in can evolve rapidly or at a snail's pace and it all depends on you."
And in March, nude photos of Shawn were sent to dozens of people on Facebook Messenger. Christopher denies doing it.
Court records show the cases in Salina were filed April 14 through April 22. Cases in Ellis County were filed on March 21 for incidents on Jan. 7. Allen County filed cases on April 19 and April 20 for offenses on March 29 and March 30.
Feldman said his agency could have arrested Christopher based on the November or December emails and sent that case for prosecution while investigating January, February and March emails. But Christopher would be in and out of jail quickly.
He said a more thorough investigation that shows a pattern of harassment builds a stronger case. Christopher also lived in Humboldt and Shawn lived in Salina — 190 miles away. Shawn said she was told police couldn't just go pick him up because he was in another jurisdiction.
The Beacon spoke with experts who know about the system — retired prosecutors, former police and another survivor of abuse. They laid out a handful of best practices, some of which the Salina Police Department already does.
Salina police use lethality assessments, a tool to see how much danger a survivor is in. The agency also prioritized cases based on how serious they are. That means a stalking and domestic abuse case will be investigated before a jaywalking case.
Shawn had already contacted a domestic violence advocate by the time the agency told her to get one. Police also increased patrols around Shawn whenever Christopher was in town for court.
The department did follow several of the recommended best practices, but it didn't do everything.
Shawn was never asked about instances of strangulation, which is also important in the investigation process. And the department's communication wasn't great, Shawn said. Officers occasionally called with updates, but there were stretches of radio silence.
Cases can have complicating factors that slow things down, but Salina police said they had manageable caseloads and mostly pointed to the time it took to sift through data for the delays in charges.
The experts who spoke with The Beacon all agreed that police have to move faster when the threats are this serious.
Justin Boardman, a former officer and investigator from West Valley City, Utah, said survivors get killed when law enforcement moves too slowly.
A study from the Homicide Research Group at the University of Gloucestershire, based in the United Kingdom, looked at 358 homicides in the UK from 2012 to 2014. Every case in the study involved a female victim and male perpetrator. The study found that stalking was present in 94% of the murders — behaviors that include obsession, fixation or watching someone.
In 2018, The Washington Post looked at 4,484 murders in 47 major cities. Nearly half of the women killed in those cities were murdered by intimate partners, the analysis said. In a closer analysis of five cities, The Post reported that more than 33% of men who killed intimate partners were publicly known as a potential threat and 36% of men in those cases had restraining orders against them or had been convicted of violent crimes or domestic abuse.
Boardman said law enforcement might be reinforcing bad behavior without knowing it.
"The abuser (thinks) that nobody's going to touch them, nobody's going to stop them, nobody's going to try to do anything to curb the behavior," he said.
Boardman now trains police to better handle domestic abuse cases. He said mismanaging these investigations isn't unique to Kansas. He said police lack resources, policies, training and trauma-informed practices. States also lack resources for shelter programs and other similar services.
Co-responder models, for example, can bridge those gaps. That's when police head out to these cases with an expert in domestic abuse. Boardman said these teams are showing promise, but it's hard for agencies to pay for them.
There's no one-size-fits-all response to domestic violence, experts said. Each case requires communication with the survivor to see what they need.
Case investigations should involve using lethality assessment tools to see how much danger the survivor is in and connecting survivors to advocates who can help them with the system. It can also be smaller things like helping them set up a Ring camera.
Quality training and regular communication about the survivors' needs is critical, but that's one area where police across the country are lacking, said Jane Anderson, a former prosecutor and current senior attorney adviser at AEquitas, an advocacy group focused on domestic violence.
Anderson said law enforcement might not know how serious stalking is. That's a training mistake. Police also could be pulled in too many directions. It isn't uncommon for law enforcement to be taking a report of domestic violence but then get notified of another call that immediately needs their attention.
"Specialized responses are key," Anderson said. "These cases are not like other cases."
The plea deal
Criminal charges were eventually filed and Christopher was set to face about 200 counts in multiple counties. The vast majority of those charges were in Saline County, where a prosecutor dismissed most of the charges and agreed to a plea deal for three counts of stalking.
Stalking has a sentencing range of five to 17 months and a maximum fine of $100,000 per charge. The plea deal also stated Christoper doesn't have to register on the Kansas Offender Registry.
Christopher said he's expecting to get one year on probation and spend no time in jail or prison.
Saline County Prosecutor John Reynolds said the plea deal is terrible. Reynolds didn't approve the deal himself — a former assistant county attorney handled the case. That attorney went behind Reynolds' back and agreed to the plea without his authorization.
That attorney was then fired.
"Damn right he was," Reynolds said. "Once they make a deal, it's a contract. I'm stuck with the contract. There's nothing I can do to back out of it."
Reynolds said the attorney never talked to the survivor in this case, which was one of the problems.
Survivors can't veto plea deals. But Anderson said prosecutors should be talking to survivors when making these agreements.
Shawn said she did talk with the assistant prosecutor at the beginning of the case, and she said he was ready to prosecute. But he struck the deal and he didn't look her in the eyes after it happened.
"The police department did what they were supposed to do," she said. "They proposed all these charges to the county prosecutor's office, and the county prosecutor's office was just like, 'Never mind. This isn't so important.'"
Issues in domestic violence investigations
Michelle McCormick, executive director of the Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence, said the issues in this case aren't just one-off problems.
McCormick said the criminal justice system is designed to protect the rights of abusers, not the victims. The accused have constitutional rights that can't be violated. But that can make survivors feel their rights are cast aside.
The system can become more survivor-focused, she said. That starts with training, like how to use lethality assessment or trauma-informed interview practices. It also needs system changes.
That can be as simple as improving police report forms or any of the larger recommendations like co-responder teams.
Christopher is currently scheduled for sentencing on Oct. 17.
Shawn just wants to get her children back and to live a quiet life.
The kids are still in foster care and her child endangerment charge is still pending. Christopher could still get custody of the children, Shawn said, but she is optimistic they'll end up with her.
"I do have criminal charges pending from an incident at our home over a year ago," she said. "It was terrible. … It was one poor choice on my account that evening … (but) Chris has had a whole lot of poor choices over a significant amount of time, and it's just like, 'Here's a slap on the wrist.'"
Correction: The headline in a previous version of this article listed the wrong town for Christopher Koch.
This story was originally published in The Beacon, a fellow member of the KC Media Collective.
Copyright 2025 KCUR 89.3
