By Billy Davis

Dennis Ray Cosby appeared in circuit court in Batesville Thursday morning, where he confessed to throwing wife Wendy Cosby’s body off a bridge into the Tallahatchie River.

Then he didn’t.

“I didn’t kill her,” Cosby, seated on the witness stand, told District Attorney John Champion during a cross-examination.

Dennis Cosby, 54, went on to allege that his wife was alive and conscious when he drove onto a bridge on Paducah Wells Road in Tallahatchie County. She then jumped into the river, he said.

“She got out of the truck and said, ‘I’ll show you, you son-of-a-bitch,’” Cosby said, looking directly at Judge Andrew C. Baker, who had leaned in to listen.

“You mean she committed suicide?” Champion asked at one point.   

Cosby’s account of events, and Champion’s prodding questions, continued for three minutes before Baker called a recess. In chambers, Champion and Cosby’s attorney, David Walker, jointly entered a motion to withdraw Cosby’s guilty plea.

After the parties emerged from chambers, Walker said Cosby’s case would be set for trial. Assistant District Attorney Jay Hale seconded that report.

When Cosby’s case goes to trial, jurors will hear that Cosby admitted to investigators that he dumped his wife’s body in the river after a fight.

Wendy Cosby’s body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River on February 10, 2008. The body had no identification, except for a ring on the left hand, and she remained a Jane Doe for five months.

On July 10, 2008, Sandy Ealy, a sister to Wendy Cosby, contacted Panola sheriff’s investigator Mark Whitten to report her missing.

Whitten’s calls to surrounding counties led to a positive ID of Cosby’s body. Her DNA was matched with that of her child.

Three weeks later, Dennis Cosby admitted to Whitten and two other investigators that he hit his wife during a fight and knocked her unconscious, court documents show. He also admitted that he dumped her body in the river.

If the plea hearing had proceeded Thursday, Whitten and Miss. Bureau of Investigations agent Tim Douglas, the second investigator, were present to testify on the state’s behalf.

Cosby was present Thursday for “plea day” in circuit court. He was expected to plead guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter after being indicted on a single count of murder.

Cosby’s plea hearing would be an “open plea,” which meant the prosecution and defense did not agree on a recommended sentence for Baker.

Before the hearing, a reporter heard Walker explain the plea agreement to Cosby and his family. The defense attorney described a charge of murder versus the “heat-of-passion” charge of manslaughter, further explaining that manslaughter carries a 20-year maximum sentence.

He told Cosby to prepare witnesses to speak on his behalf, and he advised the defendant to “speak up” because Baker doesn’t hear very well. 

He further explained that Cosby was entering an open plea.

“It could be zero, 10, 15, 20 years,” Walker told his client. “It’s up to the judge.”

Before Cosby testified, seven defense witnesses had taken the stand to describe him as a patient and kind husband and neighbor, and a doting father to his two children, now 3 and 4.

Stanley Warren, a longtime friend, said Cosby had once saved his life on an oil rig.

“I’ve never known him to have a malicious bone is his body,” Billy Shankle, a cousin, testified to Walker.

Cosby took the stand after Shankle and alleged that Wendy Cosby, addicted to crystal meth, would leave home for days at a time before returning to demand money when his disability check arrived.

Before Champion’s cross-examination, Cosby’s last words to Walker were that that his wife was not dead after he hit her. 

Champion immediately zeroed in on that assertion. He reminded Cosby that he had already stood before Baker minutes earlier and entered a guilty plea.

“I’m not here to please anybody,” Cosby said. “I’m telling the truth.”