A man freed from a Georgia prison after more than 26 years is suing the Floyd County investigators who probed a 1996 game of “Russian roulette” that led to the death of a teenager.
In a federal lawsuit filed last week, Cain “Josh” Storey alleged he was coerced as a 17-year-old into admitting that he killed his friend, Brian Bowling, despite evidence and witness accounts suggesting otherwise. That confession, the complaint alleges, was the result of an hourslong interrogation conducted without Storey’s attorney or parents present.
The defendants in the lawsuit include Floyd County and its police chief, Mark Wallace, former county coroner Craig Burnes and former county police officer David Stewart. Storey also makes claims against the estate administrator for former county police officer Harry “Dallas” Battle, the lead investigator in Bowling’s death, who died in 2021.
“The only reasonable conclusion that any trained detective could have arrived at was that the shooting was a tragic accident and no more,” Storey said in the suit.
Instead, Floyd County detectives “made the illusory promise that if (Storey) just admitted that he accidentally shot his friend, the case would be closed,” Storey alleges. “After being pressured over and over again, plaintiff finally acquiesced to what the detectives told him had occurred.”
Floyd County’s attorneys did not immediately respond to an inquiry. Stewart, now a deputy in the Floyd County Sheriff’s Office, declined to comment. Attempts to contact Burnes via phone, email and Facebook were not successful. Battle’s wife did not respond to phone messages.
Storey and another man, Daryl “Lee” Clark, were freed from prison in December 2022 following a true crime podcast that focused on the case. Clark filed a lawsuit last month against Floyd County and those involved in the investigation, alleging he and Storey were set up by corrupt police officers who fabricated evidence and threatened a key trial witness into giving false testimony. Clark spent more than 25 years in prison.
In 2021, that witness revealed to “Proof” podcasters that Battle and Stewart had threatened to take her children away from her unless she testified against Clark and Storey at trial. The witness added that Battle had repeatedly harassed her during the investigation by seeking sexual favors.
“She was obviously very hesitant to talk about the fact that her testimony, her story, played a role in these guys going to prison,” podcaster Kevin Fitzpatrick said. “And on the podcast, she apologizes to them.”
Bowling, 15, was in his bedroom the evening of Oct. 18, 1996, on the phone with his girlfriend, case records show. He told her he was playing Russian roulette with Storey, who had brought his father’s .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver to the Bowling family’s mobile home about 10 miles south of Rome. Clark says he was at his home in nearby Lindale at the time.
Bowling was shot in the head and died the next day. Storey told Bowling’s family and county police officers that Bowling accidentally shot himself.
Storey had warned Bowling not to pull the trigger, he said in his lawsuit, telling the 15-year-old, “Don’t do it, man.”
Detectives tested Storey’s hands and clothing for gunshot residue but found none, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit alleges no autopsy was conducted on Bowling, despite then-coroner Burnes telling the teen’s family that he had turned the 15-year-old’s body over to the GBI. Burnes was imprisoned in 1999 on dozens of convictions of fraud, theft, racketeering and other charges, Georgia Department of Corrections records show. He was released from prison in 2003, then incarcerated again between January 2013 and March 2014.
At a hearing in December 2022, Clark was exonerated. Storey pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, having supplied the gun that Bowling was shot with. Storey was released from prison on time served and had his conviction record cleared as a first-time offender.
“For over two decades, Lee and I sat in prison for a crime that never happened, and today we get redemption,” Storey said at the hearing. “I would like to thank the District Attorney’s Office for acknowledging our innocence and the Bowling family for their grace. I had no intention to cause anyone any harm, especially my best friend, Brian.”
