Koelliker cold case not dismissed

District Attorney Mike Fisher said Friday that both he and Special Judge John Thomas Briggs had declined defense attorney requests to dismiss a homicide prosecution brought against Dustin William Koelliker.

Koelliker, 47, was charged last September with second-degree murder or, in the alternative, first-degree manslaughter in connection with a “cold case” that the television show “Cold Justice” helped Osage County law officers to reinvestigate by providing them with access to an array of resources.

The case stems from the February 2011 disappearance of a woman named Donna Wilson. Friends and relatives of Wilson filed a missing person report with the sheriff’s office a few days after she was last seen. Then, nearly six months later, Wilson’s skeletal remains were discovered in a school bus located on the property where she had lived for some eight years.

Court records indicate the prosecution of Koelliker has now been passed to Jan. 24, 2020 for further consideration. Fisher told the Journal-Capital that it could be as long as two years before the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation completes an investigation of the case.

The Koelliker matter was the second cold case in which an arrest warrant was issued in 2018 based on the Osage County/“Cold Justice” television program collaboration.

An arrest warrant had been issued in June 2018 for the arrest of Cherri Miller-Terry in connection with the 1996 death of Joannie Goodwin. This was an entirely separate matter from the investigation and prosecution that implicated Koelliker.

In July 2019, Fisher dismissed the charges that had been brought against Cherri Miller-Terry without prejudice, meaning that charges could be refiled if the results of an OSBI review of the evidence merited a new filing. Fisher said in July that he didn’t want to wait until speedy trial considerations imperiled the Miller-Terry case. Fisher also said in July that the OSBI had a large load of cold cases to look at and six staff members to handle the caseload, only two of whom were agents.

Fisher, who took over as the new district attorney in January, said in March that he had asked for the OSBI to take another look at the evidence in the Miller-Terry and Koelliker prosecutions.