An old closed case, two arrests and a dead city commissioner — these are the basics of a true crime documentary in the making titled Our Friend Sandy from independent filmmakers Paul Nocchi and Louie Meisner, a Cincinnati native. As they start to dig through police records and dusty boxes in attics, they begin their race against time to tell the story of Harold “Sandy” Cohen and the circumstances surrounding his 1986 murder before the details are lost with the generation that remembers them.
Cohen, a first-generation Jewish immigrant, moved to Covington from Mississippi in 1978. As the city commissioner and the owner of a print shop, Cohen was well-known and, according to Meisner, beloved by the community. Meisner’s father, David, was even one of Cohen’s friends.
“He put his desk right in front of the window because he would wave at everybody walking by the window,” Meisner told CityBeat. “And that’s the kind of person he was.”
But after Cohen’s disappearance on July 5, 1986, and the subsequent discovery of his body five days later in Cincinnati, the case and his name quickly started to fade.
“In this small town back in the ‘80s, there was this really close-knit group of people, and that includes people in politics [and] law enforcement, who all have a relatively fond memory of this person and who were impacted,” Meisner said. “And yet, after this huge event happened, there was a silence […] It was dropped and then essentially never spoken [of] again.”
Cohen’s case was closed shortly after his death. Gregory Moore and James Messmer were charged with murder and all evidence points to their guilt, but Meisner still considers this case to be unresolved. He is searching for the intentions behind the actions and wants to make sure Cohen’s name doesn’t fade away.
“I want as many people as humanly possible to know that person’s name,” Meisner said.
Cohen’s case quickly became sensationalized as he was outed as a gay man who held a political office over the course of the investigation. The defense team in court was quick to blame his murder on his sexuality, claiming that “there was an accidental murder or accidental killing, because they were involved in some type of homosexual, deviant relationship,” according to Meisner. He said Covington at the time was “relatively progressive,” but it was still the ‘80s.
According to an archived article from the Cincinnati Post, a now-defunct daily newspaper, the defense planned on hiring an “expert on homosexuality and deviant sexual behavior” to testify and explain the “effects of such behavior.” This was despite the fact that the defendant, James Messmer, made no mention of Cohen’s sexuality being a factor in the crime in his statement to police.
As the facts were warped and later forgotten, Meisner says there still wasn’t a concrete timeline — or even concrete facts — of the murder everyone can agree upon. Even David Meisner didn’t know the full story until recently, although it was Cohen’s friends who found his body.
“Up until maybe four months ago, my father was under the impression that his death had to do with some sort of accident happening in the car where his throat was accidentally crushed during a robbery gone wrong,” Meisner said.
Cohen had, in reality, been beaten and murdered. Meisner said his research revealed 16 skull fractures from blunt force trauma in Cohen’s autopsy.
Meisner acknowledges that “there’s only two people alive that actually know exactly what happened,” but he wants this documentary to be about more than just Cohen’s death. He wants to uncover dusty letters and crumbling pictures to discover just who Cohen was to this town and these people before that information is lost to time.
“I guess I’m not really looking for a resolution in making people feel better, you know, there’s not a happy ending,” Meisner said. “I don’t really see an end to this outside of speaking to people [and] hearing the impact that he had.”
Production of the documentary Our Friend Sandy will start this coming fall, and the filmmakers are asking anyone with information about Cohen’s life or death to come forward.
“If there’s anybody that has any information or knows anything that isn’t public, please contact me or Paul or our organization,” Meisner said.
The documentary team can be reached via email at ourfriendsandydoc@gmail.com.
This article appears in Aug 6-19, 2025.