RINGGOLD, Ga. – “You need to stop it,” Brandy Hullander recalls telling a detective two years ago.
She was in a private office with her husband, a former Catoosa County school resource officer, and the detective, Freddie Roden. There was no love lost between the Hullanders and the sheriff’s office by that point in September 2015. Jerry Hullander Jr. had left the department a year earlier, believing Sheriff Gary Sisk was too tough on him.
Still, Brandy Hullander insists, the motives for this particular meeting were pure. Roden was investigating a child molestation case. And the alleged victim’s mother was a friend of hers. The night before, the friend dropped a bomb.
She and Roden were having an affair.
The Hullanders believed this could compromise the whole case: The lead detective in a relationship with a key witness? Not only that, the woman was married to the defendant at the time. At first, Brandy Hullander said, Roden denied the allegation. But she told him she had seen his emails with the woman. Then, she said, Roden asked them to keep quiet.