By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
CONCORD – Logan Clegg’s murder trial is starting to focus on the bullet casings found by a prosecutor a month after the murders of Stephen and Wendy Reid.
As the trial wrapped its second week in Merrimack Superior Court in Concord, Clegg’s lawyer Caroline Smith said she will introduce evidence the casings were not there 10 days before former Assistant Attorney General Geoffrey Ward found them.
Smith plans to introduce photos an FBI agent took of the wooded area where Stephen and Wendy Reid were found on May 10, 2022, and have an expert testify that the casings cannot be seen in those photos. Ward found the casings on May 20 as he was walking in the same area.
During a hearing Friday that took place without the jury present, Smith objected to the state’s plan to have Concord Police Det. Wade Brown testify he could see one of the casings in the May 10 photo.
Brown is not a photo analyst expert, and he was not at the scene when the casings were found, Smith said. Judge John Kissinger conceded that Brown’s testimony has to be handled carefully.
“It’s a significant issue in the case, whether or not the casings were there before May 20th,” Kissinger said.
No one else has testified they could see the casings in the May 10 photo, according to Smith. Brown’s statements in discovery are that he can see an object that he believes is the casing in the May 10 photo.
Kissinger ruled Brown can testify that he sees an object in the May 10 photo, but he cannot use the word “casing” to describe it.
Brown’s testimony took up most of the day on Friday as he took jurors though Clegg’s arrest in Vermont last year. Brown testified Clegg lied about when he left Concord, telling police he left in March. Clegg got out of town soon after the murders took place.
But the defense continues to focus on the evidence that they say does not link Clegg to the shootings. The casings came from Clegg’s Glock 17, 9 mm pistol, found a month after Stephen and Wendy Reid were shot. Clegg had a shooting range in the woods in a different location where police would find numerous shell casings.
Bullets removed from the Reids are not linked to Clegg’s gun, though ballistics show they were 9 mm bullets. The 9 mm is the most popular handgun caliber in the United States, and Glock sells about 1 million pistols a year in the U.S.
The casings Ward found on May 20, 2022, managed to go undiscovered even after police brought a metal detector through the scene in the days after the couple were found shot to death.
Police kept the scene secure for three days, through April 23, 2022, and Brown testified that officers set up two game cameras on April 25, 2022. According to the photos the game cameras took, a person was spotted at the scene on May 18, 2022 and early on May 6, 2022 and May 9, 2022.
Clegg, a homeless man who lived in a tent in the woods around the March Loop Trail, has no known connection to the Reids. There is no reported motive for the killing.
Stephen and Wendy Reid were enjoying their retirement in Concord and were known to hike the March Loop Trail several times a week.
Clegg claims he left the Concord woods after being questioned by police searching for the Reids because he was scared he would be arrested on a probation violation. Clegg was on probation for theft, burglary, and gun charges in Utah and was not supposed to leave the state.
Clegg’s actions after the murders are strange. When he was arrested in Vermont he had $7,000 in cash, a Romanian passport he got under a false name, a ticket to fly to Germany, and his pistol. Clegg bought the pistol using a fake identity.
Smith has said Clegg saved the cash from his job at a Price Chopper in Vermont.