By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
CONCORD — Jurors deliberated through Friday without reaching a verdict in the Logan Clegg double-murder case.
Clegg, 27, faces second-degree murder charges for the April 2022 slaying of Stephen and Wendy Reid in Concord. He’s denied shooting the couple in a crime with no known motive.
The retired couple was hiking on the city’s March Loop Trail when they went missing on April 18, 2022. Their bodies were found in the woods off that trail on April 20, 2022.
Clegg is homeless and was living in the woods near the trail at the time of the murders. His actions after the Reids were killed raised suspicions and eventually led to his arrest. However, prosecutors do not have any evidence directly linking him to the crimes, and Clegg’s defense attorneys say DNA results from the crime scene show he’s not the killer.
According to prosecutors, Clegg lied to police, used an alias, burned his tent, and fled the state. He was arrested several months later, in October of 2022, living in a tent in South Burlington, Vermont. He had $7,000 in cash, a passport, a fake Romanian identity card, a one-way ticket to Germany, and a Glock 17, 9 mm pistol when he was arrested.
But Clegg’s defense team had explanations for his odd decisions. Clegg is from a troubled family in Washington State, and his father committed suicide when he was 12.
Clegg was living in New Hampshire while on probation for burglary, shoplifting, and gun charges in Utah. He lived in fear of being caught and sent back to Utah, according to his lawyers.
Clegg burned his tent before the murders after a Concord Police Officer discovered his camping site on April 15, 2022, his lawyers say. He gave police a false name when questioned about the Reids on April 20, and left the state three days later, fearing his probation violation would soon be found out, they said.
The $7,000 came from his job in Vermont working at a Price Chopper.
The state cannot link the gun to the bullets and bullet fragments recovered from the Reids and the scene. Shell casings that match Clegg’s gun were found at what is thought to have been the murder scene, but those casings were discovered a month after the bodies were found.
The defense team hammered that month gap, proving at trial that the area had been carefully searched in the days after the Reids were found, with police, police dogs, and metal detectors. An FBI photo of the scene taken on May 10 does not show the shell casings present, according to the expert the defense brought in.
However, then-Senior Assistant Attorney General Geoffrey Ward found the casings on May 20.
Police officers testified under cross examination the scene was never secure from the public for more than three days, and there is evidence unknown people were in and around the scene before the casings were found by Ward.
More troubling for the state is the DNA evidence found on Stephen Reid. Samples taken from his belt, shoes, and boots show two people present at the murder along with Stephen and Wendy Reid, the defense team said. The state’s own DNA expert testified that the statistical analysis indicates Logan Clegg was not there.
The jury is set to resume its deliberation Monday in the Merrimack Superior Court in Concord, starting the fourth week of the trial.