Crime
Logan Clegg is charged with second-degree homicide for “knowingly and recklessly” inflicting the deaths of Stephen and Djeswende “Wendy” Reid.
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A jury on Friday ended its first day of deliberations with out issuing a verdict within the case of a person charged with fatally capturing a retired New Hampshire couple on a mountaineering path, with prosecutors saying he lied to police to cowl up his crimes and protection attorneys saying authorities arrested the fallacious individual.
Logan Clegg, 27, is charged with second-degree homicide for what prosecutors described as “knowingly and recklessly” inflicting the deaths of Stephen and Djeswende “Wendy” Reid. The couple, who had finished worldwide improvement work, had lately retired and have been shot a number of instances after going for a stroll on the path close to their house within the metropolis of Harmony on April 18, 2022.
The jury will resume deliberations Monday.
The Reids’ our bodies, discovered a number of days later, had been dragged into the woods and lined with leaves, sticks and particles, police stated. Clegg was dwelling in a tent close to the path on the time. His trial started Oct. 3 and attorneys delivered closing arguments Thursday.
Clegg is also charged with a number of counts of falsifying bodily proof and being a convicted felon in possession of a gun. He stated in courtroom Thursday that he was responsible of the latter cost.
After the Reids have been reported lacking, Clegg, who was questioned by investigators looking for them, offered a false title. He later burned his tent, erased info from his pc and acquired a bus ticket out of Harmony, prosecutors stated.
Investigators finally discovered and arrested Clegg in October 2022 in South Burlington, Vermont, with a one-way airplane ticket to Berlin, Germany, a pretend passport, and a gun in his backpack.
Prosecutors stated that his repeated lies, try and flee and the gun in his backpack supplied clear proof of his guilt.
“The state has confirmed to you … that the defendant, and the defendant solely, killed Stephen and Wendy,” prosecutor Joshua Speicher stated, describing the killing as mindless. “We’ve got confirmed this past an affordable doubt. We’ve got confirmed to you the way he did it, when he did it, the place he did it.”
Speicher added, “What we don’t know is why. We simply don’t know.”
Clegg’s attorneys stated he didn’t kill the Reids, and that the one cause he gave police an alias and left New Hampshire was as a result of he had been hiding from the authorities after violating his probation from 2021 on housebreaking and theft costs in Utah. They stated he had already frolicked abroad, in Portugal, earlier than shifting again to america.
Protection lawyer Mariana Dominguez stated the state’s case was filled with holes.
“Logan Clegg will not be responsible,” she advised the jury in her closing arguments. “Police investigated, however as a substitute of wanting on the science and on the proof with clear eyes, they speculated. They assumed. … They noticed solely what they needed to see. They bought the fallacious man.”
Clegg’s attorneys stated an evaluation of shell casings and bullets discovered within the space couldn’t conclude that his gun fired the photographs and that the casings might have come from a wide range of weapons.
“They don’t know what gun killed the Reids,” Dominguez advised the jury, including that police “solely had eyes” for Clegg’s gun.
However prosecutors stated the bullets and casings got here from Clegg’s gun.
Each side additionally gave differing accounts of a girl who was strolling on the path along with her canine and allowed the Reids to move her and stroll forward. She later heard gunshots, then got here throughout a person on the path earlier than persevering with her hike.
Protection attorneys argued that the person she noticed on the path was not Clegg as a result of the clothes he had on didn’t match the prosecution’s description.
