Jury to deliberate in Logan Clegg trial after three weeks
Oct. 19—CONCORD — A Merrimack County Superior Court jury will begin deliberations Friday morning in the three-week trial of Logan Clegg, who is charged with killing Stephen and Djeswende Reid on a walking trail in Concord in April 2022.
Just like opening statements, prosecutors projected a photo of the smiling couple with a birthday cake in front of them during closing arguments on Thursday afternoon. The photo is the last thing the jury saw before hearing instructions from Judge John Kissinger.
The jury heard instructions on how to consider the direct and circumstantial evidence presented during the trial, which included 24 witnesses.
More than 15 family members and friends of the Reids sat in the front three rows of the courtroom, including Sue Forey, Stephen Reid's sister, who was the first to testify in the trial.
Clegg, 26 at the time, was arrested in South Burlington, Vermont, in October 2022 and charged in the deaths of the Concord couple. He also was indicted for allegedly falsifying physical evidence, concealing the couple's bodies and burning his tent and campsite after the murders.
He was arrested with a Glock 17 handgun in his backpack, $7,000 in cash, a fake Romanian ID and a one-way ticket to Germany.
Before closing arguments, Clegg agreed to allow his public defenders admit guilt on a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm. He quietly told Kissinger he agreed.
In his closing, prosecutor Joshua Speicher pointed to Clegg in the courtroom and called him the killer.
"We don't know why Logan Clegg pulled that trigger and killed Stephen and Wendy, but it does not change the fact he is guilty," he said. "He murdered them."
The Reids disappeared on April 18, 2022, and a search began after Stephen Reid didn't show up for a tennis match. Authorities found their bodies three days later.
In her closing, public defender Maya Dominguez said there is no evidence to prove that Clegg was even on the Marsh Loop Trail when the Reids were shot.
"There was a motive, but they just haven't found it because they haven't found the killer," she said. "When they find the right killer or killers they will find it."
Speicher referred to witness Nan Nutt who testified she ran into a clean-shaven white male wearing a blue jacket, black backpack and carrying a brown plastic bag minutes after the shooting. The description was linked to security footage from Shaw's, which shows Clegg leaving at 2:28 p.m.
"That person was the defendant," Speicher said. "There was no other person dressed the same, carrying the same items and heading in the same direction at the same time."
During testimony, Nutt said the person she ran into was a man looking into the woods. She said the man was wearing khaki-colored pants.
"The man that Dr. Nutt saw on the trail that day was not Logan Clegg," Dominguez said. "There is zero evidence to support that."
Shell casings
Two shell casings came into question for much of the trial because they were found by an investigator on May 20 — a month after the murders.
Evidence shows the Reids were killed by six shots, Speicher said. One witness saw four shell casings on the trail, which later disappeared.
"The defendant came back to the scene and got rid of those casings, and buried their bodies," Speicher said. "He didn't see the other two. Those he missed, so there they stayed. Those two casings were there from the moment the defendant pulled the trigger."
Throughout the trial, the defense has claimed the shells were planted and found in plain sight a month later. Dominguez noted the extensive searches with police dogs, metal detectors and officers doing line searches.
"The casings at the scene were not found until May because they were not there," she said.
Speicher showed pictures for April 22 and May 10 where police later say they can spot the casings.
"They are not in plain sight. If someone planted them, why would they plant them like this?" he said. "Wouldn't they want someone to find them?"
As for the photo evidence, the defense called expert Jason Latham who said he could not identify ammunition casings in the photo.
Jill Therriault, a criminalist at the State Police Forensic Laboratory, testified the two shell casings came from Clegg's gun. However, the results of bullets and bullet fragments recovered were inconclusive.
Dominguez said nothing links the gun to the murders.
DNA evidence
Dominguez leaned heavily on DNA evidence, which included the testimony of Amber Smith, a forensic DNA analyst from DNA Labs International in Florida, who was called to stand by the defense.
Smith testified about foreign DNA on the Reids, but not enough to compare to Clegg.
Speicher said much of the DNA samples were inconclusive.
"The samples were degraded and had minimal DNA on them," he said. "That's because after the defendant killed and buried them, they sat in the rain for two days in the elements."
Their wet clothes weighed close to 10 pounds.
Besides the lack of DNA evidence, Dominguez said the timing doesn't line up with a video showing Clegg leave Shaw's with a rotisserie chicken and 2-liter bottle of Mountain Dew. He is walking at a slow pace.
Detective Wade Brown testified he made the walk from Old Loudon Road near the supermarket to the murder site in 12 minutes. Dominguez said Brown is more physically fit.
Speicher, however, said the time shows Clegg had a 15-minute window to kill the Reids.
He showed the jury a picture of Clegg buying a tent, sleeping bag and rubbing alcohol from Walmart at around 9:52 p.m. the day after the Reids' murders.
"He was going to burn his house to the ground because he murdered Stephen and Wendy," Speicher said.
At a tent site, police encountered Clegg, who gave them the name Arthur Kelly. The site was littered with Mountain Dew Code Red cans. The next day the site was cleared, according to testimony.
Clegg created a "burner email" a day after police ran into him and bought a bus ticket a few minutes later.
Why he lied
Dominguez told the jury Clegg lied to police after being arrested in Vermont because he was scared about a probation violation out of Utah. Police told him he was being investigated in the double homicide.
She said Clegg used the alias "Arthur Kelly" long before the murders and continued to do so while in Vermont.
"He lied because he was scared," she said.
Speicher refuted those facts saying Clegg used his real name to apply for a job at McDonald's and to purchase two magazines for his gun.
Police were able to track Clegg down in part because of a burnt tent site near the Broken Ground trail system.
"Innocent people don't burn their homes, places they've lived for months and months in the New Hampshire winter with nowhere else to go," Speicher said.
Dominguez said most of the state's evidence is based on speculation.
"The police wanted to catch the killer, so they convinced themselves that they did," Dominguez said. "This was a hard case to solve, but they didn't solve it."
Clegg's actions show a consciousness of guilt, Speicher said.
On the morning he was arrested, Clegg searched "concord nh news" on Google, but not Utah or other places he lived. Police also say he wiped files from his laptop.
"He was planning to run away and never come back. He wasn't going on vacation," he said. "He was escaping."
After the closing arguments, Kissinger assigned four jury members to be alternates.
