CONCORD, NH – One now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t tiny piece of evidence – the only thing that may connect Logan Clegg to the scene where Djeswende and Stephen Reid were shot to death in April 2022 – was the final focus on the defense case as nearly three weeks of testimony wrapped up Thursday.
The defense rested shortly after 11 a.m. Thursday in Merrimack County Superior Court after spending the morning attacking last-second evidence brought to the prosecution Wednesday by a Concord police detective.
CPD Det. Brendan Ryder emailed the prosecution saying that he could spot a shell casing in a photo of the scene taken April 22, 2022, the day after the Reids’ bodies were found.
Two shell casings found May 20, 2022, next to a large pine tree in the spot where the shooter could have stood to shoot the Reids were found by a state ballistics expert to have been shot from a gun found in Clegg’s possession when he was arrested Oct. 12, 2022, in Vermont.
Defense attorney Caroline Smith Tuesday said that the defense believes the shell cases were planted.
Smith called Ryder as a witness Thursday morning, taking him through the search of the site, particularly around the tree that has been known as Tree 1 throughout the trial.
When Assistant Attorney General Geoff Ward found the two casings on May 20, “they were clear enough for me to see standing, looking down,” Ryder, who’d been called to the scene after the finding, testified. He told Smith he had not seen them there before.
Earlier in his testimony Thursday, Ryder testified how he’d searched Marsh Loop Trail on April 22, 2022, looking for anything related to the crime. When he saw a broken branch next to Tree 1, with what looked like holes, possibly from a bullet, he alerted Det. Nicole Murray, who was collecting evidence at the site, and also searched around the tree.
In more than an hour of questioning, Smith had him elaborate on the number of searches – with ballistics-sniffing dogs, metal detectors – and by investigators that had been done at the site, including around the tree.
“You did not find any casings on the east side of Tree Number 1?” she asked.
“No,” Ryder responded.
“You did not find any casings on the north side of Tree Number 1?”
“No.”
“You did not find any casings on the west side of Tree Number 1?”
“No.”
“You did not find any casings on the south side of Tree Number 1?”
“No.”
Smith described a “sophisticated and dedicated search for casings” and asked Ryder if he’d found anything related to the shooting. Ryder had found a scrap of fabric from Djeswende Reid’s pants caught on a log on a path of Marsh Loop Trail into the woods to where the Reids’ bodies were found. He’d also found a bullet fragment in a pool of coagulated blood on Marsh Loop Trail after New Hampshire Fish and Game sniffer dog Cora had alerted on the spot.
“Is it fair to say that every step of that area was covered in the search?” Smith asked.
“I can’t say every area, that’s not possible,” Ryder said.
“Every area around Tree Number 1?”
“I can’t say every,” Ryder said. “I mean, ideally, yes. I searched every area that I could.”
On cross-examination, Assistant Attorney General Ryan Olberding projected a blown-up photo of the search area near Tree 1 and had Ryder use a laser pointer to show a small, blurry object in the leaves. The photo was of the area to the east of Marsh Loop Trail, and not taken of the casing or anything specific except for the area where the shootings had taken place.
Ryder had noticed the object Wednesday morning while he was reviewing photos of the case, he testified.
“Would you say if you’d have 20 hours to look, you would’ve noticed it [before]?” Olberding asked him, an apparent reference to defense expert Jason Latham’s testimony Wednesday that he’d spent 20 hours reviewing photos of the scene.
Ryder answered that he might’ve.
On redirect, Smith asked Ryder if he’d seen the object in the photo when he’d searched the scene on April 22. He repeated that he hadn’t.
“You said if you had been searching in the area for 20 hours, you would have noticed something?” Smith asked.
“I said I would have noticed more,” he responded.
“But if there are no casings there, you cannot notice casings?” she asked.
“No, not if they’re not there,” he said.
The defense Wednesday had objected to Ryder’s evidence being introduced, saying that it coming up in the last days of the three-week trial constituted unfair surprise and would be prejudicial.
Judge John Kissinger overruled the defense objecting after a brief, but contentious, hearing after the jury was dismissed for lunch.
During Latham’s direct examination Wednesday, following the hearing, Dominguez, without identifying the photo for the jury or saying what was in it, projected it on the wall behind Latham.
Latham testified that he was asked to analyze the photo about an hour before his testimony, and acknowledged he was without much of the software, or the time element, he normally has to analyze photos.
Latham explained how he clarified the image, using software, and zoomed in on it. He said the object in the photo – the same one Ryder identified as a shell casing Thursday – “was not consistent with a handgun or rifle ammunition casing.”
Concord Police Det. Alexander Harvitz followed Ryder Thursday, also testifying about the extensive searches of the scene, including one he did with Allan Schwarz, who was hiking the trail the day the Reids were shot and said he found four shell casings on the trail that afternoon. Schwarz testified the first week of the trial that he picked up one, couldn’t read any markings on it, and dropped it about it the same place it had lain.
Harvitz used a metal detector when he and another detective walked the trail with Schwarz, but didn’t find any shell casings.
Earlier Thursday, New Hampshire Fish and Game Conservation Officer James Benvenuti testified about how he and his dog Cora, who is trained to sniff gunpowder, which includes anything that would have gunpower on it, searched the length of Marsh Loop Trail, and 20 to 30 yards on either side of the trail April 22, 2022, but didn’t find any shell casings.
The shell casing has been the focus of much of the testimony in recent days.
Last week, Concord police Officer Wade Brown, testified he could spot the casing in a May 10, 2022, photo taken by the FBI. Brown had been a detective at the time of the investigation and was assistant lead on the case. Kissinger had ruled in response to defense objections that Brown was not an expert who had the credentials to say what was in the photo, that he could only say it was an object.
Most of Latham’s testimony Wednesday was comparing the same two photos Brown had – the FBI May 10 photo and one Brown had taken 10 days later after Ward found the casings. Latham explained how he used special software and grid techniques to ensure that distances and other elements are correct when comparing two photos of the same thing. He said he spent about 20 hours analyzing them and determined the object in the May 10 photo was not a shell casing.
The casing’s importance became clear when the state’s final witness testified Tuesday. Jill Therriault, a ballistics expert with the New Hampshire State Police Forensics Laboratory, said that the casing, and 18 others found at a burned tent site about a quarter mile from crime scene, where Clegg had stayed in the months before the shootings, matched casings test fired from a gun found in Clegg’s possession when he was arrested in October 2022.
The defense rested its case late Thursday morning, and closing arguments were scheduled to take place Thursday afternoon.
