CONCORD, NH – One of the biggest questions in the case against Logan Clegg on charges he shot Djeswende and Stephen Reid, is whether he could have walked from Shaw’s supermarket on Loudon Road, where he was caught on video leaving at about 2:29 p.m. April 18, 2022, shot the Reids in the Broken Ground Trail System, dragged them about 50 yards off the trail, then look fresh and unruffled when a woman walking her dogs passed a man police believe was him on the trail about 20 minutes later.
In the spring and summer of 2022, Det. Wade Brown of the Concord Police Department attempted to find out.
In May of that year, Brown dragged two weighted fire department dummies off the trail to where the Reids were found, in a timed experiment. In July, he walked from Shaw’s, across Loudon Road and through the woods to the crime scene.
Thursday, in Merrimack County Superior Court, Brown began his testimony on those experiments and other elements of the case. Brown was “assistant lead investigator” under Det. Danika Gorham, but testified Thursday that because of his experience as a homicide detective in New York City and in Concord, he was basically a second lead on the case.
Gorham, who finished testifying Thursday morning after spending the major part of three days on the stand, frequently said that she was unaware of specific evidence or interviews that Brown had done on “his own initiative.”
Brown said Thursday he was a homicide detective in New York’s 42nd Precinct for more than eight years before coming to Concord, where he was detective for more than 12 years. He’s now a master patrol officer, which he said means that he has more than eight years experience and passed an exam related to the title.
At the time of the Reids’ disappearance and and the discovery of their bodies, Brown was assigned to the Concord Police Department’s computer crimes unit.
Clegg, 27, is charged with second-degree murder in the shootings of the couple, who were shot to death while walking on the Marsh Loop Trail in Concord’s Broken Ground Trail System April 18, 2022. Reported missing by their family April 20, 2022, their bodies were found about 50 yards off the trail, covered with leaves and other woodland debris on April 21, 2022.
The day after the Reids’ bodies were found, Concord resident Nan Nutt told police she’d been walking her dogs on the Marsh Loop Trail, said she saw a man who made her uncomfortable on the trail, at the spot police believe the Reids were shot.
Nutt testified Oct. 6 that she’d been walking her two dogs, Bodi and Cori, on the trail when the Reids passed her. She said she heard gunshots about five minutes later, and about five minutes after that passed the man, who police now believe was Clegg, on the trail.
On April 23, 2022, Nutt and Brown walked the same route she’d walked on the afternoon of April 18, Brown and Nutt both testified.
On May 10, in an exercise to see if it was possible that the man Nutt saw could’ve shot the Reids five minutes before, Brown testified Thursday that he dragged the weighted dummies, one at a time, from an area on the trail where blood and a bullet fragment were found April 22 to the area about 50 yards down an incline where the Reids’ bodies were found.
In response to questions from Assistant Attorney General Joshua Speicher, Brown said he grabbed the first dummy under the armpits, dragged it to the body recovery site, ran back up to the trail, grabbed the second one and did the same. Another detective timed it with his cellphone stopwatch. The exercise took two minutes and 12 seconds, Brown said.
It wasn’t easy, he said. At one point, dragging the larger dummy, he fell backward and later discovered an abrasion on his leg.
“I was very winded, exhausted, it took a few minutes to regain my composure,” Brown said.
Speicher asked what path Brown used to drag the dummies from the trail.
“It was basically the path of least resistance,” Brown said. “The easiest path.” He said evidence found on the trail in the days after the shootings – particularly a piece of green fabric torn from Djeswende Reid’s pants – also helped him determine where to go.
The dummies – the term the prosecution and police are using – weren’t exact replicas of human forms. Neither had heads and the smaller one – about 140 pounds, according to Brown – didn’t have legs and only had partial arms. The larger one, about 200 pounds, was also missing some limbs. Brown said that portions of the dummies are removed or added to make them weigh a certain amount.
He said he didn’t pile sticks or debris on the dummies, though the Reids had been found under a pile of woodland detritus. From start to end, he said, it took about five minutes.
Gorham earlier in the day under cross examination by defense attorney Caroline Smith, also testified about the exercise. Gorham said she hadn’t seen much of what was going on, she was guarding the trail to make sure no one interrupted it.
Smith asked Gorham that, since both of the Reids had gunshot wounds to the head, and Stephen Reid also had them to the upper torso, would that have left blood on whoever dragged their bodies to where they were recovered if they were dragged by the armits.
“Possibly, yes,” Gorham responded.
Smith asked Gorham if the exercise were videotaped.
“I don’t recall,” Gorham responded.
On July 8, 2022, Brown conducted another experiment after investigators discovered surveillance video at Shaw’s supermarket of a man who in some aspects matched the description of the man Nutt saw on the trail, as well as a man in a tent police talked to April 20, 2022, when they were searching for the Reids.
The Shaw’s video showed the man buying a rotisserie chicken and 2-liter bottle of Mountain Dew and leaving the store at 2:28.49 on April 18, 2022. The video was part of Gorham’s testimony as well as that of Det. Garret Lemoine earlier in the week. It tracks the man across the parking lot, where he waits at a light to cross Loudon Road, then disappears from view around 2:32 p.m.
Brown testified that on July 8 he walked the same path the man did, then, after he crossed Loudon Road, going up another trail through a clearing for power lines to the Marsh Loop Trail and the crime scene. Brown said he didn’t time his walk with a stopwatch, but looked at his watch at the beginning and end and it took about 12 minutes.
Police later determined the man was Clegg, though at the time they didn’t know Clegg’s name.
Press pool photo by Geoff Forester/Concord Monitor
With consent from Nutt, Brown also downloaded the fitness information from her Apple watch. Nutt had enabled her exercise tracker as she crossed the Portsmouth Street parking lot with her dogs on April 18 at the beginning of her hike.
Brown created a graphic, shown in court Thursday, that time-tracked where Nutt was when the Reids passed her, as well as how long it took her to get to the crime scene site on Marsh Loop Trail, and how long it took her to complete her walk.
On Monday, April 25, the day he downloaded her app data, he took a video statement from Nutt and walked her entire route.
Brown also detailed the search for Stephen Reid’s cellphone. It was the final ping on the phone, on the afternoon of April 18, that led investigators to the area where the bodies were found by a New Hampshire State Police sniffer dog named Oakley.
But Reid’s phone wasn’t found on his person, and has yet to be uncovered, Brown said. He said there were at least five separate searches specifically looking for the phone – two with a dog trained to find electronics, Niko; and others with a metal detector and visual searches.
Brown also testified about evidence and aspects of the investigation that have been gone over with Gorham, Lemoine and Det. Nicole Murray as the trial nears the end of its second week.
Brown said the discovery of an old, tarnished bullet about three inches underground on the Marsh Loop Trail April 23,2022, was determined not to be connected to the shootings because it was a hollow point bullet.
He said a piece of torn fabric found on a log near where the bodies were found was later determined to be from Djeswende Reid’s pants, likely torn when she’d been dragged over the log.
He recounted, under questioning from Speicher, then-Assistant Attorney General Geoffrey Ward’s discovery of two shell casings May 20, 2022, in an area by a large tree on the trail that Brown said “had already been searched three to five times.”
Gorham’s cross-examination, which began Wednesday, continued Thursday morning.
Smith asked Gorham about the first attempt to question Clegg on Oct. 12, 2022, after he’d been arrested by South Burlington, Vermont, police on a probation violation warrant out of Utah.
The plan was for Brown to question Clegg while Gorham watched remotely in another room, but that plan went awry.
Gorham said that as the interview began, South Burlington police weren’t aware Gorham wanted to watch from another room. They brought her to an office so she could watch on a computer, but there was no audio.
“We couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t hear anything,” she said. It turned out that there was no audio recording equipment set up for the interview. Gorham said that the amount of Brown’s interview with Clegg that was not recorded was “several minutes.”
The issue came up at evidence suppression hearings in May, when the defense attorneys contended that Clegg was not read his Miranda rights, which police said happened during the unrecorded part of the interview. Judge John Kissinger ruled after the hearing that Clegg waived his right on Oct. 12 and the fact that the Miranda portion of the interview, where his rights are explained, was not recorded because of the lack of audio recording “did not have a meaningful impact.” The issue may come up, though, on further interviews Brown and Gorham had with Clegg Oct. 13 an 19, 2022.
During Gorham’s cross-examination, she often said she wasn’t present for an interview, evidence being found, or tested, or aware if something was video-taped or not. For instance, Gorham repeated Thursday that she never talked to Allan Schwarz, who said he found four bullet casings on the trail near the crime scene April 18, but they were gone when he went back with a detective with a metal detector April 22. She’d also said that Wednesday. She said Thursday she wasn’t aware if a later walk Schwarz took through the trail system with Brown was video-taped.
Frequently, often in relation to Brown’s interaction with witnesses and evidence, Gorham said she hadn’t assigned another detective to do something, but they took their own initiative.
“I was lead investigator, but this was an all-hands-on-deck case,” she said during cross-examination Thursday. There were 13 investigators. “It wasn’t necessarily me who assigned people” to follow-up on leads or evidence.
Smith also asked Gorham about Clegg’s purchases, both in New Hampshire and Vermont, including detailing what type of food he bought.
While baking soda was found poured over the leaves that covered the bodies, the only evidence of a baking soda purchase investigators uncovered was in Vermont, long after the shootings, Gorham said under questioning from Smith.
Smith also asked about Clegg’s purchase of rubbing alcohol April 18, 2022, which police imply he used to burn his tent and most of his belongings by April 20. Smith pointed out that Clegg had also bought rubbing alcohol online Feb. 18 “two months before the Reids were shot.”
Gorham responded that it was also right after Clegg tried to buy 100% alcohol from an online store, but he purchase was canceled because of a fraud alert.
When Smith pressed that Clegg bought rubbing alcohol two months before the Reids were shot, Gorham responded it was also “shortly after he purchased a gun.”
Also testifying Friday was Christopher Sanborn, co-owner and manager of R&L Archery in Barre, Vermont, where Clegg bought a gun Feb. 6, 2022.
Sanborn testified that Clegg bought a Glock 17 9mm handgun and three boxes of ammunition, for a total $559.99.
Under questioning from Speicher, Sanborn said gun buyers had to fill out a form and show a photo ID, but there was no waiting period to buy a gun in Vermont at the time, something that changed this year.
Clegg used a driver’s license with the name Arthur Richard Kelly, and a Barre address to buy the gun. Sanborn said that a second employee checks the information to make sure it matches what’s on the ID.
In brief cross-examination, Smith asked Sanborn about the Gen 3 model of the Glock handgun, meaning it’s “third generation.” Sanborn said that Glock is up to Gen 5 now, but still makes Gen 3.
She also questioned Sanborn about how long Glocks had been manufactured. He said he “didn’t know the date,” but acknowledged it has been “for several decades.”
Clegg is charged with two counts of second-degree murder for “knowingly causing the death” of each of the Reids, two alternative second-degree murder charges for “recklessly causing” their deaths, three counts of falsifying physical evidence and one count of being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm and one count of falsifying physical evidence (a Class B felony) was added.
He’s been held in Merrimack County Jail. The trial is expected to last until Oct. 20.
