CONCORD, NH – The fate of Logan Clegg, charged with shooting Djeswende and Stephen Reid to death on a Concord trail in April 2022, is up to a jury after nearly three weeks of testimony in Merrimack County Superior Court.
The jury of six women and six men, with three alternates, will begin deliberations at 9 a.m. Friday. Testimony in the case wrapped up late morning Thursday, and the defense and prosecution gave closing arguments Thursday afternoon.
Jurors will have to decide a case put together with largely circumstantial evidence. The evidence that could tie Clegg to the shootings is a shell casing an assistant attorney general found on the trail near where the murders took place, a month later. That casing was later determined to match those test-fired from Clegg’s gun.
Clegg is charged with shooting the Reids as they walked on Marsh Loop Trail in the Broken Ground Trail System the afternoon of April 18, 2022.
The jury will have to deliver verdicts on nine charges against Clegg: 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, four counts of falsifying physical evidence and one count of being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.
The defense Thursday conceded that Clegg is guilty of the final charge. Before the closing arguments, Judge John Kissinger explained to Clegg that the defense would tell the jury that, and asked him if he understood. In a barely audible voice, Clegg responded he did.
To find Clegg guilty, the jury will have to believe that, with no obvious motive, he shot the Reids to death on the way back to his campsite in the Broken Ground Trail System, toting the hot rotisserie chicken and two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew that he’d just bought at Shaw’s. And that when a woman walking her dogs came upon him minutes after hearing gunshots, he’d already concealed the Reids’ bodies, but showed no signs of exertion, and showed no obvious blood or dirt on his clothes. They will also have to consider that DNA from an unknown contributor found on Stephen Reid’s clothing, including inside his belt and that is less likely to be from Clegg than someone else, was not from someone dragging Reid off the trail after he was shot.
To acquit him, the jury will have to believe that Clegg bears a striking resemblance to the man on the trail, but may not be him; that shell casings found a month after the killings and later found to match his gun were planted on the trail before police had an idea who Clegg was, and that he burned down his tent site with all his belongs in it in the days surrounding the shootings because he was going to be arrested on a fugitive charge out of Utah.
Family and friends of the Reids filled the two benches behind the prosecution Thursday afternoon for the closings. Clegg, as he has throughout the trial, listened with his hand on his chin, sometimes conferring with his attorneys or writing notes.
Assistant Attorney General Joshua Speicher began his closing argument with the same photo of the Reids projected on the wall that he’d begun the state’s case with on Oct. 4 – Djeswende and Stephen laughing, a birthday cake on the table in front of them.
“This is Stephen and Wendy Reid,” he told the jury. “On April 18, 2022, they were murdered. They were murdered by Logan Clegg.”
Using slides, and frequently pointing at Clegg, Speicher reviewed the state’s case. He went through the timeline that prosecutors say put Clegg on the trail when Nan Nutt, walking her dogs, pass a man after hearing gunshots. He showed a photo of the “burnt tent site,” where Clegg had lived over the winter and up until at least April 15, 2022, when a Concord police officer visited it to roust him out, but says no one was there. Days later, the tent, with most of Clegg’s belongings, as well as 155 empty propane tanks, was burned to the ground.
When police looking for the Reids encountered Clegg in a new tent site, he gave a false name, Arthur Kelly. On April 21, 2022, before the Reids’ bodies were found later that die, he bought a bus ticket to Portland, Maine. He also put his laptop through a Fresh Start, which erases search history and other data.
When he was arrested in Burlington, Vermont, on Oct. 12, 2022, on the Utah warrant, he had $7,500 in cash, a loaded Glock 9mm pistol and a one-way ticket to Berlin, Germany in his backpack. Later that day he lied to Concord Police Det. Wade Brown when Brown asked him about his time in Concord and when he left.
“He lied and he lied and he lied again,” Speicher said.
Speicher projected on the screen all of the elements the prosecution says is evidence of consciousness of guilt, which means that his conduct proves he knew he was guilty of a crime. These include burning down his tent with his belongs in them, fleeing Concord three days after the Reids were shot, giving police a false name, lying to Brown.
He projected another slide of the lies Clegg told to Brown after his arrest, including that he’d left Concord “when there was still snow on the ground,” that he’d camped on the other side of Loudon Road and had never been in Broken Ground Trail System, that he never shopped at Walmart, that he didn’t have a gun, that he’d never used the name Arthur Kelly, and more.
Speicher also addressed the shell casing that was found May 20, 2022.
The area had been extensively searched by sniffer dogs, investigators with metal detectors, and many other investigators looking for evidence in the week before it was seen by Assistant Attorney General Geoffrey Ward when he visited the crime scene, who testified it was in plain sight.
At the time, police didn’t know who Clegg was and didn’t have any evidence that he had a 9mm Glock pistol. Months later, the casings were found to match bullets test-fired from Clegg’s gun by a New Hampshire State Police ballistics expert. The bullets that killed the Reids were too damaged to determine what kind they were.
Speicher, in his closing, said the casings weren’t in plain sight, and would’ve been easily missed by the police dogs, metal detectors and other searches that didn’t find them.
“Those shell casings came from the defendant’s gun, there’s no dispute about that,” Speicher said.
He said that to believe they were planted, the jury would have to believe that someone “got their hands on two shell casings from Logan Clegg’s gun and sprinkled them on the trail. Not in plain sight, but nestled among the leaves and sticks.”
He acknowledged that the state hasn’t proved a motive, but said it is not one of the elements they’re required to have for reasonable doubt.
“There wasn’t one soul on this earth who had a motive to kill Steve and Wendy Reid,” Speicher said. “Their murders were senseless.”
He added, “The evidence shows Logan Clegg murdered Steve and Wendy, it doesn’t matter why, he’s the one who did it.”
Defense attorney Mariana Dominguez, who spoke before Speicher, told the jury that police investigated the murder, but instead of looking at the “science and evidence with clear eyes, they speculated, they assumed, and they got the wrong guy.”
Dominguez said that the fact the killer is still at large is an injustice to the Reids.
Clegg, who was wanted in Utah for skipping out on probation, lied to police, burned his tent site and used a false name because he was afraid of being arrested on the warrant.
Dominguez said that while the state stresses Clegg lied, the case is about “the science, the science, the science.” She said the defense case doesn’t rely on the jury believing Clegg.
“Logan Clegg did lie to Detective Brown, he did,” she said.
When he was arrested in the South Burlington, Vermont, library on Oct. 12, 2022, it was by at least six law enforcement officers, three carrying long guns.
“He ended up in an interrogation room with an investigator from New Hampshire who told him, ‘I’m investigating a double homicide.’ He lied because he was scared.”
She said that the state’s claims that Clegg’s lies to Brown show consciousness of guilt doesn’t take into account the context, Clegg’s fear, or his worldview.
That included the fact that though he worked hard, he had no bank to put his money in. “He lives in a tent in the woods,” she said. He wouldn’t even go to Concord’s Friendly Kitchen soup kitchen because he didn’t trust that he wouldn’t have to show “government papers.”
She pointed out that Clegg had used the Arthur Kelly alias long before the Reids were killed, and he continued to use it after they were shot.
She asked the jury if they believed he would do that, or keep the gun used to shoot the Reids, if he had killed them.
He erased his computer because the search history was private, and included a lot of information about searches he’d done for medical conditions.
Dominguez said that the science showing Clegg isn’t guilty includes testimony from a DNA analyst the state had hired who said that the little bit of DNA that could be found on Stephen Reid’s clothing – including on the underside of his belt, which was askew when his body was found – is more likely from an unknown contributor than from Clegg.
She also called the state’s timeline that has Clegg walking from Shaw’s to the crime scene in time to shoot the Reids into question. Brown had walked the route in July 2022, but didn’t officially time it, but “ballparked it.” He testified it took him about 12 minutes, which would’ve put him on the trail about 10 minutes before Nan Nutt heard gunshots. She said another walk Brown took, in April 2022, took him more time, putting the entire walk at 15 minutes and 45 seconds.
“Fifteen minutes and 45 seconds for [Logan Clegg] to go from Shaw’s with his Mountain Dew and hot rotisserie chicken and for no reason at all, but to shoot the Reids,” she said.
She said, though, that investigators needed to make the timeline work because Nutt had tracked her walk on her Apple fitness app.
She said the crime scene, too, poses issues.
“We don’t know very much about how the Reids were killed,” Dominguez said. “The medical examiner couldn’t tell you very much about what happened, and the ballistics didn’t either. [They] can’t even tell if the fragments are the same caliber.”
She questioned that the metal detector police used throughout the spring and summer to investigate the scene didn’t work well, as many said in their testimony. “This was not a run-of-the-mill case, this was a double homicide,” Dominguez said. “I posit to you that police would not be out there investigating with a broken metal detector.” She also pointed out that the metal detector did find items, but the were not believed to be connected to the case, including three bullets on Marsh Loop Trail that were found about eight to 10 inches underground.
She said Brown also testified that Det. Brendan Ryder found a shell fragment on the trail, when it was actually New Hampshire Fish and Game sniffer dog Cora. She said that’s because the police wanted to discredit the sniffer dogs that searched the area where the shell casing was later found May 20.
On the topic of the casings being planted, Dominguez pointed out it was a high-profile case. Investigators caught numerous people visiting the scene on one of the game cameras they’d installed in the days after the bodies were found. A second game camera, that would’ve picked up the area where someone planted bullets, never worked right and investigators got no images from it.
Dominguez said that the state ballistics expert, Jill Therriault, tying casings found at the burned tent site to bullets found by police buried about 8 to 10 inches underground on Marsh Loop Trail “is based on an assumption,” because the casings and bullets were submitted together.
“Ask yourself, how do you end up with three bullets that deep underground, but don’t know anything about how the Reids were killed?” she said.
“They talk about consciousness of guilt, let’s talk about consciousness of reasonable doubt,” Dominguez said. She said that when two pieces of circumstantial evidence conflict, the jury must consider the one that points to innocence.
She said investigators, who latched onto Clegg early in the case, fell victim to confirmation bias. “When someone looks with guilt-colored classes, all they’re going to see is guilt,” she said.
“Police wanted to catch the killer,” she said. “No one wants wrongful convictions, but they do happen. They do happen in cases like this [where most of the evidence is circumstantial].”
She told the jury that Clegg was a felon in possession of a firearm, and they should find him guilty of that.
“But the state has not met its burden,” she said. “It has not proved beyond a reasonable doubt” that Clegg killed the Reids.
“If you think he could have, that’s reasonable doubt and you must acquit. If you think he might have, that’s reasonable doubt and you must acquit. If you think he probably did, that’s reasonable doubt and you must acquit,” she said.
