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Court records detail six-month-long search that led to arrest in killing of Concord couple

Broken Ground Trails in Concord, N.H., where the bodies of Stephen and Djeswende Reid were found April 21, 2022.
Dan Tuohy / NHPR
Broken Ground Trails in Concord, N.H., where the bodies of Stephen and Djeswende Reid were found April 21, 2022.

The day that Stephen and Wendy Reid, a retired couple from Concord, were reported missing, police searched their apartment and the woods behind it. In those woods, police crossed paths with a homeless man who identified himself as “Arthur Kelly.”

The following day, April 21, the Reids’ bodies were found on a walking trail less than half a mile from their home, each shot multiple times. But it would be another six months before authorities would interact with “Arthur Kelly” again. That man – whose real name, authorities now say, is Logan Clegg – was eventually tracked down in Burlington, Vermont, where he was charged this week with second degree murder.

In the six months since the Reids were found dead, authorities have shared barely any details about the case. But court records released Thursday show a broad investigation, ranging across several states, that involved surveillance footage, credit card transactions, bus tickets, and ballistics testing. Authorities allege the investigation shows Clegg was in possession of the gun used to kill the Reids when he was taken into custody.

The evidence, authorities say, also shows Clegg in the area at the time of the killings and that he fled the region shortly afterwards.

Clegg has denied any involvement in the killings, according to court paperwork, and no possible motive has been released by prosecutors.

On Thursday, Clegg waived extradition and will now be sent to New Hampshire to face trial.

An initial encounter, and then nothing

The day after the Reids were found dead, detectives returned to the campsite where they believe Clegg lived, and found it abandoned. A check of the surveillance system at the nearby Walmart showed a male who appeared to resemble Clegg, who at that point was still known to authorities as Arthur Kelly, purchasing Mountain Dew on the day police first interviewed him.

The same day police returned to Clegg’s campsite, April 22, a witness came forward. According to court records, she claimed to have seen the Reids walking in the East Concord woods on the day they were killed. A few minutes later, she claimed, she heard gunshots, and then saw a white male who fit Clegg’s description along the hiking trail.

“The man passed by her without saying anything,” an affidavit says. “She stated that after she passed him, at one point she turned to look back at him and found that he was looking at her.”

Concord Police used that witness's description, along with surveillance footage, to generate a widely distributed sketch which led to dozens of tips, but none that resulted in a “positive identification” of the suspect, according to court paperwork.

They did get one fresh tip: They were told of a different tent site, about a quarter-mile from the crime scene, which had been burned around the time of the killing. Police say they found charred remnants at this tent site, including a sleeping bag, propane tanks used for cooking, food items and soda: 47 cans of Mountain Dew and Coca Cola.

Meanwhile, Concord Police reviewed surveillance footage from a nearby Shaw’s supermarket and saw a man they believed to be Clegg approximately 30 minutes before the murder. That footage showed the man then crossing Loudon Road and entering a trail network that connects to the Marsh Loop Trail, where the Reids were found dead.

A review of surveillance footage from Walmart also turned up a sighting of Clegg, police say, less than 24 hours after the murders.

“MDM [Mountain Dew Man] made an unusual purchase that Concord PD suspected was directly related to the homicides and the Burnt Tent Site,” court records say.

Clegg had purchased a new tent, sleeping bag and bottle of rubbing alcohol, authorities said.

Following that purchase, the day after the Reids’ bodies were found, Clegg never appeared on any surveillance footage in the area, authorities claim.

On August 25, Concord detectives returned to the site of the burnt tent, and used metal detectors to locate a spent 9mm shell casing. The markings on the casing matched two casings recovered at the crime scene. Near the burned out tent, eight additional casings would be discovered. A further sweep of the crime scene with metal detectors yielded three spent bullets that police now believe were fired during the killing of the Reids.

The following month, police used credit and debit card transactions made by the man they still referred to as “Mountain Dew Man” to learn his actual name: Logan Clegg. With that information in hand, authorities were then able to piece together his criminal history, including a burglary arrest in Utah in 2020 in which his booking photo looked “remarkably similar to the images of the Mountain Dew Man,” according to the affidavit.

Clegg was wanted by authorities for violating his probation on the criminal charges out of Utah, which included an alleged stolen firearm.

On the run from charges in Utah, Clegg traveled internationally, flying to Portugal from Chicago O’Hare in June 2021. He returned to the United States in November 2021, landing in Boston. He then traveled to Concord, where that same month he was hired at a McDonald’s on Loudon Road, a position he held until February.

In May, less than a month after the Reids were killed, Clegg purchased a Greyhound Bus ticket under the name Arthur Kelly, arriving in Burlington, authorities would eventually learn. Detectives in Utah then notified Concord Police that Clegg was in possession of a one-way ticket to Germany, booked for October 14th.

Using a phone number connected to that plane ticket, authorities tracked his cellphone to a Price Chopper in Burlington. On the evening of October 12, Clegg was spotted wearing similar clothes to what he had been last spotted wearing six months prior.

Authorities then tracked him to the South Burlington library, where he was arrested. A search of his backpack revealed a Glock 17 handgun loaded with the same ammunition found at the site of the burnt tent in Concord. The police say there was also $7,150 in cash, and a Romanian passport card bearing the name “Claude Zemo” with his photo.

A forensic test, authorities claim, shows that the Glock “was the source of the spent shell casings recovered at both the crime scene and the burnt tent site.”

Todd started as a news correspondent with NHPR in 2009. He spent nearly a decade in the non-profit world, working with international development agencies and anti-poverty groups. He holds a master’s degree in public administration from Columbia University.
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