Jurors hear opening statements, view crime scene, on first day of Concord double murder trial

The trial of Logan Clegg, who is accused of killing a married Concord couple on a wooded walking trail near their apartment in April 2022, began Tuesday with opening statements and a visit to the stretch of forest where the victims were found shot.

The seemingly random nature of the killing of Stephen and Wendy Reid launched a six-month manhunt and rattled the community. Clegg was ultimately traced to South Burlington, Vermont after authorities pieced together surveillance footage from a shopping center near the woods where he was living in a tent, along with receipts from a local Walmart and Shaw's.

Clegg’s lawyers argue there is no motive, no DNA linking him to the crime scene, and no ballistics confirming the gun he carried around in a black backpack matched the shell casings and bullet fragments found on the trails near where the Reids’ bodies were found.

Clegg, an itinerant loner with a preference for Mountain Dew soda — police say dozens of cans were found in the woods near his tent — appeared in court Tuesday wearing a blue shirt and black jeans. He sat quietly while prosecutors used their opening statement to paint a picture of a furtive killer who used a string of fake names to keep out of reach of authorities.

“In the end it doesn’t matter what you call him: Arthur Kelly, Denton Kelly, Peter Black. What you will know at the end of trial is that he is all the same person: Logan Clegg,” Meghan Hagaman, assistant attorney general with the New Hampshire Department of Justice, told jurors. “The same one and only person who is responsible for the murders of Stephen and Wendy Reid.”

Pool photo by Geoff Forester

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Concord Monitor

Clegg was interviewed by police at his tent site shortly after a missing persons report was filed on the Reids when Stephen failed to arrive at a regular tennis match. That was the last time authorities would see Clegg until he was traced to Vermont six months later. He was arrested in a local library there with a fake Romanian passport and more than $7,000 in cash. Clegg had purchased a one-way plane ticket to Berlin, Germany.

Months of surveillance footage reviewed by police showed Clegg frequented a Walmart and Shaw's supermarket just across Loudon Road from his tent site. He purchased propane tanks used to heat his tent in the winter, and a large amount of soda. Before authorities pieced together his identity, he was referred to by law enforcement as the “Mountain Dew Man,” according to court documents.

Clegg’s attorneys admit that he was hiding from authorities due to an outstanding warrant in Utah, where he had fled after allegedly stealing a firearm. But they told jurors there was scant other evidence linking him to the murder.

“The real evidence, the evidence of the shooting, shows that they did get the wrong man,” Caroline Smith, his public defender, told jurors. “The timing of events shows that it was not Logan Clegg. The investigation of the crime scene shows that it was not Logan Clegg, and the science shows that it was not Logan Clegg.”

Smith said no DNA found at the scene of the murder conclusively pointed to Clegg, and ballistics also failed to link the gun in his possession to the shell casings eventually found in the woods.

Jurors, along with Clegg, court staff and reporters, spent Tuesday afternoon walking in those woods, with attorneys for both the prosecution and the defense pointing out landmarks including where the Reids were believed to have been shot and a depression an estimated 50 yards off the trail where their bodies were dragged and hidden under debris.

On Wednesday, prosecutors will begin calling witnesses in a trial expected to last at least three weeks. If he’s found guilty on second degree murder charges, Clegg faces a possible life sentence.