Jurors hear different descriptions of Logan Clegg, then travel to Concord murder scene

Twigs snapped and leaves crunched under the feet of 16 jurors as they moved down the Marsh Loop Trail on Tuesday afternoon to view the area where the bodies of Steve and Wendy Reid were found last spring. 

Nearly 50-feet off the main trail at the bottom of a hill in a natural depression, their bodies were concealed by debris and leaves after the couple were shot to death on an afternoon hike and dragged into the woods. About 40 feet from the main trail, police found a piece of ripped clothing on a log from one of the victims. Blood, shell casings and other debris were found at the base of a large pine tree lining the main trail. 

While jurors combed through the crime scene, Logan Clegg, 27, looked on with indifference, down into the woods that no longer showed any signs of the slaying. With a limp, he hiked up the pants that hung loosely against his hips and continued down the trail behind the jurors, flanked on both sides by plainclothes police officers, in the direction of the campsite he called home for six months.

Earlier on the day, prosecutors told jurors in their opening arguments that Clegg fled Concord in the days after he shot and killed the Reids to conceal his guilt and get away with murder. 

“After the murders, Clegg dragged their bodies into the woods, covered them in layers of leaves, debris and sticks and after he murdered them, he ran and he hid,” said Assistant Attorney General Meghan Hagaman. “Despite his efforts to conceal the murders and his tracks, investigators uncovered them and when he couldn’t run or hide anymore, he lied.”

Clegg remained free for six months following the fatal shooting of the Reids before he was tracked down by police and arrested in October. He is facing four charges of second-degree murder, four charges of falsifying evidence and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. 

The evidence against Clegg is merely circumstantial, defense attorney Caroline Smith said in her opening arguments. She said that Clegg’s elusive behavior before and after the fatal shootings was a result of his previous felony convictions and paranoia to keep his identity hidden from the police, not an indication of his guilt.

“The wrong man has been charged. He had no connection to the Reids, he had no contact with the Reids and he did not murder the Reids,” she said. “At the time the Reids were preparing to go for their walk, Clegg was shopping at Shaws. He did not leave Shaws with a rotisserie chicken and a bottle of Mountain Dew to murder people he didn’t know.”

Jurors were brought via bus to the Shaws parking located off Loudon Road, which sits diagonal to the Alton Woods apartment complex where the Reids lived. The supermarket sits across the street from the power lines and underpass where the Marsh Loop Trail begins. All are less than half a mile from the campsite where Clegg was living prior to the murders. 

At the time the Reids left their apartment to go on their hike at 2:22 p.m. on April 18, 2022, Clegg was seen on surveillance leaving Shaws six minutes later and likely would have crossed paths with them on the trail heading back to his tent around the time they were shot and killed, Hagaman said. 

Smith said Clegg wanted to avoid other people and was leery of police for good reason.

Arriving in Concord as a fugitive from Utah in November 2021, Clegg sought an isolated area in the woods with access to the city’s amenities where he hid out of public view, Smith said. When the police approached Clegg’s tent site three days before the murders, Clegg was spooked, burned his tent site to destroy his DNA and moved to another location in the woods. 

When police approached him in the days following the murders, Clegg gave them the name Arthur Kelly and decided it was time to leave the area as the investigation into the missing couple continued. Fearful of being extradited to Utah, he fled to South Burlington, Vermont, Smith said. 

“The police were right to investigate him – he lived alone in a tent, he did have a gun and he did lie, but he moved around to try to hide his identity from the Concord police,” she continued. “He was hiding from a probation violation out of Utah and did not want to be found.”

Hagaman said Clegg lied and used several aliases to cover his tracks, but the evidence will show he is the killer. 

When Clegg was arrested in South Burlington, Vermont last year, he was in possession of a Romanian passport bearing the name Claude Zemo, $7,000 in cash and a Glock 17 handgun that the New Hampshire State Police Forensic Laboratory determined was the same handgun that fired the bullets, fragments and casings found in Clegg’s former tent site, and at the crime scene.

“Clegg said he left Concord in February or March, he said he didn’t use a tent in Concord, he said he didn’t stay in the wooded area along the Marsh Loop Trail, he denied knowing the name Arthur Kelly and he denied having a gun,” Hagaman said. “He continued to try to conceal his murders but whether he used Arthur Kelly or Peter Black, they are all the same person and that person is the only person responsible for the murders.”

If Clegg is found guilty, he faces life in prison. He has remained held without bail in the Merrimack County House of Corrections in Boscawen since his arrest in October.