Affidavit: Stephen Reid’s cellphone led police to shooting site

Djeswende and Stephen Reid
Murder victims Djeswende and Stephen Reid of Concord.

CONCORD, NH – Stephen Reid’s cellphone led Concord Police investigators to the bodies of Reid and his wife on April 21, three days after they’d been shot, according to the affidavit supporting Logan Clegg’s arrest warrant.

Details of the search for the Reids; the impressions of McDonald’s coworkers, who said Clegg had “anger issues”; and the police encounter near where the Reids’ bodies were found with a man investigators believe was Clegg are just some of what’s revealed in the 25-page affidavit that was unsealed Monday afternoon by Merrimack County Superior Court Judge John Kissinger. 

Kissinger, earlier in the day, heard arguments by Clegg’s attorney,  Caroline Smith, asking him to reject the state’s request to unseal the affidavit and arrest warrant.

Clegg is charged with second-degree murder for the April 18 shooting deaths of Djeswende and Stephen Reid, of Concord, in April. He was arrested Oct. 12 in Vermont after the New Hampshire investigation, initially on the Utah fugitive warrant. The New Hampshire arrest warrant on murder charges was signed Oct. 18.

Logan Clegg at his extradition hearing in Chittenden County Court in Vermont in October. Clegg has been indicted on second-degree murder charges in the deaths of Djeswende and Stephen Reid, who were shot while on a walk in Concord. (Chittenden County Court video screen image)

The Office of the Attorney General had filed a motion before Monday’s hearing to unseal the Concord Police Department affidavit, saying that the state originally requested the documents be sealed because they had information that could compromise the investigation. Since Clegg had been indicted Jan. 17, and that information is public, there is no need for the items to remain sealed, the motion said.

Smith, representing Clegg, told Kissinger Monday that the documents, which detail the investigation that led to Clegg’s arrest, don’t have a purpose for the case that’s now being heard, but are simply part of the investigatory tool used to arrest him.

An affidavit by South Burlington, Vermont, police in support of Clegg’s arrest on Utah fugitive charges in October had information about the New Hampshire investigation. The 25-page New Hampshire affidavit, by Det. Danika Gorham, of the Concord Police Department, officers much more detail than the Vermont version. 

Some of the new information made public Monday (read the full affidavit below):

Stephen Reid’s Cellphone

Investigators first visited the Reid’s third-floor apartment in the Alton Woods complex on Loudon Road the night of April 20, after the pair were reported missing that night. A family member reported them missing. They’d last been heard from April 18. Investigators saw two cellphones at the apartment, and assumed one was Wendy’s and one was Steve’s. When investigators discovered on April 21 that neither of the phones belonged to Steve Reid, they realized that it was likely he had his phone with him. 

Detective Alex Harbitz submitted an exigency request to Google for location information related to Reid’s Google account. (Google collects location data from cellphone users who use Google software). At 5:10 p.m. that night, April 21, police received Google data that showed Reid’s phone location on April 18, the day the couple disappeared.

The data showed the phone left the Alton Woods apartment complex at approximately 2:42 p.m. and entered the Marsh Loop Trail at Broken Ground Trails at 2:48 p.m. The last GPS coordinates shown for the phone were at 3:47 p.m. April 18 on a wooded area off the trail.

At 5:55 p.m. April 21, Concord police detectives, as well as police sniffer dogs, when to search the area. 

At 6:14 p.m., one of the dogs took an interest in a pile of leaves and sticks about 11 meters from the GPS location. 

Police found the Reids’ bodies in a natural depression (rather than a dug grave), hidden under several inches of leaves, sticks and other “woodland debris.”

“It was considered unlikely that the victims would have been quickly discovered without the Google coordinates and K-9 units,” the affidavit says.

Stephen Reid’s phone was not with the bodies, and has yet to be found.

Broken Ground Trails map
Map Image/City of Concord, NH

 


Cause of Death

Police have said that the Reids died of multiple gunshot wounds, but have not released details. The affidavit gives more information..

Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Mitchell Weinberg found that Stephen Reid was shot four times – in his left wrist, left shoulder and head, left arm and chest and central back. Two of the bullets entered, exited, then re-entered his body. Weinberg concluded that more than one of the shots would have “posed a near-immediate threat to Stephen’s life.”

Wendy Reid was shot twice, in her right ear and head, and right ear and neck. Weinberg concluded that the shot that entered her head caused a fatal brain injury.

Both had abrasions to their torsos, indicative of being dragged.

Weinberg recovered multiple small bullet fragments, and estimated that the bullets were smaller caliber, possibly in the .380 to 9 mm range.

Meeting ‘Arthur Kelley’

The encounter with a man who called himself Arthur Kelly, who police believe was Logan Clegg, was made public in the Vermont affidavit, but the New Hampshire one offers many more details.

On April 20, a little after 9:30 p.m., police looking for Wendy and Steve Reid in the woods encountered a white man, in his 20s, clean-shaven, with brown hair. The man told them his name was Arthur Kelly and his date of birth was Jan. 27, 1992 (Clegg’s birth date is Jan. 24, 1996). 

He was in a small tent about 100 meters into the woods, and about half a mile from where the bodies of the Reids would be found the next day. 

Officer Kristie Ann DeSilvio called the name and date of birth in to Concord Police Department, but there was no match.

Det. Garrett Lemoine told the man that they were searching for a missing couple. The man responded that he was just camping for the night and was from the Boston area.

DeSilvio asked dispatch to check his name and date of birth with Massachusetts, but no record was found there, either.

The man told Lemoine that he left his tent earlier that morning and did not return until the afternoon and that he hadn’t seen anyone in that area.

He also told the two officers he didn’t want to talk with them further, he wasn’t doing anything wrong and he was only passing through the area.

Lemoine asked him if he’d given them his correct name and date of birth, and he said he had.

Lemoine noted at the time that there were many Mountain Dew Code Red soda cans on the ground in and around the tent.

On April 22, the day after the Reids’ bodies were found, Lemoine and Det. Matt Doyon returned to the Arthur Kelly campsite. Police were already suspicious Kelly had given a false name, and now knew that the Reids had been killed in the woods about half a mile away.

When Lemoine and Doyon got to the site, the tent was gone, as were the Mountain Dew cans, and there was no debris left behind, unlike what they usually saw at abandoned homeless campsites.

A second campsite that a man who frequently walked in the woods had been keeping an eye on since January was found abandoned and burned after the Reids’ bodies were found. At first investigators didn’t believe it was related to the case, but later found bullet fragments, Mountain Dew cans and other evidence that they believe shows it was used by Clegg.

‘Anger Issues’ at McDonald’s

The Vermont affidavit revealed that Clegg worked at the McDonald’s on Loudon Road from November to Feb. 6, when he left. He told some coworkers he’d found another job.

The affidavit unsealed Monday reveals more details about Clegg’s time at McDonald’s.

Coworkers told investigators that Clegg had “anger issues” and told some he was leaving because of “his coworkers’ poor work quality.”

They said he was a “loner who kept to himself,” and was easily annoyed by others. He was protective of his backpack, and wouldn’t let anyone go near his belongings.

“They recalled that Logan became agitated if someone got in his way, and that he would mutter to himself and/or yell at the manager,” the affidavit says.

Two coworkers told police Clegg would slam his hand on surfaces to express his dissatisfaction when things went wrong.

The affidavit says that, without knowing Clegg was considered a suspect in the homicides, they said they “wouldn’t be surprised if Logan turned out to be a ‘serial killer’ or ‘school shooter.’”

Multiple Witness Encounters 

The Vermont affidavit revealed that a woman walking her dogs had been passed by the Reids near the power lines shortly before she heard gunshots coming from the woods. Minutes later she encountered a man fitting Clegg’s description on the trail at the spot where police believe the Reids were shot.

Police on April 22 appealed to the public for help, asking if anyone had seen anything odd in the area where the Reids were killed.

The affidavit gives details about six other people besides the dog walker, who in the weeks and months before the Reids were shot, encountered a man who stood out as being unusual, and in some instances made them nervous, and appeared to live in the woods.

This included one woman who called the police April 14 to report the man.

The woman who called police said that she first saw the man staring at Beaver Pond while she was on Curtisville Road. She was driving to the parking lot to grab a dog waste bag she’d accidentally left behind earlier that day.

The man started walking toward the parking lot while she was there, and then stood directly behind her car as she prepared to leave. She called police because she’d seen kids in the area, and was nervous about them encountering him.

When officers got to the scene to check it out, he was gone.

Another woman said she saw an odd man twice, both times in March. The first time, he was carrying an Amazon package into the woods, which led her to believe he was homeless and living there. She said he was yelling to himself and appeared agitated. She asked him how he was doing, and he said “Oh, great,” in an annoyed tone.

The second time she saw him, he was walking on the trail near the back of Cranmore Ridge toward the Marsh Loop Trail. He was carrying two plastic shopping bags and was “screaming to himself.” When he noticed her, he stopped screaming and stared at the ground to avoid eye contact. 

The Reids on their wedding day in 1984.

Trial is July 11

The affidavit also goes into detail about further searches in the woods that uncovered shell casings and bullet fragments and more.

It relates the already well-documented connect-the-dots search that started with the Mountain Dew cans. Through surveillance video at Walmart, Walgreens and Shaw’s, as well as a digital email and credit card trail, police believe they have tied Clegg to the woods where the Reids were killed, and can put him at the scene when they were shot.

The man the witnesses had described seeing wasn’t seen again in the Broken Ground Trail area after the Reids were found. The Concord Police Department investigation eventually led them to Clegg, at a library in Burlington, Vermont, where he was arrested less than a day before he was due to board a flight to Germany at JFK Airport in New York.

Clegg’s trial was set for July 11 at Monday’s hearing, with jury selection to be July 10. He is being held without bail in Merrimack County Jail.