Opening statements are expected to be delivered by prosecutors and the defense Tuesday as the double murder trial of Logan L. Clegg who is accused of killing a retired Concord, N.H., couple on a hiking trail near their home last year, officials said.
A jury was selected in Merrimack Superior Court on Monday, and now the trial starts in earnest with lawyers from both sides expected to summarize what they say the evidence shows about the 27-year-old Clegg’s actions in Concord in April 2022.
Clegg, 27, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of second degree murder and other charges.
Stephen L. Reid, 67, and his wife, Djeswende P. Reid, 66, were found shot to death in April 2022 on the Marsh Loop Trail, part of the popular Broken Ground trail network in Concord. They had been reported missing one day earlier.
Hours after the couple was reported missing, police encountered Clegg in the woods, where he had been living for some time, according to an affidavit filed in the case. He told them his name was Arthur Kelly but investigators nicknamed him the “Mountain Dew Man” because he was carrying several cans of the drink when they met him, according to the affidavit.
Those soda cans turned out to be vital clues in one of the most intensive homicide investigations in recent New Hampshire history. Police obtained video from a nearby Walmart showing a man buying Mountain Dew on the day the Reids were reported missing, according to the affidavit. He appeared similar to “Arthur Kelly” but wore a mask and could not be positively identified.
The man made 47 visits to the Walmart store between November 2021 to April 2022, records show. On the morning after the Reids were killed, he bought a tent, sleeping bag, and bottle of rubbing alcohol, according to the affidavit. He was not seen at the store after April 20, two days after the shooting.
Investigators also determined that Clegg, who had been arrested for burglary in Utah in 2020, looked “remarkably similar to the images of the ‘Mountain Dew Man,’” according to an affidavit in the case.
In May 2022, authorities released a sketch of the man and Concord police heard from residents who believed someone who resembled the sketch was living in the trail system where the couple’s bodies were found.
The man had been seen carrying packages from Amazon and plastic grocery bags into the woods, the affidavit said.
In August, police returned to the abandoned tent in the woods and found a spent shell casing that matched casings found where the Reids were shot, according to court records.
On Oct. 11, police learned Clegg had booked an airline ticket from New York to Berlin for Oct. 14. They obtained a phone number and used cellphone data to learn he was in Vermont, according to the affidavit.
The next day, police found Clegg at a supermarket in Burlington, Vt., and took him into custody on a fugitive of justice warrant from Utah. Clegg denied any involvement in the Reids’ killings, according to the affidavit.
At his campsite in Burlington, police discovered a loaded Glock 17 pistol, $7,150 in cash, and an envelope containing a Romanian passport bearing Clegg’s photo with the name Claude Zemo.
Clegg had multiple run-ins with law enforcement in the years before his arrest for the Concord killings, including a 2018 incident in which he stabbed a 28-year-old Spokane, Wash., man to death during a fight. Authorities concluded he acted in self-defense.
The Reids retired to Concord after spending decades involved in humanitarian work overseas where Stephen Reid, a Concord native, worked for the US Agency for International Development.
“Steve’s thirty-plus year career as an international development specialist in service to the world’s most vulnerable through USAID humanitarian projects could not have been made possible without the love, care and support of Wendy who also helped recently resettled refugees acclimate and thrive in the United States,” the family said last year.
Travis Andersen of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.
John R. Ellement can be reached at john.ellement@globe.com. Follow him @JREbosglobe.