Police in North Carolina say the recently retired Green Beret’s wife killed and dismembered him after he told her he wanted a divorce. She went missing in late January.
Clinton Bonnell, 50, was killed, and Shana Cloud, 50, was charged with first-degree murder and concealing death. On Monday, she was not given bail.
The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that Bonnell’s body parts were found in a body of water in a rural area southeast of Fayetteville in February. The statement said that DNA testing last week proved that the remains were those of Bonnell.
Cumberland County District Attorney Billy West told NBC station WRAL in Raleigh that the body parts were from a human torso that had been cut up.
The station reported that West said police found digital and video proof that they think connects Cloud to the area where the torso was found.
Cloud’s lawyer, James McRae Jr., told the press that she is not guilty and is looking forward to her court date.
After more than twenty years, Bonnell left the service in December.
An affidavit supporting a search request says that he was in a physician assistant program at a nearby university on January 28 and that someone from the school reported him missing just before 3 p.m. that same day.
The affidavit says that when officers talked to Cloud, she said she had seen him the day before at a gym in Fayetteville. According to the statement, she said that they had left in different cars and that he was going to go to college to study for a test the next day.
The next morning, Cloud told officers that Bonnell’s car was at their house, but she couldn’t find him, according to the affidavit.
In the affidavit, it says that she chose not to file a report of missing people.
The warrant says that Bonnell’s girlfriend told deputies that he talked to a lawyer about getting a divorce from Cloud on January 27, the day before he disappeared. She made the missing persons report hours after the school official.
The last thing she heard from him was a text message that night, telling her he was home and that he had told his wife he wanted a divorce.
