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Friday, January 25, 2019

The Ronnie Towns Murder Case

     Elrey "Bud" Runion posted a Craigslist ad in hopes of connecting with someone willing to sell him a 1966 Ford Mustang convertible. On Thursday afternoon January 22, 2015, the 69-year-old Vietnam veteran and AT&T retiree and his wife June, a 66-year-old former elementary school teacher, left their home in Marietta, Georgia en route to McRae, a Telfair County town 180 miles southeast of the Atlanta area. They were on their way to meet a man in McRae who said he had a 1966 Mustang for them to look at.

     The day after Mr. Runion and his wife left Marietta, family members reported them missing after they failed to show up to babysit their grandchildren.

     Investigators in Telfair County, Georgia determined that a 28-year-old man named Ronnie Adrian Towns had called Mr. Runion Thursday afternoon from a disposable cellphone. Deputies with the sheriff's office questioned Towns about the call and his relationship with the missing couple.

     Later, when the authorities realized that Towns had given them information that turned out to be false, a Telfair County prosecutor charged him with giving false statements to the police and criminal attempt to commit theft by deception. At that point, Mr. Towns' whereabouts were unknown.

     On Monday morning January 26, 2015, accompanied by his relatives, Towns surrendered to the local authorities. According to the sheriff, the suspect had no criminal record and came from a good family.

      In the meantime, the search for Mr. and Mrs. Runion, a law enforcement operation that involved helicopters and watercraft, centered around a shallow pond and wooded area not far from land owned by the suspect's parents. On Monday afternoon, searchers found the missing couples' 2003 GMC Envoy partially submerged in the pond. Their bodies were discovered nearby in the woods along Webb Cemetery Road not far from the property owned by the suspect's family.

     The sheriff of Telfair County, at a press conference, made it clear that investigators believed that Ronnie Adrian Towns had lured Mr. and Mrs. Runion to McRae on the pretext of selling them a 1966 Mustang. He did so with the intent to rob them. The sheriff withheld information regarding how the Runions had died pending the completion of their autopsies. When the forensic pathologist completed his work, a local prosecutor would make a decision regarding additional charges in the case.

     On Tuesday January 27, 2015, the Telfair County prosecutor charged Ronnie Towns with malice murder and armed robbery. The judge denied him bond. According to the forensic pathologist, the victims had been shot in the head.

     The murder suspect grew up in the southern Georgia farming community where his father raised pine trees and grew soybeans, corn, and peanuts. Ronnie Towns lived with his wife and young daughter and worked on construction jobs for a local homebuilder. He also helped his uncle install carpets. "He's a good kid and very smart," the uncle said to a reporter. "It just doesn't make any sense why this would ever go down. It's hard for his parents. They're not understanding."

     Mr. Runion had been known in the community for fixing up old bicycles he gave to poor children through a charity run out of the Mount Paran Church of God in Marietta. Over the years he and his wife had participated in other charities throughout the south.

     As of January 2019, with four attorneys representing him in the death penalty double murder case, Ronnie Towns has not been tried. 


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