April 8, 2025 • 49 mins
How is it possible for a Green Beret to survive multiple times on the field of combat only to come home and be taken out by his nurse wife? Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack look at the different sides of the same marriage to determine if forensic evidence will explain how Clint Bonnell's body parts ended up in a pond just three miles from his home and just weeks after he retires from military service. How will his wife, Shana Cloud, explain the bullets in her husband's laptop and declining to file a missing person report when he is obviously nowhere to be found?
Transcript Highlights
00:00.71 Introduction
03:16.43 Green Beret skill set
0833.43 Green Beret retires
13:46.78 To be on time is to be late
18:07.48 What was found with first search warrant
23:12.81 Green Beret gone, car in driveway
28:23.25 Remains tossed into pond
33:39.72 Recovering body from a pond
38:20.96 Digital forensic search
42:44.42 Would Green Beret be "on alert"
47:58.59 Bullets in the bookbag and laptop
49:08.59 Conclusion
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quody doors, but Joseph's gotten more. Imagine you're in some
third world hellhole that our government has sent you to.
You're highly specialized. You can handle any situation, and your job,
(00:24):
in particular is to keep your teammates alive, and not
just from the perspective of say, planning an attack or
setting up a defense. I'm talking about their day to
day lives, treating them for stab wounds, gunshot wounds, blunt
force trauma, tropical diseases. Oh and by the way, you've
(00:49):
also gotten into the local villages and you're treating them
as well. The people that have never been inoculated who
I'm talking about right now are Green Beret medics. They
are some of the most fascinating special operations people on
the face of the planet because, believe it or not,
the training that you have to go through to become
(01:11):
a Green Berey metic equals that of a physician assistant,
and probably a little bit more because of the environments
that you go to. Today, we're going to talk about
one of these guys that honorably served, that retired and
(01:33):
was working actually at a university to receive his physician
assistant degree. But you know what, he'll never walk across
the stage because he's a homicide victim. Now coming to
you from the beautiful campus of Jacksonville State University, I'm
(01:53):
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks, Dave. I got
to tell you I've for a long time I thought
that I wanted to go into medicine. I really did.
I thought that that's what I wanted to do. Then
I discovered I have no bedside manner, and it probably
(02:15):
would be better with the dead, more than likely. And
I'm good. I'm good with people I love, but I
don't know about total strangers, and so I chose maybe
the path less tried. I don't know, but for me,
being around the dead was much more comfortable than being
(02:36):
in an exam room or certainly out in the field
treating somebody. I think I've done much better. But there
are people out there that have a gift for it.
They have a gift of healing, I think, and I'm
not talking about some kind of spiritual gift here. I'm
talking about the ability to utilize the tools that science
provides and to guide their hands in their mind in
order to make people better. And boy, I tell you
(03:00):
what green Berets that pursue this particular job set are there.
As far as I'm concerned, they're the best of the
best because it's very rigorous what they have to go through.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Whenever I think of Green Beret, Green Bray doctor in particular,
but Green Breays in general, you think that's a man's man,
you know. You think of the ballot of the Green
Berets and the history of the Green Beret. I think
of Jeffrey MacDonald, the one big failure of a Green Beret,
but he really was a fake one at that, even
though he's a doctor. But in this particular case, we're
dealing with a man who Clinton Bonnell, who served two
(03:36):
tours of duty in a rock which I cannot imagine
what that had to have been like for somebody working
in the medical field, in the field like that, I
really can't, Joe. It goes beyond what I can even imagine.
I mean, we see movies and things, and you see
what's going on, and we hear about these things, but
I really cannot put myself into that person, you know,
(04:01):
and imagine what it's like to wake up knowing today
could be your last day. All the while you're trying
to save lives and you could die in the process.
This is a heroic job that you live with twenty
four to seven.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
And you know the two tours that you mentioned, that's
the tours that we know about, because I.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Was going to ask you about that.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
They can be deployed all over the world well, and
a lot of it depends on which which Special Forces
group they're in, and so there are various groups and
each group, and some folks might not know this. I've
got friends that are in special operations. I've got former
students that are special operations.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
This is the difference between you and me. You've got
friends in special I've got friends in low places. You've
got friends in Special Forces.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
You know some of them are low places too and
have been in low places. But you know, I've I
was I've always been enamored of them. I was just
an old dog faced soldier. I never did anything special.
But see what they go through, and that these guys
are so highly specialized. Not only would he have had
(05:08):
to go through all of his training, which is extensive.
By the way, there, did you know that the Green
Berets and those that are in the training And I
actually met a couple At one point in time, they
were at Grady Hospital in Atlanta and they had been
sent there to work in the emergency room, and that
was part of their training. And they would go to
big cities where there was trauma, a lot of trauma,
(05:33):
particularly gunshot firearms related trauma that they could get hands
on training with when they you know, when the individuals
roll through the door, because I mean, let's face it,
some of our cities are like war zones and that's
about as close as you're ever going to. You can't
replicate that in the field. You know, you you might
could go out and if you've got a I don't know,
(05:53):
a carcass of an animal, as you Mike, could shoot
it and you know, try to repair a dead animal's injury.
But the dead animal isn't writhing around and trying to
fight you every step of the way, and you're not
having to talk with them. It requires no bedside manner.
(06:14):
So they would actually go into these environments to prepare
to go into what are referred to as austere environments
where they can operate and they can operate. David to
think about it is these guys and when I say operate,
operates interchangeable with operations as well. They operate as Special
(06:35):
Forces soldiers because they can kill you as well as helia.
But in addition to that, they can actually do minor
surgeries in the field or get you stabilized until they
can get a helo to get you back to a
base camp where there is an area of medical unit
so that they can do extensive surgery. And there's all
(06:56):
kinds of stories going all the way back to Vietnam
about the heroics of Special Forces medics. Their training is
unbelievable and it's intense, and to think about it, is
you worked untethered. Imagine that you have no support system
behind you. It's not like, you know, you can run
run down the street and go to supply room and
(07:17):
get some more bandages or something. What you got is
what you got. And if you've only got a pack
with you out in the field and you're going to
have to maybe extract a bullet, a projectile, srow somebody up,
hang an IV, you have to bring all of that
with you and you have to be prepared to administer
all that stuff and maybe do it in a mud
hole while you're doing it. Can you imagine that that's why.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
It just boggles my mind for real. But you know,
we do have people like that in our world that
just they have a different skill set emotionally, psychologically, physically
and Clinton but now was that person. So he does
all this in his military career. He's fifty years old.
He retires, okay, his day of retirement was the last
day of last year, December thirty first, twenty twenty four.
(08:02):
He retires from the military and begins his new life.
And it's amazing to me that a man with his
background could serve as you mentioned, two tours in erect
that we know about, no telling what else he has
seen and done. But he comes home and less than
(08:24):
four months, two months after his retirement, less than a
month after his retirement, he goes missing. Twenty nine days
after his retirement, the man is missing, Joe actually be
twenty eight days January twenty eighth, he goes missing. And
he was such an on time cat. He was one
of these guys that you know, you really could set
(08:45):
your watch by. You knew if he's not here, something's wrong.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
It's problems.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
So, like many of our stories, this one starts with
a well being checked. January twenty eighth, twenty twenty five,
he doesn't show up for his physician assistant class, so
an employee at Methodist University calls Cumbalen County Sheriff's office
and says, hey, go and check on this guy. He
never misses, He's always here. Something is wrong. We can't
(09:11):
get him, so they do. They go by to check,
talk to his wife, Shiera or Shannon. Cloud says, hadn't
seen him since last night. Don't know where he is,
don't have to come on and his car's there, his
stuff is there, but he's not there now, Joe, you
and I have done a number of stories about to
begin with a well being check, and usually you get
(09:34):
that one call and they go out and they check
and walk away. When one's an adult, he has a
right to do whatever he wants. We don't know where
he is. How much more can you really do? But
oddly enough, in a really strange turn of events, Sheriff's
department gets a second call on the same day, hours
after the first one. It's another person, a friend. This
(09:55):
time a close friend calls them and asks for a
well being check because he's not answering text messages and
he always does, so that actually sends their little antenna
up a little bit further. We got to check on
something here. So two well being checks hours apart in
the same day, and lo and behold, they find out
(10:16):
that his wife, Shanna Cloud, has not been the one
to file a missing person report. You know, I don't
know the rules on this, Joe. If I go missing,
how long or if you can't get up with me,
how long before you can report me missing? Do they
make you wait? You know? Forty eight hours? There is
a timetable. You can't just say day's fifteen minutes late.
(10:38):
He's missing, you know, and you're an adult. You have
the right to do what you want. I think there
is usually twenty four to forty eight hours unless they
find blood, right.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Yeah, twenty four I've heard seventy two as well. Okay,
seventy two hours, three days. Yeah, our continuum extends out
further and further. You know, we were just talking about
this young girl that would Nancy, that has gone missing
and they thought that maybe she had been spirited away
to Moldova. Again. This is another case out of North Carolina,
(11:07):
by the way.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
We were talking about this very this very thing yesterday
with Nancy on her show about the further out in
time that you extend on that timeline, the you know
you're it's a diminishment of everything involved. First the physical
location where the individual is, any evidence that's left behind,
anybody that may have seen something that just they they've
(11:31):
now gone on about their life. So you're losing little
bits and pieces. I tell you what's more, what's more
compelling to me than anything about this is that the
domestic situation where you've got a wife who shows up,
you know who the popo show up at their house?
You know where is he? And it's like, I don't know,
(11:53):
I have no idea he you know, his belongings are here,
is cars here, don't I don't know where he is.
And I guess that there are people that live their
lives that way, you know, and you know, good lucky,
God speed.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
But I don't know anybody like that, Joe, do you.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
I mean, I just before I started this, I've just
got the phone, Kimmy. I mean, you know, I know
exactly where she is, what she's doing, and she knows
what I'm doing. And the next question is when are
you coming home? Right? And so you know, and you
know and I'm not trying to like Joe. It is.
You know, we're not like roommates in college. You know
(12:30):
where you know, I don't know where my roommate is.
You know, I have no idea. I got four other
roommates in here, and I have no idea where they are.
I think they were going home this weekend. It's not
like that. You're married. You're married, you know where's where's
your husband? You know what's what's going on? And look,
I got to tell you this. There's an old adage
(12:51):
in the military, and here's how it goes. And I
have tried to teach this to my son since he
was little. It goes like this, to be early is
to be on time. To be on time is to
be late, and to be late is unforgivable. In our
(13:14):
case today, he never showed up. The question is who
exactly are we not forgiving for this? Well, you know, Dave,
(13:38):
I think that the old saying birds of a feather
flock together when we begin to think about Clinton Bonnell, who,
by the way, is retired Army Green Beret medical sergeant.
He's married to Shannon Cloud and she's a former traveling nurse,
(14:06):
which in and of itself. I've got family members that
have done traveling nursing, which is fascinating because you talk about,
you know, leaving everything behind and kind of heading out
to do your thing in different locations. And it's kind
of interesting that she now, I think, works for the
(14:31):
Virginia Department of Corrections now, and she's formerly a traveling nurse,
and of course corrections, you know, departments have nurses obviously,
But people say, well, how could she be a traveling
nurse and be married. Well, here's the thing about it.
If you work in special operations, it's not like you're
(14:51):
in like a gigantic division like the eighty second Airborne
or one hundred and first or the twenty fifth Infantry Division,
where you know that that big unit is moving and
they do weeks and weeks of spinning up and preparing
papers and all that stuff before people ship out. If
you're in special operations, you can be gone like that,
(15:13):
and you could be gone for a protracted period of time.
And here's another thing. You're not always going to be
able to tell your family members where you're going. Okay,
it's called opsec. It's operation security, and so you might
not know, but that would actually fit well if they're
married and she had been a traveling nurse, because if
he's not at home, why does she need to be
(15:34):
at home. She could be out making really good money.
She's a military dependent, so her Benny's are all covered,
got that track care working, and so she's she's out
being a traveling nurse. And now they've settled, apparently in
this location and he's in retirement. I'm fascinated by this
(15:59):
relative to the life that they had lived and to
the point where he's retired. Now you talk about throwing
the anchor out and changing lifestyles all of a sudden.
This is It's a mind blowing adjustment, Dave.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
It is, and I think that's what As the deputies
are doing the first well being check, and you know,
they talk afterwards, you know, of what they saw, the
demeanor of the person they greeted it and in this
case it's his wife. They're already starting to piece things together,
and when they go back to headquarters, you know, well,
no matter what, no matter what we think, what we
(16:35):
saw there is a man who now is missing, a
man that was very dependable. He's missing, and his wife
says she doesn't know where he is and doesn't seem
to be too concerned about it. So when a missing
person's report is filed, it was not done by his wife.
That's becoming more common in the stories we cover. But
(16:57):
they served their first search warrant on January thirty. First,
I say, they being the Sheriff's department, but I want
to point this out because on the twenty eighth, we
don't know where he is. And this is where I
went back to that twenty four forty eight hours. How
long do they have to wait? You mentioned the story
of Madelina Coachacre in North Carolina where she was not
(17:17):
reported missing for three weeks, and this is a child
we're talking about there that the parents didn't report her missing,
and they in North Carolina have a thing called Kaylee's
Law based on Kaylee Anthony, where a parent only has
twenty four hours to report a child missing, which Joe,
I don't know any person that would not report their
(17:37):
child missing immediately, you know, But there are you know,
in cases that we've covered where they don't do that.
But the same is true here. You've got a man
that's missing and people are concerned because it's not like
his current situation he's not currently active in the Green Beret.
He's not currently active in the military going overseason fighting,
he's not doing any of that. He's now into a
(17:57):
very subtle life and he's got class is to go
to and he didn't show up. He is missing. So
they filed the mission in personport three days after the
well being check, and they served the first of two
search warrants at the house. Based on what I know now,
I pretty much think I know what they found during
the first search warrant, at least the second one when
(18:20):
they went into the house. So investigators start piecing this
together and they go and travel up to Virginia. That's
where Shanna Cloud when she was working as a traveling nurse,
you know, with the prison system, she traveled through Virginia.
They had property of in Virginia. I got a lake cabin,
(18:43):
I believe in some other things. And so deputies actually
working with people up in Virginia, Virginia State Police, they
meet with them up there and they search one of
Shanna Cloud's vehicles, rental properties, cell phones, start to put
a few things together. They serve a few more search
warns over the next couple of days, and during the
(19:05):
entire month of February. Now remember dayline, December thirty first,
twenty twenty four. Clinton Bonnell retires from the military January
twenty eighth. He goes missing. We're into February. I think
the shocking part for me the man had one month
out of the military and goes missing. That just is beyond.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
It's absolute nuts. And I can tell you, dude, he
would have been celebratory. You know, this is a benchmark
moment that people wait for. They wait for that day
and to do their twenty where they're going to be vested,
(19:49):
and then they look back and they say, I've done
my time, I've served my country, and I'm up and out.
And so the fact that he had gotten in to
this physician assistant program at Methodist University, which by the way,
is quite a good one. He was not just going
(20:10):
to sit at home and twiddle his thumbs and you know,
lay back on his laurels. He was going to get
He's fifty, you know, he's still got a lot of
work life left and can you imagine all of that.
He would be a very desirable commodity. You know, once
you get the degree and you pass your boards, you know,
(20:30):
it's something to be able to say, well, you know,
we've got a PA that works in the emergency room.
Maybe that's what he wants to do. And he works
three nights a week. He's going to go in there
and work and there's not really that much that's probably
going to shock him, you know, or you know, he
might work. I don't know, he might he might want
to be a pediatric PA. You know, he might want
(20:52):
to work with little kids, because you know, these guys
when they're out in the field, they're going into villages
and they're treating people that wouldn't otherwise get medical help.
Our guys did that for years and years, both in
Rock and even more so I think in Afghanistan where
these people are so isolated, and he's somebody. Here's the
(21:13):
thing about it, Daved, this is not a normal fifty
year old. This is a guy who's well prepared to
take care of himself. I mean, he's like, I wouldn't
want to cross paths with him. Actually, that's what I
was thinking, Jarm.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah, this is a man's man and he's again just retired.
He's only fifty and it's a different world now. So
when he's missing and they start investigating. They know they're
not going to have a happy ending. He's not hiding,
he's not shocked up in a hotel smoking crack. You
know that's not him. So they, being the investigators, they're
(21:47):
already searching multiple states. You know, they're pulling all the
data they can find on every any digital thing he
gets online. They've got records of it now. And it
goes back to old school stuff because on February twenty fifth,
less than a month into the investigation, a property owner
checking some land wooded area about three miles from where
(22:10):
Clemt Bonnell lives finds what appears to be human remains
in a pond. So he is our finder. Joe, our finder.
Does not find a body, he calls in, I found something.
It probably is a body. Now, I talked to you
(22:30):
about this before we started, because I would think if
you find a body, you call you. I found a body,
but this part is human remains? Am I right in?
Assuming when they say we found human remains, that it's
not a complete body.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Well, I think that that's a good way to put it,
because it can be obviously, let's just say particulated, So
you might have evidence of human remains that you know,
you might just be standing there on a muddy bank
of some pond down the south, holding a foot in
your hand. That's detachment. The rest of the body, well,
(23:05):
that's an element of human remains. It's not a body.
So you're right to draw that distinction. And it's kind
of catch all phrase. I think now you can say
human remains, and I think most people are outside of
you and I. Most people are not going to think dismembered.
They're going to think a wholly intact body. But the
(23:26):
world that you and I inhabit, though, David, it seems
as though with greater frequency, and we even did an
entire presentation on this, both on the light and the
body backs as well as a crime con on just
the instances that we're seeing where people seem to be
the veil has been rent in two where they've crossed it.
(23:48):
When we see what other analogy they've crossed the rubicon
when it comes to what they'll do to a human body,
people are not as averse apparently as they once were
to ripping a box to shreds with whatever is at
their disposal. But going back, you know, to this gentleman,
I'm still troubled over the fact that his car is
(24:12):
still in the driveway and that there's no evidence that
he's left. And you know, look, I guess you know,
back in his practitioner days as a green bereat, it
would be nothing for him to you know, ruck, you know,
ten miles to walk into an area. Some guys continue
(24:33):
to ruck, believe it or not. There's a couple of
them that live around here. I think that they're both
attached to the RTC department. I see them rocking up
and down the road all the time with these big,
heavy packs, just trying to stay in shape. But why
are you trying to stay in shape if you're fifty
and you're retired. Now, it doesn't make sense that he
has exited the home, and everything that he would need,
(24:55):
I would think to really get by in the civilian
world is left behind and he is formed. He has
filed no notice with with the people at Methodist University,
something that I can and I'm super imposing my thoughts here,
So forgive me, indulge me something he's worked so hard for.
I mean, because that that, truly, Dave, would be a culmination.
(25:17):
You know, you you've spent all of his time, paying
your dues in the military, seeing bearing witness some of
the most horrible things that anybody could bear witness to.
And now the big payoff comes when you're accepted into
a program to work on a master's degree in medicine.
That will put you in a position to sit for
(25:38):
the boards for the for a pa and work anywhere
you want and you don't have bullets flying over your head. Okay,
(26:00):
so let me back up here and think about this
just for a moment. I've got a guy who has
apparently vaporized, nowhere to be found. You got cops looking
for him, his keys, his car, his phone is still
(26:22):
at the house. And then tell me, right am I
saying this? Right, Dave? Within three miles of his home,
A dismembered body is found in a pond by some
guy that's out checking property. Did I get that right? Yep?
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Human remains, you know. And again we're going to the
back to basics here. Human remains found in a pond
and it's on private property, but it is about three
miles from where Clinton Bonnell lives. But when I was
looking at this, Joe, over the evidence and over the
search for its and you know, going to Virginia, North
(27:00):
Carolina and all the places they were searching. I was
looking at the search warrant in his house of what
they found there. But in all of that, they couldn't
find where he was. And when the remains are found,
they didn't immediately identify as Hey, we've got this missing
green Beret we've been looking for, which you know, everybody
there's got to know, right, And now you've got a
(27:23):
guy calling in saying he doesn't say, Hey, I think
I found the Green Beret. I got something here that
looks like human remains. What are you going to find
Joe in a pond that could be from the day
the man went missing? You know, I'm going to assume
that he wasn't tied up in a cave and tortured
(27:45):
and held here in the USA until he finally gave
up whatever secrets they thought he was holding, and then
they drowned him and pulled him apart. I'm not going
to assume that. I'm going to assume that he was
killed and then his remains were then tossed into a pond,
probably weighted down with something. But I'm wondering what you
(28:08):
would really be finding Joe, What kind of pieces in parts,
and are we going to deal with animals pulling him
apart and taking you know what, are we really going
to find? What's it going to look like when I
have human remains in a pond that could have been
there for three or four weeks.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Well, when they're particulated like this, and I'm listen, this
is this is happening in Cumberland County, North Carolina, which
is right adjacent to Fayetteful. And of course Fayetteful is
right adjacent to where Special Forces is. Okay, that's where
they train and other other elements obviously of the army
(28:43):
are there as well at Fort Bragg. And so they
didn't move too far away from where you know where
his his unit would have been based out of, perhaps
you know where he retired. And lots of times, guys,
when they're getting out military, they have to return back
to the location that they entered the military end and
(29:05):
they will actually retire them at that location. It doesn't
happen every time, but it does sometimes. Well, he's there,
and now you have him in this pond that's three
miles away. If it is in fact him, you do
know that you have a body. And so they have
an uphill climb relative to trying to get these remains
(29:27):
identified and if the body has been let's just say particulated, dismembered.
We're talking about probably a pond that's in the middle
of a pasture somewhere in the south. The bottom of
that pond is going to be red clay mud probably,
(29:50):
and not necessarily all elements of the body are going
to be floating. You might not necessarily see them, you know,
out there, because some of them will be on the
bottom and they could be buried in the mud. Do
you know what it takes in order to extract that
body from that environment. Well, if you have the ability,
(30:11):
and the thing has a dam, which I guess it
would be, you try to drain off the dam. Try
to drain it off. Because you find one piece of
the body, you don't know how many sections the body
has been placed into. So I've actually participated in events
where ponds have been drained. Some places you can't drain.
(30:33):
You know, you're down in the Intercostal Waterway or something
like that, down in South Louisiana and Florida. You're not
going to drain that. You know, you're essentially coming along
the bottom with your hands, you know, looking for things
and hoping there's not going to be a gator in there,
something else that's going to hurt you. I can't imagine
anybody wanting to go into the water with an alligator
nearby them, but there commonly should not be those kind
(30:57):
of predators in faithful North Carolina. There might be some
nearer the coast. But what I'm saying is is that
the body would be in an advanced state of decomposition
already in the muck and the mire of this little pond,
and somebody's going to have to go out there and
feel along the bottom of the thing unless they drain
(31:18):
the thing all the way out, and hoping that you'll
be able to get to every single element. Because he's
here's the problem, Dave. If you have a body that
has been dismembered, it's been broken down into a variety
of elements. Could be You could have the arm, for instance,
it's cut away at the shoulder. It's also cut away
(31:41):
at the elbow, and the hand is removed at the wrist.
So that's three elements just by itself with the arm. Okay,
if somebody takes their time and how they treat the torso.
Well they remove the head from the torso, did they
split the torso into multiple pieces? Because you know, the
bowel get really messy when you go to try to
(32:02):
dispose of them. If you saw a body in half,
be prepared for a huge mess. How did they quarter
the body up? So for every bit of the body,
you don't know what happened. So this assumption is is
it's broken into the smallest part as possible. Well, Dave,
from an evidentary standpoint, the smallest part possible can hold
the key to this because you don't know what anatomical
(32:26):
element is going to give you an idea as to
what brought about the cause of death in a case
like this, So it's painstaking to say the least. And
then on top of that, you've got advanced decomposition and
you're not going to person's probably not gonna have a
wallet in their back pocket. You might if you can
find a hand, you might could do prints, but that's
(32:49):
holding out hope that the that the finger pads are
not degraded to the point where they're just a mushy
mess and you're going to have to take them, dry
them out, inject tissue builder into the ads the fingers
and have that build up over time and then roll
a print. That is, even if you can find the hands,
it's it's a heck of a mess for anybody for
(33:10):
an investigative team to be in. And boy, they were
right in the middle of it here.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
So ultimately you've got to you mentioned you got a mess.
And I have to wonder what did they find investigators
inside the home that they could tie into with the
remains of the body, because when when you find remains
like this show, and do you show up on the
(33:35):
scene and get a net. I mean you pull out
the biggest parts, I'm guessing, but there's going to be
smaller parts. I mean, the body's going to start falling
apart at some point, right, and you've got to get
everything out of this pond that you can find. Do
you really get a net and go skimming like I
do in my pool? And I'm not trying to be gross,
I'm just curious.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
No, no, no, no no. I I've literally stripped down to my
skivvies and walked out into a pond to recover bodies.
I'm literally right there in the water with the body
(34:14):
and taking the elements out one by one I remember,
and this was really dangerous and stupid on my part.
I had a guy that had been diagnosed with AIDS
and he walked out into a pond in Atlanta on
a golf course. A matter of fact, it was Bobby
Jones golf course, which is you know, Bobby Jones, famous golfer.
(34:36):
This course is named after him. I think it was
Bobby Jones' golf course. And he shot himself in the head. Well,
he was found floating out there by the workers. Well,
it fell to me to go get him, and he
had threatened to take his life. And I went out there, Dave,
and I remember, first off, it's on a golf course.
(34:56):
So I'm barefoot down to my skivvies. I'm walking out there,
and I'm walking atop of golf balls. There's golf balls
all in the water, you know. And I finally make
my way out to him to bring him in, and
I'm thinking he's got a gunshot wound in the head.
I'm looking at him. Here we are, you know, it
(35:16):
looks like some after death baptism out there in the
middle of this thing. Here I am with a body,
he's floating out there. I've got gloves. I don't know
why I'm wearing gloves and I'm manipulating the body. I
look at his head and he's got a gunshot wound,
and I'm thinking, I can't exit this pond with this
(35:38):
body without recovering the weapon, because I knew that if
I moved the body that I would lose sight or
location of the weapon. So guess what I did. I
was barefooted, and I started feeling along the bottom of
the pond with my toes, and I remember I grasp
(35:59):
the barrel between my big toe and the second toe
and drew it upwards and was able to grab the
pistol handle and take it out as a thirty eight
caliber revolver that had, you know, just sunk to the
bottom adjacent to the body. So the thing about it is,
when you're working cases like this, you have to do
what you have to do. And there's been other cases
(36:20):
where I've had bodies that have been dismembered and thrown
off of bridges and have had to go into the water.
Didn't search with my feet. And this is before the
popularity of dive teams really too, you know, and some
things are just lost. Now we have dive teams, they'll
go out and find a lot of stuff. But I
don't know if they utilized a dive team in this case,
(36:40):
or if if you just had investigators or team members
that went out there and collected the remains. Because you know,
you're sitting, you're you know, they always make a big
deal out of us having to create a command center
at one of these scenes when you have something like that,
and what it is is an area where they can
bring in a vehicle and they kind of have this
(37:01):
radio set up and everything else, and you're commanding the area.
You're setting up what everybody's job is going to do?
They think too much to command here. It's like, all right, guys,
we've got to get in the water and get this
body out of here, and we have to do it
the most efficient way we can. And we also have
to document a long way because this is a crime
scene day. That's the other thing about this. You're taking
a body and you're dismembering it, perhaps, and you're tossing
(37:25):
it out into the pond. Well, each element of the
body and anything else associated with that body or the
crime is a piece of evidence. It's just that it's
a lot of it is underwater. Now how are you
going to handle How are you going to handle that?
And assuming that this was in the middle of a pasture,
you know it's going to be muddy. You and I
have grown up and seen these ponds that you can
(37:48):
drive past on the road through any of these you know,
country hamlets, and you can't see your hand in front
of your face if you're in the in the water
and these things. So it's a very difficult and again
all steer environment to have to work in. Dave.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
All right, So now you've got the body and or remains,
you have human remains, you get them out? Now they done.
They had served search warrants on at the house, and
they had done a digital forensic look at camera, at phones, cameras,
things like that, and they were able to determine a
(38:22):
number of different things from the digital timeline that was
built using the cell phone data and they were reframing
all of that in as they were waiting on the
DNA results to come back from the human body the
human remains that they found. So in that regard of
finding the DNA, how long would it take from the
(38:46):
time you find the remains until you can get DNA
results back.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Going to I'm going to say something here that's a
big clue to the outcome of this. And it's not
like the DNA was sent out to our friends at AUTHORM. Okay,
the DNA here, Dave. This gives you an idea where
their mind is, where the mind of the investigators are.
(39:15):
They sent this DNA sample to the Armed Forces Medical
Examiner's Office. Well, why in the world would they do this?
Because you got an unknown body. They had a level
of suspicion here and it's still unclear what that clue was.
Maybe it was a tattoo, maybe the face was still recognizable.
(39:38):
They might have had an image that they could have said, yep,
kind of looks like him. We know the quickest way
to do this. We're going to reach out to our
partners with FED'S and you know, talk to the folks
at Armed Forces Medical Examiner's Office, because you know every
trooper that that you know, deployees now, they do a
DNA swab when he's individual. So you're talking about a
(40:02):
Welcolm coastal swab that they would have on file there.
So you collect DNA from the remains that you have
from where it is that they collected those remains, and
you set up a profile on that and you have
the Armed Forces Medical Examiner's Office compare it and Dave,
(40:22):
I'll be dog gone. They didn't get a hit.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Brother, and it was very quick, about four weeks between
the time you had the from a timeline standpoint, January
twenty eighth, he doesn't show up for class. They search,
wife says, I don't know where he is. They find
on February twenty fifth, the human remains in the pond.
March twenty eighth, remains identified as the missing Green Beret. Now,
(40:50):
there were some things found inside the home that the
police did not let on, did not let that out
for the public until all of this came about when
they got the positive hit. You you know, again, Gollie
g Wisby, we have a Green Beret missing, and we've
got human remains three miles from his house, and we
(41:10):
know what we're looking at. So go ahead and break
it down as to what they found inside that house, Joe.
And by the way, I will tell you that the
other evidence that came about was digital with regard to
putting Shanna Cloud right there at the pond, Joe right
(41:31):
there at about the time they expected those human remains
got in that pond. They've got well a map, they
have a digital fingerprint now of where you were and
lo and behold, hmmm, Shanna, you didn't know where your
husband was January twenty eighth, but we got you over
here where his body was found.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Yeah. You couple that data with what they found inside
that house and just think about this and remember how
it had eluded a few seconds ago to uh they
had some indicator that this might be him. Well, they
when they serve those warrants, and I don't know, this
is really rich. I got to tell you. When they
(42:14):
serve those warrants, they went into the house and this
former Green Beret by now his laptop and his book
back that you know he uses to on his journey
to become a PA. They they got bullet holes on them.
(42:37):
How do you explain that? Well, you know, because I've
thought about you know, you would like to think that
somebody that works in special operations has got eyes in
the back of their head. Okay, and yeah, I guess
they do. But if you're not in theater any longer,
and you're not working at that at that pace that
they work at, you I'm sure that he was on alert.
(43:02):
He had a situational awareness all the time that is
far exceeds anything that you or and I would would have.
He would notice little things that but still in order
to you know, use a term that they would use
in an old Western movie to get the drop on
this guy, when would he be the most defenseless. Well,
(43:23):
let's say he's getting ready to go to school, got
my book back on, got my book back on, mom,
And all of a sudden it's perforated about gunshots. Did
you shoot him from the rear? You know, was he
holding his laptop as he was shot or was he
(43:44):
shot on the other side of his laptop and he
tried to get covered with his book back. They haven't
answered that question at We do know that the body
that they recovered actually had multiple gunshot ones to the body.
But here's the thing, Dave, Okay, now you've killed your
(44:04):
former Green Beret husband allegedly. What's gonna do now? Oh,
I know what I'll do. I'll go get skill saw
or get you know, the carpenter saw or the mall
or you know, whatever it is to acts whatever I'm
going to use, and I'm gonna, you know, break up
(44:27):
my husband's body. Well, where are you going to do
that without leaving a mess? My My suspicion is is
that they're gonna, if they haven't already, they're gonna tear
this place from stem to stern. And there's gonna be
a lot of Blue Star agent that you used in
this house to you know, try to find any evidence
(44:49):
of blood, because there's gonna be a copious amount of blood,
you know, and not just from the gunshot ones, but
from the dismemberment as well. So you'll have these deposition
that are lying about that maybe she went to some
effort clean Here's another thing too that I was kind
of fascinating by. They have in fact charged her, Missus Cloud.
(45:14):
They have charged her in this case, David, She's a nurse.
She's not necessarily going to have the same aversion to
blood and no sort of things that maybe an everyday
civilian might. What do you think about that?
Speaker 2 (45:30):
I actually made a note to ask you about this
because when I saw the charges agains Shannon Cloud first
Green murder, kind of expected that, you know. But she
was also charged with concealment of death in this laying
of Clinton Bonnell, and the concealment charge is because she
failed to notify law enforcement of his death while knowing
(45:52):
or having reason to know his death was not due
to natural causes.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Wow, that's a mouthful. Yeah, that's a mouthful. And again
that that gives her I don't know if that would
qualify as you know, there's that old term that they
use legally, ease, the malice of forethought. You know, like
you're you have an awareness of something, and so they
know enough about her and the activities and everything that
(46:20):
we don't have full knowledge of right now to charge
her with this that she had an awareness. What they're
saying is well, first off, they charged it was first
degree and first degree is generally in most states is
capital homicide. So that's at the top end. Many times
there's an element of certainly malice, but there's also an
(46:41):
element of planning that goes into this. She's attempting or
has attempt attempted to conceal in the wake of this,
and they know that she has knowledge that this has occurred.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
So with given that meditation be formed in the blink
of an eye.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
I think Nancy says twinkling, doesn't she she's able with it.
She's more King James with it, so in a twinkling
of an eye, and so yeah, the with with that said, uh,
you've got this former traveling nurse to keep referring to
her as former traveling nurse that has allegedly executed her
(47:32):
husband and taken him apart piece by piece. I think
one of my thoughts was I was on the air
would show the other day and they were talking about
I was listening to them talk about I think I
was on Court TV, uh, listening to them talk about
this case before I came on to do my segment,
and one of the attorneys says, well, I don't see
(47:54):
how in the world. I don't see how in the
world a woman could pull this off. And I'm thinking,
have you lost your of course a woman could pull
this off. You sneak up on him, you have a handgun.
You know what was it.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
The boat bag in the laptop? I mean, yeah, of course.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Off. Yeah, you shoot him and then you particulate the body.
Makes a body a lot more manageable. And oh, by
the way, I've been driving past this place for a
number of years now, I've seen it. Wouldn't that be
a great spot to dump a body? Well, it's certainly
(48:35):
not Arlington, which this fellow, because of his service to
our country, may have deserved to have been in. But instead,
the person that, at least at one time in his life,
that he loved the most has now been charged with
(48:55):
his homicide. We'll see how this turns out. There's going
to be more to come. I can tell you this,
and I'd like to know what her motivation was for.
It was anger, jealousy, to have something to do with money,
or was it that they were living separate lives. We'll
(49:19):
find out and i'll let you know more. I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks
Quody doors, but Joseph's gotten more. Imagine you're in some
third world hellhole that our government has sent you to.
You're highly specialized. You can handle any situation, and your job,
(00:24):
in particular is to keep your teammates alive, and not
just from the perspective of say, planning an attack or
setting up a defense. I'm talking about their day to
day lives, treating them for stab wounds, gunshot wounds, blunt
force trauma, tropical diseases. Oh and by the way, you've
(00:49):
also gotten into the local villages and you're treating them
as well. The people that have never been inoculated who
I'm talking about right now are Green Beret medics. They
are some of the most fascinating special operations people on
the face of the planet because, believe it or not,
the training that you have to go through to become
(01:11):
a Green Berey metic equals that of a physician assistant,
and probably a little bit more because of the environments
that you go to. Today, we're going to talk about
one of these guys that honorably served, that retired and
(01:33):
was working actually at a university to receive his physician
assistant degree. But you know what, he'll never walk across
the stage because he's a homicide victim. Now coming to
you from the beautiful campus of Jacksonville State University, I'm
(01:53):
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks, Dave. I got
to tell you I've for a long time I thought
that I wanted to go into medicine. I really did.
I thought that that's what I wanted to do. Then
I discovered I have no bedside manner, and it probably
(02:15):
would be better with the dead, more than likely. And
I'm good. I'm good with people I love, but I
don't know about total strangers, and so I chose maybe
the path less tried. I don't know, but for me,
being around the dead was much more comfortable than being
(02:36):
in an exam room or certainly out in the field
treating somebody. I think I've done much better. But there
are people out there that have a gift for it.
They have a gift of healing, I think, and I'm
not talking about some kind of spiritual gift here. I'm
talking about the ability to utilize the tools that science
provides and to guide their hands in their mind in
order to make people better. And boy, I tell you
(03:00):
what green Berets that pursue this particular job set are there.
As far as I'm concerned, they're the best of the
best because it's very rigorous what they have to go through.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Whenever I think of Green Beret, Green Bray doctor in particular,
but Green Breays in general, you think that's a man's man,
you know. You think of the ballot of the Green
Berets and the history of the Green Beret. I think
of Jeffrey MacDonald, the one big failure of a Green Beret,
but he really was a fake one at that, even
though he's a doctor. But in this particular case, we're
dealing with a man who Clinton Bonnell, who served two
(03:36):
tours of duty in a rock which I cannot imagine
what that had to have been like for somebody working
in the medical field, in the field like that, I
really can't, Joe. It goes beyond what I can even imagine.
I mean, we see movies and things, and you see
what's going on, and we hear about these things, but
I really cannot put myself into that person, you know,
(04:01):
and imagine what it's like to wake up knowing today
could be your last day. All the while you're trying
to save lives and you could die in the process.
This is a heroic job that you live with twenty
four to seven.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
And you know the two tours that you mentioned, that's
the tours that we know about, because I.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Was going to ask you about that.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
They can be deployed all over the world well, and
a lot of it depends on which which Special Forces
group they're in, and so there are various groups and
each group, and some folks might not know this. I've
got friends that are in special operations. I've got former
students that are special operations.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
This is the difference between you and me. You've got
friends in special I've got friends in low places. You've
got friends in Special Forces.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
You know some of them are low places too and
have been in low places. But you know, I've I
was I've always been enamored of them. I was just
an old dog faced soldier. I never did anything special.
But see what they go through, and that these guys
are so highly specialized. Not only would he have had
(05:08):
to go through all of his training, which is extensive.
By the way, there, did you know that the Green
Berets and those that are in the training And I
actually met a couple At one point in time, they
were at Grady Hospital in Atlanta and they had been
sent there to work in the emergency room, and that
was part of their training. And they would go to
big cities where there was trauma, a lot of trauma,
(05:33):
particularly gunshot firearms related trauma that they could get hands
on training with when they you know, when the individuals
roll through the door, because I mean, let's face it,
some of our cities are like war zones and that's
about as close as you're ever going to. You can't
replicate that in the field. You know, you you might
could go out and if you've got a I don't know,
(05:53):
a carcass of an animal, as you Mike, could shoot
it and you know, try to repair a dead animal's injury.
But the dead animal isn't writhing around and trying to
fight you every step of the way, and you're not
having to talk with them. It requires no bedside manner.
(06:14):
So they would actually go into these environments to prepare
to go into what are referred to as austere environments
where they can operate and they can operate. David to
think about it is these guys and when I say operate,
operates interchangeable with operations as well. They operate as Special
(06:35):
Forces soldiers because they can kill you as well as helia.
But in addition to that, they can actually do minor
surgeries in the field or get you stabilized until they
can get a helo to get you back to a
base camp where there is an area of medical unit
so that they can do extensive surgery. And there's all
(06:56):
kinds of stories going all the way back to Vietnam
about the heroics of Special Forces medics. Their training is
unbelievable and it's intense, and to think about it, is
you worked untethered. Imagine that you have no support system
behind you. It's not like, you know, you can run
run down the street and go to supply room and
(07:17):
get some more bandages or something. What you got is
what you got. And if you've only got a pack
with you out in the field and you're going to
have to maybe extract a bullet, a projectile, srow somebody up,
hang an IV, you have to bring all of that
with you and you have to be prepared to administer
all that stuff and maybe do it in a mud
hole while you're doing it. Can you imagine that that's why.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
It just boggles my mind for real. But you know,
we do have people like that in our world that
just they have a different skill set emotionally, psychologically, physically
and Clinton but now was that person. So he does
all this in his military career. He's fifty years old.
He retires, okay, his day of retirement was the last
day of last year, December thirty first, twenty twenty four.
(08:02):
He retires from the military and begins his new life.
And it's amazing to me that a man with his
background could serve as you mentioned, two tours in erect
that we know about, no telling what else he has
seen and done. But he comes home and less than
(08:24):
four months, two months after his retirement, less than a
month after his retirement, he goes missing. Twenty nine days
after his retirement, the man is missing, Joe actually be
twenty eight days January twenty eighth, he goes missing. And
he was such an on time cat. He was one
of these guys that you know, you really could set
(08:45):
your watch by. You knew if he's not here, something's wrong.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
It's problems.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
So, like many of our stories, this one starts with
a well being checked. January twenty eighth, twenty twenty five,
he doesn't show up for his physician assistant class, so
an employee at Methodist University calls Cumbalen County Sheriff's office
and says, hey, go and check on this guy. He
never misses, He's always here. Something is wrong. We can't
(09:11):
get him, so they do. They go by to check,
talk to his wife, Shiera or Shannon. Cloud says, hadn't
seen him since last night. Don't know where he is,
don't have to come on and his car's there, his
stuff is there, but he's not there now, Joe, you
and I have done a number of stories about to
begin with a well being check, and usually you get
(09:34):
that one call and they go out and they check
and walk away. When one's an adult, he has a
right to do whatever he wants. We don't know where
he is. How much more can you really do? But
oddly enough, in a really strange turn of events, Sheriff's
department gets a second call on the same day, hours
after the first one. It's another person, a friend. This
(09:55):
time a close friend calls them and asks for a
well being check because he's not answering text messages and
he always does, so that actually sends their little antenna
up a little bit further. We got to check on
something here. So two well being checks hours apart in
the same day, and lo and behold, they find out
(10:16):
that his wife, Shanna Cloud, has not been the one
to file a missing person report. You know, I don't
know the rules on this, Joe. If I go missing,
how long or if you can't get up with me,
how long before you can report me missing? Do they
make you wait? You know? Forty eight hours? There is
a timetable. You can't just say day's fifteen minutes late.
(10:38):
He's missing, you know, and you're an adult. You have
the right to do what you want. I think there
is usually twenty four to forty eight hours unless they
find blood, right.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Yeah, twenty four I've heard seventy two as well. Okay,
seventy two hours, three days. Yeah, our continuum extends out
further and further. You know, we were just talking about
this young girl that would Nancy, that has gone missing
and they thought that maybe she had been spirited away
to Moldova. Again. This is another case out of North Carolina,
(11:07):
by the way.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
We were talking about this very this very thing yesterday
with Nancy on her show about the further out in
time that you extend on that timeline, the you know
you're it's a diminishment of everything involved. First the physical
location where the individual is, any evidence that's left behind,
anybody that may have seen something that just they they've
(11:31):
now gone on about their life. So you're losing little
bits and pieces. I tell you what's more, what's more
compelling to me than anything about this is that the
domestic situation where you've got a wife who shows up,
you know who the popo show up at their house?
You know where is he? And it's like, I don't know,
(11:53):
I have no idea he you know, his belongings are here,
is cars here, don't I don't know where he is.
And I guess that there are people that live their
lives that way, you know, and you know, good lucky,
God speed.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
But I don't know anybody like that, Joe, do you.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
I mean, I just before I started this, I've just
got the phone, Kimmy. I mean, you know, I know
exactly where she is, what she's doing, and she knows
what I'm doing. And the next question is when are
you coming home? Right? And so you know, and you
know and I'm not trying to like Joe. It is.
You know, we're not like roommates in college. You know
(12:30):
where you know, I don't know where my roommate is.
You know, I have no idea. I got four other
roommates in here, and I have no idea where they are.
I think they were going home this weekend. It's not
like that. You're married. You're married, you know where's where's
your husband? You know what's what's going on? And look,
I got to tell you this. There's an old adage
(12:51):
in the military, and here's how it goes. And I
have tried to teach this to my son since he
was little. It goes like this, to be early is
to be on time. To be on time is to
be late, and to be late is unforgivable. In our
(13:14):
case today, he never showed up. The question is who
exactly are we not forgiving for this? Well, you know, Dave,
(13:38):
I think that the old saying birds of a feather
flock together when we begin to think about Clinton Bonnell, who,
by the way, is retired Army Green Beret medical sergeant.
He's married to Shannon Cloud and she's a former traveling nurse,
(14:06):
which in and of itself. I've got family members that
have done traveling nursing, which is fascinating because you talk about,
you know, leaving everything behind and kind of heading out
to do your thing in different locations. And it's kind
of interesting that she now, I think, works for the
(14:31):
Virginia Department of Corrections now, and she's formerly a traveling nurse,
and of course corrections, you know, departments have nurses obviously,
But people say, well, how could she be a traveling
nurse and be married. Well, here's the thing about it.
If you work in special operations, it's not like you're
(14:51):
in like a gigantic division like the eighty second Airborne
or one hundred and first or the twenty fifth Infantry Division,
where you know that that big unit is moving and
they do weeks and weeks of spinning up and preparing
papers and all that stuff before people ship out. If
you're in special operations, you can be gone like that,
(15:13):
and you could be gone for a protracted period of time.
And here's another thing. You're not always going to be
able to tell your family members where you're going. Okay,
it's called opsec. It's operation security, and so you might
not know, but that would actually fit well if they're
married and she had been a traveling nurse, because if
he's not at home, why does she need to be
(15:34):
at home. She could be out making really good money.
She's a military dependent, so her Benny's are all covered,
got that track care working, and so she's she's out
being a traveling nurse. And now they've settled, apparently in
this location and he's in retirement. I'm fascinated by this
(15:59):
relative to the life that they had lived and to
the point where he's retired. Now you talk about throwing
the anchor out and changing lifestyles all of a sudden.
This is It's a mind blowing adjustment, Dave.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
It is, and I think that's what As the deputies
are doing the first well being check, and you know,
they talk afterwards, you know, of what they saw, the
demeanor of the person they greeted it and in this
case it's his wife. They're already starting to piece things together,
and when they go back to headquarters, you know, well,
no matter what, no matter what we think, what we
(16:35):
saw there is a man who now is missing, a
man that was very dependable. He's missing, and his wife
says she doesn't know where he is and doesn't seem
to be too concerned about it. So when a missing
person's report is filed, it was not done by his wife.
That's becoming more common in the stories we cover. But
(16:57):
they served their first search warrant on January thirty. First,
I say, they being the Sheriff's department, but I want
to point this out because on the twenty eighth, we
don't know where he is. And this is where I
went back to that twenty four forty eight hours. How
long do they have to wait? You mentioned the story
of Madelina Coachacre in North Carolina where she was not
(17:17):
reported missing for three weeks, and this is a child
we're talking about there that the parents didn't report her missing,
and they in North Carolina have a thing called Kaylee's
Law based on Kaylee Anthony, where a parent only has
twenty four hours to report a child missing, which Joe,
I don't know any person that would not report their
(17:37):
child missing immediately, you know, But there are you know,
in cases that we've covered where they don't do that.
But the same is true here. You've got a man
that's missing and people are concerned because it's not like
his current situation he's not currently active in the Green Beret.
He's not currently active in the military going overseason fighting,
he's not doing any of that. He's now into a
(17:57):
very subtle life and he's got class is to go
to and he didn't show up. He is missing. So
they filed the mission in personport three days after the
well being check, and they served the first of two
search warrants at the house. Based on what I know now,
I pretty much think I know what they found during
the first search warrant, at least the second one when
(18:20):
they went into the house. So investigators start piecing this
together and they go and travel up to Virginia. That's
where Shanna Cloud when she was working as a traveling nurse,
you know, with the prison system, she traveled through Virginia.
They had property of in Virginia. I got a lake cabin,
(18:43):
I believe in some other things. And so deputies actually
working with people up in Virginia, Virginia State Police, they
meet with them up there and they search one of
Shanna Cloud's vehicles, rental properties, cell phones, start to put
a few things together. They serve a few more search
warns over the next couple of days, and during the
(19:05):
entire month of February. Now remember dayline, December thirty first,
twenty twenty four. Clinton Bonnell retires from the military January
twenty eighth. He goes missing. We're into February. I think
the shocking part for me the man had one month
out of the military and goes missing. That just is beyond.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
It's absolute nuts. And I can tell you, dude, he
would have been celebratory. You know, this is a benchmark
moment that people wait for. They wait for that day
and to do their twenty where they're going to be vested,
(19:49):
and then they look back and they say, I've done
my time, I've served my country, and I'm up and out.
And so the fact that he had gotten in to
this physician assistant program at Methodist University, which by the way,
is quite a good one. He was not just going
(20:10):
to sit at home and twiddle his thumbs and you know,
lay back on his laurels. He was going to get
He's fifty, you know, he's still got a lot of
work life left and can you imagine all of that.
He would be a very desirable commodity. You know, once
you get the degree and you pass your boards, you know,
(20:30):
it's something to be able to say, well, you know,
we've got a PA that works in the emergency room.
Maybe that's what he wants to do. And he works
three nights a week. He's going to go in there
and work and there's not really that much that's probably
going to shock him, you know, or you know, he
might work. I don't know, he might he might want
to be a pediatric PA. You know, he might want
(20:52):
to work with little kids, because you know, these guys
when they're out in the field, they're going into villages
and they're treating people that wouldn't otherwise get medical help.
Our guys did that for years and years, both in
Rock and even more so I think in Afghanistan where
these people are so isolated, and he's somebody. Here's the
(21:13):
thing about it, Daved, this is not a normal fifty
year old. This is a guy who's well prepared to
take care of himself. I mean, he's like, I wouldn't
want to cross paths with him. Actually, that's what I
was thinking, Jarm.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah, this is a man's man and he's again just retired.
He's only fifty and it's a different world now. So
when he's missing and they start investigating. They know they're
not going to have a happy ending. He's not hiding,
he's not shocked up in a hotel smoking crack. You
know that's not him. So they, being the investigators, they're
(21:47):
already searching multiple states. You know, they're pulling all the
data they can find on every any digital thing he
gets online. They've got records of it now. And it
goes back to old school stuff because on February twenty fifth,
less than a month into the investigation, a property owner
checking some land wooded area about three miles from where
(22:10):
Clemt Bonnell lives finds what appears to be human remains
in a pond. So he is our finder. Joe, our finder.
Does not find a body, he calls in, I found something.
It probably is a body. Now, I talked to you
(22:30):
about this before we started, because I would think if
you find a body, you call you. I found a body,
but this part is human remains? Am I right in?
Assuming when they say we found human remains, that it's
not a complete body.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Well, I think that that's a good way to put it,
because it can be obviously, let's just say particulated, So
you might have evidence of human remains that you know,
you might just be standing there on a muddy bank
of some pond down the south, holding a foot in
your hand. That's detachment. The rest of the body, well,
(23:05):
that's an element of human remains. It's not a body.
So you're right to draw that distinction. And it's kind
of catch all phrase. I think now you can say
human remains, and I think most people are outside of
you and I. Most people are not going to think dismembered.
They're going to think a wholly intact body. But the
(23:26):
world that you and I inhabit, though, David, it seems
as though with greater frequency, and we even did an
entire presentation on this, both on the light and the
body backs as well as a crime con on just
the instances that we're seeing where people seem to be
the veil has been rent in two where they've crossed it.
(23:48):
When we see what other analogy they've crossed the rubicon
when it comes to what they'll do to a human body,
people are not as averse apparently as they once were
to ripping a box to shreds with whatever is at
their disposal. But going back, you know, to this gentleman,
I'm still troubled over the fact that his car is
(24:12):
still in the driveway and that there's no evidence that
he's left. And you know, look, I guess you know,
back in his practitioner days as a green bereat, it
would be nothing for him to you know, ruck, you know,
ten miles to walk into an area. Some guys continue
(24:33):
to ruck, believe it or not. There's a couple of
them that live around here. I think that they're both
attached to the RTC department. I see them rocking up
and down the road all the time with these big,
heavy packs, just trying to stay in shape. But why
are you trying to stay in shape if you're fifty
and you're retired. Now, it doesn't make sense that he
has exited the home, and everything that he would need,
(24:55):
I would think to really get by in the civilian
world is left behind and he is formed. He has
filed no notice with with the people at Methodist University,
something that I can and I'm super imposing my thoughts here,
So forgive me, indulge me something he's worked so hard for.
I mean, because that that, truly, Dave, would be a culmination.
(25:17):
You know, you you've spent all of his time, paying
your dues in the military, seeing bearing witness some of
the most horrible things that anybody could bear witness to.
And now the big payoff comes when you're accepted into
a program to work on a master's degree in medicine.
That will put you in a position to sit for
(25:38):
the boards for the for a pa and work anywhere
you want and you don't have bullets flying over your head. Okay,
(26:00):
so let me back up here and think about this
just for a moment. I've got a guy who has
apparently vaporized, nowhere to be found. You got cops looking
for him, his keys, his car, his phone is still
(26:22):
at the house. And then tell me, right am I
saying this? Right, Dave? Within three miles of his home,
A dismembered body is found in a pond by some
guy that's out checking property. Did I get that right? Yep?
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Human remains, you know. And again we're going to the
back to basics here. Human remains found in a pond
and it's on private property, but it is about three
miles from where Clinton Bonnell lives. But when I was
looking at this, Joe, over the evidence and over the
search for its and you know, going to Virginia, North
(27:00):
Carolina and all the places they were searching. I was
looking at the search warrant in his house of what
they found there. But in all of that, they couldn't
find where he was. And when the remains are found,
they didn't immediately identify as Hey, we've got this missing
green Beret we've been looking for, which you know, everybody
there's got to know, right, And now you've got a
(27:23):
guy calling in saying he doesn't say, Hey, I think
I found the Green Beret. I got something here that
looks like human remains. What are you going to find
Joe in a pond that could be from the day
the man went missing? You know, I'm going to assume
that he wasn't tied up in a cave and tortured
(27:45):
and held here in the USA until he finally gave
up whatever secrets they thought he was holding, and then
they drowned him and pulled him apart. I'm not going
to assume that. I'm going to assume that he was
killed and then his remains were then tossed into a pond,
probably weighted down with something. But I'm wondering what you
(28:08):
would really be finding Joe, What kind of pieces in parts,
and are we going to deal with animals pulling him
apart and taking you know what, are we really going
to find? What's it going to look like when I
have human remains in a pond that could have been
there for three or four weeks.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Well, when they're particulated like this, and I'm listen, this
is this is happening in Cumberland County, North Carolina, which
is right adjacent to Fayetteful. And of course Fayetteful is
right adjacent to where Special Forces is. Okay, that's where
they train and other other elements obviously of the army
(28:43):
are there as well at Fort Bragg. And so they
didn't move too far away from where you know where
his his unit would have been based out of, perhaps
you know where he retired. And lots of times, guys,
when they're getting out military, they have to return back
to the location that they entered the military end and
(29:05):
they will actually retire them at that location. It doesn't
happen every time, but it does sometimes. Well, he's there,
and now you have him in this pond that's three
miles away. If it is in fact him, you do
know that you have a body. And so they have
an uphill climb relative to trying to get these remains
(29:27):
identified and if the body has been let's just say particulated, dismembered.
We're talking about probably a pond that's in the middle
of a pasture somewhere in the south. The bottom of
that pond is going to be red clay mud probably,
(29:50):
and not necessarily all elements of the body are going
to be floating. You might not necessarily see them, you know,
out there, because some of them will be on the
bottom and they could be buried in the mud. Do
you know what it takes in order to extract that
body from that environment. Well, if you have the ability,
(30:11):
and the thing has a dam, which I guess it
would be, you try to drain off the dam. Try
to drain it off. Because you find one piece of
the body, you don't know how many sections the body
has been placed into. So I've actually participated in events
where ponds have been drained. Some places you can't drain.
(30:33):
You know, you're down in the Intercostal Waterway or something
like that, down in South Louisiana and Florida. You're not
going to drain that. You know, you're essentially coming along
the bottom with your hands, you know, looking for things
and hoping there's not going to be a gator in there,
something else that's going to hurt you. I can't imagine
anybody wanting to go into the water with an alligator
nearby them, but there commonly should not be those kind
(30:57):
of predators in faithful North Carolina. There might be some
nearer the coast. But what I'm saying is is that
the body would be in an advanced state of decomposition
already in the muck and the mire of this little pond,
and somebody's going to have to go out there and
feel along the bottom of the thing unless they drain
(31:18):
the thing all the way out, and hoping that you'll
be able to get to every single element. Because he's
here's the problem, Dave. If you have a body that
has been dismembered, it's been broken down into a variety
of elements. Could be You could have the arm, for instance,
it's cut away at the shoulder. It's also cut away
(31:41):
at the elbow, and the hand is removed at the wrist.
So that's three elements just by itself with the arm. Okay,
if somebody takes their time and how they treat the torso.
Well they remove the head from the torso, did they
split the torso into multiple pieces? Because you know, the
bowel get really messy when you go to try to
(32:02):
dispose of them. If you saw a body in half,
be prepared for a huge mess. How did they quarter
the body up? So for every bit of the body,
you don't know what happened. So this assumption is is
it's broken into the smallest part as possible. Well, Dave,
from an evidentary standpoint, the smallest part possible can hold
the key to this because you don't know what anatomical
(32:26):
element is going to give you an idea as to
what brought about the cause of death in a case
like this, So it's painstaking to say the least. And
then on top of that, you've got advanced decomposition and
you're not going to person's probably not gonna have a
wallet in their back pocket. You might if you can
find a hand, you might could do prints, but that's
(32:49):
holding out hope that the that the finger pads are
not degraded to the point where they're just a mushy
mess and you're going to have to take them, dry
them out, inject tissue builder into the ads the fingers
and have that build up over time and then roll
a print. That is, even if you can find the hands,
it's it's a heck of a mess for anybody for
(33:10):
an investigative team to be in. And boy, they were
right in the middle of it here.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
So ultimately you've got to you mentioned you got a mess.
And I have to wonder what did they find investigators
inside the home that they could tie into with the
remains of the body, because when when you find remains
like this show, and do you show up on the
(33:35):
scene and get a net. I mean you pull out
the biggest parts, I'm guessing, but there's going to be
smaller parts. I mean, the body's going to start falling
apart at some point, right, and you've got to get
everything out of this pond that you can find. Do
you really get a net and go skimming like I
do in my pool? And I'm not trying to be gross,
I'm just curious.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
No, no, no, no no. I I've literally stripped down to my
skivvies and walked out into a pond to recover bodies.
I'm literally right there in the water with the body
(34:14):
and taking the elements out one by one I remember,
and this was really dangerous and stupid on my part.
I had a guy that had been diagnosed with AIDS
and he walked out into a pond in Atlanta on
a golf course. A matter of fact, it was Bobby
Jones golf course, which is you know, Bobby Jones, famous golfer.
(34:36):
This course is named after him. I think it was
Bobby Jones' golf course. And he shot himself in the head. Well,
he was found floating out there by the workers. Well,
it fell to me to go get him, and he
had threatened to take his life. And I went out there, Dave,
and I remember, first off, it's on a golf course.
(34:56):
So I'm barefoot down to my skivvies. I'm walking out there,
and I'm walking atop of golf balls. There's golf balls
all in the water, you know. And I finally make
my way out to him to bring him in, and
I'm thinking he's got a gunshot wound in the head.
I'm looking at him. Here we are, you know, it
(35:16):
looks like some after death baptism out there in the
middle of this thing. Here I am with a body,
he's floating out there. I've got gloves. I don't know
why I'm wearing gloves and I'm manipulating the body. I
look at his head and he's got a gunshot wound,
and I'm thinking, I can't exit this pond with this
(35:38):
body without recovering the weapon, because I knew that if
I moved the body that I would lose sight or
location of the weapon. So guess what I did. I
was barefooted, and I started feeling along the bottom of
the pond with my toes, and I remember I grasp
(35:59):
the barrel between my big toe and the second toe
and drew it upwards and was able to grab the
pistol handle and take it out as a thirty eight
caliber revolver that had, you know, just sunk to the
bottom adjacent to the body. So the thing about it is,
when you're working cases like this, you have to do
what you have to do. And there's been other cases
(36:20):
where I've had bodies that have been dismembered and thrown
off of bridges and have had to go into the water.
Didn't search with my feet. And this is before the
popularity of dive teams really too, you know, and some
things are just lost. Now we have dive teams, they'll
go out and find a lot of stuff. But I
don't know if they utilized a dive team in this case,
(36:40):
or if if you just had investigators or team members
that went out there and collected the remains. Because you know,
you're sitting, you're you know, they always make a big
deal out of us having to create a command center
at one of these scenes when you have something like that,
and what it is is an area where they can
bring in a vehicle and they kind of have this
(37:01):
radio set up and everything else, and you're commanding the area.
You're setting up what everybody's job is going to do?
They think too much to command here. It's like, all right, guys,
we've got to get in the water and get this
body out of here, and we have to do it
the most efficient way we can. And we also have
to document a long way because this is a crime
scene day. That's the other thing about this. You're taking
a body and you're dismembering it, perhaps, and you're tossing
(37:25):
it out into the pond. Well, each element of the
body and anything else associated with that body or the
crime is a piece of evidence. It's just that it's
a lot of it is underwater. Now how are you
going to handle How are you going to handle that?
And assuming that this was in the middle of a pasture,
you know it's going to be muddy. You and I
have grown up and seen these ponds that you can
(37:48):
drive past on the road through any of these you know,
country hamlets, and you can't see your hand in front
of your face if you're in the in the water
and these things. So it's a very difficult and again
all steer environment to have to work in. Dave.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
All right, So now you've got the body and or remains,
you have human remains, you get them out? Now they done.
They had served search warrants on at the house, and
they had done a digital forensic look at camera, at phones, cameras,
things like that, and they were able to determine a
(38:22):
number of different things from the digital timeline that was
built using the cell phone data and they were reframing
all of that in as they were waiting on the
DNA results to come back from the human body the
human remains that they found. So in that regard of
finding the DNA, how long would it take from the
(38:46):
time you find the remains until you can get DNA
results back.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Going to I'm going to say something here that's a
big clue to the outcome of this. And it's not
like the DNA was sent out to our friends at AUTHORM. Okay,
the DNA here, Dave. This gives you an idea where
their mind is, where the mind of the investigators are.
(39:15):
They sent this DNA sample to the Armed Forces Medical
Examiner's Office. Well, why in the world would they do this?
Because you got an unknown body. They had a level
of suspicion here and it's still unclear what that clue was.
Maybe it was a tattoo, maybe the face was still recognizable.
(39:38):
They might have had an image that they could have said, yep,
kind of looks like him. We know the quickest way
to do this. We're going to reach out to our
partners with FED'S and you know, talk to the folks
at Armed Forces Medical Examiner's Office, because you know every
trooper that that you know, deployees now, they do a
DNA swab when he's individual. So you're talking about a
(40:02):
Welcolm coastal swab that they would have on file there.
So you collect DNA from the remains that you have
from where it is that they collected those remains, and
you set up a profile on that and you have
the Armed Forces Medical Examiner's Office compare it and Dave,
(40:22):
I'll be dog gone. They didn't get a hit.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Brother, and it was very quick, about four weeks between
the time you had the from a timeline standpoint, January
twenty eighth, he doesn't show up for class. They search,
wife says, I don't know where he is. They find
on February twenty fifth, the human remains in the pond.
March twenty eighth, remains identified as the missing Green Beret. Now,
(40:50):
there were some things found inside the home that the
police did not let on, did not let that out
for the public until all of this came about when
they got the positive hit. You you know, again, Gollie
g Wisby, we have a Green Beret missing, and we've
got human remains three miles from his house, and we
(41:10):
know what we're looking at. So go ahead and break
it down as to what they found inside that house, Joe.
And by the way, I will tell you that the
other evidence that came about was digital with regard to
putting Shanna Cloud right there at the pond, Joe right
(41:31):
there at about the time they expected those human remains
got in that pond. They've got well a map, they
have a digital fingerprint now of where you were and
lo and behold, hmmm, Shanna, you didn't know where your
husband was January twenty eighth, but we got you over
here where his body was found.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Yeah. You couple that data with what they found inside
that house and just think about this and remember how
it had eluded a few seconds ago to uh they
had some indicator that this might be him. Well, they
when they serve those warrants, and I don't know, this
is really rich. I got to tell you. When they
(42:14):
serve those warrants, they went into the house and this
former Green Beret by now his laptop and his book
back that you know he uses to on his journey
to become a PA. They they got bullet holes on them.
(42:37):
How do you explain that? Well, you know, because I've
thought about you know, you would like to think that
somebody that works in special operations has got eyes in
the back of their head. Okay, and yeah, I guess
they do. But if you're not in theater any longer,
and you're not working at that at that pace that
they work at, you I'm sure that he was on alert.
(43:02):
He had a situational awareness all the time that is
far exceeds anything that you or and I would would have.
He would notice little things that but still in order
to you know, use a term that they would use
in an old Western movie to get the drop on
this guy, when would he be the most defenseless. Well,
(43:23):
let's say he's getting ready to go to school, got
my book back on, got my book back on, mom,
And all of a sudden it's perforated about gunshots. Did
you shoot him from the rear? You know, was he
holding his laptop as he was shot or was he
(43:44):
shot on the other side of his laptop and he
tried to get covered with his book back. They haven't
answered that question at We do know that the body
that they recovered actually had multiple gunshot ones to the body.
But here's the thing, Dave, Okay, now you've killed your
(44:04):
former Green Beret husband allegedly. What's gonna do now? Oh,
I know what I'll do. I'll go get skill saw
or get you know, the carpenter saw or the mall
or you know, whatever it is to acts whatever I'm
going to use, and I'm gonna, you know, break up
(44:27):
my husband's body. Well, where are you going to do
that without leaving a mess? My My suspicion is is
that they're gonna, if they haven't already, they're gonna tear
this place from stem to stern. And there's gonna be
a lot of Blue Star agent that you used in
this house to you know, try to find any evidence
(44:49):
of blood, because there's gonna be a copious amount of blood,
you know, and not just from the gunshot ones, but
from the dismemberment as well. So you'll have these deposition
that are lying about that maybe she went to some
effort clean Here's another thing too that I was kind
of fascinating by. They have in fact charged her, Missus Cloud.
(45:14):
They have charged her in this case, David, She's a nurse.
She's not necessarily going to have the same aversion to
blood and no sort of things that maybe an everyday
civilian might. What do you think about that?
Speaker 2 (45:30):
I actually made a note to ask you about this
because when I saw the charges agains Shannon Cloud first
Green murder, kind of expected that, you know. But she
was also charged with concealment of death in this laying
of Clinton Bonnell, and the concealment charge is because she
failed to notify law enforcement of his death while knowing
(45:52):
or having reason to know his death was not due
to natural causes.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Wow, that's a mouthful. Yeah, that's a mouthful. And again
that that gives her I don't know if that would
qualify as you know, there's that old term that they
use legally, ease, the malice of forethought. You know, like
you're you have an awareness of something, and so they
know enough about her and the activities and everything that
(46:20):
we don't have full knowledge of right now to charge
her with this that she had an awareness. What they're
saying is well, first off, they charged it was first
degree and first degree is generally in most states is
capital homicide. So that's at the top end. Many times
there's an element of certainly malice, but there's also an
(46:41):
element of planning that goes into this. She's attempting or
has attempt attempted to conceal in the wake of this,
and they know that she has knowledge that this has occurred.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
So with given that meditation be formed in the blink
of an eye.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
I think Nancy says twinkling, doesn't she she's able with it.
She's more King James with it, so in a twinkling
of an eye, and so yeah, the with with that said, uh,
you've got this former traveling nurse to keep referring to
her as former traveling nurse that has allegedly executed her
(47:32):
husband and taken him apart piece by piece. I think
one of my thoughts was I was on the air
would show the other day and they were talking about
I was listening to them talk about I think I
was on Court TV, uh, listening to them talk about
this case before I came on to do my segment,
and one of the attorneys says, well, I don't see
(47:54):
how in the world. I don't see how in the
world a woman could pull this off. And I'm thinking,
have you lost your of course a woman could pull
this off. You sneak up on him, you have a handgun.
You know what was it.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
The boat bag in the laptop? I mean, yeah, of course.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Off. Yeah, you shoot him and then you particulate the body.
Makes a body a lot more manageable. And oh, by
the way, I've been driving past this place for a
number of years now, I've seen it. Wouldn't that be
a great spot to dump a body? Well, it's certainly
(48:35):
not Arlington, which this fellow, because of his service to
our country, may have deserved to have been in. But instead,
the person that, at least at one time in his life,
that he loved the most has now been charged with
(48:55):
his homicide. We'll see how this turns out. There's going
to be more to come. I can tell you this,
and I'd like to know what her motivation was for.
It was anger, jealousy, to have something to do with money,
or was it that they were living separate lives. We'll
(49:19):
find out and i'll let you know more. I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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