Nearly a decade after an East Cobb couple was found shot to death in a remote part of middle Georgia, a man suspected in the case pleaded guilty to the killings on Monday.
Ronnie Adrian “Jay” Towns entered the plea in a Telfair County courtroom for the January 2015 murders of Bud and June Runion.
Judge Sarah Wall, who sentenced Towns to life in prison without the possibility of parole, said “it’s been 10 long years,” according to Macon TV station WMAZ.
Towns, from Telfair County, had been scheduled for a court hearing two weeks ago but his attorneys got a postponement.
The Runions left their home in East Cobb on Jan. 15, 2015 in response to a posting on Craigslist to buy a 1966 Ford Mustang that Bud Runion had been interested in buying.
The Runions were reported missing by their daughters the following day, and four days later their bodies were found on a rural road, not far from where their vehicle was spotted in a pond near McRae, 75 miles south of Macon.
Authorities said the Runions had been robbed and shot in the head, but a murder weapon had not been found. Towns, then 28, turned himself in and was charged with murder and armed robbery.
But his murder indictment was overturned in 2019 by the Georgia Supreme Court, upholding a lower court ruling of improper jury selection.
Towns was re-indicted in 2020, but the case languished in the courts after that.
Earlier this year, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said it had found new evidence from a citizen, who discovered a rifle while fishing at a creek near the murder scene.
GBI investigators returned to the scene found a bag and driver’s licenses and credit cards belonging to Bud and June Runion, and a cell phone thought to belong to them. Investigators also executed a search of a home where Towns had been living.
Towns was to have gone on trial in August.
According to the WMAZ report, Towns pleaded guilty to two counts of malice murder Monday morning and the judge said “it’s pretty obvious that the Runions were special people. This was a very senseless act.”
The slain couple’s daughters were in the courtroom on Monday. Daughter Stephanie Bishop said of her parents, according to the TV station, that “we miss them terribly. I was hoping so hard to be able to call my dad…. [But] they were taken from us.”
The Runions lived off Holly Springs Road and were married for 38 years. According to their obituaries, in 1991 the Runions founded Forever Greatful Ministries, which helps families in need in the Marietta area. Bud Runion was retired from AT & T and June Runion was a preschool teacher at Johnson Ferry Christian Academy.
They were longtime members of Mt. Paran Church of God North on Allgood Road.
Related:
- Cobb District Attorney warns of scam targeting defendants
- Cobb judicial emergency declared over court filing system
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