Craigslist murder? Missing Georgia couple found dead

Police are piecing together what happened to the Atlanta couple who went missing Thursday, after setting out to buy a 1966 Mustang.

|
AP
These photos provided by the Cobb County Police Department, show Elrey “Bud” Runion, 69, and June Runion, 66, of Marietta, Ga. The couple went missing after driving across the state to check out a classic car advertised on Craigslist.

A car belonging to a missing suburban Atlanta couple was discovered on Monday submerged in a lake, and two unidentified bodies were found separately, Georgia police said.

Authorities in Georgia had been searching for the couple since they went to another part of the state to buy a vintage car off Craigslist.

"It's a sad ending for us here in this community," Telfair County Sheriff Chris Steverson told reporters. "It hurts us to know someone came to our community and met this fate."

Bud Runion, 69, and his wife, June Runion, 66, of Marietta, were last seen on Thursday when they set off for Telfair County in southern Georgia to buy a 1966 Mustang convertible from a purported seller who responded to their ad on Craigslist, Steverson said.

The couple's last telephone call was to a disposable cellphone owned by Ronnie Towns, 28, whom Steverson described as a suspect in the case.

Towns was interviewed by authorities shortly after the couple disappeared and has been charged with criminal intent to commit deception and lying to investigators, Steverson said. Towns turned himself in to authorities on Monday morning, he added.

Towns did not own a 1966 Mustang convertible, the sheriff said.

"I don't think he had a car that was even similar to the one being sought by Mr. Runion," Steverson said.

Before finding the two bodies, search teams combed the rural county about 160 miles south of Atlanta using all-terrain vehicles, aircraft and boats, Steverson said.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Craigslist murder? Missing Georgia couple found dead
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2015/0126/Craigslist-murder-Missing-Georgia-couple-found-dead
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe