It was early 2015. Jay Towns was unemployed. He had recently been fired from his job at a tree-removal service near his hometown 75 miles southeast of Macon. He was, prosecutors have said, desperate for cash.
Now he was in jail, charged with murdering a married couple from metro Atlanta. Prosecutors said Towns saw a posting on Craigslist and lured the husband and wife to rural southern Middle Georgia where he robbed and shot them dead.
The killings of Bud and June Runion, and, days later, Towns’ arrest, had happened that January. The episode, due in part to its link to the popular online marketplace, made international headlines.
Three months later, in April 2015, Towns appeared in court at a bond hearing.
Four dozen of his friends and kin were there, his father and brother among them. Towns was handcuffed and wore a jail jumpsuit, his lawyer at his side.
An assistant district attorney argued against bond, saying Towns was a flight risk for supposedly trying to elude capture in the wake of the killings. The prosecutor also suggested Towns, using a “burner” cellphone, may have tried to entice other victims.
When a judge denied bond, Towns’ attorney, Franklin J. Hogue of Macon, was not surprised.
“We wished he’d gotten a bond,” Hogue said. “It’s gonna be a long time ‘til trial.”
He could never have imagined how long.
Towns, his client, was 28 at the time and has been in jail since his arrest.
Towns, yet to be tried, will turn 37 in November.
He could face the death penalty if convicted in a trial that could — but still may not — begin next year.
‘IT’S UNFORTUNATE’
Either way, nine or more years will likely have passed from the time of Towns’ arrest until a jury hears the case against him.
Multiple factors have contributed to the delay.
Prosecutors have, since that bond hearing more than eight years ago, chosen to seek capital punishment for Towns, a legal avenue that often takes months if not years longer to adjudicate than a typical murder case.
Also, Towns’ original indictment was dismissed by the Georgia Supreme Court after a roughly four-year legal battle. Prosecutors appealed that ruling. In late 2019, the dismissal was upheld on grounds that grand jurors who indicted Towns had not been properly selected at random.
The case, in essence, then began anew with a second indictment in January 2020.
Then the COVID hit.
“It’s unfortunate,” District Attorney Tim Vaughn said recently of the case’s plodding nature. “But it’s just kind of the way things have played out.”
Motions hearings resume this week in McRae-Helena in Telfair County, where the Runions were found slain not far from Towns’ family home near the Ocmulgee River hamlet of Jacksonville. More pretrial hearings are set for the fall.
“It is unusual for a case to be eight years and eight months old and a client still be sitting in jail awaiting trial,” Hogue, Towns’ attorney, said. “But the delay ... it can be attributed to factors that themselves are a bit unusual.”
He cited the quashed indictment, prosecutors’ ensuing appeal, then the pandemic.
“Getting an indictment quashed is not that unusual, but that’s a big deal when it happens,” Hogue said. “So those two events, and I think also just the schedules of lawyers and the court always can create delays.”
Towns became a suspect in the days after Cobb County retirees Elrey “Bud” Runion, 69, and June Runion, 66, traveled to a location in south Telfair on Jan. 22, 2015, to apparently meet someone about purchasing a 1966 Ford Mustang.
Bud Runion had posted an ad on Craigslist that he was looking to buy such a car.
Law enforcement authorities believe Towns, using a “burner” cellphone, contacted Bud Runion and tricked him into traveling down to see a Mustang that did not exist. It was a ruse, prosecutors have alleged in open court, that Towns may have used to contact “multiple other individuals” around the same time, offering to sell them fictitious merchandise or automobiles.
The Runions were shot in the head and their bodies were hidden along a road east of U.S. 441 between Abbeville and Hazlehurst. Their small SUV was found sunk in a nearby pond.
Today, the passage of time since the killings happened has some locals wondering what ever became of the case.
“I get asked about it all the time,” Vaughn, the DA, said the other day. “Probably weekly.
This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with The Telegraph.
