Bud Runion waved at his neighbor Leon Cox as Cox drove past him and into his own driveway that Thursday morning.
Cox didn’t stop because Runion was talking with two other neighbors on a grassy shoulder of their street. Friendships in the Marietta subdivision go back to the 1970s when its split-level homes were built; Cox, 74, was pretty sure he and “Bud,” would catch up later about their kids, how cold it had been or one thing or another.
A while later his wife, Dee, waved to Bud and his wife, June, as they pulled out of their driveway in June’s pewter GMC Envoy. Bud hadn’t asked them to watch the house as he usually did when he and June were going out of town, so it looked like they’d be back soon.
From the Cox’s hilltop driveway, they could still see the anniversary wish Bud had etched into the gray surface of his driveway with a borrowed pressure washer: a giant heart with the inscription Bud + June 7214 (for the date, July 2, 2014).
It wasn’t until days later that Cox would ask himself why the Runions hadn’t driven Bud’s truck. There was a gun in its glove compartment, one that Bud, a Vietnam veteran, was licensed to carry and knew how to use. Or, perhaps, Cox thought, Bud took his second gun instead, the one he kept in the house. Or maybe not.
That Thursday, Jan. 22, Bud and June Runion set off across middle Georgia chasing a dream, with every expectation that they would return and carry on the way they had for the past 36 years of marriage. It was a life not without challenges, but one grounded in faith, happiness and service. This account of what happened to the Runions after they left their home that day is based on interviews with neighbors, law enforcement officials and church members, as well as court proceedings.
As the Runions’ pastor, Mark Walker, said during their funeral Saturday, “they did not know death awaited them.”
An overgrown kid
Tom Murphy returned to Atlanta on a flight from Philadelphia that Thursday. He checked his phone messages. His next door neighbor, Bud, had left a voice mail at 1:51 p.m.: “Hey, give me a call.”
There was no particular urgency in Bud’s voice, so Murphy got his bags and settled in for the drive to Marietta. It was 2:27 when he returned the call.
Bud picked up after a couple of rings. He and June were on the road, going to check out a 1966 Ford Mustang; Bud had been searching for one on Craigslist. Someone in Telfair County near McRae had responded to Bud’s ad, saying they had one for sale.
Bud had called Murphy because he couldn’t find his wallet and thought he might have dropped it as he and June were leaving. He had intended to ask Murphy to look around for it, but by the time the two men talked he’d found it on the floorboard of June’s car. Crisis averted.
Murphy would have been more than happy to help. Ever since he moved in next door to Bud and June in 2009, they had made the Murphy family feel as though they’d lived there as long as the Runions. He and Bud in particular had hit it off. Bud was the guy he could depend on to repair something broken in the house, to check in on his family when he traveled, to share a conversation during a break from yard work.
Murphy admired Bud because, at 69, his older neighbor showed no signs of slowing down. To say Bud was retired was, and was not, true. He had worked for AT&T for years, servicing equipment until he was downsized. That turned out not to be such a bad thing: he was hired back as a consultant, which paid better than his old job, albeit without benefits.
Bud and June, 66, threw themselves into missionary work from Marietta to Appalachia. Life had been good to them, and they wanted to share the bounty.
Even so, Bud believed that life and the money he made were meant to be enjoyed. And he loved cars. Every few years there seemed to be a new one: a diesel Dodge that sounded like a school bus, a Chevy Silverado, a Dodge Ram, a Ford F250, a Ford F150, a GMC, another Silverado. At one point there was a vacation camper and riding mower, even a Harley. Murphy remembers a Cadillac Fleetwood, a vintage Ford truck.
“He was an overgrown kid when it came to those trucks,” Cox said.
The hunt
What Bud wanted most of all was a red Corvette convertible from the mid-1960s. He talked about it all the time. Last fall, he made what had become a regular pilgrimage to Streetside Classics, a vintage car consignment shop in Lithia Springs. A cherry red Corvette caught his eye. He sat in it. Went over the car’s specs with broker Scott Remington. Asked about the price.
He knew what he wanted to spend, and he was willing to do a little work on the car to get his price. He was used to repairing and servicing his cars, that is until the computer circuits in the later models rendered his skill set obsolete. Remington remembers the Corvette being around $25,000. Fully restored it would have been upwards of $40,000. Bud promised to get back to him. That was his pattern: look, ask the price, say he’d think it over, leave.
As usual, Remington didn’t hear from him. Then last month he walked in by himself. Now Bud wanted a convertible 1966 Mustang, blue or red, but definitely with a V8 engine. What made him go from Corvette to Mustang? June.
For decades she’d cooked meals for him and their daughters in a kitchen that cried out for updating, and now she was serving in-laws and grandchildren. She wanted a spanking new kitchen with granite counter tops, not another car in the driveway. And she got it. Only then did Bud set out again in search of a new set of wheels.
About 10 days after his trip to the Lithia Springs brokerage, Bud visited another one where he was a familiar face. This time, he brought June along for a test drive in a red Mustang convertible. He wanted it for less than $35,000. The dealership made him an offer that exceeded that budget by something over $3,000. That was on a Wednesday. The next day Bud and June set out to find the person who had answered his Craigslist ad.
Thinking back on the conversation he had with Bud as the Runions drove south, Murphy said his friend sounded fine. Later, he would ask himself why he didn’t call him back to find out exactly where they were going.
Lost
It was about a half hour before sundown when the pewter SUV pulled up to Kinnett’s Antique & Flea Market about five miles outside McRae in Telfair County. After traveling hours and now lost on country roads slicing through alternating stretches of woods and open fields, the Runions had stopped to ask for directions.
Owner Angela Kinnett stood behind a rusty iron bed frame out front and tried to help the man find an address she’d never heard of. The landmarks he gave, which he had written on a piece of paper, were Jacksonville-Scotland Dirt Road, Prison Camp Road, a four-way stop sign. She consulted her husband, James, but he didn’t know such a place either, and Telfair had been his home since forever.
James Kinnett asked whom the Runions were trying to locate, but Bud said he didn’t have the name.
The Kinnetts did their best with directions. Bud thanked them for their help and he and June pulled out onto the empty road to continue their quest under a darkening sky.
The Kinnetts went back inside their store to close up, thinking little of the exchange. Sometimes it seemed like more lost people stopped at their shop than customers.
It wasn’t until Saturday that news broke of the Runions’ disappearance and it hit Angela Kinnett that she and her husband might have been the last ones to see them alive.
About 15 miles south of McRae is a spot that shows up on Apple maps as the intersection of Old Prison Camp Road and Jacksonville-Scotland Road. Perhaps it is the place the Runions were searching for; perhaps not. It is an unremarkable spot in an unremarkable stretch of middle Georgia.
At any rate, it is not where their bodies and their car were found. That spot is about three miles north the intersection, closer to McRae and within a mile of the farm where Ronnie Adrian “Jay” Towns lived in a trailer behind his father’s house.
The family raises peanuts, soybeans and corn. The trees are pine, the roads are dirt and many of the people around there are poor. Towns was no different. It’s not clear that he had a steady job. His family is well known within the community, and neighbors generally speak well of them.
Tightening the net
The Runions’ daughters knew their parents were going to McRae to look at the Mustang. They expected them back the next day in time to babysit their grandchildren. When they didn’t show, their daughter Brittany asked a neighbor to check her parents’ house to see if they were there.
There was no sign of them, so Brittany and her sisters Stephanie and Virginia took to social media. They created a Facebook page, Find Bud and June Runion pleading for information about what had become of their parents after they set out for McRae. The page drew lots of attention, and the daughters gave interviews to national media.
The Kinnetts were watching the news that Saturday and recognized the missing couple as the one who’d stopped and asked for directions. By then the Telfair County Sheriff’s Office and the Cobb County Police Department — apparently guided by records of calls from Bud’s cell phone — were already zeroing in on the area near the Towns family farm. Jay Towns’ quickly became a suspect. Telfair Sheriff Chris Steverson said Towns’ gave “false” and “deceptive” answers during an initial interview with investigators.
Early Monday morning, police showed up on the Towns’ land with an arrest warrant for Jay. He wasn’t in his trailer. He wasn’t at his father’s house. He’d fled into the piney woods. His father asked the police for a mercy: could he go into the thicket and talk his son into surrendering? In time, the elder Towns emerged with his son, who was about to face charges of making false statements and attempting to commit theft by deception.
Meanwhile, law enforcement officers and volunteers scoured the woods nearby, searching for a trace of the Runions. Later Monday morning, June Runion’s car was found submerged in a pond about half a mile from the Towns place. That afternoon, two bodies were found in a wooded spot nearby.
By Tuesday the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had finished the autopsies. Bud and June had both been shot in the head. Towns was charged with malice murder and armed robbery.
There never was a 1966 Mustang.
A long, long road
“We live in a fallen world, where death and evil are real,” Pastor Mark Walker told mourners at Mt. Paran North Church of God on Saturday, 9 days after the Runions disappeared.
In front of him were two caskets, one draped in the United States flag, the other topped with a spray of pink and red flowers. On the front pews sat the Runion daughters, their husbands and children. Every seat in the sanctuary was filled.
The evil visited upon the Runions has no real answer that will justify it or make it better, Walker said. He prayed for the families. He prayed for his church. He prayed for the people in McRae and Telfair County “who are heartbroken over this.” Time would bring justice, he said. And justice would remedy the evil. Forgiveness, in time that would come too, he said.
But the road there will stretch for what seems like an eternity.
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