A Green Beret looked into divorce. Then his wife was arrested after his dismembered body was found in a pond
When the girlfriend of a slain Green Beret whose torso was found in a pond weeks after he went missing last spoke to him, she could tell he had a lot on his mind.
Clinton “Clint” Bonnell, 50, allegedly told his girlfriend, Kelli Edwards, that he had met with a divorce attorney to start the process to end his marriage, and that he had even told his wife.
The next day, he was gone.
“The last text was that he was going to bed and ‘good night,’ basically,” Kelli Edwards told ABC News, recalling their last interaction on January 27. “And that was it.”
The “next morning I texted an early morning text and there was no delivery,” she recounted.
Bonnell, who retired last December after 20 years in the military and was studying at Methodist University to become a physician’s assistant, was reported missing on January 28 after both Edwards and the university called for a welfare check when he failed to show up for class.
“I knew that something was wrong because we were [typically] in communication a lot during the day — mostly text messaging because he was in school — and I didn’t hear from him” that day, she said.
A month later, Bonnell’s mutilated body was found in a pond near the Fayetteville, North Carolina home he shared with his estranged wife, Shana Cloud. He had been shot twice in the back, investigators said.
Cloud, 50, was arrested on charges of first-degree murder and concealment of death in Bonnell’s murder on Monday – the same day that DNA testing matched Bonnell’s DNA to dismembered remains.
“It’s a horrific case, and just a terrible condition that the body was found in,” Cumberland County District Attorney Billy West told WTVD. “It was just a torso. It did not have legs or arms or a head when it was found.”
New court documents revealed this week that Bonnell and Cloud had met up at the Fit4Life Health Club on January 27 – the day before he was reported missing — and Cloud confronted him about a note she found that she believed was from a romantic partner. The two then left the gym in separate vehicles, with Cloud reportedly going to a Food Lion.
Bonnell then went to see his girlfriend to give her the news before going to the university for a study session.
“Mr. Bonnell told his girlfriend that he had let the defendant know about the divorce and his plans,” said Cumberland County District Attorney William West. “We believe he was killed the following morning.”
Edwards, who said she met Bonnell when he started taking classes at her yoga studio last year, was devastated by his murder and shocked to learn that his wife was arrested.
