You’ll find Butler Nursery Road to be a long and winding country blacktop near Gray’s Creek, where life is what residents likely will tell you is quiet and serene.
It’s where Clint Bonnell and his wife, Shana Cloud, shared their home just off N.C. Highway 87, and where the retired Green Beret adored raising his stepdaughter.
Until January 28, 2025, when Bonnell went missing from the home. His dismembered torso was discovered on February 25, 2025 in a pond three miles away on Gainey Road.
A month later, on March 28, the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office arrested Cloud and charged her with first-degree murder and concealment of death/disturbing remains in the death of her husband. On Tuesday, Cloud appeared in court for a bond hearing.
“I think it’s first-degree murder,” Kayley Taber, 58, the Cumberland County assistant district attorney, told Superior Court Judge Keith Gregory during the hearing at the Cumberland County Courthouse..
Michelle Moore, Cloud’s attorney, argued that Cloud could not have committed the crimes, and should be granted bond until her trial.
“Mrs. Cloud has no previous criminal history,” Moore told the judge. “And does not pose a danger to the community. She will try to find a job,” a place to live, and will not be a flight risk.
Cloud, 51, has been incarcerated at the Cumberland County Detention Center on Gillespie Street since her arrest.
The District Attorney’s Office contends that Cloud shot her husband four times in the back on January 28, with bullets entering his backpack that contained his laptop and penetrated his body.
“So, the state’s presentation in the evidence is circumstantial,” Moore said.
She did acknowledge there was an impending divorce.
“There was another woman in the picture,” Moore said. “Mr. Bonnell was not faithful. But what evidence shows this little lady could have killed and dismembered” her husband? “She could not have done this.”
Kayley Taber argued that Shana Cloud did kill her husband.
“One of the greatest disparities in size,” she said, “is a handgun.”
Shana Cloud sat beside her attorney without emotion.
Not far away sat Stefanie Firkins, the 48-year-old sister of Clint Bonnell. She has believed since her brother failed to show up for a class at Methodist University that Shana Cloud took her brother’s life. Firkins was accompanied by a number of friends and supporters Tuesday, including Kelli Edwards, who was seeing Bonnell at the time of his death.
“The state says she did this between 3 a.m. and 8 a.m.,” Moore argued on behalf of Cloud. “The case defies reason. We are just asking the court to impose a bond that’s reasonable.”
Kayley Taber argued the other way. She also said there is video of Cloud at the pond after his death.
“We request leaving it at no bond,” she told the judge.
‘The Bond Stands’
Judge Keith Gregory listened to both attorneys, but it was Kayley Taber’s words that Clint Bonnell’s backpack she said detectives discovered in the home by a coffee table that carried weight with the judge as the 45-minute hearing neared its end.
The judge said the law makes no distinction between circumstantial evidence or direct evidence. And he said that in his more than 30 years as a lawyer, prosecutor, and judge, he also uses common sense.
“I agree, the defendant has no criminal history,” Gregory said. “But based on what the district attorney indicated to the court, common sense tells me” Clinton Bonnell “did not put that backpack in the home. Somebody put that backpack in the home.”
No bond, the judge ruled.
Epilogue
Stefanie Firkins said she has been “a basket case” since the day she first learned her brother was missing and later to learn that her sister-in-law had been charged with Clint Bonnell’s murder, and it was his torso in the swamp-like pond near the couple’s Butler Nursey Road home.
“That’s what I care about,” she said outside the courtroom after the judge’s ruling. “That she stays behind bars and she sits and rots until her trial and she’s found guilty, and I am confident she will.”
She said the home on Butler Nursery Road has been sold. Clint Bonnell’s body has been cremated, and she is waiting for his ashes to be sent to her home in Round Rock, Texas.
For now, Shana Cloud remains behind bars at the Cumberland County Detention Center across the street from the courthouse.
A jury will decide Shana Cloud’s fate in 2027.
Meanwhile, Stefanie Firkins said she will not rest until there is justice for her brother.
Bill Kirby Jr. can be reached at billkirby49@gmail.com or 910-624-1961.
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