Shana Lea Cloud will remain behind bars while she awaits trial on charges of killing her husband, retired Special Forces soldier Clinton Bonnell.
Cloud, 50, let her lawyer speak for her in a Cumberland County courtroom on Monday where she made her first appearance before a judge following her arrest on Friday. She is charged with first-degree murder and violating state law against concealing a death, disturbing human remains and dismembering human remains.
Bonnell was last seen on Jan. 27 in Gray’s Creek, according to the Sheriff’s Office. Someone a month later, on Feb. 25, called 911 to report human remains in a pond in the Gray’s Creek area. The remains were later identified as Bonnell.
Cloud’s attorney, James C. MacRae Jr., asked District Court Judge Frances Britt to set a bail, calling her a “model citizen” with no prior criminal record and strong community ties. She works as a traveling nurse, he said, adding that her adult daughter, Razzie Cloud, believes Cloud is innocent.
Razzie Cloud attended her mother’s court appearance.
“She does not believe her mother is involved in her father’s death,” MacRae said.
Judge Britt acknowledged MacRae’s points, but ruled against Cloud. Britt cited the “very heinous nature” of Bonnell’s death and said that the potential maximum punishment — the death penalty — could increase Cloud’s flight risk.
District Attorney Bill West, speaking to reporters after the court proceedings, described the case as “horrific.” He emphasized the “terrible condition” of Bonnell’s remains.
“It was just a torso,” West said. “It did not have legs or arms or a head.”
While careful not to speculate about motive, West said detectives learned that Bonnell told Cloud he planned to divorce her. Bonnell had a girlfriend, West said, who reported him missing on Jan. 29.
“One of the things that we laid out for the judge, too, is that there’s information that Mr. Bonnell told his girlfriend that he had let the defendant know about the divorce and about his plans for the divorce the night before,” West said. “We believe he was killed the following morning.”
West told CityView that detectives have not uncovered evidence to connect anyone else to the crime. “But as the investigation continues, if something like that develops, we would certainly pursue it,” he said.
Evidence leading to arrest
According to court records and statements that West and Assistant District Attorney Rob Thompson made to the judge, Bonnell, 50, was first known to be missing on Jan. 28 when he did not show up for class in the physician assistant program at Methodist University.
Cumberland County deputies searched the couple’s home on Jan. 31, a court document says. They found his school bookbag, his laptop, his car and other personal items. Two gunshot holes in the backpack and laptop matched the bullet holes on Bonnell’s torso, West said.
Thompson said electronic records obtained by law enforcement determined that on Jan. 29, a day after Bonnell is believed to have been killed, Cloud travelled down the road leading to the pond where Bonnell’s body was found, and stopped there for 15 minutes. She was about 60 feet from where the body was found, he said.
“It was a road where the body was found,” Thomspon said at Cloud’s appearance.
Bonnell’s body was found Feb. 25 in a pond about three miles from the couple’s home. DNA testing confirmed it was him, the Sheriff’s Office said on Friday.
Other military wives involved in spousal homicides
This isn’t the first time a military wife has been accused of killing her husband in Cumberland County.
In December 2000, Air Force wife Michelle Theer and her boyfriend, Army Sgt. John Diamond, killed her husband Capt. Marty Theer on the outside stairwell of an office building near the Harris Teeter shopping center on Raeford Road in Fayetteville.
Jurors at Michelle Theer’s trial in 2004 learned Diamond and Theer had plans to move to Saba, an island in the Caribbean — she even pursued a job at a university there. When Theer was indicted in spring 2002, she went into hiding in South Florida, where she lived under an assumed name, made plans to change her identity several more times and move to Mexico, and got plastic surgery on her face.
Theer was arrested after a new boyfriend inadvertently led law enforcement to her door. She and Diamond are serving life sentences.
In summer 2002, Army wife Joan Shannon pressured her daughter, 15-year-old Elizabeth, to shoot and kill her husband, Maj. David Shannon, as he slept in their home in Fayetteville. The murder followed an attempt to poison David Shannon earlier that year.
Joan Shannon’s trial in 2005 had evidence that she and David Shannon had been part of a local community of sexual swingers — couples who meet other people outside their marriage for sexual activities. The prosecutors asserted that through these activities, David introduced Joan to another man for sex, that Joan fell in love with the other man, and Joan induced her daughter to kill David so she could collect his life insurance money and run off with the other man.
Joan Shannon is serving life in prison; Elizabeth Shannon is scheduled to be released in November 2027.
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
Government accountability reporter Evey Weisblat can be reached at eweisblat@cityviewnc.com or 216-527-3608.
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