Suspect charged with murder of missing Georgia couple

McRAE, Georgia – Elrey “Bud” Runion posted an ad on Craigslist seeking to purchase a piece of his youth: a replica of the 1966 Ford Mustang convertible he bought decades ago after returning from the Vietnam War.

A potential seller lured him to a small farming town in southern Georgia, where authorities found the couple's SUV on Monday. Nearby, they discovered the bodies of 69-year-old Runion and his 66-year-old wife, June, authorities said. Both had been shot in the head.

Ronnie Adrian “Jay” Towns, 28, of McRae, was charged Tuesday with killing the Runions, a couple from Marietta, Georgia, who were known for their charitable work throughout the South: from storm-damaged towns in Alabama and impoverished areas in West Virginia to public housing in the Atlanta suburbs.

“He said, 'You can't take money with you when you're gone,'” said the couple's daughter, Brittany Patterson. “You might as well spend it and enjoy it.”

Years ago, as Runion was driving through Marietta before Christmas Eve, he saw two young girls rummaging through a dumpster, his daughter said. He fixed two of his own girls' bikes and gave them away as gifts.

This was the beginning of Bud's Bicycles, a charity loosely run out of the Mount Paran Church of God in Marietta. Runion met his wife, a teacher, at the church in the 1970s.

Neighbors said the Runions built a shed in their backyard to house the bikes. Their donations eventually expanded to include food, household and school supplies, coats, blankets and even Thanksgiving turkeys.

“Basically, he had a pantry in the basement of their house,” Patterson said.

Charity came in many forms. Patterson recalled going to a doughnut shop with her father on Saturdays as a child. Often a man she didn't know would come along, and her father would pay the bill. Later in life, she realized the man was homeless.

While the family wasn't sure Tuesday morning what had happened in McRae, Patterson had her own suspicions. Her father served in the Army's 1st Cavalry Division in Vietnam but never spoke to her in detail about the experience.

“He is a survivor and a fighter, and I know he would not have left without fighting and trying to protect my mother,” she said.

Someone tied flowers to a child's bicycle and left it under a flag flying at half-mast in the couple's front yard in Marietta, three hours north of McRae.

“When someone lives like that and something like that happens, it really tests their faith,” said her neighbor Tom Murphy.

Suspect Towns was charged with first-degree murder and armed robbery on Tuesday. At Towns' first, brief court appearance, a judge denied bail. Asked if he understood what he was accused of, Towns replied, “I understand.” His attorney, public defender Ashley McLaughlin, declined to comment afterward.

Telfair County Sheriff Chris Steverson said robbery appears to be the motive for the couple's killings, but would not say whether the Runions had cash on them or reveal other details of the case. On Monday, he said investigators had found no evidence that Towns owned the vintage car Runion was seeking.

The Runions murder shocked residents of McRae, a small town about 80 miles southeast of Macon, where a mural on the town square proclaims it is the “sixth safest town in Georgia.”

Towns grew up on a farm down a long dirt road where his father raised pine trees and grew soybeans, corn and peanuts. Now 28, he has a family of his own – a wife and young daughter – in neighboring Wheeler County. Towns supported them by working construction for a local home builder, said his uncle, Buddy Towns.

“He's a good boy and very smart,” said the uncle, who sometimes hired his nephew to help lay carpet and flooring that customers bought at Buddy Towns' store in McRae.

Buddy Towns said it had been about six months since he needed his nephew's help on a job, but he saw the younger Towns' truck drive past his store almost daily on his way to work. He said his nephew remained very close to his father, Ronnie Towns Sr., and they often went fishing and hunting together.

Towns' family helped persuade him to turn himself in to authorities on Monday. Buddy Towns said they were stunned that he would be charged in connection with the Runions' disappearance.

“It just doesn't make sense why this is even happening,” Towns' uncle said. “It's hard on his parents. They don't understand.”

The missing couple's friends and relatives near Atlanta were also stunned.

“The Bible tells us that the Lord is close to those who are brokenhearted and that He saves those who are downcast,” said the family's pastor, the Reverend Mark Walker. “And that's exactly what we are.”