A man has pleaded guilty to killing a Georgia couple who were lured to their deaths nearly a decade ago, authorities said, after a cove magnet fisherman retrieved a rifle and other evidence related to the unsolved case.
Ronnie Jay Towns pleaded guilty to the 2015 murders of Bud and June Runion and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, Telfair County Sheriff Sim Davidson said in a statement Monday.
The conclusion of the case came just months after a person used a magnet to fish in a Georgia creek. took out a rifle and some personal belongings from the Meetings in the same area where the couple was found murdered. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said in April that driver’s licenses, credit cards and other items recovered from Horse Creek constituted “new evidence” in the murder case.
Officials then said the magnet fisherman discovered a .22 caliber rifle – the same caliber used to kill the Runions. When the magnet fisherman returned to the same location two days later, they found a bag containing a cell phone, driver’s licenses and credit cards, which investigators said belonged to Bud and June Runion.
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The couple’s bodies were discovered on a county road in January 2015 and authorities said they had been stolen. Investigators said at the time that their bodies and car were found in three different locations, CBS affiliate WMAZ-TV reported.
Investigators said Towns lured the couple by responding to an online ad posted by Bud Runion, 69, looking for a classic car, although Towns did not actually own the car. Authorities said the couple drove three hours from their Marietta home to Telfair County to examine the vehicle. They never came back.
Towns was eventually charged with the murders, but his trial was delayed several times — once because too few jurors showed up to the jury when prosecutors presented him to a grand jury, WMAZ-TV reported. He was charged again in 2020, but the case was delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Eventually, after the new evidence was pulled from the creek, Towns pleaded guilty and is now expected to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
“We are grateful to have brought closure to this case and our prayers are with both families,” Sheriff Davidson said Monday.
People who magnet fish have attracted other unexpected elements in recent months. In June, a New York couple reported using a magnet to roll up in a safe containing two stacks of waterlogged $100 bills. The previous month, a magnet fisherman brought in a human skull padlocked to an exercise dumbbell from a New Orleans waterway.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
