Shana Cloud and Clint Bonnell from the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office are depicted from left to right in the image. The background shows the location where Bonnell’s body was discovered in February 2025, as indicated on Google Maps.
A North Carolina woman is behind bars for killing her onetime Green Beret husband and hiding his body, police in the Tar Heel State say.
Shana Cloud, aged 50, is facing charges including murder in the first degree and concealment of a death related to the killing of Clint Bonnell, also 50, who was reported missing in January.
Investigations began when both Bonnell’s school and a friend raised concerns about his well-being on January 28. The U.S. Army veteran had failed to show up for his physician assistant class at Methodist University, prompting the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office to take action.
“Upon Deputies arrival, they encountered Clinton Bonnell’s wife, Shana Cloud, who indicated she had not seen Bonnell since the day prior,” the sheriff’s office said in a press release. “Bonnell’s vehicle, along with his school book bag and other items, were located at the residence.”
On Feb. 25, a dismembered body was found in a pond on Gainey Road — a body of water located three miles away from the home Bonnell and Cloud once shared on Butler Nursery Road in Fayetteville.
“It looks like there might be part of a body floating out in the water,” the 911 caller told dispatch, according to audio obtained by Raleigh-based NBC affiliate WRAL. “I just got here about 10 minutes ago, [I was] just looking around and seen it.”
And what they saw was quite grim.
“It looks like it’s been there a while, there’s no legs or arms on it or nothing on it,” the caller went on. “It’s in the middle of nowhere.”
On March 28, two months to the day that Bonnell was first reported missing, investigators determined the human remains were his. Cloud was subsequently arrested by detectives later that same day.
Details about the wife’s alleged involvement in the crime are scarce. The sheriff’s office did, however, relay information in general terms.
Multiple searches were conducted at the couple’s residence beginning in late January and through the month of February, authorities say. The investigation then moved on to the execution of “search warrants on Cloud’s vehicle, rental property, and cell phone,” as well as other warrants “obtained and executed for digital data, to include but not limited to: cell phone records, video footage, digital devices, etc.”
“The data collected was analyzed and used to develop a timeline of events not only surrounding Bonnell’s disappearance, but his whereabouts prior to his disappearance,” the press release reads.
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Just before he died, Bonnell was planning to divorce his wife and told her so, according to a search warrant obtained by Goldsboro-based CBS affiliate WNCN. That information came to investigators by way of a woman who is identified as the slain man’s girlfriend. The girlfriend said he met with a lawyer in the morning on Jan. 27 to set the divorce in motion. She told detectives he texted her later that night — right after revealing his plans for a court-sanctioned marital dissolution.
