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Inset left to right: Shana Cloud and Clint Bonnell (Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office). Background: The area where Bonnell’s remains were found in February 2025 (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, 50, stands accused of one count each of murder in the first degree and concealment of a death over the slaying of Clinton “Clint” Bonnell, 50, who was initially reported missing in January.
On Jan. 28, both Bonnell’s school and a friend requested well-being checks on the U.S. Army veteran after he uncharacteristically failed to attend his physician assistant class at Methodist University that morning, according to the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office.
“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.
Then, the man said, he was going to sleep.
