Runion daughter: Dad ‘wouldn’t have gone out without ... trying to protect my mother’

MCRAE-HELENA -- Elrey “Bud” Runion posted an ad on Craigslist seeking to buy a piece of his youth, a replica of the 1966 Ford Mustang convertible he bought after returning from the Vietnam War decades ago.

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

Ronnie “Jay” Towns, 28, of McRae, was charged Tuesday with killing the Runions, a couple from Marietta, who were known for their charitable works throughout the South: from storm-damaged Alabama towns and impoverished pockets of West Virginia to housing projects 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 and enjoy it.”

Years ago, driving through Marietta before Christmas Eve, Runion saw two young girls sorting through a trash bin, his daughter said. He fixed up two bicycles belonging to his own girls and delivered them as gifts.

It was the beginning of “Bud’s Bicycles,” a charity run loosely out of 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 -- even Thanksgiving turkeys.

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

Charity came in ways big and small. Patterson remembered as a child going to a doughnut shop with her father on Saturdays. They would often be joined by a man she did not know, and her father would pay the tab. Later in life she realized the man was homeless.

Patterson said her father served in the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division in Vietnam, though he never talked to her about the experience in detail.

“He’s a survivor and fighter, and I know he wouldn’t have gone out without fighting and trying to protect my mother,” she said.

Someone tied flowers to a child’s bicycle and left it standing below a flag flying at half-staff in the couple’s front yard in Marietta, three hours north of McRae-Helena.

“If someone lives their life like this and this happens, it really tests your faith,” said their neighbor, Tom Murphy.

The suspect, Towns, was charged Tuesday with malice murder and armed robbery. A judge denied bond for Towns in his first, brief court appearance. Asked if he understood what he had been charged with, 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 he would not say whether the Runions were carrying cash or disclose other details about the case. On Monday, he said investigators had found no evidence that Towns owned the sort of classic car Runion was seeking.

The Runions’ slaying shocked residents of McRae-Helena, a tiny city about 80 miles southeast of Macon, where a public mural in the downtown square proclaims it’s the “6th Safest City in Georgia.”

This story was originally published January 28, 2015 at 8:20 PM.