Suspect indicted for 40-year-old murder of Fort Benning soldier, GBI announces
A suspect has been indicted by a grand jury in the murder of Fort Benning soldier René Dawn Blackmore that occurred 40 years ago after an investigation by the cold case unit of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
The grand jury indicted Marcellus McCluster, 64, with one count of malice murder and alternative counts of felony murder on March 28 for the 1982 murder of the 20-year-old Blackmore, said Vic Reynolds, director of the GBI during a press conference.
Blackmore was a United States Army private from Arizona stationed at Fort Benning when she disappeared on the way back to her barracks in Columbus on April 29, 1982, Reynolds said. A month later, Blackmore’s wallet and sweater were found on a roadside in Cusseta and on June 28, 1982 her remains were found off of a logging road further south in Chattahoochee County.
She was killed by a shotgun blast, Reynolds said. The U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division and GBI identified McCluster as a possible offender within a year, he said, but the original investigation stalled.
In late 2020, when GBI established the Cold Case Unit composed of retired agents, Reynolds said, and Blackmore’s death was the initial focus of the unit. The unit worked with the U.S. Army CID, the Chattahoochee County Sheriff’s office, the Office of the District Attorney for the Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit and active GBI agents to further develop the case, he said.
McCluster was served with an arrest warrant at the Georgia Department of Corrections Facility in Augusta, where he’s currently serving a life sentence for an unrelated 1983 Stewart County murder conviction, Reynolds said. McCluster will be arraigned in Chattahoochee County on April 25.
No statute of limitations for murder
Blackmore’s mother, Donna Reitman, expressed her appreciation to the GBI Cold Case unit for their dedication to solving the case, noting that Blackmore was killed on April 29, days before her 21st birthday on May 5.
“René was a focused young woman,” Reitman wrote in the statement. “Not always serious — she loved laughing and having fun with friends.”
Reitman said that when Blackmore was 12 years old, one of her friends was killed by a drunk driver. The experience prompted her to write her own will expressing the desire for her ashes to be scattered in the nearest woods because she was “very much an outdoor girl,” Reitman said.
Blackmore joined her high school ROTC program, she said in the statement, and by her senior year she commanded the unit.
“I have lived these 40 years always feeling the pain her absence causes,” Reitman said. “And believing no one outside of her family and friends even cared. It is with a grateful heart that on March 28, 2022, this belief was shown to be untrue.”
There is no statute of limitations for murder, said Assistant District Attorney Kimberly Schwartz. Murder is the one crime that takes the fundamental right to live, she said.
“We can’t know what accomplishments she might have celebrated,” Schwartz said. “We know that she would have been 59 years old and she could have been with us today.”
Jennings White is a former GBI agent who was initially assigned to the case and helped the Cold Case unit, although he is not part of the unit currently, Reynolds said. Blackmore’s case always bothered him, White said, because he knew it was solvable.
White said he was relieved to see the case solved, noting that he was 33 years old during the initial investigation, and now he and McCluster have both aged 40 years.
“I’m just so glad that I’m able to see the whole thing turn around,” White said.
This story was originally published April 7, 2022 at 5:53 PM.
