The Hit-and-Run Homicide of Davis McClendon | Full Episode

[Music] Greenwood I lived here half my life everyone knows everyone and their business I have decided to set the story straight it's still real I still think maybe I'll wake up we were out from our bird day I remember I was just sitting at the bar and he sat down beside me and we just talked the rest of the night you were there the night she met Davis I was I was there that night did it seem like there was chemistry immediately I would immediately Davis he was so kind and I mean his heart was huge we enjoyed each other so much it was an amazing 6 months Mar to her and Davis they would going away weekends a lot I liked them his smile was so contagious and he's just such a sweet guy I would have never expected this to happen ever GRE County 911 but is the one person car wreck okay it was a car wreck and somebody is hurt I pull up right beside Davis's car and he wasn't in his car and that's when I noticed his airbags were out so then also that's when I kind of started start looking at the carore noticed that his front tire was smashed in and I remember looking and I notic there's a body mer just started like screaming like who is it who is it and you look over mhm what do you think you were looking at Davis he was laying there and his head was rested on the SL like a pillow and he was shirtless and his face was covered in blood was there anything about the scene that struck you as odd was being all the way on the other side of the road the car being wrecked like none of that I couldn't piece anything together Davis's car was way over there and his body was way down here and I was like well how'd he end up down here that's quite a distance yeah to here it is quite a distance originally it came out as a as a possible traffic accident and then once officers arrived on scene they realized it was more than that a lot of people think it was an auto accident well know it was I do believe that this was an accident and not an intentional killing it was a murder I was in shock I was like it doesn't even make sense the photographs of the crime scene the text messages from Davis's phone the Ring videos looking at everything in the totality of the case was very powerful How can any of this possibly happen there's so many things missing from the story and once I kind of get that out there then I can close the chapter [Music] [Music] and 1028 whiskey Echo Victor 253 it was May 7th 2023 just after 1:00 a. m. when authorities responded to a reported Road accident on a secluded deadend Street in Greenwood South Carolina start roping this off cuz this is going to be a crime scene at the edge of the nearby woods they would find 46-year-old Davis McLendon's body but what they saw at first was on the road itself a shirt a shoe and a mangled sedan and there was significant damage to the fender inial it was a BMW 5 series similar to this one we're using to demonstrate the position of the vehicle that night after First Responders had locked everything down Greenwood County Sheriff's Office investigator Patrick Durkin arrived to photograph the scene the front driver side wheel was turned slightly whatever had transpired at this deserted Crossroads durkin's job was to freeze it in time First Responders had thought Davis McLendon's injuries seemed consistent with having been hit by a vehicle though no other vehicle relating to the Collision was there they'd found Davis's body about 50 ft away from the BMW leading them to suspect he'd been outside his car when he was hit there was no rain or anything that would potentially wash anything away so um the main thing I focused on was the vehicle Durkin says he noticed some strange damage to the BMW usually when we would you think of a normal fender bender it would just kind of be pressed into it this was torn back like a tuna can in a sense it had made authorities wonder if it was a hidden run or something more Sinister those airbags were out and a phone was on the front passenger seat Durkin saw more debris in the road but nothing particularly telling the Assumption was that he was struck by a vehicle investigator Ronnie pal from the Greenwood County Sheriff's Office says authorities had learned more by speaking to two women at the scene Meredith Haney and Megan McGovern who' called 911 Megan often babysat for Meredith's three children they provided statements of what they saw and what had occurred all night long what did mer say she pretty much gave a summary of the whole backstory that she had been dating Davis Meredith had told authorities that Davis left a club they'd been in that night calling her minutes later from the road saying he was parked at the intersection of avid Road and Saw Grass place when he'd put her on hold and then failed to come back on the line Meredith was worried and got a ride there from Megan it was Megan the babysitter who'd gotten out of her car and was the first to see Davis's body that news must have been stunning yeah it was devastating it was was crushing Davis McLendon was the ultimate people person without an enemy in the World say his friends chip Thunder buunk everybody loved Davis he was just awesome Zack Calhoun he he loved big int and Johnny coats and what Zach said he was everyone's best friend he was he loved everyone but none of them could remember Davis ever mentioning the specifics of his love life not until he met Meredith Haney he told me that he had met somebody and they had just kind of been chatting and um you know enjoying getting know know each other you know it it seemed uh seemed like a good thing seemed like a positive thing for sure Calhoun says Davis had gone through a divorce but the end of his marriage hadn't done anything to weaken his devotion as a father and a friend even to the residence of the retirement home where he worked he was the most empathetic person I've ever met more than 4 months before Davis died on the night of December 23rd 22 Meredith was at that club celebrating her 39th birthday with her best friends she says they were wearing their worst Christmas sweaters when the handsome stranger struck up a conversation then I think he text on Christmas Day and then the next day and then the next and you just kept on talking until meeting Davis she says she'd been keeping her head down just about 6 months earlier she had left her husband of 10 years a local auto body shop owner named Bud Akerman and she was struggling to balance parenting their three kids and her job as a grammar school teacher she says she knew getting involved with someone new would not be easy was there any hesitancy about moving forward with this there I mean there was she says first Davis wanted to make make sure she had no intention of reconciling her marriage he didn't want to be the reason that you know we didn't get our family back together so we made sure from the get-go that that wasn't going to be an issue and I just it just happened they would have less than 6 months together could you start to guess what may have happened how it was hit the night of Davis's death at the site investigator Patrick Durkin noticed something beyond the strangeness of the crashed car and Davis's distance from it there was an oil slick in the road it's still here uh just over a year later it's it's still here uh but there was a number of footprints and and some tire tracks that were leading away from this oil stand and what did that tell you when you saw it what we knew that there was some type of impact to the vehicle and then we knew there was uh oil and and tire marks that left from here it looked like evidence from the vehicle that hit Davis you guys are looking around and you realize the oil continues you could see it was very obvious that there was tire marks that had had gone back down the road and kind of turned around back where the tire track seemed to show a vehicle had turned around investigators had found oil spatters on a street light post it was about maybe this high and from there there was a trail of oil that had led down the road into the distance it's bread clums basically in a manner of speaking you know we just have to do the investigation and and see what evidence is there and see where it leads us to [Music] [Music] there was a trail uh that led from from the incident location investigator Ronnie poell says by the time authorities started following that oil trail from the crash site they had a solid hunch where it might lead Davis McLendon's girlfriend Meredith Haney had told them she'd suspected where he had been going when he left her at the bar that night to meet her estranged husband butd akur and it turns out the oily evidence LED right to AC's parents house garage is open he'd been living there since separating from Meredith about a year earlier Sheriff's Office yes sir authorities body cameras were rolling he kind of walked up um and almost was expecting us bud arrian and his father were both standing near the garage are there some kids here yeah y okay whose kids are they mine yours and who uh my wife okay bud had spent the day with his three kids at a local Festival he and his wife Meredith had a custody Arrangement and it was his night with the kids but in the driveway authorities know noticed his white Ford F250 pickup that's wild with oil leaking from the undercarriage they also noticed a crack in the grill and other evidence that suggested the vehicle had hit someone that's a palm Mark investigators turned to Bud do you have your ID on you I do not okay just step over here for me authorities say Bud told them he would not answer questions without his lawyer present but but from speaking with Meredith they learned she had a contentious relationship with her soon Tobe ex-husband and came to suspect a jealous Bud akur had mowed Davis McLendon down looking at the scene they deduced Davis had been standing outside his BMW as shown in this CBS News animation based on their investigation they suspect budd's pickup truck sideswiped the sedan and hit Davis carrying him on the vehicle's Grill and depositing his body across the road meridi says Bud had been upset since reaching out to her days earlier when he found out she was dating Davis he text me what did he text you he said something about Meredith how could you what was your reaction to that text I think it was hurt like I was I felt bad because I just don't like to hurt people's feeling I don't like people to be hurt so I felt bad what had begun years earlier as a promising marriage that would bear three kids had fallen apart he was a good father he was a really good dad bud was from a prominent local family and he was a business owner but Meredith says his work had become stressful I started to notice like some depression and things like that um that I've never seen before she says he started drinking a lot and the more he drank she says the more unpredictable he became there was screaming cursing you felt threatened absolutely Meredith says he never laid a hand on her but destroyed her sense of self the house was never clean enough there were never enough groceries it was so loud and vulgar it was very degrading then she says she noticed her husband was starting to become paranoid she remembers being in her closet one day and noticing a strange pillow they had cut a hole in it according to Meredith there was a hidden camera inside and then I started finding more of them what other places did you find cameras oh um there was one hidden in our dresser that faced the bed found one in a bush in the front yard and he put them in all the kids rooms she says that was the last straw they separated in the spring of 2022 I could breathe I could be me again Meredith says the separation seemed to help Bud too that he'd stopped drinking and kept going to church with her and the kids but by then she decided it was too late when I was done I was done and starting again with someone new seemed like a distant dream Meredith says until that night Davis McLendon sauntered up and sat down in her life they tried to keep things low-key at first Meredith says she never wanted to rub Bud's nose in it so what did you all do we would go out of town but Meredith says they knew they couldn't sneak around forever and it had started seeming like her new relationship with Davis was a forever kind of thing we talked about sitting on the porch rocking chairs at 80 and it was just a different kind of relationship but after Bud found out there were new complications he accused you of cheating yeah even though you were weeks away from your divorce right Meredith says Bud actually called Davis and asked him to back off until the divorce was official what was Davis's reaction to that request I think he agreed but then we talked about it and decided that was just giving him another little piece of control and on the night Davis died she says Bud seemed out of control back at his parents house investigators now had a warrant and were finding more clues that acrian had been at the crash site Oly Footprints oily Footprints at about 6 30 a.

m. on May 7th 2023 Bud acrian was arrested he would be charged with the murder of Davis McLendon we think there's enough evidence at the scene to to prove of what occurred so by the end of the night you already have someone in custody yes what's left to do well that's just the beginning because it turns out but AR did have a story to tell he says Davis was standing near the middle of a dark Road approximately shown in this CBS News animation Bud says he didn't see Davis until it was too late that hitting him had been an accident and Bud's team says they can prove it [Music] investigators are confident they could prove Bud arrian's truck had hit and killed Davis McLendon but they knew proving aurman had done it on purpose might be harder building a case starts from that night and when investigators looked at that night they learned but acrian had been tracking Davis and Meredith's whereabouts for hours he was trying to find them that night and he was was not happy about this whole situation using security video phone records and even data from Bud's own truck authorities built a timeline they began with Meredith's phone Lieutenant Matthew wac of the Greenwood County Sheriff's Office we were able to extract the information such as the calls and the texts a slew of calls and text messages Bud had made to Meredith leading up to the collision at 8:54 p. m.

Bud texts Meredith why do you hate me I just don't understand she doesn't respond to him she's out with Davis at a local restaurant we went to dinner um at break on the lake you see Davis and Meredith you know having dinner and being interrupted by buds attempts to reach her what was the FaceTime conversation like where are you who are you with why are you doing this to me did you tell them where you were I feel like at some point in the conversation either he could tell where I was because of what's around me or I finally did tell him was one or the other so at that point he knows that you're out with Davis while Meredith continued her date with Davis security cameras catch bud acrian at 10:40 p. m. arriving at a popular Greenwood club called Key West you can see bud you know he's talking to people interacting consuming alcohol the video shows Bud spent about an hour and a half at Key West then called Meredith again how did he sound on the phone intoxicated what's an intoxicated Bud sound like vulgar soon after midnight aurman had left Key West about a half hour later cameras show Bud's truck cir in front of break on the lake but by then Meredith and Davis were no longer at the restaurant you can see his vehicle drive through the parking lot as if he's looking for them Lieutenant wac says before long investigators would learn just how far but acrian had gone that night to find Meredith and Davis though acrian himself wasn't talking critical information would emerge from another Digital Witness his truck it's a Box about this big that goes into the back side of the dash wac says in some cars and trucks the infotainment systems as they're known store detailed information about how the vehicles are being driven we're in a similar model to buds Ford F250 pickup so on Bud's vehicle they were able to pull a significant amount of information this is just a little snippet you're talking just in in in a 24-hour time period it's over 3,000 events events including snap measurements of speed acceleration and Brake pressure Bud's onboard computer even pinged public Wi-Fi it passed investigators learned that bud had actually driven by Meredith's house and onto Davis McLendon street that night but while he was driving around looking for them ironically they had moved to the key West Club he had just left when Davis decides to call Bud he walked out the back of the bar it was 12:51 a.

m. a few minutes passed and I went out there to check on him he was gone did he think he could bring the temperature down mhm record show Davis called her minutes later and what was that conversation where are you and that's when he told me that he was going to meet Bud wac says other infotainment system data show that at a bit past 1 in the morning Davis and Bud had their fatal encounter and we can tell there was actually an event at 1:11 a. m.