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Inmate charged with murder 40 years after Georgia slaying

Victim vanished April 1982
Soldier Slaying Cold Case
Posted at 9:39 PM, Apr 08, 2022

CUSSETA, Ga. (AP) — Authorities say an inmate has been charged with murder in the killing 40 years ago of an Army soldier in Georgia.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation says a grand jury in Chattahoochee County indicted 64-year-old Marcellus McCluster after investigators linked him to the cold case slaying of Rene Dawn Blackmore.

The 20-year-old woman was serving as an Army private at Fort Benning when she vanished in April 1982.

Her body was found two months later. She had been killed by a shotgun blast. McCluser was already in prison serving a life sentence for an unrelated killing when he was charged with Blackmore's death.

Her mother, Donna Reitman, said in a statement that she had long assumed no one outside the family still cared.