COLD CASE

Georgia Man Charged With Killing Army Private Who Was Dumped on Roadside

René Dawn Blackmore was killed in 1982 just days before her 21st birthday.

Officials in Chattahoochee County, Georgia, said Thursday they have finally found the person who killed a Fort Benning soldier in 1982 days before her 21st birthday. Marcellus McCluster was indicted last week in the death of René Dawn Blackmore, a 20-year-old army private who disappeared before her remains were discovered on the side of a road two months later. “We know that she would have been 59 years old if she could have been with us today. But we don’t know who she might have loved, what relationships she might have built, what dreams she might have realized,” Kim Schwartz, the assistant district attorney of the Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit, said at a press conference. “All of those things got extinguished by a blast from a cheap shotgun about two miles from the middle of nowhere down in south Chattahoochee County.” Blackmore’s mother said in a statement that “nothing can give René back to me, but I do find solace in learning these men cared enough to search out that justice.”