The Hit-and-Run Homicide of Davis McClendon

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Speaker 2 Greenwood.

Speaker 4 I've lived here half my life.

Speaker 4 Everyone knows everyone and their business.

Speaker 4 I have decided to set the story straight.

Speaker 4 It's still surreal. I still...
Think maybe I'll wake up.

Speaker 4 We were out for my birthday.

Speaker 4 I remember I was just sitting at the bar and

Speaker 4 he sat down beside me and we just talked the rest of the night.

Speaker 2 You were there the night she met Davis.

Speaker 6 I was. I was there that night.

Speaker 2 Did it seem like there was chemistry?

Speaker 7 Immediately.

Speaker 6 I would, immediately.

Speaker 4 Davis, he was so kind. I mean, his heart was huge.

Speaker 4 We enjoyed each other so much. It was an amazing six months.

Speaker 6 Meredith, her and Davis, they would go on away weekends a lot. I liked him.

Speaker 6 His smile was so contagious and he's just such a sweet guy. I would have never expected this to happen ever.

Speaker 3 Greenwick County 911. This is the one person car wreck.

Speaker 3 Okay, it was a car wreck and somebody is hurt.

Speaker 6 I pull up right beside Davis's car. And he was in his car.
And that's when I noticed his airbags were out.

Speaker 6 So then also, that's when I kind of started looking at the car more and noticed that his front tire was smashed in. And I remember looking and I noticed there's a body.

Speaker 6 America just started like screaming like, who is it? Who is it?

Speaker 2 And you look over.

Speaker 2 What do you think you were looking at?

Speaker 11 Davis.

Speaker 12 He was laying there.

Speaker 6 And his head was rested on the slot like a pillow. And he was shirtless.
And his face was covered in blood.

Speaker 2 Was there anything about the scene that struck you as odd?

Speaker 4 Davis being all the way on the other side of the road, the car being wrecked, like none of that.

Speaker 4 I couldn't piece anything together.

Speaker 6 Davis's car was way over there, and his body was way down here. And I was like, well, how did he end up down here?

Speaker 2 That's quite a distance. Yeah.

Speaker 6 It is quite a distance.

Speaker 13 Originally, it came out as a possible traffic accident. And then once officers arrived on scene, they realized it was more than that.

Speaker 14 A lot of people think it was an auto accident. Well, no, it wasn't.

Speaker 15 I do believe that this was an accident and not an intentional killing.

Speaker 14 It was a murder.

Speaker 6 I wasn't shocked. I was like, it doesn't even make sense.

Speaker 12 The photographs of the crime scene, the text messages from Davis's phone, the ring videos, looking at everything and the totality of the case was very powerful.

Speaker 16 How can any of this possibly happen?

Speaker 4 There's so many things missing from the story. And once I kind of get that out there, then I can close the chapter.

Speaker 15 Anne-Marie Green reports the hit-and-run homicide of Davis McClendon.

Speaker 2 It was May 7th, 2023, just after 1 a.m. when authorities responded to a reported road accident on a secluded dead-end street street in Greenwood, South Carolina.

Speaker 16 Start roping this off because this is going to be a crime scene.

Speaker 2 At the edge of the nearby woods, they would find 46-year-old Davis McClendon's body. But what they saw at first was on the road itself.
A shirt, a shoe, and a mangled sedan.

Speaker 17 And there was significant damage to the fender.

Speaker 2 It was a BMW 5 Series, similar to this one, were using to demonstrate the position of the vehicle that night.

Speaker 2 After first responders had locked everything down, Greenwood County Sheriff's Office Investigator Patrick Durkin arrived to photograph the scene.

Speaker 17 The front driver's sie was turned slightly.

Speaker 2 Whatever had transpired at this deserted crossroads, Durkin's job was to freeze it in time.

Speaker 2 First responders had thought Davis McClendon's injuries seemed consistent with having been hit by a vehicle, though no other vehicle relating to the collision was there.

Speaker 2 They'd found Davis's body about 50 feet away from the BMW, leading them to suspect he'd been outside his car when he was hit.

Speaker 17 There was no rain or anything that would potentially wash anything away, so

Speaker 17 the main thing I focused on was the vehicle.

Speaker 2 Durkin says he noticed some strange damage to the BMW.

Speaker 17 Usually when we would you'd think of a normal fender bender, it would just kind of be pressed into it and this was torn back like a tuna can, in a sense.

Speaker 2 It had made authorities wonder if it was a hit and run or something more sinister. Those airbags were out, and a phone was on the front passenger seat.

Speaker 2 Durkin saw more debris in the road, but nothing particularly telling.

Speaker 13 The assumption was that he was struck by a vehicle.

Speaker 2 Investigator Ronnie Powell 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'd called 911.

Speaker 2 Megan often babysat for Meredith's three children.

Speaker 13 They provided statements of what they saw and what had occurred all night long.

Speaker 2 What did Meredith say?

Speaker 13 She pretty much gave a summary of the whole backstory that she had been dating Davis.

Speaker 2 Meredith had told authorities that Davis left a club they had been in that night, calling her minutes later from the road, saying he was parked at the intersection of Avid Road and Sawgrass Place.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 7 It was.

Speaker 13 It was crushing.

Speaker 2 Davis McClendon was the ultimate people person without an enemy in the world. Say his friends, Chip Funderbunk.

Speaker 7 Everybody loved Davis.

Speaker 9 He was just awesome.

Speaker 2 I said earlier, he was. Zach Calhoun.

Speaker 19 He loved big.

Speaker 2 And Johnny Coates.

Speaker 18 And what Zach said, he was everyone's best friend.

Speaker 3 He was.

Speaker 22 He loved everyone.

Speaker 2 But none of them could remember Davis ever mentioning the specifics of his love life. Not until he met Meredith Haney.

Speaker 16 He told me that he had met somebody and they had just kind of been chatting and, you know, enjoying getting to know each other. You know, it

Speaker 16 seemed like a good thing, seemed like a positive thing for sure.

Speaker 2 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 residents of the retirement home where he worked.

Speaker 4 He was the most empathetic person I've ever met.

Speaker 2 More than four months before Davis died, on the night of December 23rd, 2022,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 4 Then I think he texts on Christmas day

Speaker 4 and then the next day

Speaker 4 and then the next.

Speaker 2 And you just kept on talking.

Speaker 2 Until meeting Davis, she says she'd been keeping her head down.

Speaker 2 Just about six months earlier, she had left her husband of 10 years, a local auto body shop owner named Bud Ackerman, and she was struggling to balance parenting their three kids and her job as a grammar school teacher.

Speaker 2 She says she knew getting involved with someone new would not be easy. Was there any hesitancy about moving forward with this?

Speaker 4 There, I mean, there was.

Speaker 2 She says, first, Davis wanted to make sure she had no intention of reconciling her marriage.

Speaker 4 He didn't want to be the reason that, you know, we didn't get our family back together. So we made sure

Speaker 4 from the get-go that that wasn't going to be an issue.

Speaker 4 And it just,

Speaker 4 it just happened.

Speaker 2 They would have less than six months together.

Speaker 5 Could you start to guess what may have happened, how it was hit?

Speaker 2 The night of Davis' 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.

Speaker 2 It's still here.

Speaker 17 Just over a year later,

Speaker 17 it's still here, but there was a number of footprints and some tire tracks that were leading away from this oil stain.

Speaker 5 And what did that tell you when you saw it?

Speaker 17 Well, we knew that there was some type of impact to the vehicle and then we knew there was oil and tire marks that left from here.

Speaker 2 It looked like evidence from the vehicle that hit Davis.

Speaker 5 You guys are looking around and you realize the oil continues?

Speaker 17 You could see it was very obvious that there was tire marks that had gone back

Speaker 17 down the road and kind of turned around.

Speaker 2 Back where the tire tracks seemed to show a vehicle had turned around, investigators had found oil spatters on a street light post.

Speaker 7 It was

Speaker 22 about maybe this high.

Speaker 2 And from there, there was a trail of oil that had led down the road into the distance.

Speaker 4 It's very close, basically.

Speaker 17 In a manner of speaking,

Speaker 13 you know, we just have to do the investigation and see what evidence is there and see where it leads us to.

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Speaker 13 There was a trail that led from the incident location.

Speaker 2 Investigator Ronnie Powell says by the time authorities started following that oil trail from the crash site, they had a solid hunch where it might lead.

Speaker 2 Davis McClendon'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, Bud Ackerman.

Speaker 2 And it turns out the oily evidence led right to Ackerman's parents' house.

Speaker 20 Garage is open.

Speaker 2 He'd been living there since separating from Meredith about a year earlier.

Speaker 10 Sheriff's office.

Speaker 4 Yes, sir.

Speaker 2 Authorities' body cameras were rolling.

Speaker 3 He

Speaker 3 wanted to walk up

Speaker 13 and almost was expecting us.

Speaker 2 Bud Ackerman and his father were both standing near the garage.

Speaker 10 Are there some kids here?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 24 Okay, whose kids are they? Mine.

Speaker 14 Yours and who?

Speaker 24 My wife. Okay.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But in the driveway, authorities noticed his white Ford F-250 pickup.

Speaker 3 That's wild.

Speaker 2 With oil leaking from the undercarriage, they also noticed a crack in the grill and other evidence that suggested the vehicle had hit someone.

Speaker 25 That's a palm mark.

Speaker 2 Investigators turned to Bud.

Speaker 16 Do you have your idea on you?

Speaker 14 I do not.

Speaker 20 Okay, just step over here for me.

Speaker 2 Authorities say Bud told them he would not answer questions without his lawyer present.

Speaker 2 But from speaking with Meredith, they learned she had a contentious relationship with her soon-to-be ex-husband and came to suspect a jealous Bud Ackerman had mowed Davis McClendon down.

Speaker 2 Looking at the scene, they deduced Davis had been standing outside his BMW, as shown in this CBS News animation based on their investigation.

Speaker 2 They suspect Bud's pickup truck sideswiped the sedan and hit Davis, carrying him on the vehicle's grille and depositing his body across the road.

Speaker 2 Meredith says Bud had been upset since reaching out to her days earlier when he found out she was dating Davis.

Speaker 4 He text me.

Speaker 2 What did he text you?

Speaker 4 He said something about,

Speaker 4 Meredith, how could you.

Speaker 2 What was your reaction to that text?

Speaker 6 I think it was hurt.

Speaker 4 Like I was, I felt bad

Speaker 4 because I just don't like to hurt people's feelings. I don't like people to be hurt.
So I felt bad.

Speaker 2 What had begun years earlier as a promising marriage that would bear three kids had fallen apart.

Speaker 2 He was a good father.

Speaker 4 He was a really good dad.

Speaker 2 Bud was from a prominent local family and he was a business owner. But Meredith says his work had become stressful.

Speaker 4 I started to notice like some depression and things like that

Speaker 4 that I've never seen before.

Speaker 2 She says he started drinking a lot and the more he drank, she says, the more unpredictable he became.

Speaker 9 There was

Speaker 4 screaming, cussing.

Speaker 23 You felt threatened.

Speaker 4 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Meredith says he never laid a hand on her, but destroyed her sense of self.

Speaker 4 The house was never clean enough. There were never enough groceries.

Speaker 4 It was so loud

Speaker 4 and vulgar. It was very degrading.

Speaker 2 Then she says she noticed her husband was starting to become paranoid.

Speaker 2 She remembers being in her closet one day and noticing a strange pillow.

Speaker 4 He had cut a hole in it.

Speaker 2 According to Meredith, there was a hidden camera inside.

Speaker 4 And then I started finding more of them.

Speaker 2 What other places did you find cameras?

Speaker 4 Oh,

Speaker 4 there was one hidden

Speaker 4 in our dresser that faced the bed. Found one in a bush in the front yard.
You put them in all the kids' rooms.

Speaker 2 She says that was the last straw. They separated in the spring of 2022.

Speaker 4 I could breathe.

Speaker 4 I could

Speaker 4 be me again.

Speaker 2 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'd decided it was too late.

Speaker 4 When I was done,

Speaker 4 I was done.

Speaker 2 And starting again with someone new seemed like a distant dream, Meredith says. Until that night, Davis McClendon sauntered up and sat down in her life.
They tried to keep things low-key at first.

Speaker 2 Meredith says she never wanted to rub Bud's nose in it. So what did you all do?

Speaker 4 We would go out of town.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 4 We talked about sitting on the porch rocking chairs at 80 and

Speaker 4 it was just a different kind of relationship.

Speaker 2 But after Bud found out there were new complications.

Speaker 4 He accused you of cheating.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Even though you were weeks away from your divorce. Right.

Speaker 2 Meredith says Bud actually called Davis and asked him to back off until the divorce was official. What was Davis' reaction to that request?

Speaker 4 I think he agreed.

Speaker 4 But then we talked about it and decided that was just giving him another

Speaker 23 little piece of control.

Speaker 2 And on the night Davis died, she says Bud seemed out of control.

Speaker 2 Back at his parents' house, investigators now had a warrant and were finding more clues that Ackerman had been at the crash site.

Speaker 3 Oily footprints.

Speaker 3 Oily footprints.

Speaker 2 At about 6:30 a.m. on May 7th, 2023, Bud Ackerman was arrested.
He would be charged with the murder of Davis McClendon.

Speaker 13 We think there's enough evidence at the scene to prove of what occurred.

Speaker 2 So by the end of the night, you already have someone in custody.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 2 What's left to do?

Speaker 13 That's just the beginning.

Speaker 2 Because it turns out Bud Ackerman did have a story to tell.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And Bud's team says they can prove it.

Speaker 2 Investigators are confident they could prove Bud Ackerman's truck had hit and killed Davis McClendon, but they knew proving Ackerman had done it on purpose might be harder.

Speaker 13 Building a case starts from that night.

Speaker 2 And when investigators looked at that night, they learned Bud Ackerman had been tracking Davis and Meredith's whereabouts for hours.

Speaker 13 He was trying to find them that night and he was not happy about this whole situation.

Speaker 2 Using security video, phone records, and even data from Bud's own truck, authorities built a timeline.

Speaker 2 They began with Meredith's phone, Lieutenant Matthew Womack of the Greenwood County Sheriff's Office.

Speaker 12 We were able to extract the information, such as the calls and the texts.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 She doesn't respond to him. She's out with Davis at a local restaurant.

Speaker 4 We went to dinner at Break on the Lake.

Speaker 13 You see Davis and Meredith. you know, having dinner

Speaker 2 and being interrupted by Bud's attempts to reach her. What was the FaceTime conversation like?

Speaker 4 Where are you? Who are you with? Why are you doing this to me?

Speaker 2 Did you tell him where you were?

Speaker 4 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. It was one or the other.

Speaker 2 So at that point, he knows that you're out with Davis.

Speaker 2 While Meredith continued her date with Davis, security cameras catch Bud Ackerman at 10.40 p.m., arriving at a popular Greenwood club called Key West.

Speaker 13 You can see Bud, you know, he's talking to people, interacting, consuming alcohol.

Speaker 2 The video shows Bud spent about an hour and a half at Key West, then called Meredith again.

Speaker 2 How did he sound on the phone?

Speaker 4 Intoxicated.

Speaker 2 What's an intoxicated bud sound like?

Speaker 3 Vulgar.

Speaker 2 Soon after midnight, Ackerman had left Key West. About a half hour later, cameras show Bud's truck circling in front of Break on the Lake.

Speaker 2 But by then, Meredith and Davis were no longer at the restaurant.

Speaker 13 You can see his vehicle drive through the parking lot as if he's looking for him.

Speaker 2 Lieutenant Womack says before long, investigators would learn just how far Bud Ackerman had gone that night to find Meredith and Davis.

Speaker 2 Though Ackerman himself wasn't talking, Critical information would emerge from another digital witness, his truck.

Speaker 12 It's a box about this big that goes into the backside of the dash.

Speaker 2 Womack says in some cars and trucks, the infotainment systems, as they're known, store detailed information about how the vehicles are being driven.

Speaker 2 We're in a similar model to Bud's Ford F-250 pickups.

Speaker 12 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 a 24-hour time period, it's over 3,000 events.

Speaker 2 Events including snap measurements of speed, acceleration, and brake pressure. Bud's onboard computer even pinged public Wi-Fi's it passed.

Speaker 2 Investigators learned that Bud had actually driven by Meredith's house and onto Davis McClendon Street that night.

Speaker 2 But while he was driving around looking for them, ironically, they had moved to the Key West club He had just left.

Speaker 4 When Davis decides to call Bud, he walked out the back of the bar.

Speaker 2 It was 12.51 a.m.

Speaker 4 A few minutes passed and I went out there to check on him. He was gone.

Speaker 2 Did he think he could bring the temperature down?

Speaker 2 Records show Davis called her minutes later. And what was that conversation? Where are you?

Speaker 4 And that's when he told me that he was going to meet Bud.

Speaker 2 Womack says other infotainment system data show that at a bit past one in the morning, Davis and Bud had their fatal encounter.

Speaker 12 And we can tell there was actually an event at 1.11 a.m. on May the 7th.

Speaker 2 They say Ackerman hit the brakes hard.

Speaker 12 We can narrow it down to tenths of seconds of when the collision occurred.

Speaker 2 And according to the computer, seconds after the collision, Ackerman's truck had stopped.

Speaker 12 At that point in time, Bud's opening the door.

Speaker 13 He opens the door before he shifts it to park.

Speaker 2 Womack thinks Ackerman got out of his truck, which was probably leaking from the collision. Remember that puddle of oil in the road near the victim.

Speaker 12 Then he closes the door, then he gets back in, and then it's shifted to drive at that point in time.

Speaker 2 Then, say authorities, Ackerman turns his truck around near the lamppost, roughly as you you see in this CBS News demonstration based on their investigation.

Speaker 2 He then drives away, leaking an oil trail all the way to his parents' driveway.

Speaker 12 Right here, his phone becomes unavailable, the ignition turned off, and it disconnected from his device.

Speaker 2 What does that tell you?

Speaker 12 That's when he got home and got out.

Speaker 13 It started to paint a very clear picture.

Speaker 2 But Ackerman's attorney, Jack Swirling, paints a different picture.

Speaker 15 I don't think he intended to run Davis McClendon over. There's no indication that he's an aggressive or violent individual.

Speaker 10 Sheriff's office. Yes, sir.

Speaker 2 Nor, says Swirling, is there much to indicate his client was drunk that night.

Speaker 10 Can I get you to sip with me over here before the police?

Speaker 2 None of the cops who arrested him reported he seemed tipsy.

Speaker 15 The only one who said he was intoxicated was Meredith.

Speaker 5 Was he stalking them that night?

Speaker 15 I think he was trying to find out, confirm that they were together. He wanted to talk to her.

Speaker 2 According to Swirling, Meredith and Davis had betrayed McClendon's promise to Bud to stand down until the Ackermans' marriage was officially over.

Speaker 15 She couldn't wait another month, and she's out with this guy, and she's cheating on her husband. They are still legally married.
South Carolina law calls that adultery.

Speaker 2 And Swirling says the night Davis died, he let Bud Ackerman's repeated calls and text messages to Meredith get under his skin.

Speaker 15 Davis got upset about it, and that's what led to them having this meeting. Bud thought they were going to meet and talk.

Speaker 2 He says Bud had suggested an innocent and safe place for it to happen.

Speaker 15 They were supposed to meet at Bud's parents' house, which is about half a mile from that location.

Speaker 2 Swirling says Ackerman's children were sleeping there that night. So attacking Davis would have been the last thing on his client's mind.

Speaker 15 You wouldn't meet at your parents' house if you were angry and threatening and ready to kill somebody.

Speaker 2 He says it was Davis who selected the deserted intersection as a new location. And remember how Davis was found without his shirt on that night?

Speaker 2 Well, Swirling says he believes Davis took it off to prepare for a confrontation.

Speaker 15 He was ready to fight.

Speaker 2 Swirling insists Bud Ackerman meant no harm that night, and Bud is about to tell that story to a jury.

Speaker 3 Your name?

Speaker 26 William Gray Ackerman Jr. I'm also good bye bud.

Speaker 27 Hey there, we're Corinne Vienne and Sabrina DeAnaroga here to introduce our newest podcast, Crimes of a Crime House Original.

Speaker 28 Crimes of is a weekly series that explores a new theme each season, from Crimes of the Paranormal, Unsolved Murders, and more.

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Speaker 30 Good morning, everybody.

Speaker 7 We are on the record in the state versus William Bud Ackerman.

Speaker 2 Prosecutors are determined to prove it was no accident that Bud Ackerman hit Davis McClendon the night night he died. So in September of 2024, Assistant Attorneys General John Conrad and John Meadows.

Speaker 22 He intentionally drove his car into the body of Davis McClendon.

Speaker 2 Start the case off with a bang. Bam!

Speaker 22 And that's what this case is about.

Speaker 2 They'll argue Ackerman couldn't stand the fact that his estranged wife was seeing someone, and Bud was searching for Meredith and Davis all over town.

Speaker 22 Bud Ackerman was not going to let Davis McClendon be with Meredith.

Speaker 22 That's your house right there.

Speaker 25 Yes, sir.

Speaker 2 Meadows and Conrad lead with their strongest evidence. There are actually time stamp videos from the neighbors' doorbell cameras at the moment of the crash that killed Davis.

Speaker 2 It shows what they say is Bud's Ford F-250 driving through the frame. Seconds later on the video, what sounds like a crash.

Speaker 2 And seconds after that, a series of muffled sounds.

Speaker 22 What did you hear?

Speaker 15 I heard somebody yelling.

Speaker 2 Prosecutors argue it's Bud Ackerman's voice yelling at Davis McClendon after running him down.

Speaker 4 What it sounded like to me was,

Speaker 4 what do you want to talk about now?

Speaker 22 Bud's yelling, unheavenly expletives.

Speaker 13 He said to Davis as he was lying on the ground.

Speaker 14 I think he was glad he was dead.

Speaker 2 But Bud Ackerman's defense attorney, Jack Swirling, argues the audio is too garbled to prove anything.

Speaker 19 I've listened to it several times now, and I don't believe you could conclude 100% that that is actually what he said.

Speaker 2 The prosecutor then calls Megan McGovern, the Ackerman's babysitter and friend, to describe the moment she'd seen Davis's body through traumatized teenaged eyes.

Speaker 31 He had blood coming out of his ears and his nose, and I couldn't, I'm not exactly sure if it was coming out of his mouth or not, because I mean, there's just blood everywhere from his nose and everything.

Speaker 2 But their star witness is the woman at the center of both men's affection, Meredith Haney, who testifies with the date-night security videos as a guide. Yes, sir.

Speaker 18 Is that you?

Speaker 4 Yes, sir.

Speaker 2 She tells the jury Bud Ackerman called her when she and Davis were at break on the lake.

Speaker 22 Did you think he was trying to find you?

Speaker 4 I did worry, yes.

Speaker 2 And kept calling after they got to Key West Club.

Speaker 22 Is that a call from the defender Bud Ackerman?

Speaker 4 Yes, sir.

Speaker 22 Did you reject that call?

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 22 18 seconds later, you get another call.

Speaker 4 Yes, sir.

Speaker 22 Well, what'd you think about all these calls coming in?

Speaker 4 I was getting very frustrated and angry.

Speaker 4 And just, it was getting obsessive.

Speaker 6 It was getting scary.

Speaker 2 And she says by the time Davis McClinton left her at the Key West club after midnight.

Speaker 22 And is that Davis McClendon leaving the bar?

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 2 She was worried Bud might be volatile.

Speaker 2 So when Davis later called to tell her he was going to meet with Ackerman, she says she wanted to go check on the situation in person and makes clear to the jury that when she saw the scene, she had little doubt who'd killed her boyfriend.

Speaker 4 I drove back into Meg's car because I thought that the only way that Bud would have ever killed somebody would have been to shoot

Speaker 15 objection.

Speaker 2 Don't go. The judge sustains the defense's objection, but Meredith continues.

Speaker 4 I was scared that he was still out there.

Speaker 7 Okay, Mr.

Speaker 19 Swirling, you need cross-examination. All right, real quick.

Speaker 7 Can I step down, man?

Speaker 18 Your Honor, the state calls Special Agent Brian Hudak.

Speaker 2 Digital forensics expert Brian Hudak tells the jury about data in the infotainment system of Ackerman's pickup, including some that show Bud was driving in exactly the right place.

Speaker 11 In Greenwood, at the end of such an evidence.

Speaker 2 At exactly the right time.

Speaker 11 Between 111.31 and 111.32.

Speaker 2 To be implicated in the deadly collision.

Speaker 2 He suggests they can even tell the moment of impact.

Speaker 19 There's something that causes this truck to deaccelerate very quickly, correct?

Speaker 12 Correct.

Speaker 2 And Hudak says the evidence shows Ackerman was going 25 miles per hour.

Speaker 32 And the amount of detail that that truck had on what Bud did that night is simply breathtaking.

Speaker 3 Four vehicles completely on the wrong side of the road when it strikes the BMW.

Speaker 2 Collision reconstruction expert Corporal Christopher Bratcher testifies the dents show Bud's speeding pickup sideswiped Davis's BMW sedan.

Speaker 2 As shown in that CBS News animation, based on the prosecution's theory, they say Bud was aiming at Davis, who was standing near the driver's door when he was hit, and that the truck kept going with Davis on the grill until he fell off where authorities found him.

Speaker 2 But Jack Swirling argues much of the same evidence shows hitting Davis was an accident.

Speaker 17 We maintain that Mr.

Speaker 15 Ackerman did not act intentionally in this case.

Speaker 2 He says Bud Ackerman had no idea Davis was standing outside his car and calls auto forensics expert Jonathan Nelson to testify that given Ackerman's speed in the dark over a slope in the road and into the parked BMW's headlight beams, he wouldn't have seen Davis McClendon standing in the road until at most two and a half seconds before the collision.

Speaker 8 Or would a person have sufficient opportunity to avoid impact?

Speaker 2 I think most people would have little to no opportunity to begin to try to avoid.

Speaker 2 And Swirling says Davis wasn't standing right next next to his car when he was hit, but further out towards the center of the road, and that Ackerman swerved to his left into the BMW to get around him, as shown in this CBS News animation based on the defense's theory.

Speaker 15 He's trying to avoid hitting him.

Speaker 4 Wouldn't you swerve the other way?

Speaker 21 Why he can go right.

Speaker 15 I can't answer that.

Speaker 2 Swirling knows there may be only one person who can.

Speaker 3 Call Buzz Ackerman.

Speaker 2 Ackerman's attorney begins by trying to show the jury his client was Meredith's long-suffering but devoted husband.

Speaker 15 Did you love her?

Speaker 26 I did very much.

Speaker 2 He admits he was angry at Meredith, but says he only wanted to talk to her and agreed to meet Davis to talk to him, too.

Speaker 18 Do you have any intention to hurt him?

Speaker 26 I did not.

Speaker 2 Ackerman says he hadn't realized how fast he was going and that he was only trying to pull up next to Davis to talk and didn't see McClendon standing in the road until the last moment.

Speaker 15 What action did you take, if any, to avoid hitting the person?

Speaker 26 I jerked my truck as hard as I could to the left to try to hit his car to stop the motion of my truck from going forward.

Speaker 2 But on cross-examination, he admits something that undercuts his claims of innocence that night. He had never called 911.

Speaker 3 I panicked.

Speaker 18 He panicked.

Speaker 2 Instead, he left the scene and drove to his parents' house and told them what had happened. But they never called authorities either.

Speaker 15 I've seen so many people react in abnormal ways. In all the cases I've handled, I've come to expect those kind of things.

Speaker 2 In closings, Prosecutor Meadows argues Ackerman is a murderer with a truck as his weapon.

Speaker 22 This might as well be a drive-by shooting with a gun.

Speaker 2 And he says the Ford pickups infotainment system proves it.

Speaker 22 This is Bud's frame.

Speaker 14 This is malice.

Speaker 10 This is intent.

Speaker 18 The state has not proved that Mr. Ackerman acted with malice or with the intent.

Speaker 2 It's the highest possible bar, and the defense insists the state has not proven its case.

Speaker 22 That Mr.

Speaker 15 Ackerman is entitled to a verdict of not guilty.

Speaker 20 This is judgment day.

Speaker 15 It's verdict day.

Speaker 15 You never know what a jury is going to do. You got 12 people making the decision.

Speaker 7 Have you reached a verdict in this case?

Speaker 7 Ladies and gentlemen, it's my understanding that the jury has reached a verdict.

Speaker 2 For the Ackerman jury, six days of testimony and evidence boiled down to a deliberation less than a half hour long.

Speaker 30 State of South Carolina versus William Gray Budd Ackerman.

Speaker 2 Did you have a feeling about what that verdict might be?

Speaker 15 Yeah, a quick verdict like that is not good.

Speaker 3 Not good.

Speaker 30 We, the jury, unanimously find the defendant guilty.

Speaker 2 Bud Ackerman is guilty of the murder of Davis McClendon.

Speaker 14 That was the right verdict.

Speaker 4 I mean, I thought it would be fast. Not that fast.

Speaker 2 Not just fast, but too fast to be thought through, says Bud Ackerman's attorney, Jack swirling i don't think the jury considered everything that was presented to them they didn't need a lot of time to stew over the evidence the evidence was clear and obvious

Speaker 2 damning evidence of what bud ackerman did say davis mcclendon's friends and equally damning evidence they say of what bud ackerman never did

Speaker 16 Our friend laid there in the road.

Speaker 2 They still can't wrap their head around why nobody in the Ackerman family ever called 9-1-1.

Speaker 16 Somebody should have done the right thing.

Speaker 2 At sentencing, right after the verdict, Davis McClendon's son demands accountability from the Ackermans.

Speaker 2 It is time for this spoiled, evil individual in this spoiled, evil family in Greenwood to finally gain some repercussions for their actions.

Speaker 3 Thank you.

Speaker 14 Lots been said about why

Speaker 24 we didn't call 911.

Speaker 2 But Ackerman's father tries to explain his own lack of action by saying he was too disoriented to know what to do at that hour of the night when his son woke him with the news.

Speaker 2 The judge's sentence is devastating to the defendant.

Speaker 7 Mr. Ackerman, if you please to answer.

Speaker 7 Sentence of the court is, Mr. Ackerman, you be committed to the State Department corrections period of 45 years.

Speaker 2 It looks like the end of the road for Bud Ackerman.

Speaker 4 I know that

Speaker 4 where he is is where he's supposed to be.

Speaker 2 But it may allow for a new beginning for Meredith Haney.

Speaker 4 I was worried that

Speaker 4 if he only got five or ten years, that I'd never get to start a new life because I'd be scared for when he got out.

Speaker 2 With their father unlikely to get out of prison for decades, she's determined to spare her children from the impact of that horrible night. As a single mom, she leans on friends and family.

Speaker 2 How are the kids doing?

Speaker 4 We'll make it through.

Speaker 2 Looking back, she believes Bud Ackerman really wanted to target her that night, and that she's only alive because he found Davis McClendon first.

Speaker 4 Davis saved my life.

Speaker 2 You really feel that way?

Speaker 3 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 If true, Meredith Haney owes her life, however challenging, to the new man she had once hoped to share it with.

Speaker 2 How would you like Davis to be remembered?

Speaker 2 As a hero?

Speaker 4 For the way he treated people,

Speaker 4 for his empathy for his heart

Speaker 2 he was just a good person

Speaker 2 join me tuesday for post-mortem from 48 hours where we'll dive even deeper into today's episode and answer your questions about the case.

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Speaker 15 Dearest Eva, I think about you all the time. Once I find you and your daughter, then I will kill you both.

Speaker 9 Those words and those threats were absolute psychological terrorism.

Speaker 21 Surviving 12 years of terror.

Speaker 3 You be prepared for my arrival.

Speaker 2 Oh my god. He found our house and he was coming.

Speaker 21 My nightmare stalker, the Eva LaRue story, now streaming on Paramount Plus.