DAWSONVILLE - Northeastern Judicial Circuit District Attorney Lee Darragh announced today that the Dawson County Grand Jury has indicted Manford Bruenn for the March 1986 murder of Donald Wade Smith.

The investigation into the murder has been an ongoing effort by agents from the Cleveland Office of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Dawson County Sheriff's Office and the Cobb County Police Department.

The 1986 investigation determined that Smith was kidnapped in Cobb County and taken to Dawson County where he was killed.  At that time, Cobb County Police arrested three people for the kidnapping, all of whom were later convicted.  Bruenn was also charged with kidnapping Smith by Cobb County Police, but he disappeared and his whereabouts are unknown. Bruenn has family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and may have been hiding over the past twenty years in the New York City and Washington, D.C. areas. 

Attached are mug shots of Bruenn taken in 1986 as well as with two sketches by GBI forensic artist Marla Lawson of what Bruenn may look like now.

Anyone with information on Bruenn is asked to call the GBI tip line at 1-800-597-TIPS (8477).

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Contact Information:

Lee Darragh, District Attorney, Northeastern Judicial Circuit,706/344-3620;John Bankhead, GBI - 404/270-8330

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