Man arrested in 1973 Monroe County cold case
Monroe County authorities made an arrest Friday in a generation-old “gangland-style killing,” one of the oldest cold cases in East Tennessee.
Max Benson Calhoun, 67, faces a charge of first-degree murder in the 45-year-old death of John Raymond Constant. Officers serving a sealed grand jury indictment arrested him Thursday, Monroe County Sheriff Tommy Jones said.
Investigators found the bullet-riddled body of Constant, a 43-year-old truck driver, slumped in the cab of his truck on Old Fort Road off U.S. Highway 411 in Vonore, Tennessee, near the south bank of what’s now Tellico Lake, early in the morning of March 16, 1973. He’d been shot at least 17 times with a high-powered rifle in what appeared to be an ambush, authorities said at the time. UNCRACKED
CASE
A special strike force of Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agents and a $2,000 reward offered by Gov. Winfield Dunn failed to yield any arrests. Authorities tried every last resort, including questioning some witnesses under hypnosis, according to News Sentinel accounts.
The first arrest, made nearly a decade after the killing in September 1982, fell apart when 10th Judicial District prosecutors dropped the case against Harold Buckner, a onetime candidate for sheriff in neighboring McMinn County, on the eve of trial.
This week’s bill of indictment against Calhoun offers no new details on the case. Authorities at the time suggested Constant had been tied to underworld figures who ordered his death when he “began rocking the boat.”
OLD CLUES, NEW CLUES Steve Crump, the current district attorney general, said Friday the theory hasn’t changed, although he didn’t give specifics. Investigators took the old pieces of the puzzle and put them together with some new leads that arose.
“Recent new developments led us to reopen the case and present it to the grand jury,” he said.
Calhoun’s lawyer, Jim Logan, said he’s eager to see some proof.
“It’s going to be a very difficult thing to defend someone against acts that relate to events 45 years ago,” Logan said. “Do you remember what you were doing on a specific date 45 years ago?”
Calhoun remained in jail Friday night. He could make his first court appearance Feb. 25.