Corey Trumbull (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department), Logan Cline (GoFundMe)
A Texas jury needed only 15 minutes to convict an avowed white supremacist of the capital murder of his girlfriend’s 11-year-old son, who was tortured, sexually assaulted, and killed in Wichita Falls, before his remains were discarded in an abandoned car back in December 2019.
Corey Trumbull, now 35, was found guilty Tuesday of murdering Logan Cline, who weighed just 69 pounds at the time his life was brutally taken from him.
At trial, Wichita County District Attorney John Gillespie told jurors that Logan’s head injuries in the weeks before he died were so severe that he was unable to speak, the Wichita Falls Times Record News reported.
Logan’s body was found in February 2020 wrapped in clothing inside an abandoned four-door Ford sedan near a Red Roof Inn in Wichita Falls after authorities received a tip from law enforcement out of state. The boy’s mother Stormy Johnson had been living out of that hotel with the victim and his then-15-year-old sister Lexi, before fleeing to Las Vegas.
Stormy Johnson (Wichita County Jail)
As Las Vegas authorities investigated a domestic violence incident involving Johnson and Trumbull, Johnson allegedly told police that she escaped from Trumbull after he had choked her using a metal dog leash and beat her multiple times, leaving her with several broken bones.
According to the arrest warrant, Johnson said Trumbull “stomped” on Logan’s head inside the hotel room.
Cline’s older sister, now 18, provided “detailed descriptions” of the torture and abuse that she said “happened daily” — often with her mother also participating in the abuse. That abuse, Lexi said, was also sexual and involved bestiality “on several occasions.”
At Trumbull’s trial, Lexi testified on the witness stand that both Trumbull and her mother were meth users and would force her and her brother to use drugs, too, and that the abusers laughed as they forced Logan to perform sex acts with dogs, local CBS affiliate KAUZ reported.
The sexual crime and child abuse allegations led to led to separate charges of sexual assault and possession of visual child pornography against Trumbull and Johnson in Nevada. According to Las Vegas police, Trumbull wanted a so-called “poly” relationship with a minor female, and maintained that white people were the supreme race and should multiply.
Corey Trumbull (Wichita County Jail)
Before Trumbull and Johnson were indicted in Texas, Lexi had told cops that her brother was punched and hit with a belt and a stick before he had a seizure, coughed up blood, and died.
“They just kept hurting him,” she told investigators at the time.
Authorities said that Trumbull tossed the boy’s body in a tub of ice before leaving his remains in the abandoned car.
At trial, Trumbull’s defense reportedly admitted that he was a murderer but that he didn’t intend to kill Logan, and that he should instead be charged with the lesser charge of felony murder.
Prosecutor Gillespie unloaded on that argument during closings.
“I’ve been doing this for 22 years. ‘He’s a sadistic murdering [expletive] but not a sadistic capital murdering [expletive],’ that’s a new one,” he said, as reported by NBC local affiliate KFDX. “They’ve gotta work with what they’ve got, I guess.”
The term Gillespie used was “sadistic bastard,” the Times Record News noted.
A GoFundMe campaign started after Logan’s murder said that his father was a member of the U.S. Army who was then-serving in Afghanistan.
“My 11-year-old Grandson, Logan Cline, recently died a tragic death. His father, Nick Cline, is a member of the U.S. Army currently assigned to Afghanistan,” said a message from the victim’s grandmother. “We would like to thank everyone who has donated and we have raised enough money to cover funeral and travel expenses. Thank you for your heartfelt condolences and prayers.”
The victim’s mother, who was previously convicted of child abuse and indicted for murder in October 2021, has yet to face trial.
After she was confronted by investigators about her son’s death, Johnson said that she and Trumbull met online in the summer of 2019. Within a month, Trumbull was living with her and the two children.
Johnson remains in the custody of the Wichita County Sheriff’s Office on a $1.25 million bond on charges of murder and tampering with evidence, jail records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
Though the prosecution did not pursue the death penalty in the capital case, Trumbull will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole — barring a successful appeal.
Jerry Lambe and Alberto Luperon contributed to this report.
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