n order to keep Burchard bankrolling
her lifestyle, Turner had been extort-
ing him, Earp says. She made vari-
ous serious threats against him, and
warned that she might go to the po-
lice with information. Earp wouldn’t
name the “horrible” and “devastating” and “totally un-
founded” allegations that could have cost Burchard his
job working with children. When I ask if the allegations
involved Burchard behaving inappropriately with chil-
dren, she says yes but won’t elaborate. Smith later told me
that prosecutors found nothing of the sort on Burchard’s
phone. “I’ve been led to believe there were lots of nude
photos, but of adult women,” he said. “I can’t confirm or
deny that right now, because I haven’t seen it yet.”
Whether Turner’s information was real or invented,
Burchard was too afraid and embarrassed to go to the
police. When Turner decided to move to Las Vegas with
her four-year-old son at the end of 2018, Burchard paid
for her to leave town. Despite her threats, Turner stirred
up sympathy in Burchard, Earp says. Soon after leaving,
she told him she was sick and couldn’t work or afford
to care for her son (the one child she had custody of ).
Burchard wanted to help, so he decided to fly to Vegas,
telling Earp he wanted to see for himself if Turner was
telling the truth.
“Don’t do it,” Earp recalls telling him on the phone
after his plane landed. “Don’t stay.”
On the morning of March 7, a 911 caller reported that
he’d seen a blue Mercedes-Benz coupe abandoned on a
dirt road, two miles off the highway, close to the popu-
lar Lake Mead National Recreation Area and about 20
miles northeast of the Las Vegas Strip. The desert there
is jagged, its low mountains streaked with red earth and
spotted with dried green brush and litter—torn plastic
bags and shimmering broken glass.
When police officers approached the vehicle, both
windows were rolled down. They found blue latex
gloves and “evidence of a small fire” in the passenger
seat, according to their report. There was blood on
the back seat and on the driver’s headrest. An officer
pushed the ignition button, and the car started. When
they opened the trunk, the police found clothes and
bedding encasing a foul odor. Pushing the clothes and
blankets aside, they uncovered Burchard’s dead body.
An autopsy the next day revealed Burchard had
died from blunt force trauma to the head. Later, when
grand jurors were shown pictures of his injuries, they
said, “Jesus Christ” and “Oh my God.” Bruises, cuts,
and scrapes zigzagged across his face, neck, arms, and
upper chest. Part of his ear was missing. The Mercedes,
police eventually learned, was linked to Kelsey Turner.
According to police reports and grand jury tran-
scripts, the end of Burchard’s life began a week earli-
er, on March 1, when he arrived at Turner’s place—a
two-story stucco home in a perfectly nice suburban
neighborhood—and found a full house. On the top
floor, Turner shared the master bedroom with her
27-year-old boyfriend, Jon Logan Kennison. Her son’s
bedroom was also on the second floor, along with her
roommate Diana Pena’s room. Another roommate,
Jeremy Escherich, slept downstairs.caring for a child. Burchard was already exceedingly
trusting, Earp says—he usually carried $1,000 in cash
in his wallet, along with a little black book in which
he’d written down all his account passwords.
Just over a week before he died, Earp says, social
workers appeared at their front door, inquiring about
the doctor’s condition. She didn’t know who or what
tipped off the social workers to Burchard’s potential
dementia, but she saw this as an opportunity. She told
them her boyfriend needed help: A young local woman
named Kelsey Turner was taking advantage of him.
To the outside world, Turner was a 25-year-old
party girl, transplanted to California from Arkansas—a
bottle-blond aspiring model who filtered her selfies
through an app that made her look like a Bratz doll.
On Instagram, she posed in bikinis and lingerie and
wigs, posted updates about her boob job, and promot-
ed nightclub events. She had a tattoo of a gun tucked
into a garter belt on one thigh. Her modeling shots
appeared on the websites of Playboy Italia and Max-
im, beside interviews in which she described herself
as “impulsive” and a “Russian-American blonde just
trying to change the world.”
“I love thrills and fun,” she told Playboy Italia.
“[I’m] living my life fully aware that it’s the only one
I have.”
Earp first became aware of Turner sometime in
2017, she says, though she didn’t know how or when
Burchard met her. Authorities also haven’t disclosed
how the two met, but divorce filings from Burchard’s
first marriage obtained by the Salinas Californian in-
dicated the doctor had a history of meeting women
online, some with “suggestive screen names,” and
sending them money. Some he’d meet in person. At the
time, he denied these relationships were romantic or
sexual—he just liked to help people out.
Earp believed him, and unlike his ex-wife, she tol-
erated his unusual form of charity. But none of these
other women consumed Burchard’s attention or bank
account quite like Turner, whom Earp calls “danger-
ously insane.” As Earp understood it, Turner had two
small children and nowhere to live. She couldn’t qual-
ify for a lease on a house, so Burchard offered to sign
one for her, then ended up paying her rent entirely. He
also signed a loan for a BMW convertible and ended
up making the payments on that, too.
While Burchard’s behavior may have been con-
sistent with that of a “sugar daddy,” Turner didn’t
use that phrase, at least when describing Burchard
to her roommates. She also denied their relationship
was ever sexual. As her lawyer, Brian J. Smith, later
described it, “She said it was more of a case of the doc-
tor having a huge crush on her—let’s put it that way.”
But after months of financial support, Burchard
tried to cut Turner off. Earp cheered him on. The two
women had never met, but they hated each other.
Earp called Turner “the white-trash whore” instead
of referring to her by name. Turner knew that Earp
was pressuring Burchard to stop paying her rent; the
twentysomething once texted Burchard that his girl-
friend was “on the shit list with me and if she [gets] me
evicted, I’ll kill her.”PERSPECTIVES
I
2001
2017
2017–
2018
EARLY2000S
LATE2018
The divorce filing for Dr.
Thomas Burchard (below)
reveals he had given
thousands of dollars to
women he’d met online,
something his ex-wife
found inappropriate.At some point in the year,
Earp becomes aware that
Burchard is involved in a
relationship with Kelsey
Turner that involves him
giving her financial support.
It’s unclear when Burchard
and Turner first met.Kelsey Turner models
for the websites of
Playboy Italia and Maxim.Burchard meets his
partner, Judy Earp, while
on a trip to Las Vegas.
Soon after, she moved
from Orange County to
Salinas to live with him.After being evicted from
her home after Burchard
stopped paying her rent,
Turner moves from the
Salinas area to Las Vegas
with her four-year-old son.A TIMELINE
TO A
MURDER138