According to testimony from both roommates, the
fighting began on March 2, when Escherich’s girlfriend
showed up at the house, apparently drunk, and began
chatting up Burchard. Turner was not happy with this
behavior, becoming especially enraged when the wom-
an and Burchard decided to go to the store together.
She allegedly screamed at Escherich, accusing his girl-
friend (who was also young and blond) of trying to take
Burchard away from her. When they got back to the
house, Escherich and his girlfriend quickly left in a taxi.
Later that night, Turner freaked out again after dis-
covering text messages on Burchard’s phone between
him and her mother. When she allegedly found what
Pena agreed in the grand jury trial were “pornographic
photos,” Turner lost it, threatening once again to get
him fired. Then Burchard began freaking out. He shut
himself in her son’s bedroom upstairs, slamming the
door behind him. (Earlier, one of Turner’s friends who
was visiting had collected her four-year-old and taken
him from the house.)
It all happened so quickly, according to Pena. She
hadn’t known Turner for very long; she was living
rent-free in the house, essentially a part-time nanny for
Turner’s little boy. She was 30 at the time, a few years
older than Turner and Kennison, and worked nights as
a bartender at the Colosseum theater at Caesars Palace.
Then suddenly she was here, watching as Turner’s boy-
friend kicked down the door of Burchard’s room and
barged in with a baseball bat.
When Pena ran into the room moments later, accord-
ing to her grand jury testimony, she found Burchard
sporting a large red-and-purple bruise on his temple. She
took the bat from Kennison, who retreated downstairs
with Turner. Pena got Burchard a glass of water.
Burchard needed to go to the hospital. So he walked
downstairs to the garage, climbed into the back seat of
Turner’s car, and waited with Pena for someone to drive
him there. He didn’t want to get Turner in trouble—if
anyone at the hospital asked, he said, he’d tell them he
got mugged. But as Turner and Kennison remained
inside the house, Burchard became convinced Turner
would “probably kill him,” Pena testified.
When Turner finally came out to the garage, she
ordered Pena to start cleaning upstairs; there were
dirty clothes everywhere, and blood from the fight had
spilled onto a bed. Turner offered to take Burchard to
the hospital “in a little bit, after everything was straight-
ened up,” Pena said in court. But Burchard refused to go
back inside the house.
That’s when Pena heard Turner yelling at Kenni-
son to “knock Thomas out.” By the time Pena got back
downstairs to try to stop whatever was happening, she
said Turner told her “it was too late.”
Pena saw Kennison emerge from the garage, hold-
ing a gun, covered in blood. Pena panicked and began
crying. “I didn’t know what else to do, so I just started
cleaning,” she testified.
Pena stayed at her boyfriend’s house that night, along
with Turner and Turner’s son. The next day, they re-
turned to the house to clean up some more, then checked
into a motel. Kennison joined them. For the next few
nights, they bounced around between friends’ housesand another motel. Then a friend of Turner’s picked
them up and drove them to California.
Gradually, they were all arrested. Weeks after fleeing
Vegas, Turner was captured by a fugitive task force in
Stockton, California. In mid-April, Pena turned herself in
to the Las Vegas police; with her lawyer, she told the de-
tectives everything she knew. A few days later, Kennison
was arrested. His attorney later called Pena a “snitch.”
While the others pleaded not guilty to murder charges
(including a Category A felony of murder with use of a
deadly weapon against a victim 60 years or older), Pena
pleaded guilty to a lesser charge: accessory to murder.
In early June, they all sat in the same downtown
Vegas courtroom, brought before a judge for procedural
hearings with other inmates. Turner seemed to pout her
lips while she waited, pulling her blond hair to one side.
Her prison scrubs were oversize, hiding the pregnancy
that had been revealed after her arrest in Stockton.
“She’s under an enormous amount of stress right
now,” her lawyer, Smith, said this summer. “Due in large
part to the fact that she’s pregnant, very near to the end of
her term, and she’s locked up in a place that’s extremely
unpleasant.” (Smith did not know her exact due date,
and since then, she’s given birth to a daughter.)
Kennison was expressionless, looking around the
courtroom almost casually. At an earlier hearing, he’d
been admonished for flashing a note reading “Love U
lil Mama” on a piece of paper he held while talking to
a judge. Pena tried to hide her face from the cameras.
Soon after Turner’s arrest, the case was picked up
by international media; no one could resist the story of
the beautiful woman with a dark side allegedly killing
a doctor described as beloved, almost saintlike. At the
time, Earp told reporters that she calculated Burchard
had paid for Turner’s expenses amounting to about
$300,000. Later, she tells me that was a conservative
estimate—she’d stopped calculating.
While Smith declined to provide Turner’s full version
of events, he insisted it was impossible for her to have
killed Burchard. She was about five foot four and 120
pounds, he said; how could she have lifted his body into
the trunk of a car, let alone beaten him to death? Smith
agreed that Pena was a “snitch,” saying she had a lot to
gain by “telling the police what they wanted to hear.”
“Don’t believe all the hype,” Smith said. “There’s a
salacious aspect to all this, which has generated a lot of
interest. Everybody loves these true crime stories that
have a sexual component to them.” (Pena’s and Kenni-
son’s lawyers did not comment for this story.)
When the trial rolls around—currently planned for
the summer of 2020, though likely to be delayed due to
the complexity of the case—it’s expected that more de-
tails about Burchard’s proclivities and his relationship
with Turner will come to light. Earp says she’ll be called
as a witness, and she’s eager to play the role.
In the aftermath of Burchard’s death, she feels a
painful validation—like she’d been right about Turner all
along. For months, she’d been accusing the young wom-
an of being unstable and dangerous. She told Burchard,
she told the social workers, and she told the police.
“I’d been warning people,” Earp says. “You begin to
wonder, Is anybody listening?” ▪2019MARCH 1
MARCH 2
MARCH 7
MARCH 21
JUNE 13
Burchard travels to Las
Vegas to visit Turner at her
new home, where she lives
with her son, her boyfriend
Jon Logan Kennison, and
two roommates.According to testimony,
Turner becomes angry
when Burchard starts
speaking to the girlfriend
of a roommate, and then
later when she allegedly
finds explicit photos on
his phone. According to
roommate Diana Pena,
Burchard was hit on the
head with a baseball bat.An abandoned Mercedes-
Benz is found on a dirt
road by a 911 caller.
Officers dispatched to
the scene find Burchard’s
body in the trunk.Turner (below) is arrested
in Stockton, California.
Weeks later, Pena turns
herself in; Kennison is
arrested shortly after, on
April 17. Pena agrees
to testify against the
others and pleads guilty
to accessory to murder.Turner, now visibly
pregnant, and Kennison
appear in court. Both plead
not guilty to murder and
conspiracy. Prosecutors
later decide not to pursue
the death penalty. The trial
BURCHARD: COURTESY OF JUDY EARP; TURNER: SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY SHERIFF/AP/SHUTTERSTOCK. is scheduled for July 2020.