20/20 - A Model Murder
Episode Date: August 31, 2024An Instagram model's relationship with an older man turns deadly, and a witness provides a shocking account of the fatal day Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices...
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Walking around out here in places there's just nothing. You feel so alone.
As gorgeous as Lake Mead is, anytime you get a call out on Lake Mead, you know it's not going
to be natural. It's going to be a murder. That vehicle has to come from somewhere.
If it didn't go somewhere, the people that were driving it did.
-♪
Kelsey definitely had what it took to make it.
She was definitely Insta-famous.
And then there's the respected child psychiatrist
with an affinity for Beanie Babies and magic.
So it's this former model and this California doctor,
and eventually they collide in a terrible, terrible way.
Like the magician he was,
Dr. Burchard had managed to conceal from view
much of his relationship to the Insta model.
A lot of people are looking for a pretty girl
to have on their arm.
They're looking for a fun time.
Bad Barbie, she liked being called that.
That is the new good for sure.
And the good doctor had it bad for Barbie.
He just kept saying he loved Kelsey.
And he was bankrolling everything.
But what can that come to?
What can that lead to?
And then, one missing model and one missing man.
And then when you hear about the details,
it was an unfolding storyline of absolute chaos.
What do you remember waking up to?
It was kind of like a chaotic mess.
The tension in the house on Puritan Avenue is palpable. It's going to become a tinderbox of mayhem.
How did these four people come together in this house?
Sometimes we have to realize
there's evil in this world, too.
-♪ What do you want to be?
Be like me.
-♪ Is this for real?
Or is this just infatuation?
This is the annual Babes in Toyland charity drive.
-♪ Who do you want?
Oh, is it the fame or the...
This is the biggest influencer charity event
in all of Los Angeles, possibly the entire planet.
I'm Michael Sartain.
I'm the host of the 2022 Babes in Toyland Toy Drive.
We're supporting the Midnight Mission
right here in Hollywood, California.
It's like a charity event,
but high profile
with a lot of celebrities and powerful people.
Being a model can be fun.
When you're making a lot of money
and you're enjoying what you're doing every single day,
social media has made it easier for people
to break into the modeling space.
Ladies and gentlemen, give yourselves
a big round of applause.
I'm famous, famous.
This is not the Met Gala.
Think of this event like the prom.
Instagram model prom.
Did you see me on TV?
The car, diamonds, and empty.
Every one of the girls that's on the carpet today, they have to be on Instagram.
So yeah, they would be Insta models.
An Insta model basically is a model
that is pursuing modeling through Instagram,
and that is a new term now, Insta modeling.
Kelsey Turner was a rising Insta model
when she made her red carpet debut
at Babes in Toyland in 2017.
Kelsey definitely had what it took to make it.
She was definitely Insta-famous.
Let's go!
Men wanted to be with her,
and women were intimidated by her.
Let's go!
Go!
Go!
Kelsey's end goal was for everyone
to know who she was,
know her name, and know her image.
Kelsey definitely wanted to be famous.
Kelsey Turner was chasing fame
in this new virtual way that people chase fame on social media.
So that meant posting videos and photos of herself on Instagram,
hoping to get attention.
Because being famous in this environment
is the coin of the realm for Insta models like Kelsey Turner.
And in this particular world,
it's all about getting seen and noticed.
It's all about the image.
You used to be famous because agencies made you famous, like William Morris and CAA.
Because you went to the Pro Bowl or you were an NBA All-Star because you won an Academy Award.
Now you are simply famous because of the number of social media followers that you have.
And it's become a completely different world.
Don't you want to be famous?
As an aspiring model myself, having a social media presence is crucial. You could post one picture and it could go viral.
And the idea is that you can make money on social media, like just by the right number of followers, if you get enough of them.
Insta models like Kelsey can, in theory,
earn a healthy living.
Because, in part, platforms like Instagram
will pay someone based on the number of views
that their posts get.
So if Kelsey's fans wanted to see her
in a tight pink dress, that's what she gave them.
And they'd reward her in clicks.
It could be a lucrative business,
and it could be something that brings in a steady cash flow
for them.
There's a whole lot of ways that you could leverage
your social media following that I'm sure Kelsey was able to do.
And she had amassed already a really big following.
I think Kelsey had about 100,000 followers at the time.
Kelsey's main Instagram page, Kelsey Turner Official,
was where she showcased her modeling pictures,
and she used this platform as her portfolio.
And then there was also a fan page account,
which is Kelsey Turner Bad Barbie.
I would say that Bad Barbie is a good way to describe her.
And she liked being called that.
I think Kelsey's bad Barbie came from when
she turned into a boss woman.
And to me, bad means independent.
It means you're doing your stuff.
You're owning it.
Bad is the new good for sure.
Kelsey was super Barbie-ish.
Blonde hair, voluptuous lips going on,
and she had a great body.
I think that all of her photos were pretty risque.
Kelsey didn't hold back.
She's gonna be famous.
When I met her, she had already been
on the covers of magazines like Dream Vixens, Conceited
Magazine, another magazine called 110.
It says, a 10 is what men dream of.
Kelsey was on Playboy Italia.
It's still a valid playmate,
but it's not like a Hugh Hefner at the house playmate.
My reaction when I got sent the picture of Kelsey,
I literally smiled as big as I could and said out loud,
holy cow, she's made it, and here she is on a magazine.
And it's not just any magazine.
This is a Playboy Bunny magazine.
The way she described herself in her Playboy Italia interview
probably tells you a lot about how Kelsey Turner saw herself.
Impulsive, fun, living my life fully aware
that it's the only one I've got.
The persona is what you're trying to sell,
so you don't want to give off that you're a stick in the mud
that doesn't want to have a good time.
Perceptions are nine-tenths of reality.
I would say that her lifestyle, at least online,
looked very lavish.
Kelsey wanted us to think she was a person living
a high-status lifestyle, a person living
a glamorous lifestyle, a person living the lifestyle of the model that she aspired to be.
On social media, the perception of Kelsey Turner is that she's working it
and that she's making it.
She's got a brand-new, beautiful, blue Mercedes coupe.
She's got a four-bedroom house.
She's doing something right.
Having a price tag attached to that, it doesn't come cheap and it doesn't come free.
The fact of the matter is, Kelsey really
isn't making the kind of money from Insta-modeling
that it appears.
So her friends are wondering, how is this working?
I don't think that she made this money on her own.
This was not the same Kelsey I knew, absolutely not.
Sometimes these instant models will do whatever it takes or anything it takes to please their followers.
So to keep up the facade for her followers,
Kelsey turns to a very unlikely source.
Monterey is a jewel in Northern California's coastline. I'm looking around here, are you even allowed to live here
if you don't have a boat?
I don't know, maybe if you play golf.
So you can come to Monterey for golf along the shoreline at the courses in Pebble Beach.
You can come for the marine life at its world-famous aquarium.
Or for the vestiges of Cannery Row, that once teemed with vivid life,
as Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck wrote about in the 1940s.
Judy Earp came here for love.
Later in life life love.
Tom was the most intelligent man I have ever known.
I think it was a pretty immediate mutual attraction between Tom and I.
A realtor who was divorced with four children, Judy was on a group trip to Las Vegas in the early 2000s
when she met Dr. Thomas Burchard.
He was a child psychiatrist in Monterey,
who was also recently divorced.
He's a good listener, being a psychiatrist,
but he was also an extremely good talker,
conversationalist, so sometimes I would wonder
did he ever give his patients a chance to talk?
Their romance blossomed.
They'd keep in touch via email.
He'd visit her in L.A., where she'd go to museums with Tom,
and he'd always be looking the bookish part.
Tom's uniform, which he had worn for 40 years,
khaki pants, white dress shirt, and a bow tie.
Every day.
Two years or so into their relationship,
around 2004, Judy and her four kids move in
with Dr. Burchard and the couple builds
this new life together.
One of their favorite pastimes,
catching a show at the downtown theater.
I know we went to a weird Al Yankovic concert here.
He was awesome, right?
I liked that.
I really enjoyed that one.
Judy would learn just how respected,
really even revered, Dr. Burchard was in this area
by his colleagues and by parents of his patients
at Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula,
where he worked for 40 years.
Maria's youngest child was one of Dr. Burchard's patients.
My daughter, since she was five years old, had some psychiatric problems.
And we struggled for about four or five years trying to find a good psychiatrist who connected with her.
He was like a breath of fresh air for her.
He was a joyful man. He was always happy.
I never saw him angry ever or upset or felt like he was being rushed ever
he basically i think saved her life to help create a one-on-one relationship with his young patients
dr burchard liked to use toys his office was like something you'd expect in will Wonka or something. He had buckets of Costco-sized candy and snacks.
He had books, piles of books.
Tom had a collection of Beanie Babies,
and his younger patients really enjoyed seeing,
oh, well, do you have this one?
And, oh, yeah, right here.
My daughter, she kept asking for one particular Beanie Baby,
and he held out, held out, I think until she was like 18 years old
he finally gave it to her.
Dr. Burchard also had a surprising talent, magic.
He'd frequent the local magic store and he'd spend hundreds of dollars
every time he went in.
And he used magic to gain the confidence of his young patients,
making things appear and disappear.
He had a trick where he would take a $1 bill
and fold it up and blow on it,
and then he would turn it into a $100 bill.
But he would ask the child
if they could name the president on the $100 bill,
they could have it. Well, at first that worked, you know, because Benjamin Franklin wasn't a president.
And then hip hop showed up.
It's all about the Benjamins.
He really cared about his patients.
He listened to them.
He stuck by them.
He didn't drop them when they turned 18, which happens with a lot of child psychiatrists.
Dr. Burchard's generosity was well known on his own time and on his own dime. He'd often
make trips to Costco to buy food or school supplies for his patients and their families.
You know, if somebody was behind on their rent, he would loan them money. He felt that most problems in the world
were caused from chemical imbalances
that medicine could correct or lack of money.
Tom thought that he could save the world with his pen.
Write a check or write a prescription.
I believe it was like a Don Quixote.
Judy had never imagined just how far Tom's generosity and largesse might go
until the day in his car when she saw another woman's name
on top of a lease agreement that Dr. Burchard was signing.
And that name was Kelsey Turner.
I saw it. I said, hey, what's this?
And he explained all about it.
And I said, that's not a good idea, Tom.
Don't do it.
There's no guarantee.
And I explained to him, you are responsible.
If she doesn't pay, they're coming after you.
According to Judy, Kelsey had once described herself
to Dr. Burchard in emails as a single mom with financial hardships who just needed a little help getting back on her feet.
But it wasn't her feet that Kelsey Turner sent him photos of.
He believed that everyone could be good, you know, that no one was intrinsically bad.
And unfortunately,
that's not true.
So in Cannery Row, John Steinbeck would write,
it's all fine to say time will heal everything.
This too shall pass away.
People will forget.
And things like that when you are not involved.
But when you are, there is no passage of time.
People do not forget.
And you are in the middle of something that does not change.
What are you thinking about now?
Sometimes we have to realize there's evil in this world too.
And I think that Kelsey Turner personifies evil.
And now evil has a new address.
The Insta model is coming to Tom's town.
And she's not coming quietly.
Get out of my way!
You're gonna break my heart!
East of Monterey, maybe eight miles off the Pacific,
is the city of Salinas.
Salinas is known as the salad bowl of the world.
The majority of the produce that's consumed in the U.S. is grown in this valley.
Those who pick the lettuce are some of the hardest working people in America.
But nearby, Kelsey Turner is hardly working at all.
Thanks in part to a lease agreement that's been signed by a child psychiatrist.
She lived there with her mom, and then Kelsey had two kids.
They were there pretty much 24-7, and it was just always kind of chaotic.
Get out of my way!
You live in my car!
To judge from some audio recordings her next- door neighbors made one night in 2018,
Kelsey doesn't sound all that happy there.
The window was always open because it was hot.
There was a lot of loud talking and banging going on.
So I came in and I just kind of had the phone and I just got down and just kind of held it.
I held it here for about 10 minutes.
No!
You...
F*** that!
F*** that whore!
Kelsey can be heard angrily berating her mother.
Mom, f*** that!
You would just hear yelling and swearing and banging.
Are you kidding me?
Hold up!
So why was the Insta model, the men's magazine cover siren, living with her mother and two children in a house funded by a 71-year-old?
The answer could be found maybe 2,000 miles to the east in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
That's Kelsey Turner's hometown.
Kelcey's Instagram world started in Jonesboro.
Kelcey would actually come out to the barn with me
when I would take care of the horses,
but the horses were not her cup of tea.
Kelcey definitely wanted to be famous.
When she grew up, she wanted people to know who she was
and where she came from. Kelsey definitely wanted to be famous. When she grew up she wanted people to
know who she was and where she came from.
Kelsey was not country. She was known as Barbie growing up. She kind of idolized
wanting to be like a Barbie doll. Kelsey has always been very pretty. She wanted
to do her hair, she wanted to do her makeup.
Kelsey liked to go to pageants, events that she was able to kind of show off at.
She was very interested in the famous life and that was what Kelsey was thriving to be.
It turns out that Kelsey's mother Samantha used to be a model. In fact on her Facebook page you
can see a resemblance between mother and daughter. Her mother even posted this side-by-side shot of them on Instagram, saying,
I can't believe how much we look alike. I believe that Kelsey got her first taste of stardom from
her mother, and she would see all of the attention that her mom got from that. So I do believe that
that's where she decided that she wanted to follow that role.
Back then, Bad Barbie went by the Instagram handle Arkansasy1993.
She was very sassy.
There are, you know, like her innocent days of wearing a sundress with cowgirl boots, just posing on a chair a little bit sexy.
And then once she got out to L.A. is when she really started to take away the modest and put herself up there and show off her good body
it took her defiantly out of arkansas into and then out of a troubled marriage and then in full
glamazon mode onto the internet and that's where a new world of red carpets and photo shoots beckon
And that's where a new world of red carpets and photo shoots beckon.
Straight up.
But what had brought her to Salinas was the older man that her neighbors, the Stuarts, had started noticing.
He was a very stoic man.
I mean, whenever Kelsey and the mother were out, you know, sunbathing or just being outside, he would just stand there.
We would try to figure out who he was. And I said, well, maybe he's a grandfather.
Maybe he's the dad.
Who knows who he was?
The man was Dr. Thomas Burchard,
and he was giving till it hurts
because he was not Kelsey Turner's doctor
or her kids or her mother's.
Friends say Kelsey had become his obsession.
Well, I heard a couple of their conversations with him
with Kelsey where she said,
last night was pretty good, wasn't it?
There's more.
Yeah.
Like the magician he was,
Burchard had managed to conceal from view
much of his relationship to the Insta model in residence.
But Judy knew what he liked to do online.
He did like looking at pictures of,
you know, pornographic pictures.
What did you ask him about it
when you found out he was doing that kind of thing?
I didn't approve of it in any way.
I just didn't realize the danger that it could lead to.
You know? With Kelsey, Thomas Burchard I just didn't realize the danger that it could lead to, you know.
With Kelsey, Thomas Burchard had done more than just look.
Suddenly here's a real-life model right here, real-life, you know.
Talking to him, connecting with him.
And how do you think that made him feel?
You know, the playboy model and all of that,
I think it kind of boosted his ego
actually more than just kind of i was aware fully aware that he was going over to her house
burchard would tell a different story to his male friends that his obsession with her made him understand how heroin addicts must feel and that kelsey turner would do anything he wanted he goes he
goes eddie it's i'm in too deep i'm not i'm not going anywhere i'm with her she's mine i'm hers
we're gonna have this life together but that meant paying for the privilege of her company because Kelsey Turner had come too far
not to get what she was due.
If we tried to characterize the relationship
he had with Kelsey Turner,
we might say an intimate relationship.
A transactional relationship.
Yes.
So no matter what roof Kelsey Turner found herself under,
Thomas Burchard was paying for it
and for everything else, too.
Usually, it would be preceded by a text from Kelsey Turner
asking him to come over or to bring groceries
or to bring medicine over.
Happy birthday to you.
Remember how Burchard was convinced that all problems could be solved with
prescription drugs or money? According to text messages between these two, Kelsey
Turner felt the same way. She would ask for prescription drugs, money, rent for
houses, access to cars. She was more like, where are you at? I need money. You know, I need these
prescriptions right now. You better get over here. She would always say, you want some of that love?
You better get over here. I got suspicious about Kelsey and this relationship when she started to
post things like her new vehicles and things for her house that are concerning of where the finances came from
there was a bmw for kelsey she was demanding that he financed her life and the increasing horror of
those close to him he did just that i would say thomas what are you doing seriously i mean you're
a doctor what's going through your mind? I would definitely say
as nicely as I can that Dr. Burchard was Kelsey's sugar daddy, yes.
I never, I felt secure in our relationship. I did not see her as a threat to our relationship.
Obviously, I was a mistake in not seeing her as serious of a threat.
Eventually, Judy just became fed up with the cozy and costly relationship between Thomas and Kelsey.
What kind of ultimatum do you finally give Tom?
I told him. I said, you know, she's got to go.
At this point, you're going to have to get her evicted.
Kelsey didn't like the sound of that.
According to text messages, some threats were made.
She had threatened to kill me. I saw the text.
If she gets me evicted, I'm going to kill her.
And Thomas finally seems to be getting the message.
Kelsey gets kicked out of that Salinas house,
and her BMW is taken away, too.
And Judy has a plan to put something between these two.
Distance. Lots of it.
Tom took my suggestion
that Las Vegas would be a good fit for her,
so he gave Kelsey Turner money
to go to Las Vegas permanently.
You must think now things will get better.
That's what I hoped.
Las Vegas and Kelsey Turner,
made for each other, right?
But Thomas Burchard's destructive obsession
would soon resurface.
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We are in Las Vegas.
This is the Las Vegas Strip. What makes people so excited about coming here is the stimulus that you get, all the
shining lights and all the shows and all the performers that you can see.
Mega casinos.
Go gamble.
You can indulge in all of your vices.
People come here to reinvent themselves. So after being driven out of Salinas,
Kelsey Turner is off to live in Sin City,
which allowed her to post photos on social media in a town
where she knew how to have a good time.
Kelsey was part of our Hollywood crew that would go from Los Angeles to Las Vegas
and do those weekend parties with us.
We were just all kind of lit and just having a good time.
Her Barbie world was in Vegas.
There's a lot more opportunity for money out there,
and there's a lot more opportunity for modeling,
dressing up, tight dress, figure showing, hair long, hairspray, heels 10 inches tall.
But one thing was clear.
She needed a way to pay the bills,
and her Insta-modeling career had stalled out.
She was posting less magazines and print modeling photos
when she was in Vegas.
She was starting to make poor choices,
and she was becoming something she was in Vegas. She was starting to make poor choices and she was becoming
something she was not.
With social media
models, it's all about the
image and no matter what was going
on underneath, she had to post
pictures that made reality
seem much more lavish.
Kelsey was spending mad dough but I
never really knew what her source of income was.
But those close to Thomas knew exactly where the money was coming from.
I saw several texts where she needed more money, more money for everything.
Including a new Mercedes to replace the BMW that Judy had made Thomas take back.
And Kelsey let Judy know all about that in a photo of the Benz that she texted.
So her response is, thanks for taking the BMW.
I look better in the 2017 Benz anyway.
And then there are three emojis of a raised middle finger.
I knew what it was.
It's just like, whatever, you know.
Now, as if the new car wasn't enough,
Thomas starts paying rent on this four-bedroom house for Kelsey and her four-year-old son.
And irony of all ironies, the house is on Puritan Avenue.
She had no credit history, so she couldn't qualify for a lease.
After Kelsey moved in, neighbors started noticing
a lot of activity at the house.
What kind of behavior did they report seeing going on?
People coming and going at all hours,
several arguments and quarrels that they noticed here
on the front steps.
I know that there were three or four people
living in a house
that she was claiming she was living in on her own.
Diana Pena was one of those people.
She was a bartender who babysat Kelsey's son
while Kelsey hit the strip looking for men with money.
Was she good at getting people to give her money, you think?
Yeah.
Why do you think people would want to give her money?
I don't know. She's a pretty charming person.
She's good at manipulating things.
Finding men for Kelsey was like shooting fish in a barrel.
And Pena says that Thomas was by far her biggest catch.
She called him her whale.
Her whale?
Yeah.
What was he paying for for I don't know.
I know that you would like once in a while call him in.
She needed close he was a little bit of a push over.
And Kelsey kept Thomas in the dark on just about
everything including who was living in a house he paid for
on the ground floor there was Jeremy estrus roommate who slept in the bedroom next to the garage.
Upstairs was Diana's room,
which was next to Kelsey's son's bedroom.
And Kelsey was in the master bedroom,
which she would share with her new boyfriend,
a 27-year-old former gang member named John Logan Kennison,
whom she met in early 2019.
named John Logan Kennison, whom she met in early 2019. She liked the little, jubble, like, gangster-y type guys.
Bad boys.
Not only were these two inseparable,
they even got matching tattoos.
Where did they get their names tattooed on each other?
Like, right here, I believe.
I think when you look at the relationship
from Logan's perspective,
you see someone who is completely enamored with Kelsey.
Apparently, that meant having to deal with Kelsey's ongoing relationship with Thomas.
I think anybody in Logan's position would not want to ask the questions they don't want the answers to.
You can see that Kelsey is trying to make sure that her relationship with Dr. Bouchard
remains the way it is and that no one can interfere with it and disrupt that arrangement.
She never posted pictures on social media that would allude to having a boyfriend or
being in a serious relationship.
It seems that Kelsey did not post about boyfriends
for two reasons.
One, she didn't want her fan world
to think of her as hooked up with someone.
And the other one was that perhaps she wanted Thomas
to think her world revolved around him,
and she needed his money.
When we looked through the phones,
we could see extensive cash payments to her. And I
would say over the span of the relationship, it was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I stopped counting at about $750,000. $750,000? It was around that. A lot of it came out of his,
I guess, 401k, his retirement. And Burchard was evidently
feeling the financial pain. He once texted Kelsey, I sent over $100,000 for you this year,
which was unwise financially for me and clearly not sustainable. Perhaps needing a break,
Thomas and Judy decided to take a little getaway to Las Vegas for Valentine's Day 2019.
And it would combine Valentine's Day,
and his birthday was February 16th,
made a long, you know, little vacation.
Despite everything that's happened,
Thomas just can't break away.
He cannot help himself when it comes to Kelsey.
So does he wind up seeing Kelsey Turner on this trip?
I think he briefly saw her on that trip.
Thomas tells Judy that he needs to see Kelsey's son,
whom Kelsey says was sick.
And while Thomas was at the house,
Kelsey made sure everyone else was gone.
So it's a couple of weeks later, and Kelsey's money demands are still nonstop.
And yet Thomas buys a round-trip ticket.
Monterey, Vegas, Monterey.
He heads back to Sin City to see Kelsey.
I think Brashard was ready to break it off.
He's going to come out here, and he's going to let her know,
I'm not going to pay the bills anymore. You're thinking maybe, just maybe, your six-month-long nightmare is
coming to an end. I'm hoping. I'm really hoping. But this house on Puritan Avenue would be the
place where all hope was lost and the real nightmare would begin.
It's Friday, March 1st, 2019.
In a way, for Dr. Thomas Burchard, a day of reckoning.
So Instamodel Kelsey Turner is going to get a visit from her so-called sugar daddy.
This guy has been spending literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on Kelsey
so that she could keep up this lifestyle that she so badly wants.
Dr. Thomas Burchard's Vegas trip comes as a totally out-of-the-blue surprise
to his longtime girlfriend Judy Earp, who's back in Monterey.
I called him about 5.30,
and he goes,
oh, yeah, I'm in Las Vegas.
And I go, why are you in Las Vegas?
And his exact words were,
Kelsey Turner is such a consummate liar.
I just had to check things out for myself.
Kelsey's clearly on edge at this time
because Dr. Burchard may or may not have gone there
with the intent to break up the relationship.
When Burchard arrives at the rental
he's paying for on Puritan Avenue,
Kelsey has allegedly stage-managed the scene,
warning her housemates not to alert him
about her new live-in boyfriend, John Logan Kennison.
What did Kelsey tell you as far as staying at the house
that Friday night when he first arrived?
That Logan's name was Jay,
and he was her tattoo artist,
and not to mention that they were a couple
and not to talk to Dr. Burchard.
I think she was worried that Thomas was gonna find out
that she was dating Kennison
and she didn't wanna lose her meal ticket.
After the first day and night,
Burchard sends a Saturdayurday text to judy back home saturday
afternoon he texts me and says he thinks he has effectively resolved the situation here
and he is looking forward to coming home on monday but later on saturday it starts getting tense at
the house after housemate jeremy esich's girlfriend Chelsea Accardi shows up.
Chelsea Accardi is the girlfriend of roommate Jeremy Esherich.
This creates all kinds of trouble because she's a young, attractive blonde
who suddenly goes on a ride with Dr. Richard to the store,
which makes Kelsey absolutely crazy.
She freaked out.
She was screaming.
She was calling Dr. Richard to come back to the house.
She kind of figured that Jeremy had Chelsea
kind of trying to steal her sugar daddy.
Kelsey and Chelsea kind of got into a bit of a fight
in the front lawn, and Mr. Kennison did as well.
Chelsea clearly has no interest in a relationship with Thomas,
and she and Jeremy eventually leave in a taxi.
By then, an uneasy truce appears to have settled in
on Puritan Avenue that evening.
Around 11 p.m., Thomas, Kelsey, and one of her friends
head out to the Vegas Strip to pick up Diana
after her work shift at Caesars.
But on the way back, they manage to lose their way home.
I'm not very good with directions,
and none of them were, so Kelsey took Dr. Burchard's phone
and was trying to get the GPS going.
She started going through his phone,
and she saw some stuff that she didn't like, messages
between her mom and Dr. Burchard.
Why do you think it upset Kelsey so much?
Kelsey said that they were talking about maybe
taking her children.
It appeared he was informing her mother on aspects of her living situation, and she was upset that that communication was taking place.
She started hitting him and kicking him, kind of getting a little crazy.
They were hitting each other pretty bad.
You're in the back seat of a car.
You've worked a full shift.
Mm-hmm.
And the two people who have picked you up
are having a screaming physical fight in front of you.
Yeah.
Once everyone's in the house,
Diane is hoping that the situation will be diffused,
but it was far from that.
Kelsey is still ranting and raving,
and she is screaming at Burchard
and demanding the passcode to his phone.
She looks at the phone,
but suddenly she goes nuts again.
She starts shouting accusations to Dr. Burchard
that are really troubling.
Allegations are made that Thomas Burchard, in fact,
has child pornography on his device, on his iPhone.
As it relates to the child pornography,
there was no pornography material on the device.
So whether that was a false accusation being made by Kelsey
in an attempt to harm Mr. Burchard's reputation,
I don't know.
Still, even the threat of child porn
would be devastating to a child psychiatrist
with a sterling reputation back in Monterey.
So what might a desperate man like Dr. Burchard
be capable of in that kind of situation?
You just knew this was a very volatile situation.
Yeah.
But you couldn't predict where it was going to go.
Right.
36 hours later, it's time for Tom Burchard
to fly home to Monterey.
On late Monday afternoon, I decide
to go meet the plane to make sure he gets home.
I watched that plane land.
I watched every single person get off
and kept watching until the next flight boarded the plane.
And he was not on the flight.
Thomas Burchard, the amateur magician,
has seemingly pulled his own disappearing act.
And he wasn't the only one who's gone suddenly missing.
Kelsey Turner has apparently vanished into thin air too.
When Judy called the police department here, they actually went out to the house.
They knocked on the door.
Just nobody was home.
This is a crazy story.
A beloved child psychiatrist, missing.
An Instagram model, missing.
Nobody has a clue until one is revealed
in the cold, desolate Nevada desert.
Patrol gets a call that there's a car out in the desert.
She said it's not the kind of car that should be back there.
MUSIC
MUSIC MUSIC Like, I know this spot here, and we'll take it there. There was a body in the trunk. When you looked at the body, what did you see?
The level of depravity here is off the charts.
Why aren't you just running out the front door
and never coming back?
I was really scared, not just for me,
scared for my family, you know, my friends.
There's a witness to an epic fight
between the doctor and the Insta model.
They were just, like, wrestling crazy.
I just started screaming at them to stop.
Someone who saw it all and lived to tell.
I've never been so scared in my life.
Like, terror.
And then I just kind of went, no.
But whose murder did she witness?
Or was it more than one?
Kelsey Turner lacked all eyes on her.
She liked to be in the center of the pictures,
the center of the crowd.
She liked the camera.
Kelsey Turner was an aspiring Insta model
who sought attention and admiration
from her followers on social media.
Kelsey was extremely open about her body
and loved showing it off.
She didn't care what anyone thought about her.
Kelsey wanted us to think
she was a person living a high-status lifestyle,
a person living a glamorous lifestyle, a person living a glamorous lifestyle,
a person living the lifestyle of the model
that she aspired to be.
From what I saw, that was true.
That was her reality.
But it turns out that Kelsey's fancy lifestyle
in Vegas, the luxury car, the four-bedroom house,
was not being paid for by her Insta-modeling career.
Instead, she was being bankrolled by a highly regarded 71-year-old child psychiatrist from Monterey, California, named Dr. Thomas Burchard.
I think you can fairly say they were having an intimate relationship.
There's at least a text exchange that is very suggestive of the idea that they had a sexual relationship in exchange for money.
The life that Kelsey was living was a huge shock.
This was not the same Kelsey I knew, absolutely not.
Kelsey's new life in Sin City was a far cry from the one she'd once had back home in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
once had back home in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
Friends say Kelsey loved being the center of attention and knew from a young age that she was bound for something bigger,
she thought, than working as a waitress in town.
Kelsey wanted to be a superstar.
She definitely didn't belong here in small Arkansas.
I used to joke with her a lot about, like,
bro, you're not from Jonesboro.
Her modeling career began while she was here in Arkansas.
No doubt, Kelsey saw herself as achieving a lot
for someone in Jonesboro
and probably gave her the confidence to move out west.
But after arriving in Las Vegas in late 2018,
it looks like things are about to fizzle out.
The modeling career was not exactly what she had hoped for.
She was posting less magazines and print modeling photos when she was in Vegas.
By the time Kelsey got to Vegas, her life had already spiraled.
We knew something bad was going to happen.
And so as March of 2019 begins, it looks like Kelsey's life is about to take a turn for the worse
because Thomas Burchard is fed up with paying hundreds of thousands of dollars
to subsidize her party-hardy lifestyle.
At that point, it's looking like it's between $700,000 and $750,000,
and I just stopped counting.
Friday, March 1st of 2019,
Thomas pays an impromptu visit to Kelsey's house
on Puritan Avenue.
That's the house he's paying for.
And it turns out there are others living there too,
besides Kelsey's four-year-old son.
Three housemates in all,
including a new live-in boyfriend, John Logan Kennison.
I always think what could I have done to prevent him
from going to Las Vegas that time, you know?
Thomas and Kelsey are left alone in the house
on Friday night.
Then on Saturday, Judy gets a text.
On Saturday, he texted me and he said,
I have effectively resolved the situation here
and I really am looking forward to returning home on Monday.
But later on Saturday, things turn volatile.
There are fireworks triggered by Kelsey's jealousy
after Thomas takes a housemate's girlfriend out for a ride.
The tension ratchets up again
when Kelsey threatens to report him to his hospital
after falsely claiming his phone contains child pornography.
I think Thomas, knowing that he didn't have child pornography inside his device,
was willing to argue that point because it wasn't true
and probably recognized, you're trying to extort me, Kelsey.
Now, by Sunday, Judy's radar is up in the stratosphere
because she is having trouble connecting
to Thomas in real time.
She finally texts, why don't you answer the phone?
And he replies, I'm out to lunch.
Now, Judy knew right away that that was odd,
but made no sense to her. I said eating and
talking on the phone never stopped you before. I was texted back. Well, I need to charge my phone.
And after that, the phone went dead. Through the day into the night, there's no response
to Judy's increasingly concerned text messages, which she would later provide to Monterey authorities,
along with texts between Kelsey and Thomas.
Watching the tone of your requests that he called change,
getting more urgent, more desperate, more really begging him to be in touch.
I didn't know what had happened.
I didn't know.
The following day, Thomas is scheduled
to arrive back in Monterey.
Judy is anxiously waiting at the airport,
and Thomas never shows up.
And now I'm just shaking.
I'm scared.
So I go to the gate agent, and she checked,
and she came back and told me that he had not checked in
for the flight and he was not on the flight.
So at this point, I know something is wrong,
seriously wrong.
And so I called the police in Las Vegas
and filed a missing persons report.
The local police department did their due diligence in trying to first go out to the house a couple persons report. The local police department did their due diligence
in trying to first go out to the house a couple of times.
They did a welfare check.
They knocked on the door.
Just nobody was home.
This was just a huge mystery.
Judy Earp didn't know where Tom Burchard was.
She's trying his cell phone.
It's been off.
Nobody can get a hold of Kelsey either.
burchard was she's trying his cell phone it's been off nobody can get a hold of kelsey either
on wednesday just four days after thomas's phone had been shut off suddenly the phone is back on
the way we know this eddie mendoza tried to call him someone answers but it's not thomas some sketchy guy answered and said um hello i I said, Thomas, this isn't Thomas.
Who are you?
And he said, I picked up this cell on the Vegas Strip.
And I said, you know what?
You don't know what you're involved in.
That belongs to a doctor.
So I'd advise you right now to call 911 and get that phone turned in.
Police are able to bring in this mysterious man
for questioning by a detective.
And when he tries to do the interview,
the guy's, like, really violent.
They try to explain to him, listen,
you know, this guy's been murdered,
and he says, well, I'm the one that killed him.
You finally got your man.
He says he's the person that killed the owner of the phone,
but had no credibility
because he had no idea
of the circumstances, and he was clearly mentally unstable.
So for one moment, somebody appears to be confessing
to the murder of Tom Burchard.
Yep.
It seems like the clues into Thomas's disappearance
have dried up.
But the very next day, in the Nevada desert,
there's a stunning discovery.
So we are, this is kind of the edge of the city limits here.
And it's going to shift this case into high gear.
Nobody's digging a grave here or anything like that.
No.
When you really care about someone,
you shout it from the mountaintops.
So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you.
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Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care.
Did I mention that
we care?
The call
comes in March 7th
from here in the dry as dust
state park near Lake Mead,
something unusual has been found deep in the desert here.
It's a late model luxury car, abandoned.
And who had discovered that the car was here?
There was a young guy that recently purchased a pickup.
He wanted to see what the pickup's off-road capability was
and just come enjoy the mountains, and that generated the call.
Taking the drive that morning to check it out,
Las Vegas detective Ryan Jaeger from Homicide.
So we are as far northeast of Las Vegas as you can get.
It's kind of the edge of the city limits here.
It's a harsh environment out here.
Like today, the weather's perfect.
But in the summer, it'd be 113 out here.
At night, it gets really cold.
So on the day of March 7th, 2019, this is the road you're driving down?
Yes. of march 7th 2019 this is the road you're driving down yes and just hours before the detective's
march 7th trip it was that late model car making this drive goes inside feeling frantic and
desperate to conceal their deadly secret and the first thing they see that little kiosk there makes
them go yep let's take this.
But none of it's... You don't feel like any of it's planned.
Like, I know this spot here, and we'll take it there.
No, because if it's planned, I think there would be better spots.
They're also in a sedan.
Right.
It's very low clearance.
It's made to travel on the freeway and get good mileage.
Late model Mercedes. Do you know what time of day they came in?
I think it was late hour.
Like, the best estimation would have been
in under-the-cover darkness, which out here,
for the most part, wouldn't be very hard.
That wasn't the place they wanted to abandon the car.
That's where they ended up having to abandon the car.
And just like you say, if the car had been around here, because here's this great little thing of concealment.
We have a large 10-passenger SUV that we drove out here.
You can't see a thing over here.
It's 50 feet or so from us, and if you look this way,
you can't see a Suburban, much less a small Mercedes.
But if they had gotten that car here,
how much time might that have bought them?
It may have bought them weeks, days.
It would have definitely bought them a lot more time.
Instead, the car is found in short order.
And when police take a closer look at the abandoned Mercedes,
they make a grisly discovery.
There was a body in the trunk.
When you looked at the body, what did you see?
It kind of looked like someone's grandpa.
Like you could tell it was a square.
Like a square is a person that has a job.
He's not a drug dealer.
He's not someone involved in the criminal activity.
He had like a little suit jacket on with a little bow tie and some khaki pants.
Is this the kind of guy you would normally see in the back of a car?
No, not at all. In what respect? Is this the kind of guy you would normally see in the back of a car?
No, not at all.
In what respect?
The clean-cut guy in his 70s.
They don't normally end up beat to death in trunks of cars.
So you'd found Mr. Rogers in the back of the car?
Yes, that's a good way to describe him.
Little sweater vest on, the... exactly. the dead man is dr thomas burchard
a child psychiatrist from monterey california who's been missing for almost a week
a victim of murder most foul what could you tell as far as his wounds a lot of the blood had dried
so you could tell that he had a lot of
defects and blunt force trauma on his head and face you could tell he'd been hit with something
hard yes yep inside the truck detectives find a wealth of evidence it looked like a total cleanup
kit there was rubber gloves in there there was was trash bags, there was clothes, there was bloody rags.
Everything for our murder is going to be in this trunk
except the actual murder scene.
Detectives also find evidence of a clumsy attempt
to cover up the crime.
They wanted to set fire to it in hopes to destroy
any evidence that was in the car
and probably try to incinerate the body that was in the trunk.
Okay. And how did they go about doing that?
They lit a small fire on the passenger side seat
that maybe burnt about a silver dollar size of the leather seat,
and then the fire extinguished itself.
Yeah.
And they just want to get away from that car and everything it represents.
It was obvious just walking up to the scene that
the murder didn't happen here how could you tell the victim hadn't been murdered here
it wouldn't make sense for two people to be in a car together drive all the way out here and have
something go bad to where one of them gets killed stuck in the trunk and then one guy just walk away
stuck in the trunk, and then one guy just walk away.
We call it a body dump.
It's a disposal site.
It's not where the actual murder itself took place.
Nobody's digging a grave here.
There's no sign of a struggle nearby, nothing like that.
No.
I know somewhere other than here,
it could be anywhere, valley-wide,
there's a murder scene that I don't know about. Where's our crime scene?
We have to find out where he was murdered.
That search would take detectives from the desert
into the city of Las Vegas
and to a certain house on Puritan Avenue.
And would a piece of evidence found inside that trunk
lead cops right to the killer?
I'm like, I think, I think we got a guy.
March 2019, Judy Earp has been desperately trying
to reach her partner, Dr. Thomas Burchard on his cell phone,
but there's been no response.
Then four days after Thomas goes missing in Las Vegas,
Judy's life, their 17 years of togetherness here in Monterey,
is shattered by an unexpected phone call.
I see it's a Las Vegas number.
Detective Jaeger told me that we found Tom.
And, you know, I'm relieved.
And so I asked him, is he OK?
And he said, no, he was deceased.
I just can't comprehend it.
And I think I'm saying no, no, no, no, no out loud.
And I'm thinking, why?
Why would anybody do this?
You know, I knew who had done it.
100% I knew.
And you told the police that right away, didn't you?
Oh, yeah.
Tying Kelsey Turner to this crime scene
isn't exactly a stretch for detectives.
After all, they have a big, metallic,
3,800-pound clue to work with.
It was leased to Kelsey,
and Thomas was just paying the bills on it.
But detectives find evidence inside the trunk,
next to Burchard's body,
that points to another culprit in his killing.
So the baseball bat was kind of wedged in there.
I'm looking at the bat, and I'm like,
well, this has got to be our murder weapon.
And there was a name on it.
Greg Hagio was on the bat.
And I'm like, I think we got our guy.
Greg Hagio is an ex-boyfriend of Kelsey Turner's,
and he has a criminal history.
But it turns out Greg Hagio is not the guilty party he has a
rock solid alibi he was in california at the time of the murder he spoke to us he was like i'm not
involved in a murder he's like i have a poor choice in women that's for sure a closer examination of
the mercedes reveals damage to the ceiling of the car, blood on the seat.
Leading detectives to conclude Burchard was killed by a second object as he sat in the car and then crawled along the car's floorboards to evade the assault.
At that time, I was kind of focused on the bat.
Like, well, you couldn't even swing that bat inside the car because the car is not big enough.
I think there's a different murder weapon.
I don't know if it's going to be a hammer,
because it's a real distinct shape.
It would seem likely that the extent of the injuries
speak to a man having performed this heinous act.
Who else is in Kelsey's life?
Well, there's her current boyfriend, John Logan Kennison.
This was the residence that Thomas Burchard was paying for for Kelsey Turner to live in.
And who else lived here at the time, at the beginning of March,
when Thomas Burchard came to visit Kelsey here?
John Logan Kennison.
Cell phone data indicate lots of activity
in the early morning hours of March 3rd
from some of the residents here.
Days later, it put some of them on the road
to that site in the desert.
But now, no sign of Kelsey, Tennyson,
or housemate Diana Pena.
When police search inside, they find signs of foul play.
The house was a house full of clues.
From the bottom floor to the top floor,
there was evidence that something bad had occurred.
You could see that in the garage, there was apparent blood.
They found the broken door upstairs,
blood still on the door.
They found a blue and white striped towel that matched one of the towels that had covered Burchard in the door. They found a blue and white striped towel
that matched one of the towels
that had covered Burchard in the trunk.
That means two separate attacks on Burchard
with two different weapons.
Detective Jaeger is still hoping
one of the residents will return,
but when he talks to the neighbors,
one of them says a gray sedan keeps driving past the place
and gives the detective a license plate number.
It was actually a guy at a cleaning service
that had cleaned the house and was coming back
because Kelsey refused to pay him.
He did acknowledge there was also a large red stain
that the cleaning guy thought was just red wine
or maybe spaghetti sauce.
And he was like, yeah, it probably would be a blood stain. that the cleaning guy thought was just red wine or maybe spaghetti sauce.
And he was like, yeah, it probably would be a blood stain.
A warrant has been issued for Kelsey Turner.
And it turns out that an FBI task force out of Stockton, California, has gotten the goods.
They've tracked down Kelsey Turner.
So they reached out to the stockton police
who did find turner living near the railroad tracks and east of downtown stockton she was there
with her four-year-old son kelsey turner is taken into custody on march 21st 2019 posing for a photo
that won't be posted on her instagram page. Detective Jaeger flies out to California
to interview her in jail.
When she walks up to me, she kind of saunters a little bit
and she's acting somewhat seductive.
She reaches her hand out and I was like,
well, I'm Detective Jaeger.
So once I advised her of her rights,
she was like, nope, I'm not gonna talk.
But I wanted to leave a little something with her.
I was like, you know, what you did in Las Vegas,
you're gonna go to jail for it.
What did you see on her face when you said that?
She just went blank.
The saunter was gone.
We're back now with the Playboy model accused of murder.
Police say 25-year-old Kelsey Turner killed a psychiatrist
with the help of accomplices who are still on the run. accused of murder. Police say 25-year-old Kelsey Turner killed a psychiatrist with
the help of accomplices who are still on the run.
Talk about going viral. The instant model's face now splashed across TV
screens and web pages all across the world.
I was shocked when I heard that she was arrested for murder. I was thinking to
myself there's no way that's Kelsey. I would have never imagined
in a million years that she would be caught up in this kind of situation.
Not long after Kelsey is taken into custody, arrest warrants are issued for John Logan
Kennison and for Diana Pena. Kennison, it turns out, is at his mother's house in Las Vegas where
he is arrested. Diana Pena hears that there's a warrant for arrest
and does what she thinks is the best thing for her future,
turn herself in.
Once in custody, Diana Pena starts talking,
and for the first time,
police will have a shocking firsthand account
of exactly what went down
inside that house on Puritan Avenue.
Okay, here we go, Chris.
I just wanted to tell the truth.
I get to say my piece and have a little bit of closure.
Mark.
So as she worked her job at Caesar's Palace
and looked after Kelsey Turner's young son,
Cheyenne Diana Pena tried to steer clear of all the drama Kelsey loved to stir up.
Until the night Diana saw horror unfold before her.
A night she would describe to police.
A traumatic night she's talking about in detail for the first time, only to 2020.
Why did you want to share your story with us today?
I just wanted to tell the truth.
I get to say my piece and have a little bit of closure.
And maybe also other people might have a little closure too.
It was late on Saturday night, March 2nd,
when Diana finished her shift at the Coliseum
and asked her roommate for a ride home.
She got the ride all right.
But when Thomas Burchard got lost
and passed his phone to Kelsey so she could use the GPS,
all hell broke loose on I-15.
She started going through his phone,
and she saw some stuff that she didn't like.
Messages between her mom and Dr. Burchard.
Why do you think it upset Kelsey so much?
Kelsey said that they were talking about maybe taking her children.
She started hitting him, kind of getting a little crazy.
They were hitting each other pretty bad.
So they're going 60 miles an hour and they're fighting.
Yes.
A screaming physical fight in front of you.
Pretty terrifying, especially since it was, like, on the highway.
As they arrive at the house on Puritan Avenue,
the fight escalates.
And what happens next?
There was a lot of screaming, smacking.
Kelsey's rage includes those threats to contact Burchard's employer
with baseless claims of child pornography on his phone.
Kelsey is essentially preparing to extort Thomas
on the basis that she is going to release
this damaging material to his reputation,
that being child pornography,
ultimately resulted in Thomas becoming upset
and going into the bedroom that he'd been sleeping in and closing the door.
What was he expressing at that time?
He kind of seemed a little confused.
He just kept saying, like, he loved Kelsey,
and he didn't know why she was acting like that.
Those are the words he was using?
Yeah.
Saying, I love you.
Yeah.
What is John Logan Kennison doing
when he sees that his girlfriend
is screaming at this old man?
He kind of seemed surprised at first,
and then he started, you know, yelling and screaming too.
Diana's first thoughts are for the little boy.
She has a trusted friend whisk him out of the house
as Kelsey's anger intensifies.
So she's just in the red zone.
Yeah.
Screaming, yelling, throwing things,
and you can see that that's having a big effect
on John Logan Kennison.
Mm-hmm.
He's gonna do something about this.
Yeah. He ran upstairs, and he broke down the door.
What are you going through
when these acts of anger and violence
are starting to take place?
Just kind of terror, horrified. So you're screaming for him to stop? What are you going through when these acts of anger and violence are starting to take place?
Just kind of terror, horrified.
So you're screaming for him to stop?
Yeah.
And Kelsey is doing what?
She's on the stairs screaming at him to keep going.
What happens when he succeeds?
Somehow he got a bat. I don't know where the bat came from.
And what can you hear or see is taking place after that? I just seen the bat go up and go in the direction of the doctor.
And you could hear it hitting him.
So I kind of made my way in there.
And I got the bat away from Kenison.
And I just started screaming at them to stop
and, like, calm down.
What kind of condition was he in at that point?
He was coherent, but he was hurt pretty good.
The doctor's eye was starting to get, like,
it looked like blood in his eye.
And then I just said, let's take him to the hospital.
So we got him to the car, and I helped him in the back seat,
and he said that he wanted a jacket.
So I asked Kelsey if we could get him his jacket.
And so Kelsey and Mr. Kendison went in the house
to look for the jacket.
Dr. Thomas Burchard may be dazed and confused,
but he's sharp enough to know one thing.
He may never make it out of this house alive.
What are you remembering?
I'm sorry.
I just feel bad that I didn't...
I should have believed him.
He said, you know, they're going to kill me.
When Kennison and Kelsey return,
it's not to return Burchard's jacket.
It's to separate the doctor from his only ally.
Pena is instructed to go upstairs and clean up the mess created during the bedroom fight
while the doctor remains in the garage.
The next voice she hears is Kelsey's, demanding that John Logan Kennison attack Dr. Burchard.
She called Kennison a bitch,
said that she'd seen men knock out guys easier than he's doing.
Kelsey never tries to stop Kennison.
To the contrary, she's encouraging Kennison.
And she has the ultimate weapon in Kennison, right?
Yep. He'll hit anything that Kennison, right? Yep.
He'll hit anything that she wants him to.
Yep.
He has a firearm with him, and he beats Dr. Bouchard to death.
A couple minutes later, she came out and said, he's gone.
The doctor was dead.
Kennison had killed him.
Kennison ultimately comes out of the garage covered in blood.
I've never been so scared in my life.
It's just...
like, real terror.
And then I just kind of went, no.
But for Pena, the terror is far from over.
What were you scared of?
I didn't want them to do what they just did to Dr. Bouchard to me,
and I just witnessed it.
Dr. Thomas Bouchard has been murdered in Kelsey Turner's garage. And like a figure from a nightmare, John Logan Kennison emerges covered in the doctor's blood.
I've never been so scared in my life.
It's just like real terror. And then I just kind of went, no.
So I just turned around and started washing dishes
because that was the only thing I could do to calm down.
But Kelsey Turner had received more than half a million dollars from Dr. Burchard.
So what was in it for her to murder her meal ticket why
kill the golden goose because he didn't want to be her golden goose anymore
he was going to take it all away he had been her whale yeah
according to pena you know he's just lifeless so now they don't know what the hell to do
According to Pena, you know, he's just lifeless.
So now they don't know what the hell to do.
I started freaking out, and they just started yelling that I need to clean the house up.
He had a gun in his hand. He's covered in blood.
I probably would have jumped out the window if he asked me to.
I was scared. I didn't want them to do what they just did to Dr. Richard to me.
Kelsey knew him a lot longer than she knew me. And I just witnessed it.
Did you ask yourself even then, why didn't I do more to stop this?
Yeah, some days I don't think I could have really done anything without
chancing putting myself in harm's way. Sometimes I wish I didn't come home early.
Maybe that would have changed something.
I guess we'll never know.
They know that they got a dead guy in the car.
So we can't use that car.
They're in a panic.
They're to try to figure out the next step.
They all flee Puritan Avenue, ultimately arriving
at the Rio.
And along the way, they had ditched Dr. Burchard's phone,
which was discovered by the transient,
who police questioned but ultimately released.
Even in death, Dr. Burchard is the gift that keeps on giving,
as his credit cards are still being used all over town,
even to buy cleaning supplies.
Now, four days after Brashard is killed,
Logan tries to get rid of the Mercedes
with Dr. Brashard in it.
What did you hear about what happened to that car?
It was Mr. Kennison and a couple of people
that went with him,
and he said he set the car on fire and left.
But it had been discovered intact,
along with a wealth of evidence.
The police found a prominent California psychiatrist
dead inside the trunk of an abandoned car.
When the news breaks about the discovery of the body,
Diana, Logan, Kelsey and her son
are all holed up together at the Rio.
I went down to the front desk
and then Kelsey came running and grabbed me.
She started freaking out. She said that the police found the doctor in the car and that
she thought they were gonna come get her. So she just pulled us into a car. They're
in such a rush that they leave Dr. Richard's bank book with his accounts,
some passwords, along with identification for Diana and Kelsey's driver's license.
From that point on, they bounced around.
They stayed at a friend's condo
and a Motel 6 down the street from the MGM.
Why aren't you just running out the front door
and never coming back?
I was really scared.
Scared for my family, you know, my friends.
So what happened next?
We went to California.
They didn't have any money, and I kind of lied to them
and told them that I know people that can get you jobs
that you don't really need an I.D.
If they would just let me go.
And I left. get you jobs that you don't really need an ID, if they would just let me go.
And I left, and they said that they would be watching me.
They had Kelsey's friend drive me back to Vegas.
I got my dog Snickers, and I got a hold of my mom.
What was it like to have to tell your parents
what had happened?
It's horrible.
It's horrible.
Because you're terrified and you can see their terror.
So we went and turned myself in.
Well, eventually we learned that Diana Pena is a key piece in investigators learning exactly what happened. In time, she takes a plea deal.
Her charge is reduced from murder to accessory to murder.
And part of that is because she's agreeing to help police and prosecutors
piece together the moments of Dr. Burchard's death.
Once police get Kelsey in custody, Logan finds his way back to Las Vegas
and ultimately police arrest him
here at his mom's house. In July of 2022, Kennison ultimately pled guilty to second-degree murder and
conspiracy. He was sentenced to 18 to 45 years in prison. And I think you can hear that he is
genuinely remorseful, that he understands that he committed a terrible crime.
Before the judge imposed her sentence, Logan spoke.
I'm sorry for everything, all the pain I caused
and everything that they've had to go through
the entire time, and I hope after today
that they'll get the closure they deserve.
I think that if you look at the situation,
there's no universe where Dr. Bouchard and Logan
meet without Kelsey. And situation, there's no universe where Dr. Bouchard and Logan meet without Kelsey.
And ultimately, there's no violence without Kelsey instigating it.
There was definitely a connection between the two.
My ultimate impression of her is that she's someone
who is capable of getting people to do things for her on her behalf.
I agree with Pam that she is able to spin a story
for whatever audience that she has in front of her.
Kelsey was the ringleader, the puppet master,
and she found people that she could control
and people that she could manipulate.
Not only Dr. Richard, also Logan.
ABC News reached out to Logan Kennison,
and in a letter he told us, quote,
I want to help others that were involved in similar situations
to hopefully prevent the same from happening
and show people that toxic love situations
aren't always what they seem.
When Logan is talking about toxic situations,
I view that as a cautionary tale to mind the company you keep.
One more shocking detail about Kelsey Turner
has yet to come to light.
So all this takes place while she's pregnant with a baby?
Yeah, she is. Yeah, very pregnant.
Do we even ask who the father was?
Former Playboy model Kelsey Turner made her appearance in court today.
Turner is accused of killing a California psychiatrist.
Kelsey Turner embraced the cameras
that were covering her pretrial hearings.
She smiled for the cameras, turned around,
messed with her hair, looked like nothing
was wrong in the world.
Even in court, she kind of viewed her courtroom experiences, at least appeared to me, as part
of the extension of her brand.
It was almost like a reality show for her.
As she's awaiting trial, there's a startling development.
Kelsey gives birth.
That means she was pregnant during the entire sequence
of events leading up to Thomas Burchard's murder.
So all this takes place while she's pregnant with a baby?
Yes.
She is, yeah, very pregnant.
The identity of the father remains a mystery,
and Kelsey's not talking.
But John Logan Kennison raises a lot of eyebrows
when he holds up a sign in court
love you little mama kelsey turner in her hearings was defiant she was not going to admit any guilt
she vows to fight it out in court but then abruptly changes her tune as her trial nears
the former playboy model accused of murdering her ex,
her boyfriend, is taking a plea deal.
Kelsey Turner was set to go to trial
for killing her 71-year-old boyfriend.
The plea deal comes as a surprise to everyone.
And then there's a twist.
Kelsey's allowed to enter what's known as an Alford plea,
where she pleads guilty to second-degree murder
while still maintaining her innocence. The sent guilty to second-degree murder while still maintaining her innocence.
The sentencing for second-degree murder is set by statute, and that's regardless of what kind of plea she entered. And so it really makes no difference in our estimation.
I think that gives you a lot of insight into Kelsey. She knows that we can prove the case.
She just doesn't want to admit to others or maybe even herself that her responsibility in the case.
Judge Kerry, you're deciding.
Good morning, everyone. You can be seated.
At her sentencing, it was made clear Kelsey won't be resuming her Instamodel career anytime soon.
Mr. Turner, you're hereby a judge guilty of second-degree murder, a felony.
You're hereby sentenced to 10 to 25 years in Nevada Department of Corrections.
We've always known Kelsey Turner
to play to the cameras wherever they were.
This time, she'd rather duck the attention.
I'll go ahead and let Ms. Turner speak,
and then I'll call her.
But while Kelsey remained silent,
Thomas Burchard's longtime girlfriend Judy Earp
spoke out in her victim impact statement. My entire world was viciously ripped from me with the murder
of Thomas K. Burchard. I frequently dreamed that Thomas come home and it was all a big mistake.
Then I realized that the real nightmare is waking up and knowing that he will never come home.
I never realized such evil existed in this world until this happened.
His murder left a huge gaping hole in the whole community of Monterey.
Dr. Thomas Burchard had a public life and a secret life,
but those who knew him back in Monterey still stand by the
man they knew and trusted.
Really nothing that I heard in the news changed my opinion
about who he was.
I know that he wasn't a bad person at all.
And for what happened to him was just this absolute tragedy.
I miss Tom every day.
You know, some days it's harder.
In your heart, do you still love Thomas Burchard?
Yeah.
You know, and I don't think there's any real getting over it
or moving on or resuming your life.
I don't, and I will have to keep going forward,
even if it's one step, one foot in front of the other.
And we should note that John Logan Kennison
appealed his conviction, but it was denied.
He'll be eligible for parole in the year 2037.
And David Kelsey Turner, the one-time model,
will be eligible for parole in 2029.
That's our program for tonight.
Thanks so much for watching.
I'm Deborah Roberts.
And I'm David Muir from all of us here at 2020 and ABC News.
Good night.