Cold Case Files - Murder On The Menu

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

A young boy is the sole survivor when his family is massacred in their Minnesota home. Two decades later - he helps cold case detectives catch the serial killer responsible. Progressive - Progressive.com  Trade Coffee - Visit drinktrade.com/SURVIVED to enjoy 30% off your first order when you subscribe! Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at Shopify.com/coldcase and take your retail business to the next level today! 

From A&E, this is Cold Case Files, the podcast. December 15th, 1978. The depths of winter in Stearns County, Minnesota. The ground covered in snow, the air bitter cold. By the light of the moon, 11-year-old Billy Huling runs through the woods. He runs for help. He runs for his life. Billy's family has just been shot.

Officer Jim Castriba responds to the call. As soon as I opened the door into the porch and stepped in, I could immediately smell the smell of gunpowder. And with my flashlight, I was able to see a 12-gauge shotgun casing laying on the floor. Kostreba continues into a darkened living room and the only bedroom on the first floor where a mother appears to be sleeping. I saw her laying on the bed and she was laying with her head towards the foot of the bed with her legs drawn up and I just by observing her I realized that she was dead. Dressed in a nightgown and robe, 36-year-old Alice Hewling lies dead. Kostreba moves upstairs to look for her children.

He follows a trail of shell casings to the second floor. There he finds three of the Huling children, 16-year-old Susie, 13-year-old Wayne, and 12-year-old Patty. Each had been shot, gunned to death. The officer presses on to the bedroom of the one child who survived, Billy Huling. The sleeping bag was laying on that bed and you could see two gunshot holes actually in the mattress and the pillow. And Billy had said that the guy had shot twice at him and had missed both times because he had kind of slid down inside a sleeping bag. As morning comes, a team of investigators arrive to scour the scene for clues. They search the house and find nothing but shell casings.

They follow tracks in the snow, but none lead to the killer. Here in Stearns County, Minnesota, the Hewling Massacre is a crime unlike any before or since. It's horror indelibly etched in the mind of a young deputy. By Patty's bed, there was a dresser. On that dresser, there was a stack of clothing. And obviously what she had done is she had gotten her clothes out the night before, before she went to bed. And I placed them there to get put on in the morning. And I knew that that's what she was going to do. She had plans to get up in the morning and go to school, get dressed and go to school, and it didn't happen. She didn't have a chance. The only chance she had was to cover up her head before she got shot. And I guess that's something

that'll be with me the rest of my life. Four days after the murders, Deputy Gary Miller is on patrol in neighboring Wright County. On the morning of December 19th, he enters a routine call at the Clearwater Plaza truck stop. A customer is harassing the waitresses. Before approaching the individual, Miller runs a quick check on his car. And I ran the tag, the license number, to try to get a little background on who I was going to be dealing with. When that license check came back, it indicated the vehicle was stolen. Miller confronts the problem patron, 27-year-old Joe Turi, and arrests him for auto theft.

The vehicle that he was driving was towed into our impound area there and as was our procedure I asked another officer to accompany me and we did an inventory of the car. Among the items found inside Turi's car are handwritten lists scribbled on odd scraps of paper, the names of dozens of women, many of them waitresses. There was a number of notebooks and coasters and napkins that had names of females and license numbers of cars. And some of them had descriptions of where they lived. A couple of them had been circled and said, get this one. Like every other cop in the area, Gary Miller is on the lookout for connections to the Huling massacre. Joe Turi's fascination with waitresses appears to provide one such link.

One of the Huling children, 16-year-old Susie, worked part-time as a waitress at a local diner. Miller passes the information on to the man working the Huling case, who questioned Turi about the list of names. Somebody's trying to find out if this little diary, if that was yours or if it was in the car when you took the car or... What does it have to do with anything? Well, maybe nothing. It doesn't. In other words, it's yours, isn't it? Yeah, it's mine.

He was kind of a drifter. He wasn't able to hold a job very long. And since he really didn't have a place to live, he spent a lot of time in restaurants and truck stops and those sorts of places. And he said that he was trying to find a girlfriend. And so he would write down descriptions of potential girlfriends. While the catalog of women may be unusual, even suspicious, it is not by itself illegal. Detectives turned their attention to a second unusual item found in Turi's car.

A 27-inch metal bar wrapped in black vinyl. Well, we knew that Alice had sustained some beating, and we always thought that bar was a possibility, but when they weren't able to find any blood or tissue on it, then it was kind of put aside. Investigators are uneasy, but can develop no specific links between Turi and the Hewling murders. A few weeks later, the auto theft charge is cleared. Joe Turi is released and fades into the background of a Minnesota winter. What do you understand we're going to try to do today, if you wouldn't mind telling me?

11 days after the murder of his family 11 year old billy huling undergoes hypnosis in hopes of recalling some clues to the killer's identity i thought i heard a shot and then i heard somebody come upstairs he came through the hallway and Wayne looked up and and some started yelling no no don't oh and then the guy shot him with a shotgun and then I heard him. At that time, I had went under my blankets. From inside his sleeping bag, Billy hears the sounds of his two sisters, Susie and Patty, being shot to death in their beds. Then he hears the killer's footsteps approaching.

I heard the guy come back into our room. I came over and stood in the middle of the room. He shot at me once, came by my head and rang my ear. He poked me with a barrel of the gun and I think I moved a little bit. I tried to stay still and when he poked me, he must have saw something on me move, shot at me again in the same place, missed me again, felt me again with a barrel.

With his life in the balance, Billy Hughling plays dead. The killer is satisfied and leaves. Billy's story offers police a window into the killing ground, but presents few clues to catch a killer. In time, the case goes cold. Meanwhile, a killer continues his work, selecting and stalking his next victim,

another young waitress. May 8th, 1979, in Afton, Minnesota. Five months later, and 95 miles away, winter is but a memory, and the town of Afton, Minnesota, relishes its first day of spring. The day unfolds like most others for Fran Wollenhaus. By mid-afternoon, she finishes her errands and heads for home. So I drove in the driveway, which was a long driveway, and I saw Marlis' car.

Marlis is Fran's 18-year-old daughter. She's a month away from graduating high school and works part-time as a waitress. I opened the door to the lower level on the side of the house. And I called Marcy and she didn't answer. A few more steps and Fran is in the study. It is here that she finds her daughter. She was sitting upright against the little school desk that I had when I was in third grade. And she was totally covered in blood. Marlis Wollenhaus is barely alive. Fran calls the police.

And all I did was hold her to me until the police came. I mean, there was no... I saw the injury and knew... I mean, her brain, skull was totally crushed and was on the floor. Marlis is rushed to the hospital and dies two days later. Mike Johnson is among those assigned to investigate. There were a number of investigators that were assigned initially, probably two-thirds of what then was our investigative division, worked the case in the early weeks. But it was quickly evident that there was not going to be a quick resolution to this case.

Without a murder weapon, fingerprints, or any other clues, the case quickly goes cold. On Saturday, May 12th, the day before Mother's Day, Fran Wollenhaus buries her daughter. Of course, I was totally in shock, numb, had no feelings. Mother's Day from then on for many years were extremely painful. And I wanted to know in my lifetime who did it and why. I wanted answers. September 26, 1980. A chilly night, more than a year after a murder of Marlis Wollenhouse, a young waitress clears the last of her tables and clocks out. It's about nine o'clock when 19-year-old Diane Edwards walks north along

Roberts Road. She's just three blocks from home when a brown station wagon drives up over the sidewalk, and an unidentified man forces her into the car. Five people witness the abduction and call the police. A search ensues, but there will be no trace of Diane Edwards found for weeks. Two weeks later, in Elk River, Minnesota, off a country road, a hunter stumbles upon a pair of glasses and a purse. Inside the purse, an ID bearing the name Diane Edwards. By late afternoon, Chief Deputy Dave Hofstad and dozens of officers are searching the brush. Shortly thereafter, here comes a helicopter, and I would say within five minutes, one of the deputies in the helicopter radioed me

and said to get in my car and drive up the road to this little hill and get out of your car and walk down into the ditch. And as I walked into the ditch, I observed a female laying on her stomach with her hands like this and her head like this. With one glance, Deputy Hofstad realizes he's found Diane Edwards dead from a single stab wound to the chest. Within a couple of weeks, Hofstad gets wind of a possible suspect. In Minneapolis, police have a man in custody on charges of kidnap and rape in a case unrelated to the Edwards homicide.

The suspect's name is Joseph Turi, the same Joseph Turi once suspected but never charged in the 1978 murder of Alice Huling and three of her children. Police get a warrant and search Turi's garage, looking for clues that might link him to the Edwards killing. They found spiral notebooks with pages of names of girls. Two years earlier, a similar collection of women's names and numbers was found in Joe Turi's possession, but could not be linked to the Hewling murders. This time, however, Hewling's notes offer much more. Diane Edwards' name and the number to the restaurant where she worked are found in a notebook inside Joe Turi's garage. Hofstede believes he might have found Diane Edwards' killer and travels to Minneapolis to question Turi. He played with you. I mean, I think he was good at trying to think he could manipulate you

and lead you all over and not go anywhere. He never ever said anything when we talked to him up there that you could come down on. But when you walked out of there, you really had a feeling this is the right trail. For the second time in two years, Joe Turi's name tops the list of murder suspects. And for a second time, investigators are stymied by a lack of evidence against him. As the darkness of winter once again descends upon Minnesota, the Diane Edwards homicide case joins the Hewling murders and the Marla Swollen House murder

in the cold case file. Joseph Turi is not off the hook yet. In April of 1981, he is convicted on three counts of rape in cases unrelated to the unsolved murders. With his convictions, he's looking at at least 30 years behind bars, and life behind bars does not agree with Joseph Turi. He was being picked on by fellow inmates.

The guards were giving him a bunch of crap. Nobody liked him. He had no friends, and everybody was picking on him. Deputy Archie Sonnenstall transfers Turi to a new cell block. Turi is grateful. I really appreciate that. He says, you're the first one that's ever did anything for me. I says, well, here's my card. If you have any further problems, give me a

call. Two weeks later, Joseph Turi uses that card. This time, he's looking for a transfer out of jail altogether. We got into a conversation about his cooperating with authorities, and did I feel that they would cooperate back with him if he needed some psychiatric help, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Convicted rapist Joseph Turi would rather do his time in the state mental hospital. To get there, he's willing to give up the details of a murder. Basically, in so many words,

Joe would clean up the Diane Edwards homicide. Sonnenstahl relays the information to prosecutors investigating the Edwards case. And they said, go back and talk to him and tell him that we're receptive to the idea of cooperation. We can't make any promises because we don't know what the problem is. But we'd be receptive to his cooperation. You have the right to remain silent.

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to grow your business no matter what state you're in. Shopify.com slash coldcase. Coldcase Files is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you can be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance. It's easy and you could save money by doing it right from your phone.

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for a convicted rapist to do time. Joe Turi has been locked up here for almost seven months when he decides to cut a deal. Turi offers to trade a murder confession for a bed in the state mental hospital. In May 1981, Deputy Archie Sonnenstall turns on a recorder and Joe Turi begins to talk about how he killed Diane Edwards. You said you saw a gal walking up the street?

Yeah. Did you stop by this gal? Yeah. Who was she? Diane. Diane who? Edwards. He pulled up alongside of her, and he recognized her,

and she recognized him. And he asked her to get in the car. And she wouldn't, so he grabbed her, forced her in the car. After you got her in the car, how did you manage to keep her in the car? Tied a rope around her arms. Or put her in the back of her car. Tied a rope around her arms behind her? Yeah. I put a tightrope around her arms behind her. With Diane Edwards restrained,

Turi drove 60 miles north to a rural area near Elk River. Then he raped her on the front seat, and she screamed some insult at him, and he just blew it, and he stabbed her. Did she say something to you or do something after you finished having intercourse the first time in the front seat? Yeah, she screamed at me and said something that I can't remember exactly. And how did you respond to that? Blew up.

You blew up. You blew up. And when you blew up, what happened? The guy stabbed her. He said he then drug her down in an inclinement down towards the woods where he raped her again. And he thought she might have been dead by that time because she wasn't moving or saying anything. To be certain Turi is telling the truth, investigators arrange an afternoon drive.

Turi directs them to an empty stretch of road some 60 miles north of St. Paul. And he had me turn up this little trail that I knew led to the site and we're coming up that little hill that I knew led to the site, and we're coming up that little hill, and as we get to the spot, he says, stop right here. Turi gets out of the car, walks down an embankment, and points to a ditch alongside the road. And Dave looked at me, and he said, you know, he's within four feet of where we found the body. And this is a very rural setting.

So far as landmarks, I mean, they just aren't there. He knew. Detectives are now convinced their tour guide is a killer. His confession is genuine. On May 13th, 1981, Joe Turi is charged with the murder of Diane Edwards, a crime for which he will eventually be convicted. As he awaits trial, however, Turi discovers that despite his confession, a transfer to the state mental hospital will not be granted. Instead, he finds himself in yet another jail cell, still doing his best to make the state believe he should be moved.

Six months later, in Elk River, Minnesota, Toby Kreminga has spent a lifetime drifting in and out of prisons. In December 1981, he finds himself incarcerated in a county lockup in Elk River, Minnesota. It's here that he meets his new cellmate, Joseph Donald Turi. Well, right off the bat, after the jailer locked the door, he told me what the rules were going to be. And I was in a foul mood anyway, and I told him, kiss off.

So we stood up, and then we started swinging on each other. After the altercation, the two men settled into a friendly relationship, and Toby Kruminga begins to learn about his new cellmate. Well, we played cards. each other. After the altercation, the two men settled into a friendly relationship, and Toby Krumminga begins to learn about his new cellmate. Well, we played cards, we played checkers. He was waiting trial on Diane Edwards, and he talked a little bit about that. With a guilty verdict all but certain in the case of Diane Edwards,

Joe Turi is once again looking for a way around doing hard time. Well, that's when he came up with the idea of being nuts. You want to write a letter to the judge, you know. And so I said, sure, we'll write a letter to the judge, you know, whatever you want to write. Joe Turi dictates and Toby Kraminga writes two letters detailing two more killings. The first relates to the murder of waitress Susie Huling. It writes, I asked her to go out and she said that her mother wouldn't let her date,

so I followed her mother around for a while. We actually went over to the mother's house and told the mother that he wanted to date her daughter. And she told him to call him a pervert, told him to get the hell out. The letter goes on to describe Turi's revenge. I got to thinking about Ms. Huling calling me a pervert. I got real pissed, so I drove back to the Huling house. I grabbed her by the hair, and I told her that before she died, she would go through more physical and mental pain than she had ever gone through in her life. I then went upstairs. By this time, I was really

going crazy. I shot two girls and a boy in the head. Details of the killings filled four handwritten pages. I didn't believe it. I thought, well, even if he didn't do it, he'd write a letter like this. They'd still think he was nuts. In a second letter, three pages long, Turi describes the murder of Marlis Wollenhaus. The letter reads, I freaked and hit her three or four times in the head with a hatchet. I heard the dog going crazy upstairs, so I left in a hurry.

Joe Turi signs and dates both statements. Kraminga signs as witness and hands the letters off to a jail guard to be delivered to a judge. But once again, Joe Turi's plans go awry. His letters never make it to the judge. Instead, Turi finds his confession leading the local evening news. In the Hewling murder confession, Turi says he knew one of the Hewling daughters, but her mother refused to let him see her. I was standing next to Joe, and they had a newsflash. He planned to tie up the family and rape one of the daughters, but when he went into the house and entered Mrs. Hewling's bedroom on the main floor, she recognized him and said,

and we quote, leave my house, you pervert. I said, oh, damn. You know, I mean, I was just as stunned as Joe was. I had no idea it was going to be on the news. Turrie then says he shot her above the knees and hit her a couple of times. Oh, he just freaked. He kept on saying to me, you double-crossed me, you lied to me, the judge is supposed to get it all out, you know.

This evening, Joseph Turrie said he has never raped or killed anyone. Once the statements were made public, Joe Turi denies ever making them. As for his signature on the bottom of the page, Turi claims he signed a blank piece of paper, what he thought was a jailhouse petition for better food. Turi then offers an alibi for one of the killings he supposedly confessed to. On the day Marlis Wollenhaus was killed, according to Turi, he was working on a production line at the Ford Motor Plant. Investigators called Ford and confirmed the alibi. Suddenly, the letters don't look so solid.

Basically what it amounted to was a jailhouse confession from one person to another. And early on in that part of the investigation, our office alibied the suspect, believed he was at work. And for that reason, there was no credibility put on him. He had his name written out, and he wanted me to sign it to him. Police accept Joe Turi's alibi, and the jailhouse confessions are discredited. This is how things will remain for 15 years until a team of cold case detectives takes a closer look at Turi's confession and find the clues that everyone else

had been missing. In 1996, in a single office on the second floor of Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a select few take on the cases all others have given up. The cold cases. Agents dig into a file that has haunted them. The murder of 18-year-old Marlis Wollenhaus. The trouble is, it's not a good case for cold case. We didn't have any evidence. The only really strong, strong thing was the victim.

And by that means is the entire small community, everybody in the world out there wants this. They all knew her. I mean, it was one of those cases that just kept crying, saying, please pick me up again. Special Agents Everett Doolittle and Randy Stricker begin by re-evaluating all the players in the case, including a one-time suspect, Joe Turi, now serving a life sentence for the murder of Diane Edwards.

And I met with the investigators and they said, no, we cleared him. Turi was at work at the time of the murder and couldn't have done it. And that's been said all along. 15 years earlier, detectives had placed a phone call to officials from the Ford Motor Company who told them Joe Turi was working at one of their plants at the time Marlis Wollenhouse was killed. Cold case detectives are not satisfied with the verbal confirmation. They ask Ford to locate the actual time card for the day in question. Later, one of Doolittle's detectives calls him with results from the search.

And he said, yeah, Joe Turi was at work on May 8th at the time of the murder. Joe Turi, date of birth, 1911 was. And I said, he said, yes, his dad was at work at the time. There's no record showing Joe Turi was at work. Going back and rechecking identified that they were both employed there and that Joe was working the later shift, which afforded him the opportunity to commit the crime

and still make it to work on time. So that was the big break. It blew away his alibi. The collapse of Turi's alibi puts the convicted killer once again in the crosshairs of the Wollen House investigation and brings his jailhouse confession back into play. Detectives give it a fresh look, hoping to determine if it reads true or if it's just another piece of cellblock fiction.

We took it apart piece by piece by piece. What he said he did, where he went. And then there were little things in there. And one of the little things, they didn't seem to matter that much, but they mean everything. On the third page of his confession to the Wollon House killing,

cold case detectives discover one of those little things, a story about a little girl. He talked about coming out the end of the driveway and spinning his tires and blowing gravel all over this girl. His quote, I see this little bitch, and I put it to the floor, I spin gravel, and I take off. Detectives find a chilling echo of Turi's letter in a statement to him at the Wolin House crime scene. And there's a statement from a girl who was eight years old at the time,

who got out of school, was walking to her girlfriend's house. And she's walking right by the entrance to the long driveway and she's interviewed back then and said I saw this he called it a cream-colored little car come out and this guy's threw gravel and dust all over her and took off that's never been in the media that's never been out because they're really worried about she's eight years old the family was scared for her safety how did this confidential detail find its way into joe turry's confession for cold case detectives the answer is simple turry's confession is genuine in this business you'll have people confess to crimes that they didn't commit but they don't know the particulars joe knew the particulars.

There's information in there that nobody would ever know or couldn't know but the person who committed the murder. It is the third time that Joe Turi has been looked at for the Wollen House murder. This time, the suspicion sticks. 17 years after Marlis Wollen House was found bludgeoned to death, Turi is arrested for her murder. John Fristick is given the task of prosecuting Turi for the Wolin House murder. To prepare for trial, Fristick decides to educate himself about Turi's criminal past. Part of that history, the lingering suspicion among

members of law enforcement that Turi might be responsible for yet another set of crimes, the murder of Alice Huling and three of her children. Fueling those suspicions is a curious police stop, made just days after the Huling massacre. From a stolen car driven by Turi, police pulled a metal bar, a list of women's names, and a toy Batmobile. At the time, no link could be developed

between these items and the Huling murders. 19 years later, John Fristick believes he sees just such a connection. And I thought to myself, what is Joe Tree doing with a Batmobile in his car? Everything else in the car, I can understand somewhat. What is he doing with a child's toy, a little tiny Batmobile? And then it occurred to me, Alice Hewling had two small sons, Billy and Wayne, the same age as boys who would play with toy Batmobiles. And so I thought to myself, where do you get this car? Did this come from the Hewling house?

To answer that question, John Fristick must first track down the one person who might know. Shout at me again in the same place. Miss me again. The sole survivor and only witness to the killings, Billy Hewling. San Diego, California, 1998. Petty officer William Hewling has spent more than two decades trying to forget about a cold night in December, 1978. The night his childhood ended. The night his family was murdered. Being as young as I was, I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to do anything. And I just wanted to continue on with my life and forget that it ever happened. But it's

something that you never really forget. And you grow older you start thinking about it more. You know, it hits you and you're like, man, you know, my family's not here. After 20 years of trying to forget, Billy Huling is now called upon to remember. The witness coordinator in Washington County called up and said that they had some evidence that they wanted me to look at. And just, I don't know why I said it or where it ever came from. It's just like, oh, did you find my Batmobile car? The following day, Billy Huling identifies the Batmobile, a toy believed lost the night his family was murdered. A toy found in Joe Turi's possession just four days after the crime. Joe Turi took from their house after he killed Alice Hewling and her children, he took from their house Billy Hewling's Batmobile.

He took a souvenir. Piece by piece, Joe Turi's carefully arranged world is breaking up, and the specter of old crimes rises again. Trade Coffee is changing the way you experience coffee at home. A lot of the coffee out there is dull, stale, and questionably sourced. Trade curates a wide variety of coffees from the best small batch specialty roasters in the U.S. and then makes personalized recommendations based on what you like or want to try. The coffee is roasted to order and ships to you within 48 hours. From hot or iced, dark roast to decafs, or espressos to cold brew, Trade has it all.

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A true crime podcast. It got me upset because this is someone's kid, and someone knows she's gone. That takes a different approach. It was shocking for something like this to happen in our little town. Focusing on the communities affected by life-shattering crimes. It made news throughout the entire region that these two people had been shot while they slept in such a safe community. To give a new perspective on the devastation crimes can cause.

It was shocking for something like this to happen in our little town. Featuring cases from quiet towns to bustling cities and interviewing the people closest to the case. My first thought was that it's an unusual location for us to have a homicide. Listen to the true crime podcast City Confidential and step beyond the yellow tape to learn just how far a crime can reach. There are certain cases in the history of Boston that I think sort of define the city. I think this is one of them.

New episodes of the City Confidential podcast are available every Thursday, available wherever you get your podcasts. For 20 years, the murder of Alice Euling and three of her children has remained a mystery. And for 20 years, a child's toy has gathered dust at the bottom of an evidence locker. Investigators found the toy among the possessions of a man named Joseph Turrey, but could never fathom its significance. Now the sole survivor of the attack, Billy Euling has identified the car as identical to one of his childhood possessions. A toy detectives believe Turi took as a souvenir on the night he slaughtered the Huling family. Now the team returns to the Huling case file, wondering if any other clues might turn up.

Special Agent Randy Stricker reviews Alice Hewling's autopsy photos. It notices an unusual pattern of bruising. In reading the reports that have been generated by the officers that were conducting the investigation, they had indicated that the bruise on the body could have been caused by a shotgun butt or a shotgun barrel. And I couldn't see the correlation there. Stricker decides to take his questions to an expert, a man who studies bruises for a living. Dr. Michael McGee is a medical examiner and forensic pathologist, a specialist in the field of pattern injury recognition. Agent Stricker

asks McGee to look at Alice Hewling's autopsy photos and suggest what kind of weapons might have caused her injuries. She had a bruise that was elongated. It looked like it almost had a cylindrical or tubular appearance. The bruise has a distinct upper border and lower border and in the midst of it are small punctate areas of hemorrhage suggesting to me that whatever object had struck her was long, probably metal, had a rounded edge, and had a series of circular to oval-shaped depressions cut into it. At least that's what I told the BCA they should be looking for. Playing a long shot, Randy Stricker reviews physical evidence pulled from Joe Turi's stolen car in 1978, hoping to find just such an item.

The one piece that really stood out in my mind was the pipe. Because of looking at the photographs of Alice Ealing and looking at what appeared to be a pattern injury on her right breast area, I wanted to look at the pipe. They left it for me to look at. I measured it. Compared it to the autopsy photos, compared it to the autopsy measurements, and based on that I told them I think this is it. When Dr. McGee has photos of the bruise and bar enlarged, the connection becomes clear. So you can see the edge of the bar

matches the edge here, the edge of the bar matches the edge here. The small holes present in the surface of the wrapping match the small focal areas of bruising and abrasion on the surface of the body. The strap in the middle of the bar that holds the wrapping in place can be seen as this blanch mark running down the course. So when the bar impacted the body, it imprinted this pattern of the bar strap and the holes on the body, causing a reverse image. Dr. McGee's testimony is the final link in a chain of physical and circumstantial evidence tying the Huling murders to Joe Turi, and Joe Turi to yet another set of charges for murder. In February of 2000, at the Stearns County Courthouse,

a jury returns its verdict in 12 hours. In the case of the Hewling family massacre, Joseph Turi is found guilty on four counts of murder and sentenced to four consecutive life terms in a Minnesota prison. For sole survivor Billy Hewling, the sentence seems appropriate. I'm at a point now where it doesn't matter. It's not going to change anything. He's doing his time in jail.

He's never going to get out. I'm happy with that. I can live with that. 20 years ago? No, that probably wouldn't be enough. I think justice is a very important part of the healing process. Fran Wollenhouse finds her own measure of justice on October 14, 1998, the day that Joseph Turi is convicted of yet another murder, the beating death of Fran's daughter.

For us, we went for so many years without knowing who killed Marlis. And I say it was like a freeing of my soul when I finally had answers. The real killer should be sitting in this chair, not me. Justice, it seems, brings comfort to everyone except the man behind bars. A man who says he is wrongly convicted. They ain't got no evidence on me. They ain't got none. It's all circumstantial stuff that they manipulate to make me look bad. Like I said, they can indict a ham sandwich in this state. Joe Turi is serving six consecutive life sentences at the penitentiary in Stillwater.

And while there is no death penalty in Minnesota, sometimes a de facto sentence is imposed inside the walls of the prison. Joe Turi nearly met such a fate when a fellow inmate drove a laundry hook nearly into his brain. The convicted killer survived and now seeks the compassion of society.

But I can't get no justice because I'm a poor man. I ain't got no lawyer, ain't got no family to stick up for me. That's why I'm locked up. I ain't got nobody. The investigators who put Joe Turi behind bars suggest he deserves no such grace. He explained to me one day, Joe Turi quote, it's not my fault, all women are nothing but whores and bitches. Everyone has ruined my life, they broke my heart.

I mean, he was looking for a relationship that never happened. He thought he would, you know, somehow he's going to date one of these girls, what he called it, and they'd fall in love, and it never happened. He was very angry. Joe's a very, very sick individual. He has no remorse for his deeds. He just does not belong in society. He belongs exactly where he is.

Joe Turi sits in a jail cell in Minnesota convicted of murdering six people and suspected of at least one more. Turi has made yet another jailhouse confession, providing details on how he killed 20-year-old John Biersbach in 1979. Turi later rescinded the confession. Detectives, however, suspect he is Biersbach's killer and hope someday to develop enough evidence to convict him of the seventh murder. Cold Case Files is hosted by Marissa Pinson, produced by Jeff DeRay, and distributed by

Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and hosted by Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold Case files at anetv.com. Titanic, or The Wolf of Wall Street. No matter your vibe, download the Pluto TV app to spend summer doing what you love, watching endless movies. Tell me that's not the deal of the summer. Summer of Cinema on Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.