Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Killer Wives: Death by Jello

Episode Date: August 5, 2020

Two men die years apart, with one thing in common: Lynn Turner. This suburban Atlanta woman lives on the fringes of law enforcement. In fact, she tries to become a cop herself and fails. So she marries a policeman and has an affair with a firefighter. How does each relationship end with murder?Joining Nancy Grace today: Ashley Willcott - Judge and trial attorney, Anchor on Court TV  Dr. Bethany Marshall - Psychoanalyst, Beverly Hills Sheryl McCollum - Forensics Expert & Cold Case Investigative Research Institute Founder Dr. Kris Sperry - Former Chief Medical Examiner, State of Georgia Ray Caputo - Lead News Anchor for Orlando's Morning News, 96.5 WDBO Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Wow, that hurts. Both your boyfriend and your husband end up dead? How did that happen? That's quite the coinkydink, right? What do both of them have in common besides the fact they're dead? Lynn Turner. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories.

Thank you for being with us here at Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111. Take a listen to this. It was difficult to fathom how two civil servants in two neighboring towns, both in their early 30s, died so suddenly. Until both families realized they had something else in common. The two men were both living with the same woman when they died, Lynn Turner. I couldn't turn to get on the phone quick enough. with the same woman when they died, Lynn Turner. I couldn't turn to get on the phone quick enough. I called the lead investigator, and I just basically said, you need to go out there and seal off the apartment.

Do what you need to do, because I'm telling you, there's no way you can have two young guys like this pass away. When questioned, Lynn Turner claimed it was just a tragic coincidence. And local prosecutors found no evidence the two deaths were connected. After all, Lynn Turner had no criminal history. I actually just thought that it was really, really bad luck. Really bad luck. Really bad luck. You know, every fiber of my being is screaming,

there is no coincidence in criminal law. With me, an all-star panel to figure this thing out, Ashley Wilcott, judge, trial lawyer, Court TV anchor at ashleywilcott.com. Renowned psychoanalyst joining me out of Beverly Hills, Dr. Bethany Marshall at drbethanymarshall.com. Founder, Director of the Cold Case Research Institute, Cheryl McCollum, former Chief Medical Examiner for the entire state of Georgia, who performed an autopsy related to this case, and lead news anchor, WDBO, joining us, Ray Caputo. Ray Caputo.

Ray Caputo, first of all, who is Lynn Turner? Well, Lynn Turner, she's an innocuous-looking woman when you look at her, but she's someone whom she grew up, had a tough life by her own. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Did you say she was innocuous-looking? Yeah, if you look at her, Nancy. Did you say that? Because I got gotta tell you something I staked her out in a parking lot one time and she came out surrounded by friends just chatting

away she had a mini skirt on uh well it left very little very little to the imagination. I am not judging. I don't care what she wears. But I can tell you, it was not innocuous. It was, let me just say, very impressive. I mean, you know, Cheryl McCollum, have you ever seen Lynn Turner? Oh, yes, absolutely. I would not call her innocuous. I would call her a brunette bombshell.

That's what I'd call her. She uses her assets, let's say. She thinks well of herself, the way she carries herself, Nancy. There's no question about that. And it's not just the way she carries herself, which, you know, really put it all out there. Again, not judging. Don't care. But I'm interested because there's two dead bodies connected to her.

But I will never forget hiding in a parking lot. It was hot. And I was between two cars. She was something else, okay? So I see why these guys fell for her. So Ray Caputo, now that Cheryl McCollum and I have schooled you, she's anything but innocuous. Let me tell you, if you'd seen her at that time, oh, wow.

Okay, so what does she do for a living, Ray Caputo? Well, she wanted to be a cop, Nancy, and apparently she failed the psychological examination. So she never became a cop cop but she did move into being a civil servant she was a 9-1-1 operator and that's how she connected with her first husband who was also a civil servant he was a police officer with Cobb County. Okay wanted to be a cop failed the psych exam to Dr. Bethany Marshall, I always use the example of Jim Jones. Remember him?

Who got scores of people to drink poisoned Kool-Aid and they died? Yes. He tried to be a Methodist. I'm a Methodist. He tried to be a Methodist minister, I've been told, and failed the psych exam.

To be a minister, he failed the psych exam? Yeah, so he went and founded his own church and went to Guyana, as I recall. So she tried to be a cop and failed the psych exam. Warning, warning, let me wave the red flag. One of my best friends is a police psychologist here in L.A., and she does all the psyche valves for police officers and fitness for duty reviews. If there's an officer involved shooting, she evaluates them. And she told me the story of a 23, 24 year old young man coming in and she asked him what he was

interested in. And he said, guns. I love guns. I have so many guns. I have guns in my basement. I have guns in my bedroom. I have guns under my bed. I hope she flunked him. She flunked him right away. But Nancy, you know, sociopaths, and this woman seems like she has sociopathic tendencies, they gravitate towards positions of power. And they imagine that if they are holding handcuffs, or they're carrying a gun, or they're a police officer, that that's going to give them power over the people around them. So that's a very common trajectory for somebody who's homicidal or sociopathic is to want to be a police officer. That's interesting. You know, Cheryl McCollum, I don't know if you recall, my longtime investigator the entire 10 years plus I was in the DA's office was Ernest. Oh, absolutely.

And I even created a character based somewhat on him for Haley Dean. I would make him carry the gun or, you know, he had so many guns and knives all over his body. After my fiance's murder, the last thing I wanted to do was carry a gun because in my experience, that's a surefire way for you to get in trouble is carry a gun. But, I get it, whoever wants a gun, it's in the Constitution to have one, but that feeling of power that Dr. Bethany Marshall is talking about, was she, let's just say, power adjacent? You know what, Cheryl, take a listen to this. This is Lynanne Zanger.

After hours, Lynn stalks the officer's favorite bars in Marietta, Georgia. It's here she meets officer Glenn Turner. Glenn didn't have any enemies. Glenn just got along with everybody, and he was very gullible. Just a very easygoing, likable, big teddy bear guy. Singled out by the sexy brunette, Glenn falls quickly under her spell. Fairly attractive lady.

And for Glenn, it was, you know, Glenn wasn't the best looking guy. He wasn't in the best physical shape. He wasn't chiseled or anything. But for Glenn, Lynn was a catch. Wow. So what do you make of that then? Cheryl McCollum, you know, in the Atlanta area, cops go to certain restaurants, certain bars, and if you want to meet cops, everybody knows where they go. It's not a big

secret, right? So would you say she's cop or power adjacent? Yeah, they call them badge bunnies. So here's what it sounds like to me. Wait, wait, wait, wait. They call them what? Badge bunnies. So here's what it sounds like to me. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. They call them what? Badge bunnies. Somebody that goes after. Okay. You know what? You just taught me something new, a badge bunny. Okay. Go ahead, Cheryl. I can always learn something new. It sounds like to me, she wanted this job and she didn't get it. So the next best thing to get on the dance floor, so to speak, is to become the 911 operator and then date a police officer. Because again, by proxy, you've got the stories, you've got the power, you've got these life and death situations that you feel like now you're a part of. So she's living the life right there on the edge of it.

Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, we're talking about the death of not only a boyfriend and a husband of Lynn Turner. But, you know, very often after work, Dr. Sperry, there is a string of bail bondsmen near the courthouse. And I would always, instead of paying $10 a day for a parking spot right beside the courthouse, I would always go down to those broken asphalt out in the open in the rain, parking lots about four or five blocks from the courthouse. So I'd park way down there, and I would very often after work meet up with either a friend from the DA's office, my investigator, or a defense attorney at one of the bail bondsmen. And we'd go to wherever we were going to go, and it would usually end up after getting dinner. And

we'd look around and like, who are all these people? There were people from the police force. There were people that weren't employed by the police force that were, I guess, like Cheryl McCollum said, badge bunnies. Just curious, do medical examiners have dead body bunnies? No. No. I mean, there's groupies. I don't like the way you said that. Yeah, you hesitated.

There are groupies. You know, if they can get access to someone, to a medical examiner, find out who they are, they're groupies. They're often the ones that like apply for investigator jobs, especially, you know, they don't have medical degrees and can't be pathologists, but they can be investigators or autopsy technicians. And there are some, there's about, it's about 50-50 male and female. So there's a lot of women. And you can...

You never told me that. I've known you all these years. We've had a lot of cases together. You never told me there were medical examiner groupies. Well, you never asked. I never even thought of that. Yeah, you're right. I didn't.

And I think there's a very good reason for that. I think I didn't want to know. Guys, we're talking about a boyfriend and a husband, both dead in their early 30s, both by the same type of physical problems, as I recall, heart ailments. Guys, take a listen to our friend Sharon Martin. Lynn and Glenn had met in 1992. At the time, Lynn was a Cobb County 911 dispatcher, and Glenn was a county police officer. It started out as, let's just put it this way, it would be pleasant, a one-night stand. That may have been how it started,

but Glenn soon fell for Lynn. He proposed a year later. He rolled in that one evening, and he said, we're going to get married. I said, you lost your damn mind. The couple married on I said, you lost your damn mind. The couple married on August 21st, 1993. Unfortunately, as with Randy years later, constant bickering marred the relationship.

The arguments were mostly about money. Lynn unfortunately had what my parents used to refer to as champagne taste on a beer budget. Lynn worked more than one job. Lynn worked more than one job. Lynn worked more than one job. Lynn was also gone a lot, and she began making frequent trips back to her hometown 30 miles away, incoming Georgia. So we hear how the two met. It started off very casually, but it turned into something very, very different. Ray Caputo, what happened then? Well, they get married, Nancy, and problems start really quickly. I mean, we're talking like within months. They're sleeping in different rooms. There's money problems.

You heard that sound clip, champagne taste on a beer budget. Well, she was overspending. And, you know, Glenn was a Cobb County PO. He wasn't making a ton of money. He had to take a second job just to work at a gas station just to make ends meet because every time he paid a bill down, all of a sudden the credit card bill would go right back up because Lynn was overspending. And that caused a ton of problems in their marriage. Hold on right there. Dr. Bethany Marshall, isn't it true that one of the main things married couples argue about is money? Money, sex, and power. Those are the three things. But it does sound to me like Lynn. Power, power. There's no argument in my home. Lucy,

my daughter, has all the power followed by the guinea pigs who seemingly run our life so what do you mean by money and power well it's like who's going to make the decisions who's in charge who gets their way um who sort of wears the pants in the family so to speak i that would be lucy lucy lucy and lucy my 12 year old daughter okay go ahead i'm trying to connect with what you're saying. It sounds to me like Lynn had sociopathic tendencies, as I said earlier, and we know that sociopaths are very parasitic. They glom onto a host and they suck the life out of them. And in this particular case, her poor husband is working two jobs one of which is at a gas station and she just kept keeps spending the money and spending the money so clearly she's using him she's not in love with him but she's kind of a mooch and she's using him and but i think she

also is getting kind of a high about being police world adjacent part of the excitement of that to ashley wilcott judge and trial lawyer and get this jackie really wants you to know this that lynn turner bought a dachshund 240z on the credit card how surprised do you think lynn turner was when he gets his credit card bill in the mailbox and bam husband would have my head. And bam, he's like, I thought I paid that off next month, and now it's like $20,000. There's a 240Z on there. My husband would have my head.

Not only that, I would have his, Nancy, for doing that. Those are the kinds of expenses you don't just incur. But let me say this. We all know the good and the bad, I would suggest, about those people we choose to marry. I do not think it was a surprise to him that he married somebody who was spending his money left and right. Uh-uh, uh-uh. No, I do not like a spendthrift. Absolutely not. The other day, Davey tried to get a new pair of shoes. I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no. We're going to get those resold again. Yes, we are. But you know what, Dr. Bethany Marshall, that shows you

the wide range of marriages because I was at an open street festival with a friend of mine that is actually a shrink. She's a psychologist. She was going to get a pair of as she called them chandelier earrings that was being sold and one of the i hate shopping but i was just walking along basically looking for food at the street festival she was shopping and she actually called her husband to ask to buy the earrings when she hung up i'm like you have to ask to buy a pair of earrings at a street festival they're 30 she goes well you know due to my spending we now check in with each other every time one of us can spend over 25 dollars i'm like 25 okay? $25? Okay. My answer to that would just be don't buy it.

If I have to call David to ask him, dear Lord in heaven. So that shows you the wide range of how finances are handled in marriages. Nancy, if I had to call my husband every time I spent $25, we'd be on the phone all day long. Well, you are a known clothes horse, Dr. Bethany. I've never seen you in the same dress or pair of earrings, and they all fit. Slim fit. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.

That they'd only had sex twice after they were married. He said that she had some kind of female problem and she wasn't able to have sex. Of course, we're all thinking to ourselves, well, I could name three or four other guys she's seeing that she's having sex with. Of course, I couldn't say anything to him. Glenn also told friends Lynn was spending money faster than he could earn it. He said, here I am working 365 days, working all these part-time jobs, sometimes two or three jobs a day. I've about got it paid off, and here she just rung them all back up again. I mean, she just had a stack of credit cards and just spent, spent, spent, spent.

While Lynn was married to Glenn, she met Randy Thompson, a fireman from a nearby town. Randy's family says Lynn lied about her marital status. Lynn had told us she had been married, but that she was divorced. OK. I've got to borrow a phrase, not my own. The writing is on the wall.

Guys, how did one woman end up with a dead boyfriend and a dead husband? Aside from claiming she has, quote, female problems and can't have sex with her husband for two years, apparently she's dating a lot of other guys. That was the problem. That's the problem right there. Guys, take a listen to our friends at Forensic Files. He was so sick, I could hear his voice shaking when he talked to me.

He just said he had an unbelievable stomach virus. He couldn't get rid of it. He was vomiting, couldn't stop vomiting. He had diarrhea. And he just basically said to me, man, I've never been this sick like this. He was also incoherent and hallucinating. His wife said he'd had a really bad night,

that in the middle of the night he had got up, began to hallucinate. He began to run around the house. He pulled out his weapon. He thought there was intruders outside, intruders trying to get inside the house. Glenn's wife coaxed him back into bed. The next morning, he appeared to be better. He called me that he was going to go to work the next day, and I thought that, you know, he was sounding good,

and I thought that he was going to be fine. But a few hours later, Glenn Turner died. To Dr. Chris Sperry joining us, what do you make of those symptoms? He's confused. He's sick. He's just feeling very, very bad. And, you know, on one level, it sounds like he's just got a bad case of the flu. They could be easily mistaken for that without any problem. Wait, you mean hallucinating? I've had the flu, I never hallucinated. Some people, if

your temperature gets high enough or you get a little dehydrated, you know, you'll hallucinate and it can be pretty bad. I mean, it's enough that the person ought to be taken to the hospital just for that

because it could mean that they're critically dehydrated, for instance, or their fever is very high. It should be checked out. But alone, that's not the first thing that doctors are going to think about. Well, if he went to the hospital, the first thing the doctors are going to think is going to be dehydration, something like that that's causing the illness. And they're not going to think about poisoning as the first diagnosis based upon his symptoms.

Dr. Sperry, do you remember what they first thought was Glenn Turner's cause of death? Oh, they thought he had the flu, had a heart attack because of having the flu. It was very vague. How does that happen? How do you have the flu and then have a heart attack? A flu-derived heart attack? Because I've never heard of that either. Well, you have to have bad heart disease to start with.

It's something that's making your heart more sensitive to severe stress. And it's... Actually, I can tell you, over almost 100,000 autopsies, I've never seen anybody have a heart attack because they had the flu, unless it was a 90-year-old man who'd already had multiple bypass procedures in his heart arteries, that already has really severe underlying problems. But, you know, normal hearts, that just is, you know, that's not going to be a problem. What about it, Cheryl McCollum?

Do you recall what they first thought regarding COD, cost of death on Glenn Turner? Right. They thought it was an irregular heartbeat brought on by probably dehydration. But Nancy, pre and post behavior matter here. And again, you want to start with what family and friends thought. His brother at their wedding, giving the best man toast,

said, and I quote, I feel like I'm more at a funeral than a wedding. Come on now. They knew. They knew before the vows were done that this was not going to work. They all were fearful that this was not a good fit, not a good, you know, couple. And I think when she makes a statement, he's running around, he goes into the basement, he's trying to drink gasoline. At that point, why would she,

as a 911 operator, not call 911 for help? She couldn't get him back up those basement steps if she tried. Nothing about this rings true. Yeah, Dr. Bethany, I was going to ask you a question. I recall for the longest, and actually I still do it to this very day, after case murder, I would very often, not meaning to, when I try to say wedding, I'd say funeral and vice versa, and still do it today. I guess I always connected it somehow because it's right before our wedding and it ended up turning into a funeral. But sometimes people say things they don't mean to say,

or they may say things in jest, but it reveals an underlying truth, or at least in their minds. What is that phenomenon, Dr. Bethany? Well, it sounds to me like her lack of love for him was transparent, that everybody thought but him. It's like he was the one person in the room that hadn't gotten the memo. And it sounds to me like the best man who was given the speech wanted to speak his truth. I mean, they were concerned about him. They were worried about him.

Not about her, I don't think, but they were worried about him. And Nancy, it sounds like when he was poisoned, he was in the middle of some kind of a psychotic episode or what we could call a delirium. We've used the word hallucinating. But if a part of the delirium or the psychotic episode was that he was waving a gun and thought that intruders were going to break into the house, why would she put him back in bed and spend the night with him? I mean, people who are that paranoid are very scary. He's waving a gun. What's the guarantee he's not going to shoot her and think she's the intruder? So somehow she had the upper hand in the situation, even though she claimed he was psychotic and paranoid. She knew what was going to happen to him. She knew she was

safe. She knew how this story was going to end. So it's hard to know what really happened in that household that night. So the next day he calls his mom and he says he's feeling better, he's going to go to work. But a few hours later, he dies. What happens after that? Listen to our friend Peter Thomas. Just a few weeks after Glenn's funeral, Lynn moved in with Randy Thompson. Although they had two children together, they were never legally married, probably

because Lynn would have had to forfeit Glenn Turner's pension. Believe it, that's why she didn't marry Randy. She'd have lost Glenn's pension by remarrying. So she didn't marry him. She's smart. She knew that money was out. It wasn't long before Randy Thompson told friends, just as Glen Turner had, that he was unhappy with Lynn.

It was almost comical the way they fought, cat and dog, just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And I asked them, why do you keep calling her? Why don't you even take the phone calls? Well, she's the mom of my kids and all of us. The mom of my children. So once again, she's landed right in the middle of an unhappy relationship. Ashley Wilcott, the fact that she moves in with another guy just weeks after her husband's funeral, that's concerning.

How often do you see that? Yeah, it is concerning. You often see that when it is a person who uses people for their own means. And so I would also suggest, you know, to all those people who are listening out there, be really cautious when you meet somebody who's ready to move in immediately after they've just buried the person they were with. This is a huge red flag that she is out for herself, no one else, and she might be a little cray-cray. You know, I'm just thinking back on that COD cause of death, Dr. Sperry. I guess because the wife said he had pneumonia or the flu, and they think he had a heart attack,

wouldn't you just naturally, wouldn't there be an autopsy when someone that young passes away well there was an autopsy and and uh what did not was was not figured out actually until i figured it out a few years later after randy thompson died the pathologist never looked at the tissue slides from the kidneys or any hold on let me make an out of that never looked at the tissue slides from the kidneys. Hold on. Let me make a note of that. Never looked at tissue slides. Well, you know what? You just mentioned Randy Thompson. Take a listen to this, Dr. Sperry.

First, he fell off a fire truck in Cumming, Georgia, and broke his nose. When he had surgery to repair the damage, he developed a life-threatening staph infection. The doctors told him, this is a very, very serious situation. You can die from this very easily. Randy survived that, but his health problems continued. One of his friends found him sprawled on his kitchen floor, vomiting and incoherent.

He started hallucinating. He looked at me and said, get back in your damn cage. I looked at him and I said, get back in your damn cage. I looked at him and I said, what? Get in your cage. What are you talking about, Randy? I said, get in your cage. Then I realized he thought he was talking to his bird.

DENNIS FARINA. This was diagnosed as a severe stomach virus. But gradually, he improved, thanks to help from his common-law wife, Lynn. Every time I talked to him, he sounded stronger and stronger. And he said, Lynn made me grilled cheese with sweet tea. He said, I held it down, didn't throw it up. I said, well, good, Randy. I said, that's good.

So maybe you're on the uphill side of this. Two days later, his condition deteriorated, and Randy Thompson died. Hallucinations again. A sense that you're feeling better after your common-law wife gives you grilled cheese and sweet tea. Listen to Sharon Martin. Randy had spent much of the weekend in bed, tended by his girlfriend, Lynn Turner. Sunday afternoon, Lynn said she went by and carried him some food, some chicken soup.

And the following morning, his friends from the fire department had come by to check on him. He actually had a doctor's appointment that a friend of his was going to take him to. But there was no answer at the door. Nobody can get in. He's not answering the phone. Randy was home, however. Looking in the window, the firefighters could see their friends sprawled out on the sofa, but he didn't appear to be napping. Randy didn't respond at all to knocks, yells. My husband was a volunteer firefighter, so I turned on his pager and I could hear the two-way talk on the radio. So I knew that they were there. I knew something at that point was really wrong.

Worried for his friend, one of the firefighters quickly kicked in the door. But it was too late. Randy was already dead. So here you have boyfriend and husband both dead. To Ray Caputo, the fact that they were both having hallucinations just before their death, both seemed to feel better just before their death, then die, very, very coincidental. Ray Caputo was Glenn Turner, the husband, the first lover. Was his body exhumed? His body was eventually exhumed, Nancy, after all this started taking place and later things were learned.

But obviously nobody knew anything until they started putting the pieces together after the boyfriend, the second person that Lynn was involved with, died. To Ashley Wilcott, you know how hard it is to get a body exhumed. You have to jump through a lot of legal hoops. You absolutely do. And you have to file. You have to get a court order. And it is very tough to do. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. You may wonder what could be a potential motive to kill not one but two men.

Listen. Investigators made a startling discovery. Even though Randy Thompson had only $35,000 worth of life insurance, Lynn was in a big hurry to collect it. We were able to determine through cell phone records that on the day of Randy's funeral, between the time of the service in the church and the service that was held at the cemetery,

Lynn was on her cell phone trying to contact the insurance company. DENNIS FARINA. Maybe there was more to the death of these two men than first appeared. Glenn must have had something to do with some of this, because there is no way two young men, police officer and a firefighter, dying at a young age

without somebody doing something. But it took a medical examiner to bring it all to a head. Listen. Dr. Caponin learned what happened to Lynn Turner's first husband, Glenn, six years earlier. On a hunch, he reviewed Glenn Turner's autopsy report. I looked at all the tissues and polarized the lung and the kidney, as I do in all of my cases. And to my surprise, there were oxalate crystals in Glenn Turner's kidneys. So Dr. Kopponen went back to the toxicology lab

and asked them to recheck the test results on Randy Thompson's tissue samples. And the lab discovered they'd made a mathematical error. I immediately realized that I had made an error in calculating the original concentration of ethylene glycol in Randy Thompson's blood, and in fact, it was off by a factor of ten. When we made the appropriate correction for the mathematical error that I'd made, suddenly became a lethal level of ethylene glycol. Well, with me, the former chief medical examiner for the whole state of Georgia, Dr. Chris Sperry, and what you said earlier about the lab results,

you're right, they were not checked carefully. What happened, Dr. Sperry? Well, Dr. Capone, when he had done the autopsy on Randy Thompson, he found these crystals in the kidneys that were very mysterious, and he brought those to me to look at, and I was suspicious as well. And that's when I called up the Cobb County Medical Examiner's Office and asked for the tissue slides that they had made after Glenn Turner's death and a few days later I got the slides and

that was when I figured out that the slides had never been reviewed and ever been looked at because they were still glued in their little spaces in the the cardboard container that we store slides in. They were made but never looked at. So we looked at the slides, Dr. Capone and I, and sure enough, the crystals were in the kidneys of Glenn Turner, and that put two and two together. Okay.

As I have told you many, many times in your former office at the medical examiner's headquarters, would you please repeat that in regular people talk? Everything you just said. Sure. Would you just say that again and slow it down for trial lawyers like myself to understand? Go ahead. Oh, sure. Well sure well dr capone uh one of my colleagues had brought me the tissue slides from randy thompson and we found crystals little shiny crystals that glow like christmas trees in the kidneys uh from randy thompson's autopsy but there's only a few things that these crystals could come from. One of those things that's pretty high on the list is antifreeze. The chemical name is ethylene glycol.

But if someone drinks antifreeze, the body will try to metabolize the antifreeze and it ends up as crystals deposited in the kidneys, which actually will make the kidneys shut down. So looking at that, and we had no reason to, you know, Glenn Turner, excuse me, Randy Thompson did not have any diseases or medical conditions that would cause him to form these types of crystals. I then actually myself called the Cobb County Medical Examiner's Office and asked for tissue slides from Glenn Turner's autopsy.

I got them. They were sent to me in a couple of days in a cardboard container that we store slides in. These tissue slides we make from autopsy tissues. And lo and behold, the slides had never been removed from that cardboard container because they will sometimes get little dabs of glue that we use in making the slides that will make them stick to the cardboard container. And all of them were stuck down. They had never been looked at.

So Dr. Capone and I put them under the microscope. Lo and behold, we found the same type of crystals that we had seen in Randy Thompson's kidney slides. We found the same types of crystals in Glenn Turner's. And with both of those together, the only thing that would cause crystals in the kidneys of two otherwise healthy men would be antifreeze poisoning. Dr. Sperry, I'm just curious. When you order them, based on what you're learning, you go, hey, I want to see those slides. You order them, and you put the slide. You see they've never been taken out of the container because they're still kind of glued in. You take them out.

You put them, I guess, under a microscope. Right. And you see these, as you say, crystals. What does that look like for the rest of us? How can we compare that? It looks like looking at a bunch of stars on a dark night, looking up and seeing all the stars. Stars. You're cutting out on me, but stars. Okay, your findings suddenly lead to an investigation,

and we learned that Lynn Turner had gone to an animal shelter and tried to purchase a chemical used to kill cats. Some people believe that she wanted to kill boyfriend Randy Thompson. In the end, she's taken a trial. That's when I staked her out in a parking lot. And she is found guilty on a double murder. But that is not the end of the story. Lynn Turner goes to jail, but to you, Dr. Chris Berry, how does the story ultimately end? A few years after she was imprisoned, we got a call one morning that

she had been found dead in her cell. And so that, you know, gets her an automatic autopsy. And I did the autopsy myself. And what I found was that she had saved up, she had high blood pressure. And instead of taking her high blood pressure pills every day, she saved them up surreptitiously. And once she had, we figure, about 40 to 50 of the high blood pressure medicine pills, she took all of them all at one time and killed herself. What would that do to you, taking that many high blood pressure pills? That particular pill, what it would do, her heart would gradually slow down because that particular pill affects the way the heart beats, and it will slow the heart down normally. And in toxic doses, it will just cause the heart to ultimately slow down and stop on its own. Dr. Sperry, as I recall, she fed Randy Thompson antifreeze,

sweet-tasting and sweet tea, and fed Glenn Turner antifreeze and jello. Remember that? Yes. Oh, yes. The end of the story, questions answered, but the memory of these two men still burn in the minds of their families.

Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.