Every Town - Her Own Sister Revealed The Shocking Truth About Alissa Turney’s Disappearance

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

Sibling rivalries are a normal experience. Typically they happen when you're younger and eventually you grow out of them (hopefully) and the bond that forms after is something that is unbreakable. Alissa Turney was a girl who didn’t always see eye to eye with her younger sister Sarah when they were kids, but ultimately, a few decades later, and Sarah would do anything possible to bring justice in this strange and disturbing case. 💥 Watch On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/scarymysteries🎧 Our Other Podcast: https://scarymysteries.buzzsprout.com💥 Exclusive Podcasts: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1235579/subscribe 💀 Follow Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scarymysteries 💀 Follow Our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrew.fitzg👁 Follow Our TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewfitzgerald💥 Follow Our Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scarymysteriesofficial🗣 Business Inquiries: [e-mail] Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Every town has a dark side. sibling rivalries are a normal experience. Typically they happen when you're younger and eventually you grow out of them, hopefully. The bond that forms after is something that is unbreakable. This attorney was a girl who didn't always see eye to eye with her younger sister Sarah when they were kids, but ultimately a few decades later. Sarah would do anything possible to bring justice in this strange and disturbing case. I'm Andrew and welcome to another episode of every day.

town guys. In this case today is interesting and has a lot of moving parts you can check out online after we're through. So for today, we're looking at the tragic incident that happened at the Turney family on May 17th of 2001 when 17-year-old Alyssa ran away. But the question on everyone's mind is, is that what actually happened? Let's head over to Phoenix, Arizona, and find out the shocking truth about Alyssa Turney's disappearance. Alyssa was born on April 3rd of 1984 in Arizona to Barbara and Stephen Strom, and from the start, her life could best be described as living in a blended family. Alyssa had a half-brother named John from Barbara's previous relationship.

When the Strom couple separated, when Alyssa was only three, her mom moved on to marry Michael Turney, a former sheriff's deputy and electrician. Michael himself had three sons from his first marriage, and later he would go on to adopt Alyssa and John. Together, Michael and Barbara welcomed their own daughter, Sarah, on October 18th of 1988, and so the tourney brood was comprised of six siblings, but it was Alyssa who became closest to Sarah, who was only four years younger than her. Barbara was diagnosed with cancer in 1993, and the family suffered their first major tragedy when the following year she passed away due to the disease.

Alyssa was nine years old at the time. While her brothers were at different stages in their lives, some of them went on to live with their relatives in California, leaving Father Michael on his own to raise his two daughters. As Alyssa and Sarah were growing up, Mike seemed to treat the two girls differently. One was his flesh in blood and the other was adopted, and he made that clear.

He established two completely different relationship dynamics mixed with each daughter, essentially acting as an authoritative figure to Alyssa while making Sarah feel like they were friends and that she was loved. Over time, Mike's relationship with Alyssa drove a wedge between the two, especially when the teenage girl became more interested in her social life rather than focusing on schoolwork. Mike was discouraging and would tell people that his daughter was slow and had ADHD, even though she had never been diagnosed. Sarah got used to witnessing the squabbles between her sister and father. It became the sort of norm in the household. But one day, it appeared as if Alyssa just couldn't take it anymore, or Elyze decided she didn't

want to live that life. It was one afternoon when Sarah came home with her dad, she found her sister's bedroom in complete disarray. Among the strown-about items was a note explaining that Alyssa had run away. And this was just the start of a mystery that began to unfold over the next couple decades. So let's take a closer look at what exactly transpired back on May 17th of 2001. The day Alyssa disappeared. It was Alyssa's official last day of her junior year at Paradise Valley High School. She was excited to start the summer and had plans to attend a graduation party later that evening. The Maricopa County Attorney's Office later explained, though, that on that day, Alyssa poked her head into her boyfriend's woodworking class and said her stepfather was taking her out of school early.

And in Mike's version of the story, he did in fact pick his daughter up at around 11 a.m. from school and after that, they had lunch together to celebrate. However, as was unfortunately the norm, they ended up getting into a heated argument about Alyssa wanting more freedom. But her stepdad asserted that as long as she lived under his roof, she needed to follow his rules until she turned 18. returned home after lunch, he said Alyssa was still angry and went straight to her room. Mr. Turney then left the house at around 1 p.m. to run some errands and pick up Sarah. When they returned home, Alyssa was gone. The note had been left behind in her unusually messy bedroom, saying she was running away to California, and further said,

Dad and Sarah, when you dropped me off at school today, I decided I really am going to California. Sarah, you said you really wanted me gone. now you have it. Dad, I took $300 from you, and that's why I saved my money. Now for context, you have to understand that the rules of the house that Michael had laid out for Alyssa were far beyond basic. It would be suffocating for any teen trying to figure out their place in the world. For instance, he drew up contracts for Alyssa to sign in exchange for being able to go out and be social. These contracts broadly stated that she wouldn't engage in drug or alcohol use or any sexual. activity. The stringent stepfather also set up an extensive surveillance system throughout the family

home. And so Alyssa had to live with the fact that she was almost constantly being filmed by Mike whenever at the house. Even the calls into and out of the home were recorded. And sometimes, pretty weirdly, Mike would sit outside Alyssa's part-time job at the jack in the box and film her while she was on duty. Now, he insisted that all this was for the girl's safety, not to keep tabs on them. But it was certainly a bit creepy that Michael seemed obsessed over Alyssa in this way, even more so because she wasn't actually his biological daughter. So why exactly the excessive protectiveness of Alyssa? At 12 years old in 2001, Sarah didn't think much about Alyssa's note about leaving for California.

And she said, I wasn't worried. I was under the impression Alyssa was going to be back. I don't think her being gone forever was anything that ever crossed my mind. mind. Sarah acknowledged that California was a beautiful dream that her sister had always had. When the police investigated her departure, they determined there was no foul play involved and believed it was a case of a teenage runaway. Alyssa's stepbrother John, who knew that Alyssa was afraid of Michael, likewise accepted that she likely fled the house after a fight

with him. Alyssa's other brother James told the media, I told her she could come stay with me, and then when I found out she was missing, we went hundred. percent believe she had run away. She got away from Michael, and that's what she wanted. James found it odd that his sister never came to him nor his aunt's house in California. She had so many options of places to go, but instead, she just vanished. No warnings, no premonitions. She just went missing, and police hadn't gathered leads for years before the case gained

interest again several years later. From the jump, family members and friends of Alyssa did. disagree that there was no foul play involved. Well, for seven years, no one asked any real questions, as it was considered by police to be an open-and-shuck case of a girl who would run away. When a murderer named Thomas Heimer confessed to killing Alyssa in 2006, the police were forced to re-examine her disappearance. Ultimately, Thomas' description of Alyssa was off, and his story proved to be untrue,

but the case had been looked into further, and that's when police recognized that many of the circumstances surrounding Alyssa's disappearance were uncharacteristic of her being a runaway. For one, she left behind her phone and all her personal effects. She also hadn't told anyone she was leaving, even her closest friends or boyfriend. Despite Mike's insistence that Alyssa was troubled, by all account she was a normal teenage girl, and so for her to just up and vanish seemed strange, added to the fact that five years after her trip to California had passed, and still no one had seen or heard from her. In 2008, the Phoenix Police Department's Missing Persons Unit opened Alyssa's case, and according to Sergeant Maggie Cox,

realized that foul play was likely a factor in her disappearance. Investigators then interviewed 200 people who had known her, and it didn't take long for some alarming details about Michael to be exposed. Alyssa's friends told police that Michael had tried to sexually abuse Alyssa. Her boyfriend friend revealed that Michael had tried fooling around with her. The most disgusting of all, Alyssa told her friends that she'd once woken up tied to a chair, gagged with Michael on top of her. Alyssa even confided to a teacher who had dated her father about this when she was younger, but those cries fell on deaf ears. Her friends didn't want to cause trouble, and adults were given reason to doubt her. These new allegations of sexual abuse by Michael, though, prompted

investigators to focus in on him with Sergeant Cox stating the totality of circumstances known to police put the focus on Michael Turney as the suspect. But Mike refused to personally cooperate with the cops or undergo any sort of polygraph test. He would only speak to them by phone, email, or by facts. In Sarah's recollection, she was asked by the police to come to their headquarters in December of 2008

when she was told by a detective, We think your father did it. Your house is being raided. Also, your father probably molested your sister. It was known that in 2000, a year prior to Alyssa's disappearance, Mike called the child protective services in a sort of preemptive strike, where he informed them that if ever, Alyssa filed a child molestation complaint against them, she was lying.

The mounting evidence was enough for the police to execute a search warrant on the attorney family home, and so on December 11th of 2008, the authorities entered the house. This raid uncovered surveillance footage that Michael had collected of Alyssa using home cameras and contracts, quote-unquote, signed by Alyssa, saying Michael had never molested her. But the golden ticket they were looking for, surveillance from the day she disappeared, was surprisingly nowhere to be found. For a man is diligent and watching over his girls every move. It was certainly strange there was no way.

coverage for that day. Arguably, though, what they did find inside the attorney's home was even more incriminating. Uncovered with 30 improvised explosive devices, 19 high-calibre assault rifles, two handmade silencers, and a van filled with gasoline cans, and 26 handmade explosives filled with gunpowder and roofing nails. It was the single largest stockpile of explosives discovered in the Phoenix Police Department's history. During the search, authorities also discovered a 98-page manifesto titled Diary of a Madman Martyr. The documents stated that Michael, who used to work as an electrician in the 80s,

and complained about workplace conditions, accused the international brotherhood of electrical workers of being involved in the alleged kidnapping and murder of Alyssa. The writings continue to state that Mike had killed two people he thought were in charge of killing his stepdaughter. He also planned to blow up the Union Hall in revenge on December 15th and then kill himself in the process. However, ultimately, he claimed later on police framed him for all this

and planted the evidence in his house. Subsequently, though, Michael was arrested afterwards Sarah was briefed about everything the police had found. His grief engulfed her, she talked to family members, most of whom told her that they suspected Michael was the one responsible for her sister's untowulfed. timely disappearance. In 2010, Mike pleaded guilty of possessing 26 unregistered pipe bombs was sentenced to the maximum term of 10 years in federal prison, but really this had nothing to do with Alyssa's case. Sarah was told that after he served his sentence, he would be arrested for

Alyssa's murder, but that wasn't the case, because as Mike's release date in 2017 came closer, Sarah was then informed that Mike couldn't be charged because Alyssa's body had never been recovered and they had no confession. So, hoping to get the truth straight from her father's mouth herself, the determined younger sister met with her dad to try to obtain a recorded confession. She met and tried to work Mike into saying something incriminating. And she came close, but not close enough, when he said that he would tell her the grim truth on his deathbed. Or if the state agreed to execute him by law,

lethal injection within 10 days of his confession. So he was essentially confessing to doing something terrible, but this wasn't actually enough to hold up in court. It left Sarah more disappointed and frustrated, and that's when someone suggested that using social media could help her get more media attention if it picked up steam, which would then in turn force authorities to no longer ignore the facts. Sarah worked endlessly to get the word out, creating Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts all dedicated to finding clues as to Alyssa's whereabouts. She did interviews, got connected with well-known true crime podcasters, attended crime con, and also created her own podcast in 2019 called Voices for Justice. It gives an intimate look into the sister's family

history, events leading to the disappearance of Alyssa, and a timeline of what had happened since then. Through her podcast, Sarah was also able to relieve some of her pain. as she discussed the details of Alyssa's case and misconceptions about Mike she thought she knew. In May of 2020, she started uploading videos to TikTok that focused on Alyssa's case. In one home video from 1997 that Sarah posted on TikTok in the summer of 2020, Alyssa can be heard saying, Sarah, dad's a pervert. In another video, Sarah secretly recorded her father and asked him point blank about Alyssa's

disappearance. Michael Turney told her in the clip, Be there at my deathbed, Sarah, and I'll give you all the honest answers you want to hear. Sarah replied, why don't you give them to me now? Michael said, because you've got them now. Not long after this, Sarah excitedly expressed. Believe it or not, TikTok has become an important outlet for Alyssa's story. I've received more interest in this case from that app in the past month than in the past 10 years. She vat to continue her social media crusade for her sister and to date has over one million followers on TikTok alone. So this motivated her to continue her fight for Alyssa, who taught her how to be tough.

She believed that her sister deserved justice and she was determined to give her that. And that day soon came when in February of 2019 Alyssa's case was submitted. to the county attorney's office, requesting homicide charges be made against Mike Turney. It takes some more time, but justice was finally within reach. On August 19th, Maricopa County Attorney, Alistair Adele, announced that Michael Roy Turney, already 72 years old, had been arrested and Mesa in charge with second-degree murder in the death of Alyssa. She credited Sarah's endless commitment to Alyssa with getting the case to where it currently is.

Attorney Adele said, Sarah Turney, your perseverance and commitment to finding justice for your sister Alyssa's a testament to the love of a sister. Because of that love, Alyssa's light has never gone out and she lives on in the stories and photos you've shared with the community. This passion you have demonstrated to her during your journey is something that will keep Alyssa's memory alive forever. So that's going to do it for this week's episode of EveryTen

guys, hope you enjoyed it. Remember if you want to watch this in video form, complete with visuals, go check out our YouTube channel called Scary Mysteries. Remember to come back next week for another episode filled with scary, strange, and mysterious stories. Because who knows? Maybe your town will be next.