Going West: True Crime - Alissa Turney // 8

Episode Date: January 25, 2019

Plenty of people have gone missing in the desert. But was this Arizona teen just another runaway, or did her stepfather's obsessive control finally seal her fate? This is the disappearance of 17-year-old Alissa Turney. **GOING WEST DOES NOT OWN ANY OF THE NEWS CLIPS PRESENTED** 20/20 on ID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-fyrdJtrIY  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, what's going on through crime fans? I'm your host Heath, and I'm your other host, Daphne, and you're listening to Going West. Today's episode we cover a very special case, and we actually have an interview at the end of the episode that you guys are really going to want to hear. But before we get into this case, I wanted to give a big shout out to De and John and Eugene. Thanks for listening. Also a huge shout out to Beatrice. That's literally my mom. She's our number one fan. Yeah, she's so proud. So very proud. Anyways y'all, let's get into this case. He said he and his stepdaughter, Alyssa, have been arguing the day she went missing. At first, it seemed like a typical fight between a teen and a parent and the she had run away.

Days and weeks of anxious waiting turned into years without a word. She wouldn't have taken that risk. She would have taken all her hard earned money out and called us a day, but that didn't happen because she didn't run away. Yeah, yeah, it's a pervert. Sir, give me the camera now. Some of Alice's friends say that she came to them in tears

and you were on top of her, gagging her. Another time she woke up, she was handcuffed to the bed. Are those things true? Absolutely not. Did you ever do anything sexual with your stepfather? No. Why would I do that? They have no proof whatsoever. They have nothing other than rumors and news. If they have no proof, that doesn't mean you. You didn I do that? They have no proof whatsoever. They have no proof. That doesn't mean you didn't do it.

There's only two people that can confirm whether I did it and didn't want us to. Me and here, there's a Lissa. This was not here and I'm sitting here. And all I can say until hell freezes over, I didn't do a damn thing to my daughter. Did you kill her? No.

Absolutely not. No, absolutely not. Alyssa Marie Turnie was born on April 3, 1984 in Phoenix, Arizona. She was last seen on May 17, 2001 at her home in the vicinity of Belroad and 34th Street in Phoenix. When she was just three years old, her mother, Barbara married a man named Mike Turnie, who had four children of his own. Barbara had two children herself and the whole family joined together. Now, Alissa's biological father wasn't at all a part of her life, so Mike basically became her father. Yeah, it's also important to note that in the family they didn't consider, you know, like step siblings or step parents. They were just their sisters and their brothers and their dad, you know, like step siblings or step parent, they were just their

sisters and their brothers and their dad, you know what I mean? Yeah, that was something that Mike mentioned that wasn't allowed in the household. Basically, they weren't allowed to use the word step. So no step sister, no step father, that word just wasn't allowed. Barbara and Mike had a daughter, Sarah, when Alissa was around the age of seven. Then when Alyssa was nine years old, their mother passed away due to cancer and from then on, her stepfather Mike raised the children by himself.

When Alyssa was 17, she was living at home with her stepfather Mike and her half sister, Sarah. All her brothers had moved out of the house by this time, leaving just the three of them there. She was like any regular teenager, always hanging out with friends. She was just the three of them there. She was like any regular teenager, always hanging out with friends. She was definitely the life of the party. Her friends and her sister Sarah remember her as making any situation fun and always making others laugh.

Mike was extremely strict when it came to Alissa. However, with her sister Sarah, he was the cool dad. Sarah never really had any rules or restrictions. Mike would buy her beer when she got a little bit older. Let her do pretty much whatever she wanted, encourage her to skip school, stuff like that. And around 2005, when she was about 17, Mike even let her boyfriend move in with her. But this is stuff that he would never allow. Alyssa to do. Yeah, I think Sarah even mentioned that her father would come into her room in the morning

and be like, hey, do you want to go to school today? A lot of the time, Sarah would say no. And so he would just let her stay home. And she actually mentioned that she would go to school like two to three times a week at best. Mike monitored Alyssa's every move pretty much. He always had to make sure that she was doing well in school and attending class and that she was going to work.

He would even sometimes drive to her job at Jack in the box and watch her from outside just to make sure that she was there. He cared about who she hung out with, what she did, and was extremely critical and selective about the activity she did, often telling her that he didn't want her smoking weed or drinking Yeah, I know like when I was growing up, you know obviously my parents like monitored my actions as well They wanted to know if I was in school or if I was like skipping class which a lot of time I was But in this certain situation, I mean he's sitting outside of her work like watching her making sure that she's at work. That's a little bit strange Yeah, I think as a parent it definitely makes sense to make sure your children are on the right path for sure

It was just weird that he did this with Alyssa, but not any of his other children and that he went to that Extra extreme with it His excuse for being so overprotective with Alyssa was that she was reckless and easily influenced whereas Sarah wasn't. The thing is though Alissa was responsible. She never missed a shift at work. She had a steady boyfriend. She would get into fights with her sister as sisters do. She hung out with her friends a lot and listened to alternative and rap music. Some of her favorites being Marilyn Manson and M&M. She also had a sweet side where she loved cute things like gel pins and kids stationary

and hello kitty shirts, which was as most of you know a very 90s and early 2000s kind of thing. So she was just kind of a normal teenager. So Mike thought that Alyssa had ADHD and because of this he thought it would be a good idea to put her in special education classes despite the fact that she was a fine student and had gotten good report cards. Yeah and I guess Mike had actually tried to sue this school because the school didn't think that Alyssa had any learning disabilities and it was believed that Mike did this because he kind of wanted to keep control over Alyssa, and he knew that if she had to ride like the short bus that she would be extremely embarrassed and that her friends wouldn't want to talk to her anymore. Alyssa wanted to move to California. It was a dream of hers to get out of Phoenix and to have

a change of pace and scenery. Her aunt happened to live in California and Alyssa had openly been hoping to stay with her and seemingly start a new, which is something a lot of people wish for. However, she didn't have a set plan with her aunt, it was just a goal of hers to move there whenever she could. In her junior year of high school, just one year from graduation, she even considered dropping out and leaving to California. There was something in Arizona that made her want to get out as soon as possible. On May 17, 2001, it was Alyssa's last day of her junior year at Paradise Valley High

School in Phoenix. When the final bell rang at school, her sister Sarah, who was around 13 at the time, waited patiently outside for her dad to pick her up. So apparently he often forgot to pick her up from school. This wasn't abnormal to her. So her and her friend began walking to her friend's house as they would often do in this kind of situation and she thought nothing of it.

All accounts at this point are from Mike and no one else. Mike Turnie later stated that he took a list out of school early around 10, 30, or 1130 or 11am and they went out to lunch. It's unclear why he shortened her school day when she had already had a short day at school. He just took her out of school even earlier than she would have been released. They picked up lunch to go and took it home, then having a discussion about how Alyssa was going to spend her summer break. Apparently, he wasn't too happy with her answers. He said that, quote, she wanted more privileges. Alyssa then stormed angrily into her room.

At around 1 p.m., Mike left to pick up a camera lens, run errands, and pick up Sarah. He apparently tried to call Alyssa while he was gone, but she didn't answer the phone. Once Mike had picked up Sarah around 5 p.m, he told her that Alyssa hadn't been answering the phone and asked Sarah to try calling her. Alyssa didn't answer those calls either. So it's also important to note that from the time that Mike picked up Alyssa from school to the time he ran errands and picked up Sarah, it was about 6 hours that's unaccounted for.

So all we really have is his word. When Mike and Sarah returned to the house at 5 p.m., Alissa was gone. Her backpack had been dumped across her room and her cell phone lay on the dresser next to a note. And not notes said, Dad and Sarah, when you dropped me off at school today, I decided that I really am going to California. Sarah, you said you didn't want me around. Look, you got it. I'm gone. That's why I saved my money. Dad, I took $300 from you. Signed Alyssa. There's actually a lot of speculation surrounding this letter.

So I guess Alyssa would usually sign her name with a big lowercase a But in this letter she actually signed it with a capital a So a lot of people think that it was probably a forced letter and we'll kind of get into that and why we don't think that she actually ran away Like she said in the letter now Sarah didn't really think much of this letter right off the bat She assumed Alyssa was off with her friends and that she'd run away but would come back. However, Mike was extremely concerned. He was desperate to find her, immediately reporting her missing, printing flyers and putting

them all across town, asking everyone in the area if they had seen her, and even obtaining phone records for that day. He then started taking trips to California, apparently doing the same thing, asking people if they'd seen her and passing out flyers. Michael was definitely changed after Alyssa's disappearance. He was in bed a lot more often, and he was just a lot less motivated in general

to do anything other than find her. He would sometimes spend up to a week in California and would go incredibly frequently. Sarah went with him a couple times to help on his search as well. According to Mike, seven days after a listen went missing, he received a phone call from her. The call woke him up at 5 a.m. and Alissa was seemingly still incredibly upset about their conversation a week earlier. Just 29 seconds into the call, she told him to leave her alone and then hang up. Extremely distraught, Mike jumped into his car to search all nearby payphones, thinking that she

was somewhere in the area. The police later traced the call to a payphone in Riverside, California. The case goes cold. No one hears from or finds Alyssa Termi. There are no leads of where she could be. She never went to her aunt's house in California, like she'd been planning for so long. She was so determined to leave that she even saved up $1,800 to make the trip, but that money was never touched. She didn't take her cell phone, clothes, makeup, house keys, or any of her belongings.

So how could you be a runaway like her family and law enforcement think? And I think the one thing that stands out so much to me, it's not so much her leaving her clothes and her makeup, but more so that she left $1,800 and that that bank account was never touched, you would think that she would have withdrawn the money before she actually left. Well, that's one of the biggest reasons that I don't believe that she's a runaway, other than the other things that we're gonna bring up

Because she would have had to use money and even though she did say that she took $300 from Mike It doesn't make any sense that she would leave that $1800 untouched If you're going into the next state and you're gonna start a new life $300 is not enough. Yeah, especially because you know, she had been gone for a week before Mike had gotten that phone call from her. You would think that she would have, you know, exhausted that $300 within a week easily. Alyssa was very close with her siblings, friends, and steady boyfriend, but she never mentioned any plans of running away and none of them ever heard from her after she was reported

missing. Although she had plans eventually to go to California, these circumstances do not line up with those of a runaway case. As her sister Sarah says, quote, because she didn't run away. In 2006, so roughly five years after a list's disappearance, a Florida man named Thomas Hymer, a self-proclaimed serial killer, confessed to the murder of Alyssa Turni. After already being granted life in prison, Tom said he had killed 21 women across the United States. He identified Alyssa in a photo lineup showed to him by law enforcement as one of his victims. Will Anderson and Stuart Summershoe, two Phoenix detectives, were then assigned to a list's case. So the good news is that at this point, she's no longer being treated as a runaway, but

now a victim of foul play. Obviously, it's not good news that she's not a runaway and didn't willingly go on her own, but at least now, the police are treating her that way because we pretty much know that's what happened to her. Yeah, and now investigators can start to take Alyssa's case more seriously. Well, that's the issue. It's for the first few years of this case, police just thought that she was a runaway,

so they kind of just pushed it to the side and didn't really care, which was a huge problem, because then that initial evidence is gone. Yeah, and we've actually mentioned this kind of happening with other cases in a few of our earlier episodes that when police determine somebody a runaway, it's very easy for them to kind of push it to the side and not really take it that seriously. And that happened, you know, a lot

throughout the 70s and 80s. Police just chalked it up to a runaway instead of, you know, a serious disappearance. Thomas Heimer's story went like this. He was traveling across the United States in May 2001 and stopped at a biker bar in Phoenix, Arizona, where he found a van in the parking lot. He ended up punching and knocking out the owner of the vehicle and stealing his van. Inside the van, he found Alyssa, who was strung out on heroin. Even though he had abducted her, they started a relationship. Apparently, the two ended up in Georgia, where he killed her during sex. He also mentioned

that Alyssa, like himself, was very interested in unusual and kinky sex. Tom then chopped up her body and disposed of it in a recycling plant. However, his story really didn't line up at all. Although Tom's confession was very detailed, it really lacked hard evidence. He claimed she was a heroin addict, but none of her family or friends agreed with this. They stated she was never the type of person to have done hard drugs, especially heroin. She just was not a type of person. Besides, it's incredibly difficult to hide a heroin addiction from every single person that you know, so this was very suspicious on his part. Detective also questioned Alyssa's boyfriend John about her sexual preferences since Tom had made such a matter of fact statement

about her interest. John said absolutely not. She again wasn't that type of person. John and Alyssa's sex was very normal and I think out of anyone he would be the one to know that. After police continued to dig into this confession, they realized that nothing Thomas said had checked out. Thomas was eventually given a polygraph which he failed miserably. Apparently, Tom had just clipped a list's photograph from an advertisement in USA today that talked about the details of her disappearance, so his confession was completely fabricated, which he admitted. Interestingly enough, Tom had also claimed

to have killed JC Dewgard, who most of you have probably heard of. For those of you who haven't, JC Dewgard was kidnapped and held hostage from the age of 11 in 1991 until the age of 29 in 2009. So as time shows, Tom was in fact not her captor and he didn't kill her like he said he did because we know it was Philip Gerido who held her hostage and she's still alive today. So Tom is clearly

lied about a lot. During the detective search into Alyssa's case in 2008, they began discovering troubling things about her home life. The focus really began to change from her being run away to someone purposefully making her disappear. The story of her running away willfully started to fall apart because none of the facts really supported it at all. Considering years had passed since her disappearance, detectives basically had to start from scratch, but unfortunately most of the evidence that could have initially been collected was gone. Anderson and Summershoe obtained a search warrant for Mike Turnie's house, although he had since moved to a house across the street,

so they actually obtained warrants for both his old house, where Alyssa disappeared from and his new house. Police were looking for any kind of evidence that could help them figure out where Alyssa went, but what they found was much more than they expected. In Mike's house, there were 19 high-calibre assault rifles, 26 homemade pipe bombs, two silencers, three explosive devices, and numerous other weapons. It was the largest stockpile of explosives discovered in Phoenix Police Department history. To safely and securely remove each bomb, more than 100 neighbors were temporarily evacuated from their homes, and Mike was taken into custody.

At the time, Mike was carrying two handguns, a recording device, seven magazines of ammunition and a knife when he was arrested. And it's important to note that Mike was actually just going out to his mailbox to check his mail and he was completely strapped to the teeth. And investigators or police decided not to enter his house and arrest him, so I'm kind of curious what would have happened if they actually went into his house. I mean, would Mike have gone out guns blazing or what would have happened in that situation? That was such a crazy thing to learn. Like, why did he have so many weapons on his person when he was just hanging out at the house and going to

check the mail? Like, did he always carry this many weapons on him? And if so, why? Yeah, I don't know anybody that would have that many weapons on them at one time. I mean, you're not fucking Rambo. You don't need, you know, a bunch of knives and guns on your person at all times, unless you're an extremely paranoid person. Apparently Mike had been planning on causing some sort of terrorist attack on the international brotherhood of electrical workers who he claimed wronged him in the 70s. He even wrote a 98-page manifesto titled, Diary of a Madman Martyr, which detailed his plan of attack. His reasoning for wanting to kill these men

was that apparently two of those men in the Union were responsible for killing Alyssa and that he had already killed those two men himself. Michael stated that Alyssa was buried in Desert Center, California. When investigators checked the story out, apparently those two men had died before Alyssa went missing.

One died of cancer and the other killed himself. Now in his manifesto, he also stated that he needed to kill at least a hundred of those union workers. His plan was to fill up his van with flammable and explosive material, set a rock on the gas pedal, and let the van self drive through the gates of the union and explode on impact. He then planned to use high-powered rifles to shoot through the doors and kill anyone else who was inside. Mike Turnie was then arrested for unlawful possession of unregistered destructive devices

and he pleads guilty during his trial on April 2010. So because this was a felony charge, he was sentenced to 10 years in a federal prison, which was the maximum sentence for this crime. He was released in March 2017 and now resides in Phoenix, Arizona once again. Along with all the explosives, detectives discovered a snuff film in Mike's house. The video included a naked woman tied to a chair being brutally murdered, and the murder portion of the film was looped on repeat. So back in 2008, when this occurred, and as detectives began interviewing more people, they were

alarmed by what they found. Many of Alyssa's friends and even her boyfriend stated that Mike tourney kept surveillance in the house and recorded all calls going in and out. Mike kept all of their recordings and surveillance tapes, often even spying on Alyssa and her boyfriend while they were in the house. And by the way, there was actually a camera hidden in the heater vent pointed towards the couch. So when Alyssa was with her boyfriend and they were doing what boyfriends and girlfriends do on the couch, that was all being filmed.

Sarah had mentioned that she knew about the camera's outside of the house, but not the camera in the living room vent. She didn't find out about that for a while. So Mike had of course claimed that he had this for security reasons, which does make sense, but his other actions following were extremely shady. Exactly, and at one point, Michael even told Alissa's boyfriend, John, that she was cheating on him so that they would break up.

Because of this, Alissa and John got into a huge argument, which was all recorded on home surveillance. It's thought that Michael was jealous of their relationship and didn't want her dating anyone. However, John and Alyssa stayed together. Most disturbingly, detectives received information that Alyssa had been sexually abused by Mike since childhood. Apparently, when Alyssa was nine years old,

she admitted to her teacher that she had had sex. Her teacher thought she meant kissing, but then Alyssa said that she had sex with her stepdad. Apparently about 25 people, both friends and family, had come forward saying that Alyssa had told them about Mike sexually abusing her. She even told some of them that he gagged and handcuffed her. By now, if you couldn't figure out what type of person Mike was, well now you know. The year before her disappearance, Mike Turnie had called Child Protective Services, stating that if Alyssa had ever called, filing a child molestation and complaining against him, that she was lying.

Later in an interview, Michael stated that if Alyssa had been sexually abused, she could have just called Child Protective Services, but she didn't because she wasn't abused. The interviewer then mentioned, well, you told them not to believe her anyway, so why would she? At some point Michael had a Lisa sign contract stating that she was never sexually abused by him. He said that he had taken psychology courses and learned that signing contracts with your children was a good parenting method. However, he didn't do that with any of his other children besides Alyssa. And why would you have your child sign a contract saying that you didn't sexually abuse them if you weren't guilty of sexually abusing them?

It's so sketchy. Alyssa's brother told an interviewer on Alyssa's episode of 2020 that Alyssa told him that one time Michael took her out to the desert and tried to fool around with her, but she pushed him away and didn't give in to his advances. Another disturbing find was that in the mid 90s, so before Alyssa went missing, Alyssa and Sarah's cousin came to stay at their house. He had just gotten off a work shift late one night and decided to watch a movie.

He popped in the doctor-do-little VHS that was in the Termi's living room and found something incredibly disturbing. Recorded over the movie was a home video of two young girls naked from the waist up, wearing newspapers over their faces, sitting on Michael's living room couch. Mike is believed to have been recording this video. It's also believed that the video was of Alyssa and her friend, but no friend has ever come forward admitting that she was in this video. In this cousin, how to apparently been staying with attorneys for about six months,

and after he had seen this video, he left pretty quickly, I think, within like a few days. So when police figured out that Michael had kept surveillance tapes, they wondered why he never turned them up when Alyssa initially went missing. When detectives asked for the tapes from May 17, 2001, Michael said that he had already reviewed them and that there was nothing of interest shown. Detective Anderson stated, quote, �Even if you think it shows nothing criminal, it shows me what she's wearing. It shows me how her hair was styled,

it shows her walking out of the home which would direct my attention somewhere other than that home. His opinion of nothing is different than my opinion of nothing, I want that tape." Now that they know Michael had recorded phone calls as well, they also asked him about the call that Alyssa apparently made from a Riverside California pay phone a week after her disappearance. Michael stated that he didn't think the call was important, which is why he never showed it to police and that he actually had recorded over that tape. And that is just so shocking to hear that these are two things that he didn't show the police initially and that he didn't think were important where a phone call and the video of her walking out of the house

is the only evidence that would have been available. So why would that not be important? Well we know that Mike had a background as being a sheriff's deputy. So if he did cover up those tapes or he disposed of them, it's pretty clever on his part if he was involved in this crime. Mike also refused to take a polygraph or sit down for an interview with police. He only communicated with them through facts, email, and phone. At this point Mike turnies a major suspect in Alyssa's case But with no body there is no crime. And again, Mike was a police officer in the 70s and 80s

So he would know how to commit a murder and definitely know how to dispose of a body. The two main places people figure her body is our Desert Center California, and a local shopping plaza that was being built at the time she disappeared. Now, like we mentioned earlier, Desert Center California is where Mike stated to police that the union workers who supposedly killed her had put her remains. It's important to note that Desert Center California is three hours away from Phoenix. The one thing about this that confuses me is if Mike did in fact kill Alyssa, why would he give up? Oh, her remains are in Desert Center California.

So that's why I don't really believe that they're there because he said that. I mean, it's possible that he could have dumped her remains there on one of his many trips to California since it's on the way, but I just don't really see how that's true. But then again, where did he just randomly pull desert California from? And there's some reason to believe that Sarah's uncle James was actually involved in disposing of Alyssa's body since he owned a recycling plant up north, which we're going to get into here in just a second. Alyssa in Sarah's aunt says that she was unaware that Alyssa had plans to come to California

at the time of her disappearance because they didn't have a solid plan. She was also unaware of the abuse, but she believes that might kill Alyssa. When Alyssa Terny's case was featured on 2020, Sarah Terny didn't believe that her father was guilty of the crime it wasn't until after that she started believing in his guilt and is now a major advocate for his conviction here's Heath's interview with Sarah turnie can you explain to us the differences you saw pertaining to the treatment of yourself and Alyssa by your father growing up? Yeah, and of course it's kind of two different perspectives. One from when I was a kid and one now, which is so different, but when I was growing up, I was really envious of Alyssa.

I thought that she got a lot of attention. I wanted that attention. I wanted all my doubts attention. So I was really jealous. I didn't understand why he said so much time on her. And she was kind of the opposite. She didn't understand why I was blessed alone and given so much freedom. So I think what's most glaringly obvious is when we were both 17, if you look at that, she was monitored every second of every day.

I mean, he would go to her work to check on her. He had a camera in the vent. When I was 17, my boyfriend moved in with us. He would buy a spear, I was allowed to do whatever I wanted. What was the biggest factor that changed your mind concerning your father's innocence? It's hard to say, I mean, the 2020 episode definitely factored in. But it's not as if right when I saw it, I immediately changed my mind. It took some time. So, I think it was a combination of learning new facts

from the ABC show. You know, we found out that she was taking out of school early that day. I also found out that my brother had told the police that she came to him and said that my father was actually molesting her. So, at first, I was kind of outraged and thought that he was betraying the family and how did this be true and all those feelings but then slowly but surely and reading comments and hearing more about it and understanding more of the story and what was going on and it became really obvious. Yeah that must have been a really tough realization. So at any point did you have any suspicion that your father was sexually abusing Alyssa?

No, never. I mean, and that's what makes it so confusing, is, and they thought the yield is each other all the time, they screamed. But no, never anything that serious. I didn't think you went that far. We know that you had a cousin come stay with you guys in the mid-90s had seen some evidence of a lissus molestation. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so our cousin David Garmin lived with us for a goodness maybe six months. I can't quite remember, but it was in a very long time. And then he suddenly was gone, which didn't seem abnormal to me, but yeah, he approached the missing list of podcasts.

He said that he had something he wanted to speak about. And he said that when he was living with us that one night he came home from work and put a VHS and be player. It's a Dr. Doodle. My father had like always recorded things from T.E. We had bookcases and bookcases full of the H.S. We just had tons of movies. So he picked out one we wanted to watch and

instead of Dr. DuBittles, he says that it was Elvisa and an unknown friend. They were naked from the waist up sitting on our couch with newspapers covering their faces and that he could tell that the camera was, I believe, on a tripod and that my father was there. But yeah, he says that he definitely knew it was a list of that and that he recognized the friend but couldn't remember her name. But I don't know, no friend has ever come forward. I would love to know if this is true or not. I have not found the VHS label Dr. DuWittle, but that would have been taken by the police.

So how did David know that it was Mike behind the camera, other than the fact that it was in his living room? I forget exactly what he says, but he says that he knew that it was my father. So I'm not sure, I mean, how you know from behind the camera would have to be his voice. So when you were living with your dad, did you witness the stockpile of guns and pipe bombs

kind of just laying around the house and so no i didn't know that there were any bombs or anything like that in the house i knew that he had guns but honestly even today i couldn't tell you what a legal gun person illegal gun looks like uh... they know a lot of it came down to like homemade silencers and like modifications on them but yeah i knew that he had a ton of guns. I just didn't know, but they were apparently illegal or like high caliber. You know, he was always at gun shows. He was always

getting different things delivered to the house. My whole life, him and my brothers had shot guns. It was just something I was never into being, you know, at a certain point, the only girl in the family would go off and do it alone. Guns were always a part of our lives. When I turned 18, I got a gun. It's kind of like the right of passage in the house. The police took that gun also. But, yeah, of course, I had no idea about the bombs. We know that you have a petition going around,

which will link to our website. Trying to get your father to go to trial for the disappearance of Alyssa. How close are you to receiving your goal amount of signatures um... so if you look at the petition into creeping goal but the overall goal is five hundred thousand and which i actually just went on social media and said that we should make it a million but it's hard with the petition i don't know how effective it is i just think it's more of a talking point for us to have that behind us i don't know that they're going to take it super seriously i had a meeting with the police and I said,

listen, I have 90,000 signatures. What's it going to take? Do I need 750,000? Do I need a million?" And they said, we don't really care how many signatures you have. They don't care. There's not social advocacy like that. You know, and I thought they might, but it's becoming more and more apparent that if it's not huge, they don't care. So even 90,000 is nothing to them, which is why I think if we got to like a million, it might actually make them think about it. Yeah, we definitely hope that we can help in some way with that because it's the most important.

So, do you think that your father's background as a deputy sheriff could have led him to believe that he was capable of getting away with murder? Oh absolutely. I mean I think that definitely fueled his ego and make some things that he could chew whatever he wants. I think that he knows the end of the mouth of police work and granted he might I don't know. But yeah, I think I gave him a lot of arrogance. I mean, he certainly reported her missing in such a way he knew that it wouldn't have opened a type of search. He said, you know, I have a missing daughter, but listen, I know she's in California, she's with her aunt. I just wanted to let you know. So we mentioned Thomas Heimer earlier in the episode, and even though his statements weren't true, do you feel fortunate that his statements pushed investigators to re-examine Alyssa's case?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I'm very thankful for Thomas Heimer as discussing and backwards as that might sound. Absolutely, if it wasn't for him and his false confession, I don't think this would have ever been reopened. We know that your dad claimed that he was controlling over Alyssa because he felt that she needed extra guidance, but we also find out that he's kind of contradicting himself. Did you witness any of the name calling her verbal abuse? And here's audio from the video that Sarah's referring to. It was taken in 1997 when Alyssa was just 13 years old, so four years before she went missing. Hit the red button.

Yeah. Oh, look who he. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a pervert. This is giving me the camera now. And you're still recording. And Lissa is stupid moron!

And that was extremely disturbing. What sticks in my head growing up is him telling me to not tell her she's stupid. Like, something that actually happened. It was drilled into me that, like, I was not allowed to call her stupid. Um, what I'm sure it happened all the time, I just can't remember specific instances. And you've stated clearly that you believe your father was responsible for the disappearance of Alyssa. But do you think that anybody else may have been involved?

It's possible. So there's two uncles that I think could have helped either kill her or helped dispose of the body. But the police won't really look into that, so that's pretty tricky. But yeah, I mean, I think if my father was stuck in a situation where he needed to dispose of a body and he needed help, I don't see why he wouldn't go to these people.

There's also a really seated dark history with my father and his brother, my uncle James. And you know, his kids, my uncle James' kids come out and say that they're more afraid of my uncle James than they are of my father. Yeah, and can you tell us a little bit about the story where your uncle had shot your aunt and your father may have helped cover up that situation? Yeah, so this is a story I grew up with my whole life. My cousin speak about it openly now to the media.

But essentially, sometime in the 1970s, while my father was a police officer, his brother shot his wife. My father was there. He was trying to get the kid out of the house. He came in while his brother was shooting his wife. And Detective Summer shoe has come out and made a statement stating that he knows that my father's hampered with evidence. I mean, it's hard to say and she never pressed charges because she was definitely afraid

that they were going to come back and kill her. So we know that Mike claims he got a phone call from Alyssa a week after her disappearance. Do you think that it's possible that he arranged to have this phone call made? Yeah, so he was physically there and picked up the phone call. We have these left these on phone records from the phone company, so this phone call did actually happen. Someone in our home picked up at 5 or whatever it was in the morning. So I think that most likely he hired someone to do that for him or knew a friend or gave someone a couple bucks to give him a call at this time from the pay phone. I think in Phoenix at least I could probably go to at least, I mean if I go to two gas stations

I bet I could find some reason to do that for me. It's not difficult. I don't think it was her. Yeah and if she had run away I think she would have probably taken that $1800 with her. Oh yeah well she would have taken it before she left. I don't think that she would have taken the chance. taken that $1800 with her. I want to examine this note that Alyssa left. Do you think that Alyssa wrote the first part of the note, but then your father forged the second half?

I don't think he forged it. I think he made her write it. I think he found the note, got pissed. But what the hell is this? Okay, you want to run away? Fine. You're going to be gone. Write this. Do you think that your father felt he was going to lose control over a list of

by her going to your aunt's house in california no absolutely i mean there was an ongoing battle between my aunt and my father my whole life uh... and it's hard to say because they did some not so great things and he did some not so great things and it's a good comes down to it, I think he was really afraid that she was going to go somewhere. There was far enough away from her to feel safe and with someone she felt comfortable enough to tell the truth and that someone who knew would definitely speak up. And speaking about these sexual allegations, can you talk a little bit about the people

who Alyssa had confided in? Yes, I would love to because even in my most recent meeting with the police, the point person on the case said, what sexual abuse allegations are you talking about? And I had to point out that they had over 12 people. I mean, I have a post-it of it somewhere, and I think it's closer to 25, but to be safe, I'm always like, over a dozen people in your documents a ledge that was it came to them and that these things and like you said it was a teacher it was friends it was family I mean she told everyone and nobody helped and it's so sad to think that she was failed in so many ways there were so many

people that knew and just nothing came of it. And even now, the police told me, well, this is not here. What are we supposed to do? So about Alyssa's potential remains. I know that you had talked before that she may have been buried underneath an outside shopping mall or desert center California. Can you tell me why these might be plausible scenarios? So there's a shopping mall that's about, maybe five miles from our home very, very quick. We used to write our go-karts up there, so it was somewhere we went as a family,

and then it later was being turned into a shopping mall the summer that she went missing. Because I remember it was the end of seventh grade, and then by eighth grade, the mall was open and ready to go and it was like, you know The hot spot for the kids to walk to. There's been so much time for the shopping mall But it was so close Convenient there would have been holes. My father was familiar with construction. He did electrical electrical work So I think you would have known like how easy is it to to throw in an already dug hole the target is going to go on top of.

So, we reached out to the shopping center and I was like, this is not a joke. You know, I would love to see your construction schedule. So, I'm trying to get that from them to see like, if there were holes on May 17, 2001 or what that looked like to see if it's even a feasible place to look for a body. But I just don't think you could have gotten that far. I mean, the timeline is hard to narrow down because I can't quite remember when he picked me up that night, but it couldn't have been more than six hours. And I don't see him risking driving to California across a border in which you were often stopped to go hide this body. It doesn't make any sense when he was so familiar with the desert. And that place was so close and even up north

he had access to a recycling plant that our uncle owned. And he had access to his brother's home. It was known for helping him. They both helped each other cover up crimes in the past. So I think that he had a lot more options closer by. Have investigators even checked any of these places out? No, they refused to. I gave them a map a few years back that had all these specific coordinates circled. It was just this map of the desert. And I was young and foolish and I was scared and it was just a few years after everything had happened. And I said, I don't, I think I was still in the transition of, do I believe my dad or do I not?

And I found the map and I just said, I don't want this and gave it to the police. And my boyfriend at the time had actually Googled these coordinates and they were all just like in the middle of the other. But nothing came of that. They never looked. They never gave me an answer. And now I'm pretty sure that map doesn't exist according to them any longer. So I know that you had met with your father sometime in 2017. I'm just curious how the conversation went. I mean, what did you say to him and what questions were asked?

So it was October 2017. I called him and I said, I want to meet with you. And we met in the Starbucks and I recorded him and he was excited that I wanted to be back in his life and I said, no, this is not what this is about. I told him quite frankly, I said this 10 years, 70 years old and I want to ask you questions based face to face outside of a phone line that's being recorded through the prison or outside of the prison room where we have a bunch of security guards looking at us, like I want to know, and I asked them everything. And he was horrible, and he talked terribly about Alyssa, and he tried to intimidate me,

and he said, some really disgusting things, including, you know, he said, darling, come to my best bet. My best bet, and I'll give you all the honest answers you want to hear. And then he said that he would also confess that the state gave him legal injection within 10 days. And of course, I'm excited after this and I go to the police and I get them that recording and they say not good enough. It's so frustrating that these police officers just don't get it.

Oh, yeah. I mean, but the thing is they do get it. And they're the ones that news before I did. They sat me down. The day that the house was rated. so they called me you know because I'm the point person on the case at this point. I've been the point person, the family context since I was 17 years old and they called and they said listen we have some news about your sister can you turn down the position and I think my exact words were I have a stand-in chest while I be back in time. I said yeah yeah no problem come on down. Then I came down and waited about 30 minutes, saying my boyfriend was there and they called

me back and they said, listen, they don't have any news about your sister. We're raving your home. We know that your father killed Alyssa. He also sexually molested her. You also have a sister. You don't know about how do you feel about your father now. And my exact words were, am I free to go? I need to call my brothers, to which I did.

And for months and years after that, they sent me documents and emails trying to convince me, have you heard from your father? Have you see, you should brief this full interview from ABC 2020. He says some pretty shocking thing, you should check it out. I mean, just years and years and years, I'm trying to convince me that he did this. And then I finally come back and I say, listen, I get it.

My mind has changed. I think he did it too. How can I help? And I say, great. You know, try to talk to him. Have you talked to him? Have you talked to him? And then I say, you know what we're going to do?

We're going to wait until he gets out. So that way, we're going to wait. When he gets out, we're going to prosecute him. So that way, he can't combine his bomb sentence with the murder sentence. We don't want him to do any less time than he has to. I say great. A few days before he's released from prison, I get an email saying that the cold-cheese unit for the Phoenix Police Department has been dissolved, that the two detectives on my case were no longer assigned to the case. And I kind of wait, and nothing happens, and he's not arrested, and I request the meeting, and that's when we sit him down, and say, we're not going to prosecute, we're not going to look for a body.

Good luck, get media. We are going to give you a silent witness campaign. You'll have a billboard on every freeway in Phoenix. And that never happened. I'm in a position right now where I either have to make this like a making a murderer type of profile in the media Or I have to go physically find my sister's body like these are the only two things that are going to Get them to do what they said they were gonna do a very long time ago get them to do what they said they were going to do a very long time ago. So I just have one last question for you Sarah. If you could relay one message to our listeners, what message would that be? That I need help. I can't do this alone. We're not setting a precedent. There have been many nobody cases in Maricopa County tried and won with less evidence. There's no reason that this case shouldn't be treated the same.

So I need help in telling the police that they need to follow through on what they know happened, because I don't understand what they're hiding or what they don't want to come to light, but for some reason, other cases with less evidence have gone through and they're just deciding to not let this one go through. And so I will fight in-kick and scream until the day I die to make that happen. Although Mike Turnie and no others for that matter have been convicted for Alyssa's murder, this does not mean that she was just a runaway.

At this point in 2019, it's been nearly 18 years since she disappeared. She would be celebrating her 35th birthday this year. If she had runaway, why wouldn't she have contacted any single person in her family or her friend group to let them know she's safe? How would no one have reported seeing her any time over all these years? It's simple, Alyssa Turnie did not run away. Phoenix police refused to search for Alyssa or figure out what happened to her unless her body is discovered. Sarah, Alissa's sister, has been passionately trying to convict her father of Alissa's murder for years and even has a petition. Please

visit JustisForAlissa.com to learn more about how you can help. If you're interested in learning more details about the case, check out the amazing podcast Missing Alissa hosted by Atevia Saapala. Let's bring justice for Alissa. Thank you so much everybody for listening to today's episode of Going West. Yeah, this was a really special case to cover and thank you so much to Sarah Attorney for giving this, for giving this amazing interview. Please share this episode with friends and family because not only does it help our podcast, but it most importantly helps Alyssa Turnie's case and helps Sarah get justice for her sister. Yeah, and definitely don't forget to check out the podcast missing Alyssa if you want some

extreme details on the case. We have some photos of Alyssa and some details of the case on our Instagram and on our website so check that out at Going West Podcast and then our website is goingwestpodcast.com. And don't you dare forget that your boys out there on Twitter. Find me at Going West Podcast. Please tune in next week for episode 9 for a brand new case. So everybody out there in the world, keep it real, and stay weird. Cheerio. you