Murder With My Husband - 276 - The Sugar Baby Murder

Episode Date: July 7, 2025

In this episode, Payton and Garrett dive into the case of a retired doctor with a secret obsession that ultimately leads to his downfall. Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/murderwithmyhusba...nd NEW MERCH LINK: https://mwmhshop.com Discount Codes: https://mailchi.mp/c6f48670aeac/oh-no-media-discount-codes Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/themwmh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murderwithmyhusband/ Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@murderwithmyhusband Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/into-the-dark/id1662304327 Listen on spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/36SDVKB2MEWpFGVs9kRgQ7?si=f5224c9fd99542a7 Case sources: Oxygen.com - https://www.oxygen.com/snapped/crime-news/playboy-model-kelsey-turner-helps-kill-doctor-over-money ABCNews.go.com - https://abcnews.go.com/US/witness-recalls-night-instagram-model-badd-barbie-murdered/story?id=97334479 TheCalifornian.com - https://www.thecalifornian.com/story/news/2019/06/21/california-doctor-killed-salinas-thomas-burchard-kelsey-turner-playboy-vegas/1515878001/ 8NewsNow.com - https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/former-las-vegas-model-sentenced-to-minimum-of-10-years-in-death-of-california-doctor/ Wikipedia.com - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelsey_Turner CBSNews.com - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kelsey-turner-former-playboy-model-plea-deal-beating-death-doctor-thomas-burchard/ ReviewJournal.com - https://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/courts/former-model-sentenced-for-2019-killing-of-psychiatrist-2709807/ AYMag.com - https://aymag.com/murder-mystery-badd-barbie/ ABC.com - https://abc.com/episode/56e5b1be-ff2b-4f83-9174-1196c1200192 KSBW.com - https://www.ksbw.com/article/new-gruesome-details-released-about-murder-of-chomp-doctor/28110614 Elle.com - https://www.elle.com/culture/books/a29329307/sugar-daddy-murder-elle-november-2019/ Happyscribe.com - https://www.happyscribe.com/public/20-20/a-model-murder Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to an Ono Media Podcast. Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Morland. And I'm Garrett Morland. And he's the husband. And I'm the husband. If we sound a little different, it is because we are currently recording in a different place. But don't worry, we are here with another episode. For those who are watching on YouTube, we don't know what we're going to do about video yet because we brought our set, we brought our camera and it is just not working. I could get into it technically, but it's just, it's not working. It's a bugging out. It's wiggling out really frustrating because
Starting point is 00:00:33 they are not cheap cameras. I just don't understand how it's 20, 25 and we're literally sending people into space, but have yet to figure out all of the technological glitches that happen like almost every time we record is how is this still happen yeah and i know it's not just us we have friends in the podcast industry friends in photography videography whatever it is there's just stuff happens and it's annoying but we will figure something out for video um i don't know if it'll be us it probably won't for the for those who are on YouTube. I'm so sorry.
Starting point is 00:01:07 Go listen to the audio if you want. We love you guys. Thank you everyone for being here. We are on just a little fourth of July. I don't know. We're just out of town. We're in nature hanging out for a few days. Daisy Daisy dumped in the pond.
Starting point is 00:01:24 Now she smells like pond water. so she's going to have to take a bath every day this week. She smells so bad, but thank you for supporting us and let's get into this week's episode. Our sources for this episode are oxygen.com abc news.go.com the Californian.com eight news now.com CBSian.com, 8newsnow.com, cbsnews.com, reviewjournal.com, aymag.com, ksbw.com, l.com, and happy scribe.com. So most of us can understand how great a feeling it is
Starting point is 00:01:54 to help someone in need, whether that's volunteering, making a donation, even just lending a hand to a friend or a stranger when you see them struggling. And sometimes all it takes is one good deed to realize, I want to help more people. It's easy to see why some people literally dedicate their lives to these acts of service. But what we rarely ask ourselves during those moments when we're volunteering or helping someone we don't really know is what are their
Starting point is 00:02:23 intentions? Do they have an ulterior motive? Because helping someone can be a vulnerable thing. And when help is offered to the wrong person, that can be a slippery slope. Especially if you put your foot down to the wrong person, they might just keep taking from you anyway. And as today's case will prove, that might even mean taking a life.
Starting point is 00:02:48 So let's head now to the picturesque coastal town of Salinas, California, where in 2019, the 71 year old Dr. Thomas Bouchard is living with his fiance, Judy Earp. Now that year, Thomas is finally starting to talk about full retirement after working for decades as a child psychiatrist and being 71 years old. Thomas spent years working at some of the top hospitals in the country from Cincinnati Children's Hospital to Massachusetts General and even UCLA. But for the last 40 years, he has been a staple at the
Starting point is 00:03:27 community hospital of the Monterey Peninsula. In fact, Thomas had been there for so long, he was now seeing the kids of the kids that he had once treated. So it's safe to say Thomas has dedicated his life to helping people, particularly children. and it doesn't get much more altruistic than that. Which may be why Thomas is having a hard time just letting the job go. While he likes to tell people he's retired, he still treats his patients about four hours every week. He feels like there is some patients that really need him, and he's willing to put full retirement on hold just to help them out.
Starting point is 00:04:07 But working only four hours a week does give Thomas plenty of time to enjoy the other things that he loves in life, including magic. He had been practicing for years and loves cheering up his patients with the tricks he learned. Thomas takes it pretty seriously too. He's a member at an exclusive magic club in Los Angeles called the Magic Castle and has been going to magic conferences for years. For his fiance, Judy, who was 12 years younger, that was part of the charm when she met him back in the early 2000s.
Starting point is 00:04:44 At the time, Judy was a realtor who had been divorced with four kids, and she was actually on a trip with some friends in Las Vegas when she met Thomas for the first time. The two connected over the fact that they had both been recently divorced and were embarking on new chapters in their lives. And after a few great conversations by the pool, the two stayed in touch over email. Thomas would actually travel down to LA all the time to visit Judy at her home. But around 2004, Judy decided to move with her kids up to Salinas and in with Thomas. So safe to say things are getting pretty serious. There was just one quality of Thomas's that Judy both loved and hated, and
Starting point is 00:05:30 that was how generous Thomas was with his money. Okay, which wouldn't they like that because they're spending it on them. I think with other people, okay, she loves and hates it. Thomas was the kind of person who never really spent much money on himself. He pretty much always wore a variation of the same set of clothes, khaki pants, a white dress shirt and a bow tie, but buying things for himself was not really what brought Thomas joy. He preferred to spend his money on other people to make them happy.
Starting point is 00:06:03 And you know those magic tricks I told you about sometimes they ended with letting the patient keep the $100 bill that Thomas used for the trick Wow, that's cool. In fact, he was generous with his patients in other ways, too If they couldn't afford things like their medication or books and supplies for school He often chipped in to help, no questions asked. This is the kind of guy you want as your doctor. But it wasn't just his patients. Thomas seemed to have a soft spot
Starting point is 00:06:33 for helping other women in need. Particularly people who were going through addictions, or single mothers struggling to make ends meet, maybe even sex workers. But there was something else going on with Thomas beginning around 2018 that Judy started to notice. So they've been together for quite a long time in this one day she was approached by a social worker who seemed to be tipped off by one of Thomas's colleagues. And that social worker told Judy that someone was worried Thomas might be experiencing the early stages of dementia.
Starting point is 00:07:13 Though I will say this didn't really come as a shock to Judy, she had noticed Thomas getting lost in parking lots, forgetting where he had left his car. Judy's daughter said Thomas didn't recognize her when she ran into him at the grocery store. He was even forgetting how to use the TV remote. And while it seemed gradual, it definitely sent Judy into a panic
Starting point is 00:07:35 when Thomas set off on a trip in March of 2019 and didn't tell Judy where he was going. So heartbreaking because I'm sure you guys listening as well. Like we know a lot of people with dementia and it's heartbreaking. It's it's hard. It's one of those things that is honestly hard to put in the words, but it is heartbreaking. You grieve someone who's still alive.
Starting point is 00:08:00 Correct. Yes, I think that's a great way to put it. So on March 1st, Thomas got on a plane and headed to Las Vegas and he didn't tell Judy that he had done that until he landed at about 5 30 PM that night. And for the next few days, Judy had a hard time getting in touch with him again. He wasn't really answering his phone. He was seeming a bit cagey. So by Sunday she texts him saying, why aren't you answering me? And he replies with something pretty strange.
Starting point is 00:08:29 He just says, I'm out to lunch. Now, Judy thinks this is weird because he's called her and chatted plenty of times during a meal before. So she says to him, well, that's never stopped you before. And then he says, I need to charge my phone. And then after that, his phone goes dead. So Judy keeps texting him throughout the day, but the texts aren't going through.
Starting point is 00:08:51 She's getting more and more frantic, especially when she doesn't hear from him that night. But on Monday the 4th, he is supposed to be headed back from this spontaneous trip. So Judy goes to the airport and waits for his flight to get in. And after all of the passengers get off the plane, there is still no Thomas. Now this is really freaking Judy out. So she goes to the desk and says, Hey, I just need to know if my fiance ever
Starting point is 00:09:18 even got back on the plane. And they tell her, no, he never checked in for his flight and he actually wasn't on the manifest. Are you allowed to? This might be a dumb question. I'm just not sure. Are you allowed to drive if you have dementia? I think so. Are you allowed to fly like I mean, technically I think you're allowed to do anything. Like are you just for like your safety? I get the acid. I mean, aren't you like are you a danger to other people? I don't know. I think your family or your caretakers might decide that interesting. Yeah. So, um, judy at this point decides to call the Las Vegas police. She's like, this whole trip has been so weird. I've barely
Starting point is 00:09:58 been able to talk to him and now he wasn't even on the plane back that he said he was going to be on on, she thinks Thomas is missing. Now with Thomas's age and possible dementia, the police actually take it pretty seriously, but they don't have a lot of information to go off of right now. Though on Wednesday, two days after he didn't come home, a friend tries his cell phone again randomly,
Starting point is 00:10:22 and now it's turned back on, only it's not Thomas who answers Thomas's cell phone. No way. The person says, oh, I found this cell phone on the Vegas strip. So wherever Thomas is now, he doesn't have his cell phone with him. Okay, okay, anyways.
Starting point is 00:10:42 Though it's not until the following day, March 7th, that there's a real break in this missing persons case and it's not one anybody was hoping for. So that morning, someone calls 911 to say that they spotted a blue Mercedes abandoned on a dirt road. It's about two miles off the highway, kind of closer to the Lake Mead area, which is about 20 miles away from the Las Vegas Strip. Good old Lake Mead. We already know enough about that. Yeah. Now when police get there, they see that both of the windows on the Mercedes are rolled down, but there's no one in any of the seats of the car. What they do find inside is a pair of blue latex gloves. There's blood in the back seat of the abandoned car
Starting point is 00:11:27 and on the driver's side headrest was also blood. And what looks like evidence of a small fire in the passenger seat, like someone had tried to burn the car but it clearly didn't work. And when they open the trunk they find a bunch of clothes. They find bedding. They find bloody towels and it smells terrible So when they move those things aside They already are kind of figuring what they're gonna find in this trunk and they are right No way there is a body in the trunk of this abandoned car okay, and once they check the pockets and find the ID
Starting point is 00:12:06 and credit cards that are still inside, they confirm that this is the missing elderly Dr. Thomas Bouchard. All right guys, we are jumping into an ad and it is one of the best rocket money. A lot of people aren't aware of how much they spend each month. Do you know how many subscriptions you pay for? What about how much you spend on takeout or delivery?
Starting point is 00:12:30 Rocket money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions Monitors your spending and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings Payton and I use rocket money We organize all of our credit cards, we have our bank accounts, we know what subscriptions we're paying for, it helps you organize in categories. It's very easy to use. It's great to see an overview of everything. We've used it for years now.
Starting point is 00:12:56 We've canceled so many subscriptions through it. We absolutely love it. Their dashboard lays out your total finance picture. Rocket Money's five million members have saved a total of 500 million in canceled subscriptions with members saving up to $740 a year when they use all of the app's premium features. You guys check it out.
Starting point is 00:13:16 I love it, Payton loves it. We know you guys are gonna love it. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Download the Rocket Money app and enter, our show name, Murder with My Husband in the survey so they know that we sent you. Don't wait, download the Rocket Money app today
Starting point is 00:13:34 and tell them you heard about them from our show. Also inside that car, they find what they're pretty sure is the murder weapon, a bloody baseball bat. And obviously, I mean, it goes without saying this is homicide because dead people can't put themselves in trunks and close it. So they find the bloody baseball bat and it's a detail that is somewhat confirmed from the autopsy the next day, which states that the cause of death was in fact blunt force trauma to the head. But they also find repeated marks of a small circular shaped injury which kind
Starting point is 00:14:12 of almost looked like the barrel of a gun. So basically we have a ton of evidence here so the next step for police is to find out okay well who does this Mercedes belong to? Which isn't too hard for them, because after quickly running the VIN number on the vehicle, they find it's registered to a woman named Kelsey Turner. Now when police start looking into Kelsey, they aren't exactly sure what she and Dr. Thomas have in common, because Kelsey is a 25 year old model. She was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas in May of 1993. She was a country girl who was raised on a farm
Starting point is 00:14:54 with dreams of one day moving to a big city and finding fame. She's country. She began doing pageants and then turned to modeling, which eventually brought her out to Los Angeles, where she landed a few magazine covers. But Kelsey found most of her fame through Instagram, where she called herself bad Barbie. She would pose in bikinis. She showed photos of her gun tattoo. She took selfies like the
Starting point is 00:15:22 bad Barbie. Are you thinking bad baby? Oh, that's what I'm thinking is bad baby. The one I was on Dr. Phil right. Catch me outside. Yes. Okay, not the same girl. Okay. Okay. Thank you. I was like, wait, this isn't making sense. Bad Barbie would take selfies and wigs and lingerie. She tried to portray herself as someone who was on the up and up in her career. A woman who was finding success in a tough industry who was on the up and up in her career. A woman who was finding success in a tough industry, who was living this glamorous model life. But in reality,
Starting point is 00:15:49 Kelsey wasn't making much money from her dreams at all. She was a single mother of two kids, and at 25 years old, had already been divorced twice with no steady income. So a lot of people who knew the real Kelsey, wondered how was she even able to afford some of the things that she was posting about online, like a brand new house in the Salinas area of California, a brand new BMW. She always had new clothes, bags, jewelry, accessories. And the answer to that is Dr. Thomas
Starting point is 00:16:21 Bouchard. So remember how I mentioned that Thomas did love to help people? Well, a lot of those people were attractive young women that he met on the internet. And while I'm not totally sure how or when Kelsey and Thomas first stumbled upon each other's profiles, I do know that shortly after they began chatting, Thomas seemed to fall for Kelsey. Not only was she a beautiful blonde model, she was a single mom of two just trying to get on her feet. The perfect recipe for disaster for Thomas, who was attracted to both her and the fact that she was down on her luck. This was his sort of thing. So at first, their relationship was just online, transactional, as Kelsey called it. She would
Starting point is 00:17:03 said Thomas pictures of herself and he would send her some cash to help pay her bills So this isn't exactly a good old doctor helping Someone out there is definitely some transaction going on here Eventually the two began to meet up in person Thomas would bring her prescription drugs she asked for, then a new bag and then a new car, then rent on a house not too far away. Thomas told a friend of his that he finally understood what it was like to have a drug addiction, only Kelsey was his drug of choice.
Starting point is 00:17:39 He became obsessed with her. He would do anything she asked of him, even though apparently their relationship never was sexual. Kelsey said it stayed transactional no matter how much money Thomas gave her. He was her sugar daddy, as she described. Now, apparently this wasn't the first time Thomas had found himself in a situation like this.
Starting point is 00:18:03 Some sources claimed this was something that happened during his first marriage as well and might have been what ended it too. But obviously for a time he was keeping this relationship of sorts from Judy, his fiancee. Well, yeah, though around 2017 his secret was finally exposed. Judy found some paperwork in Thomas's car one day back in 2017, and it was a lease agreement to a rental property for a woman named Kelsey Turner. And Thomas was the one co-signing for it. Thomas seemingly told Judy the truth about the situation. He's like, no, things aren't sexual. She I just help her out financially.
Starting point is 00:18:46 But it also seemed like Kelsey had been manipulating him into doing a lot more than he was comfortable with. She told him that because she had bad credit, she couldn't qualify for a lease. And if someone didn't co-sign for her, she and her two kids and her mother would be homeless. So Thomas agreed to sign the lease, but then she left him on the hook for the rent each month and then the same thing happened with
Starting point is 00:19:10 the BMW. He got her according to her. She had nothing to get to work in. So Thomas helped her take out a loan for this vehicle, but then she wasn't making the payments, which obviously leaves Thomas responsible. Meanwhile, Judy noticed the large amounts of cash that were draining quickly from Thomas's accounts by twenty nineteen. Judy says Thomas had given Kelsey at least seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars for various things. Oh seven is a seven hundred and fifty grand., is in total what he had given Kelsey over the years.
Starting point is 00:19:48 A lot of money, dude. Judy, who was seemingly very dedicated to the relationship and not willing to leave Thomas over the matter, finally came up with a solution she thought might fix things, get Kelsey out of the Selena's house, in fact, get her out of this state. So she told Thomas to put some distance between himself and Kelsey, and to take away that BMW that he was making the payments on. And so after talking to his fiance, he did, but he rented Kelsey a new house in Las Vegas instead. Though Kelsey didn't really seem to mind this change.
Starting point is 00:20:23 In fact, she was living it up in Vegas. She had new friends, a new house, a new flashy lifestyle, one that was still being funded by Thomas who just seemingly couldn't kick his habit of Kelsey. He even bought her a new car in Vegas, even though he had taken her old one away. It was a blue Mercedes Benz. And so Thomas buys Kelsey this new car and then Kelsey texts Judy, Thomas's fiance. Now remember, Kelsey is a young girl. She texts Judy and says, quote, thanks for taking back the BMW. I look better in a Benz anyways, followed by three middle finger emojis. Holy crap. So Kelsey does not like Judy, who is trying to stop her paychecks from coming
Starting point is 00:21:10 in, that's insane, but the harassment between these two didn't stop there. Apparently, Kelsey had told Thomas a few times that she would kill Judy if she threatened to take away her home or her car again. By the way, that house she moved to in Vegas, the one Thomas is paying for, she's not living there alone. She's also there with one of her kids, her four year old son, two roommates, one of which is like a part time nanny of her kid and her twenty seven year old boyfriend and former gang
Starting point is 00:21:40 member, a guy named John Logan, Kenison, who she met in early twenty nineteen. a former gang member, a guy named John Logan Kenison, who she met in early 2019. But by the end of February, Thomas had apparently had enough. This had really kind of caused an uproar in his life because even though Kelsey was now hundreds of miles away, she was still finding ways to get to his money. Apparently she had stolen some of his passwords
Starting point is 00:22:01 to his online accounts and was using his money to help pay for other things in her life. So by March Thomas decided he was gonna fly to Vegas and cut Kelsey off in person and this is why he doesn't really tell Judy where he's going and what he was doing there. He didn't even tell her he was going to Vegas until he was already there that night. It seems like maybe he didn't want her to worry about the fact that he was going to see Kelsey in person. He had innocent motivations, but would Judy be able to understand that after the toxic relationship she had with Kelsey? Which obviously
Starting point is 00:22:38 Judy has a right to be worried because as we know, Thomas never made it back on that return flight home. And then on March 7th, Thomas was found dead in the trunk of Kelsey's car that Mercedes Benz he had purchased for her. It just seems crazy to me that I mean, I guess all these cases are crazy, but she just killed him. So once Judy here's from police, yes, your husband was found murdered and he was in the back of this girl, Kelsey's car. She obviously has no doubt in her mind that Kelsey is responsible for this and the police are obviously feeling the same way. They just aren't sure why or how, but they quickly get a search warrant for the house Kelsey was living at, the same place that Thomas was staying when he came to visit Vegas.
Starting point is 00:23:24 And when they get there, the place is vacant. Neither Kelsey nor any of her roommates are there. But the police do find a few other things of note inside that house, like an identical set of blue and white striped towels that actually matched the ones in the trunk of the car that were covering Thomas's body. So now you've tied evidence from the crime scene at the car back to the house that he was staying at with Kelsey. And they also notice the door to the upstairs bedroom is broken and it has blood on it. There's also
Starting point is 00:23:57 blood in the garage and a very apparent and poor cleanup job. They also find something in there belonging to Thomas though. It's a notebook of his. It kind of seems like a journal. And in it, Thomas writes about some sort of extortion plan Kelsey was keeping over him, which actually kind of explains a lot because apparently when Thomas threatened
Starting point is 00:24:18 to cut Kelsey off financially a few months earlier, she actually said that she would go to the police and tell them that she had found child sexual abuse material on his devices, which is so crazy because we see this a lot in cases where a victim is killed and the person who killed them, they'll continue to drag their name right because they're not alive to defend themselves. Right? Because I do want to say this is completely unfounded. There was never anything of the sort found on anything Thomas owned. We see it happen a lot
Starting point is 00:24:50 even in like court, even in the courts. I went to trial and stuff right. They'll just continue to drag someone's name and make stuff up to try to get the person who is in question off and I don't know. I just, it really irks me. But in Thomas's mind, he was like, okay, even though this isn't real, just these allegations alone in today's day and age will ruin my career, my reputation, my legacy, everything. No one's gonna wait around to get to the other side
Starting point is 00:25:21 to find out that it wasn't true. Yeah, which I mean, he's right. So Thomas couldn't let her even utter such a horrible falsehood about him. So this is why he moves her to Vegas and keeps paying for things. So at this point, he's kind of locked into this. He doesn't want to be doing it anymore. I mean, it's illegal at this point, right? It's blackmail. Like, yeah, he could go to the cops and stuff, but then she's still just going to talk trash on him.
Starting point is 00:25:43 And it's probably why he never even went to the police after he found out that she was stealing from him by getting his passwords. Not to mention a lot of it had to do with some shame. Thomas was feeling over having been suckered into this sugar daddy relationship with a twenty five year old woman while he had a fiancee. This is a woman he fell for and was willingly helping out at first that was now kind of blackmailing him.
Starting point is 00:26:10 So as I mentioned, Kelsey and all of her roommates fled the house the second news broke that Thomas's body was discovered. And they all turned off their phones too, which kind of implicates all of the roommates in the house, not just Kelsey, when all of them leave and try to cover up their tracks. So an arrest warrant is issued for Kelsey Turner
Starting point is 00:26:31 and an FBI task force actually finds her back in California in the Stockton area, hiding out with her four-year-old son. So she's finally taken into custody on March 21st, 2019, but she's not willing to talk. At this point, they also find Kelsey's new boyfriend, John Kennison, who's been hiding out at his mom's house. And it's the same deal with him.
Starting point is 00:26:53 Then they put out a warrant for one of Kelsey's roommates whose fingerprints were found inside the Mercedes, which just like, which she cannot basically explain. A woman named Diana Pena, the one who was acting as the part time nanny for the kids. So boyfriends arrested Kelsey herself is arrested and her nanny Diana is also arrested. She actually turns herself into police and Diana comes in willing to tell detectives everything that went down in the days leading up to Thomas's death, which it's pretty funny because I feel like this actually happens a lot now where and the police know it.
Starting point is 00:27:29 There's multiple people involved. Someone's going to crack. One of them will crack and will spill everything at some point. And it's most likely going to be the nanny, not the actual person connecting you to the victim and their boyfriend. Shop with Rakuten and you'll get it. What's it? It's the best deal, the highest cashback, the most savings on your shopping.
Starting point is 00:27:52 So join Rakuten and start getting cash back at Sephora, Uniqlo, Expedia, and other stores you love. You can even stack sales on top of cash back. Just start your shopping with Rakuten to save money at over 750 stores. Join for free at rakuten.ca or download the Rakuten app. So this is what she says. Thomas showed up at the house on March 1st, as we know. And while it seems like he tried to have some tough conversations with Kelsey that night, he literally lies out there to talk to her in person to try to figure this out. These conversations didn't appear to be productive because Thomas stayed at the home that evening and was still there the following day. That night,
Starting point is 00:28:34 Kelsey and Thomas went to pick Diana up from the Vegas Strip where she was also working as a bartender. And on the way back, Kelsey asked Thomas if she could use his phone to plug in the GPS for directions. And apparently while she had his phone, she found something. Text messages between Thomas and Kelsey's mother were on Thomas's phone. Wait a second. No, these conversations were more about the well-being of Kelsey's four-year-old son. So basically, Thomas is texting her mother saying, like, hey, here's what's going on.
Starting point is 00:29:11 I'm really worried about Kelsey. She doesn't seem to be in a very good stage of life. I'm worried about the little boy. And Kelsey found these messages as basically him threatening the custody of her child. And this sent Kelsey into a rage. She began hitting Thomas as he tried to calm her down. Eventually they do make it back to the house,
Starting point is 00:29:31 but things just get worse from there. Kelsey continued screaming at Thomas, again bringing up the false accusations of child exploitation material and that she planned to ruin his life if he did anything to take away her son. As things looked like they were going to turn violent again, Thomas actually ran and locked himself in Kelsey's son's bedroom to try and escape the situation.
Starting point is 00:29:54 Luckily, the four year old boy was with another one of Kelsey's friends at another house this night so he didn't witness what came next. Because at this point, Kelsey's boyfriend, John got involved. I want you to keep in mind, this is an elderly person with onset symptoms of dementia. Yeah. That these young kids are that they killed. I mean, there's no other way to put it. Yeah. Ganging up on, I mean, it's horrible. It's absolutely horrible. So apparently John
Starting point is 00:30:26 at this point kicks in her son's door and went in with a baseball bat and began by my beating the doctor out of here. So Diana claims when she's talking to police that at this point she steps in, she took the bat away from John got Thomas a glass of water, told him she was going to get him to a hospital. She got him downstairs and into the backseat of Kelsey's Mercedes. And I guess Diana doesn't drive because she said she waited for Kelsey to calm down and then come drive him to the hospital. Now at this point, Thomas starts pleading with Kelsey saying he won't report her. He'll tell the doctors he was mugged.
Starting point is 00:31:01 He won't mention her name at all. He's like, listen, just get me to the hospital mainly because he's terrified at this point that he's not going to make it out of this house alive. And unfortunately his fears are founded. I am so heartbroken right now because that is so sad because Kelsey comes down to the car. Oh my gosh. She doesn't calm down.
Starting point is 00:31:20 Instead she gets more erratic. She orders Diana to get back inside the house, start cleaning everything up, the blood out of her son's room. And Diana, who is terrified of these people who just started beating a 70 plus year old man, does what she's told. Meanwhile, Diana hears another argument break out downstairs. Kelsey starts yelling for John to knock Thomas out. And by the time Diana goes downstairs to try to intervene again, she sees John coming back in from the garage and he has blood all over him and he has a bloody pistol in his hand. That's when Kelsey looks at Diana and says, Thomas is dead,
Starting point is 00:31:57 which if you think back on the autopsy, this does make sense. They believe Thomas was hit with a baseball bat and also a pistol of some kind. I bet you she thought that she was going to get killed as well. She's like, what do I do now? Right. So afterwards, I mean, I guess we can't really, we can only take her story that she gave police, which she totally could have altered. But afterwards, Kelsey starts coming up with a cover story for all of them. Something about Thomas going back to California with some guy they had never seen.
Starting point is 00:32:26 Meanwhile, Diana, Kelsey, her son, and John all go to stay at the Mandalay Bay for the next day or so. And during that time, Kelsey and John talk about getting rid of Thomas's phone, but Diana says she's not sure what they actually ever did with it. Though it seems they just left it on the strip somewhere, and that's when that random stranger answered when Thomas's friend called a few days later. Then the next day, March 4th, Diana says
Starting point is 00:32:50 John drove off in Kelsey's Mercedes and Diana says she never saw the car again after that. At the same time, Diana, Kelsey and her son went back to the house, hired a cleaning service to come by, told them they had a party that had gotten out of hand. After that, they all left the house and stayed at another hotel before Kelsey eventually went off to California with her son, where she was finally arrested a few weeks later on March 21st. Kelsey and John both pled not guilty to the murder charges, and Diana actually accepts a plea deal to the lesser charge of accessory to murder for not reporting the crime in the first place. Diana received three years probation for her role. She later tells the press, if I could go back and change how I handled the situation, I
Starting point is 00:33:33 would, but I don't know exactly how I would because I was scared. But being scared is not really an excuse. Finally, in May of 2022, John Logan Kennison also pleads guilty to murder. He's given 18 to 45 years behind bars. But before that, while Kelsey was waiting for her trial, she actually gave birth. Based on the timing of events and the way John held up a sign during one of her hearings that read, love you little mama, people believe he was the father, and that she might have actually been
Starting point is 00:34:06 pregnant when they killed Dr. Thomas Bouchard. But Kelsey never ended up making it to trial because she later accepted an Alford plea to second degree murder and was given ten to twenty five years in prison. Oh, that's it. Yeah. She'll be you kidding me. Listen to this. She'll be eligible for parole in March of twenty twenty nine at just thirty six years. Oh my gosh, no, no, that's not okay. Sorry, twenty six to thirty six like that's not nothing. No,
Starting point is 00:34:32 no, no. You either sit in there for life or yeah, that's not like you get. She's going to get out and be able to live life. Her whole life has not passed her okay with that. That's wild. That's so messed up. Judy, obviously Thomas's fiance thinks this is a terrible idea. She pointed out that during the early hearings, Kelsey was smiling and laughing, posing for cameras. It's clear she wasn't taking anything seriously. Judy called her an evil person who deserves to spend
Starting point is 00:34:57 the rest of her life behind bars. And honestly, I don't really disagree here. For Judy, Kelsey did irreparable damage to her life, her love, and her livelihood. She took things from Thomas and Judy that they will never get back. In the end, Thomas's generosity was both maybe his greatest quality and his downfall. And now the woman who truly loved him is left to suffer the consequences. This case truly, truly broke my heart because I, I think the way life unfolds and the trauma that people have, there is probably some reasonable explanation for why Thomas was wanting to help out these young women in the first place.
Starting point is 00:35:42 And the fact that at some point he said, Hey, I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore and him saying no led to his death has an elderly man is actually so devastating because Kelsey was in her twenties. She literally could have just wiped her hands and moved on like you have a sugar daddy. It's over move on. It's worth killing over. It's disgusting. It's horrible. I just it makes me so sad. I mean, especially when people, I mean like he can't defend himself. He can't do anything like it's it's just horrible. It's just absolutely horrible and they should both be in
Starting point is 00:36:20 prison until they die. I don't really care. Like there's no other. I don't have any other words for it. This should be in prison until they die. I don't really care. Like there's no other. I don't have any other words for it. This should be in prison till they die and that should be that. But here we are. There's just a different level to something of killing children, differently abled people, elderly people. It takes a different level of evil to be able to do that and then laugh in the cameras about it afterwards. I truly hope that Judy receives justice at some point, but from the sounds of it, it doesn't seem like we're ever going to get there. All right, you guys, that was our case for this week, and we will see you next time with another one. I love it.
Starting point is 00:36:57 And I hate it. Goodbye.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.