MISSING: Alissa Turney

[00:00] Hi, Crime Junkies. It's Britt, and I have big news. One of my favorite seasonal shows, CounterClock, is back with a brand new season, and it is wild. Host Delia D'Ambra is digging into the 2008 Lane Bryant murders. I mean, this isn't just a recap. It is a reinvestigation. She's talking to law enforcement, people from the community, even sources who have never spoken publicly until now. And you know I love a show that asks all the questions. Listen to CounterClock Season 8 now wherever you get your podcasts. [00:30] Crime junkies, Britt and I have a wild ride to take you on today. It is the case of missing Alyssa Turney that will have you picking your jaw up off of the floor by the end. But before I start this episode, I need something from you. We have hammered this into you all before. These are real people we're talking about on our show. This isn't just a fun 30-minute way to make your morning commute cushier. [01:00] And they let us share their stories because they're hoping people on the other end will actually care and actually do something. So before you listen to this story, I need you to commit to doing something for me. At the end of the show, I'm going to ask you to sign a petition that Alyssa's sister has put together. This will cost you no money. It will take less than two minutes. And this past week was Thanksgiving, and I'm sure most of you got to spend time with your family. [01:30] torn apart by her disappearance. So if you have 30 minutes to sit here and hear her story, you owe her sister the two minutes it will take you to actually make a difference. So again, please listen all the way to the end of our episode. And when you're done, go to CrimeJunkiePodcast.com to sign that petition. With that, Britt, are you ready for me to dive into the disappearance of Alyssa Turney?

[01:55] I am so ready. Okay, let's do this. [01:59] Thank you. [02:29] I want to take you all the way back to a time that is particularly nostalgic for me. 2001, a time when Lifehouse was at the top of the Billboard charts, Brittany and Justin were wearing matching denim, and the first ever iPod was introduced to the world. It was a great time to be a teenager, and at the center of our story is 17-year-old Alyssa Turney. Alyssa was like most girls her age, [02:59] Edgy, testing her boundaries by dating boys, staying out late, smoking weed. She was a junior in high school and living at home with just her stepdad and her half-sister, Sarah. You see, Alyssa's real dad was never really in her life and wanted little to do with her. Alyssa's mom got remarried to a man named Mike who had three boys of his own, and together they had Sarah. Now, Mike's three boys were grown and out of the house.

[03:29] cancer in the span of one year, just Mike, Alyssa, and Sarah were left in the house. Mike had very different relationships with his two daughters. With Sarah, he was the fun-loving, cool dad that let her get away with anything. He would buy her and her friends beer. He not only allowed her to skip school, but he actually encouraged it. With Alyssa, on the other hand, he was like a completely [03:59] He would often follow her. Like when she would go to work, he would sit outside of her work to make sure she was there. He monitored her attendance, how she was doing in school, who she was hanging out with. And he would often come down on her for drinking and smoking weed. [04:29] and Alyssa just wasn't. [04:32] But there were signs of something more brewing. Tensions between a stepfather and daughter that Sarah couldn't quite put her finger on as a young kid. And just to show you an example, take a listen to this clip from a home movie taken back in 1997. [04:49] Hit the red button. What? Hit the red button now. I don't want to. [04:55] How do I record? [04:57] Hit the red button. - Sarah! - Oh look where he?

[05:00] Dad! [05:01] Yeah! [05:03] - Yeah. [05:07] Okay. [05:08] Hey, hey. [05:09] I'm going to go. [05:14] Give me the camera now. [05:15] - Okay. [05:16] - [05:19] *poof* [05:21] And you're still recording. [05:23] And listen, it's stupid moron! [05:28] and this is a stupid moron [05:32] Well, I don't like that at all. Yeah, so you can see tensions were always running high between the two. So what happened on May 17th, 2001 was only a little surprising to Sarah. That day was the last day of school before summer break, and her dad didn't show up to pick her up after school. All the buses came and went, and when he still wasn't there, she walked to a friend's house. This actually wasn't unusual at all. [06:02] walk to this friend's house so frequently that it didn't even register with her that maybe something was off and without any communication to her dad he knew to pick her up there. When he did arrive sometime likely between 4.30 and 5 he tells Sarah that Alyssa is missing and he can't get a hold of her. Here he says he passes his cell phone to her you try calling her and attempt after attempt as they drove the phone would just ring until Alyssa's voicemail would pick up.

[06:32] Finally, when they arrive home, Sarah was the first to enter the house and her dad told her to go check in Alyssa's room for any kind of sign of her or where she could have gone. When Sarah enters, she sees that the contents of Alyssa's backpack had been emptied, but the bag itself was gone. And that cell phone that she had been calling was left on Alyssa's dresser, [06:52] right beside a note. And Britt, can you read this note for me? [06:57] "Dad and Sarah, when you dropped me off at school today, I decided I really am going to California." [07:03] Sarah, you said you wanted me gone. Now you have it. Dad, I took $300 from you. That's why I saved my money. [07:10] Alyssa. Now, Sarah was sad that her sister had left, but truthfully not surprised. Her sister had an aunt that lived in California that Alyssa had talked about going to live with in the past. That night, Mike Turney did call the police to report his daughter as a runaway. He said they had an argument and she left for California. [07:29] Now I should mention, Mike Turney had a history with law enforcement. He actually used to be a cop himself. So he knew how the system worked. And he had to have known that reporting a 17-year-old as a runaway and saying he likely even knew where she was at her aunt's house wasn't going to raise any big alarm bells. And it didn't. Police opened a missing person file on Alyssa, but no real investigation was done into finding her. [07:59] to ask questions or look into her things. They didn't go do interviews with people at school or her friends who saw her the day that she supposedly left. If they would have, I think they would have seen that her disappearance wasn't as straightforward as Mike Turney had presented to them. About a week after Alyssa supposedly left, Mike reports to police that he got a call from her very early in the morning and a call where he said that she just cursed at him and blamed him for the reason she left.

[08:29] told him she was in California and would never be coming home. [08:32] Did police verify that this call even happened? No. So I think they were just taking Mike at his word. Remember, they didn't really even do an investigation. And this was just even more proof to them that she was in California because he said she was in California. [08:47] But for some reason, Mike wanted them to have proof of this call. Mike was a very litigious man, so he ended up suing AT&T for the phone records, and he was able to prove that there was actually an incoming call from California to his home in the very early morning hours on that day. This call would be the last time Mike or anyone was contacted by Alyssa. [09:17] and never once contacted her friends or her boyfriend. [09:22] What about the aunt that she supposedly went to live with? Did she actually have her? I'm guessing no. So she had the aunt in California, but she never contacted her as well. And it's super interesting, I think, because... [09:35] Sarah said that there actually was talk of her going to live with this aunt shortly before her disappearance. Her dad and Alyssa could not get along. And he said, you know what, if you don't want to be here so bad, go live with her. And Alyssa was kind of warming up to the idea. And here is Alyssa's sister, Sarah, on a 2020 special saying where she thought Alyssa might have been. Until I'm shown evidence otherwise, she's on the beach sipping margaritas, living a brand new life.

[10:05] You know, that's the way I want to think of her. I won't let myself think negatively without evidence. [10:11] So pretty much all of her family thought that she was a runaway too, right? Well, for a while, until Mike started to convince them that maybe something more sinister had happened. And here's where things, in my opinion, start to get a little hinky. And it's only something we can now see from the outside looking in 17 years later, because at the time, everyone else was too close to the situation to see the forest through the trees. [10:41] he thought something terrible had happened to her. He said that, yes, she had left, but after some time, he thought someone had been following her or somehow harm had come to her along the way. He stressed to the family that he had reported her missing to the police and they weren't willing to do anything, so he was the one that had to be Alyssa's champion. He said he was the only one who cared. He was the only one who was looking for her. And Sarah said in the weeks following Alyssa's disappearance, her dad would make frequent trips to California. [11:11] driving in the areas they were familiar with, driving in the areas where he got that phone call, looking for Alyssa and passing around her missing person flyer. So he's telling the police that she's a runaway and the family that something bad has happened to her. [11:26] Did he tell the police that something bad happened to her? No, he never said anything different to the police. There's this huge contradiction. He has convinced the family that something bad has happened to her and that the police are doing nothing about it. But at the same time, the only story he's ever given to police is that she has run away and I probably know where she is, so it's not a big deal. What about that call? We know he got a call in the early morning hours from California. Right.

[11:56] and for a long time, like I said, people took him at his word. He had this proof from AT&T that a call came in from, I think it was like River County, California. Yeah. But when you think about it, the call came like a week after she went missing. And in the week between the time she did go missing and he got that call is when Sarah said that he was doing a lot of traveling to California to supposedly look for Alyssa. If for some reason he had something to do with it, [12:24] How hard would it have been if he hired somebody to make a phone call from a payphone? Now that you mention it, it's totally possible. Or even... [12:33] I mean, going even further on a ledge, [12:36] He could have... [12:37] left something somewhere, called someone and said, you know, he has contacts there at that point. It's more than just a coincidence. Exactly. And if we had any kind of like recording of the phone call, [12:48] That would help, but we will get to that later. [12:52] Unfortunately, Alyssa's case went cold for many years. And for many years, it was the same story. The family believing that Alyssa had left, and if you believe Mike, then thinking that some harm had actually come to her. And the police, probably not even knowing Alyssa's name as her missing person file, got further and further back in a stack of cold cases never being looked at because no one was calling to remind them.

[13:21] all along that he was pushing police and he was being her champion but getting no cooperation but in reality it seems he was doing nothing now sarah had resided herself to the fact that she might never know what happened to her sister where she was living who she was with until 2006 and [13:39] when the case broke wide open. There was a man named Thomas Heimer who was serving time in a Florida prison for murder. To understand this story, I need to give you a little background on Heimer and why he was in jail. Back in 2001, just months after Alyssa's disappearance, on the other side of the country in Florida, a housekeeper at a Fort Lauderdale beachfront motel was cleaning a room when she found the body of a woman underneath a bed. [14:09] The woman had been strangled and stabbed in the neck. And the police in Florida found out that her name was Sandra Lee Goodman. She was a 30-year-old video clerk. And an all-points bulletin went out for her car that was missing, a 1996 Honda. Within a day, it was spotted in Georgia with an unknown male behind the wheel. And that man was Thomas Heimer. Thomas had recently met Sandra and they'd been traveling together, her a willing companion, [14:39] Now, Thomas Heimer wasn't on anyone's radar for the murders, and he certainly wasn't on the radar for the Phoenix Police Department in Alyssa's case. Until...

[14:59] 2006 when they received a letter. A letter from Thomas that said he was going to make them famous with his confessions. [15:10] Cape Fear is a new series now streaming on Apple TV. This 10-episode psychological thriller is executive produced by Martin Scorsese and stars Academy Award winner Javier Bardem, Academy Award nominee Amy Adams, and Emmy nominee Patrick Wilson. When convicted murderer Max Cady is released from prison, he begins infiltrating the family of the married attorneys who helped put him behind bars. Watch Cape Fear streaming now on Apple TV. [15:38] I recently learned that after working out, performance and recovery come down to what's happening in your blood. Now, I pay a lot more attention to what's happening inside my body. And here's what most people overlook. Training gives your body the stimulus, but your internal environment determines what happens next. Thankfully, function can help you see exactly what's going on under the hood. Things like your glucose, whether your body is burning clean or running on fumes. Your omega-6 to omega-3 ratio, which one is winning the inflammation battle? Your DHEAS, one of the building blocks your body uses to make testosterone. [16:08] one of the first things to quietly decline. When these markers are off, you can do everything right and still feel like you're fighting against yourself. Check in on your health. Function provides over 160 labs for $1 per day and member pricing on MRI and CT scans. Join at functionhealth.com slash crimejunkie or use gift code crimejunkie25 for a $25 credit toward your membership. [16:29] When police got this letter, they looked through their files. Who is Alyssa Turney? Could this guy be legit? They dusted off their files and took a photo of Alyssa with them to Florida to talk to this guy. They put together a photo lineup of girls about Alyssa's age, asking him which one was the girl that he knew. And sure enough, he picks out Alyssa right away.

[16:58] hooked up until he accidentally killed her during a sexual act and disposed of her body. Now this was a chilling lead to police, but they needed to verify it. For the first time in seven years, these detectives were going to investigate Alyssa's case and talk to people in her life to see if perhaps they had found the answers to what really happened. [17:21] However, it didn't take a lot of looking before they realized that Heimer's story, it just wasn't adding up. Heimer said that Alyssa was a heroin addict, but when police tried to verify this, no, no, she wasn't. One of the lead detectives back in 2006 said that being a heroin addict isn't something that you can hide from your friends and family. There wasn't a single person in Alyssa's life who said that she did hard drugs. So this didn't match up. He's like, that's not something you can hide. [17:51] about his sexual encounters with Alyssa, and he said that she had some very weird sexual tendencies, which he shared with police. Again, they go back and try and verify this. They talk to Alyssa's boyfriend, the one she was actually dating right before she went missing, and he said, absolutely not. None of what this guy is saying is true about her sexual preferences. So it doesn't take long before investigators realize that Heimer is just conning them. But if he isn't telling the truth, they thought... [18:21] then where is Alyssa? [18:23] In trying to verify his story, they had been talking to her friends and her family. And in seven years, this teen runaway had made contact with no one. She had $1,800 in her bank account at the time she supposedly left. And in the time that she had been gone, all of those years touched none of it.

[18:43] Which doesn't add up to the note that she left. Exactly. She said in the note that she had actually taken $300 from her dad. [18:52] And that's why she'd been saving her money. [18:54] She takes $300, she steals $300, but doesn't [18:57] Take the $1,800 she had sitting in her account that she had immediate access to. That she acknowledges she was saving for this very reason. Exactly. Like, things are not adding up. Her social security number had never been used. She never had a job. She never went to school after her junior year. It starts becoming painfully clear. This was not a runaway case. Something had happened to Alyssa. [19:22] With seven years between the investigators and fresh leads, the detectives now had to start their case from scratch, hoping people's memories of Alyssa were still intact and hoping they could find some physical evidence of what happened to her. [19:37] As they interview those closest to Alyssa, a new picture starts to emerge of May 17, 2001. Like I said, it was her very last day before summer break, but for the first time investigators find out, [19:51] Alyssa didn't stay in school the whole day. Mike tells police that he actually picked her up early that day, sometime between 11 and 12. Because police are finding out about this seven years later, those school attendance records don't exist anymore. But Alyssa's boyfriend, John, who was interviewed, confirms that she had come into his shop class to say goodbye and tell him that she was leaving school. But she would see him later that night at an end of the year party. Wait, wait, wait. We got to back up.

[20:21] You just laid a lot out. [20:24] She tells her boyfriend she'll see him later that night. Right. And not just her boyfriend. Apparently, when they talked to all of her friends, she'd been telling all of them that she was going to be at this end of the year school party. Okay. So I get that she wouldn't tell her parents that she's running away. [20:41] or your family, or whatever. You want to keep that hidden, because you're running away. That's the whole point. Yeah. But you don't make plans with other people for that night, especially, like, with your boyfriend. Especially with your boyfriend. Like, at 17, your 17-year-old boyfriend is, like, your whole world. You know what I mean? I married mine. You literally did. They had a really great relationship. Like, it's actually, like, touching and a little bit heartbreaking, because for a long time after this, John didn't date. Like, he... [21:10] He was so in love. He thought they were going to have a future. They were going to get married and have kids. It was like he lost his person. He did. And so for her to run away, it's not something that she wouldn't even tell him. You know what I mean? Like of all people in the world, you're right. He was her person. And... [21:27] She's telling him, yeah, I'm leaving, but I'm going to see you in a little bit. Okay, so we can move past that, but let's go back to her... [21:35] stepdad picked her up early? Did we know that? No, that is totally new information, brand new to police. And get this, in all of the years Alyssa was missing, he never mentioned this to anyone in the family. And they didn't even find out about it when police did. They didn't find out until after ABC did a 2020 special on Alyssa's case years later. And it's when they

[22:05] Like her aunts and her brothers and her sister found out that the day she went missing, she didn't come home from school like a normal day. The day she went missing, her dad, for some unknown reason, picked her up early. Just out of curiosity, do we know that he brought her home? So the short answer is no. We don't have any proof that he brought her home. [22:28] other than that note that she left. Now, according to Michael Turney's story, he said that he just picked her up to go get lunch. Then he does say that he brought her home. And he said it's when they got home that they get into a fight again about normal house rules. Alyssa said she was tired of following them. And Mike did the dad thing, like, as long as you live under my roof, you're going to follow my rules. Oh, gosh. According to him, they did come home. They have this fight. And then he says she freaks out, goes into her room. [22:58] went to run errands and then eventually picked up Sarah and that's when they arrive home and find Alyssa missing [23:03] Police are suspicious of Mike's story, but they have little to go on. They think there's likely no physical evidence of anything because it's been seven years, but... [23:13] They get lucky, and they find out that Mike was not only a very litigious man, like I had said, but he was a very paranoid man. [23:22] a man who wanted everything documented, everything recorded, and they find that for almost 20 years, Mike had been passively recording every incoming and outgoing phone call on his home line. Oh my God.

[23:39] He also had cameras recording everything outside his home, and they find out that he had even placed a hidden camera in the vent of his living room recording everything. No. For decades, some cold cases have been reduced to files in a cabinet, but not anymore. I'm Ashley Flowers, and me and my team on the deck have been traveling across the country to report on these forgotten cases. [24:09] being solved after decades. [24:11] Join me every Wednesday as we revive these stories one card at a time. Listen to the deck now. [24:18] wherever you get your podcasts. [24:21] When they ask Mike about these cameras, he sends police images of Alyssa with boys from months before she went missing. Like a time that doesn't even matter. And like her and suggestive... [24:33] like [24:34] positions with boys. Like I, why, why would you send that? But he provides them nothing to [24:39] from the actual day that she went missing. This video that could be crucial to finding a lead in this investigation. When police pressed him for it, he said, oh, you know, I looked at it. There was just like nothing on there that would give you any clue to where she was. Like nothing really helpful. It gives you a time as to when she left the house. Oh, it gives you everything. And police are saying like, if there's nothing, just like, just give it to us. Yeah. Yeah. Prove it. They're like, your opinion of nothing is totally different than my opinion of nothing.

[25:09] that was interviewed. And he said, you know, it shows me what was she last wearing? What jewelry was she wearing? So we can see her inside. Did she leave alone? What did she take with her? Okay, you have cameras outside. Did she get into a car? Did she walk away? He's like, I've got way more to go off of. Even if it is just her leaving the house than I have right now. I need that tape. [25:29] They also ask him to provide audio from his home phone recorder for the day that she supposedly called him from California. Now, this is what I was talking about earlier. You know, if we had proof, you know, did he pay someone to call? Did someone actually call? If someone called, who was it? Right. So he records everything. But he said... [25:47] that, oh gosh, you know, just that day [25:51] that recorder happened to be turned off. [25:53] This is some Nixon stuff right here. It's getting really fishy. With suspicions rising, police now have enough probable cause to get a warrant to search his home and look for those recordings themselves. They detain Mike, not to arrest him, but just to hold him, get handwriting samples from him. [26:12] As they look through the home, [26:14] In their minds, really searching for like videotapes and audiotapes, the investigators come across something horrible. [26:21] mind-blowing. [26:22] Twenty-six. [26:25] homemade pipe bombs. What? And a 90-page manifesto written by Mike Turney. [26:32] Oh, totally normal. Yeah, definitely. Not what they were expecting. As the bomb squad is called in, investigators try to digest his writings. It covers everything in his life, everything he thought was wrong, every way in which he was wronged. And he claims a new story in this manifesto about what happened to Alyssa. In this manifesto, he still says that Alyssa ran away.

[27:02] used to work for. You see, back in the day, Mike had been a whistleblower, and he said the union was out to get him. And they took revenge on him by murdering his stepdaughter. So... [27:14] He, according to his own writings, avenged Alyssa's death by finding and killing two men that had killed her. Now, when police look into this accusation, the two men were actually dead, but their deaths were totally unrelated. They died from natural causes. And it seems that these were the writings of a crazy man. Mike did plead guilty to the possession of the 26 pipe bombs, which, by the way, he told ABC 2020, that special that he was on, that those were totally planted by police. [27:44] never seen them before in his life. Sure, he wrote that manifesto, but had nothing to do with the bombs. Did the police just have like a... [27:51] pipe bomb making night where they fabricated all of these for it? Like, where do you get 26 pipe bombs to plant? Pizza and pipe bombs? Clearly. As police continue... [28:02] to search Michael's place, you know, after the bomb squad comes and clears it, they get tubs and tubs of paperwork, videotapes, audio tapes. Now, the videotapes that they had were really limited. It looked like it was like the same tapes used over and over. But the audio tapes, they had hundreds of hours of audio tapes spanning decades to go through. And it's like, you know, obviously

[28:32] But they have to go through everything. Now, in all of this stuff that they found, it doesn't seem that they found anything from that day that she went missing. So even though Mike said, oh, yeah, I saw the video. Nothing's on it. [28:46] it doesn't seem to even exist anymore. Whether he erased it, whether he had it turned off and it never existed in the first place and he made that up... [28:55] They have all this information, but they don't have the crucial information, that missing day. And again, to me, it looks more suspicious when you have 20 years of recordings, but you don't have the one day that matters. They did find some really dark stuff. There was this commercially made snuff film, I guess, that was viewed by like a million people. But Michael Turney had that snuff film. [29:25] actual like murder part of it just looped like four times. [29:31] And that's what he was watching. [29:34] And so it's stuff like that, that they're, again, they don't have evidence that he did anything to Alyssa, but they have these really dark pieces of evidence. Now, [29:45] Despite this conviction, despite this dark evidence, Alyssa's sister Sarah couldn't believe that her dad had anything to do with Alyssa's disappearance. She started a website back in 2008 or 2009 dedicated to finding Alyssa, and she had another site dedicated to advocating for her father's innocence in Alyssa's disappearance. She said, listen, I know him. Other people know him. He wouldn't be capable of something like this. Everyone who knows him knows he's a good man.

[30:15] special. The public makes him look, you know, horrible on the news. You know, he, it's not him. Everyone who knows my dad is shocked. [30:23] I mean, I guess it's kind of what you have to tell yourself. Well, that 2020 special came out years ago, and a lot can change in just a few years. [30:33] Hi, Sarah. [30:34] Does any part of you now think that maybe she could have run away? [30:38] No. [30:39] No, there's zero part of me that thinks she could have run away. [30:45] you'll learn more about sarah's journey to the truth on our next episode but between now and then she needs your help it has become clear that her sister was murdered and sarah alleges it was done by her father she's asking that all of our listeners sign a petition to get the attention of [31:15] thousand signatures to even get noticed. I know our listeners can put a big dent in that. [31:20] Like I said, if you had 30 minutes to listen to this episode, you owe Sarah the two minutes it takes to sign the petition. You can find that by going to our website, CrimeJunkiePodcast.com, click on the episodes link, and find the blog posted, Missing Alyssa Turney.

[31:50] with co-hosting by Britt Prewatt. All of our editing and sound production was done by David Flowers. And all of our music, including our theme, comes from Justin Daniel. Crime Junkie is an audio Chuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? [32:09] Okay, crime junkies, you know I absolutely love a twist and a turn, especially when it comes to people who turn out to be someone they're not. That's why I have been obsessed with the podcast Chameleon. Every Thursday, host Josh Dean deep dives into a scam so bizarre it will leave you wondering, how did they get away with that? [32:28] It is truly one of my favorite podcasts right now and I've been listening for years. [32:32] I think you'll love it too. [32:33] Listen to Chameleon wherever you get your podcasts.