John Jefferson
Kelsey Turner (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, Law&Crime).
A former Playboy and Maxim model is currently serving 10 to 25 years in Nevada state prison over her role in the death of a prominent child psychiatrist found stuffed in the trunk of her car near Las Vegas.
Kelsey Turner, 31, was the impetus for the death of 71-year-old Dr. Thomas Burchard — her one-time, so-called “sugar daddy.”
Another man was largely responsible for the brutal killing — but another woman was around for the crime as well. And for the cover-up. And then for the post-killing escape, however brief, to California.
According to Clark County prosecutors, Turner and her then-boyfriend, Jon Logan Kennison, 32, beat the doctor to death following a knock-down, drag-out argument and then left his body in the trunk of Turner’s car on the outskirts of Lake Mead. Kennison previously pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 to 45 years in prison.
A former roommate of the couple, Diana Nicole Peña, was initially charged with murder in the case but pleaded guilty to one charge of accessory to murder in June 2019, insisting she had nothing to do with the bludgeoning itself. She later served as a key witness.
And, in an episode of “20/20” that re-aired on Friday night, she recalled the days of anger, bloodletting, subterfuge and running.
“I’d never been so scared in my life. It’s just like real terror. And then, I just kind of went numb,” Peña told ABC News about the surreal events of March 1, 2019. “I just turned around and started washing dishes, because that was the only thing I could do to calm down.”
Peña told law enforcement Turner and Burchard got into an altercation after Turner became “upset about photos and messages on the doctor’s phone,” according to Las Vegas NBC affiliate KSNV.
“[S]he saw some stuff that she didn’t like,” the witness elaborated in comments to ABC News, “[M]essages between her mom and Dr. Burchard … talking about maybe taking away her children.”
Then, Peña said, she saw Kennison raise a bat — but did not see it connect with the victim. The roommate suggested Turner egged the violence on — prosecutors agreed. Peña also said she later saw Kennison wrestling with the doctor — and that she was told to go upstairs and help clean up the scene of the crime after the fact.
“I just started screaming at them to stop and calm down,” Peña said.
The witness says she told the couple to take the injured man to a hospital. And then he asked her for his jacket.
“He said, ‘you know, they’re going to kill me,”” Peña added.
By the end of the day, Burchard would be beaten to death, not with a baseball bat, but with a gun, prosecutors said. Kennison wielded the weapon, and Turner encouraged the fatal bludgeoning.
Turner was the first to be arrested, in late March 2019, followed by Kennison the next month; Peña turned herself in to police after initially accompanying the couple to the Golden State post-slaughter.
According to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, Burchard and Turner had a relationship with the older man whereby he paid the rent on a home she shared with her mother in Salinas, California. But, eventually, the rent checks stopped coming.
Then the payments started up again.
At the time of his death, Burchard paid the rent on the Sin City house where Turner, Kennison, and Peña lived.
Judy Earp, Burchard’s girlfriend for some 17 years, said her then-partner spent upwards of $300,000 on the model over several years and described Turner “as evil as Charles Manson” in comments to Las Vegas ABC affiliate KTNV.
“The last conversation I had with him, he had to go to Las Vegas to check things out because she was a compulsive liar,” the grieving woman told the TV station.
Earp first reported Burchard missing when he failed to get off a flight returning from Las Vegas in March 2019. Days later, he was found inside the trunk of Turner’s blue Mercedes-Benz C300.
The car, located on Nevada State Route 147, was reported to authorities by a man driving through the area with his children because it was parked alone with a rock thrown through one of the windows. As investigators inventoried the car, however, the psychiatrist’s body was found stuffed inside the trunk.
Burchard was a well-known child psychiatrist. He often entertained his patients with magic tricks. After 40 years, he went on semi-retirement by switching to a 4-day workweek so that his patients would still have the care they needed. He often sent money to women he met online, according to Boston.com, a sticking point in his 2001 divorce.
“He didn’t want to be her golden goose anymore,” Peña told ABC News. “He was going to take it all away.”
In November 2022, Turner entered an Alford plea on one charge of murder in the second degree in exchange for guaranteed parole eligibility after 10 years behind bars. An Alford plea allows criminal defendants to maintain their innocence on the facts of an allegation while simultaneously accepting the state’s evidence would likely convince a judge or jury of their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
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