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Sunday, July 9, 2023
Saturday, July 8, 2023
Murder of Moriah Wilson
On the night of May 11, 2022, professional cyclist Anna Moriah "Mo" Wilson was
fatally shot at a friend's home in Austin, Texas, United States. Police charged
Kaitlin Marie Armstrong, a yoga teacher and realtor, with stalking and killing
Wilson, in the belief that the murder was the result of romantic jealousy
ignited by Wilson's casual encounter with her boyfriend, pro cyclist Colin
Strickland. Armstrong had spent 43 days at large prior to her capture in Costa
Rica, where authorities say she had been trying to set up a new life.
Background
Victim
Anna Moriah Wilson was born on May 18, 1996, in Littleton,
New Hampshire, the daughter of Eric and Karen (née Cronin) Wilson and the
sister of Matthew Wilson. She grew up in Kirby, Vermont. Wilson graduated from
Burke Mountain Academy in 2014, and from Dartmouth College in 2019 with a BA in
engineering. Her obituary states she "enjoyed
cooking, writing, and traveling – she especially loved Italy, Taco Tuesdays,
maple creemees and playing Catan with her friends."
Raised in a family of athletes, Wilson developed a passion
for cycling as a young girl. She was a nationally ranked junior skier, but had
recently become a gravel cyclist. Before deciding to pursue her career as a
professional cyclist full-time, she had worked as a demand planner for Specialized.
Accused
Kaitlin Armstrong (born November 21, 1987) grew up in
Livonia, Michigan. She graduated from Stevenson High School in 2005, then
attended Schoolcraft College and Eastern Michigan University. She has been
described as a yoga teacher and licensed realtor.
Armstrong was in a relationship with professional cyclist
Colin Strickland. They briefly separated in the fall of 2021, by which point
Strickland had met Wilson and began a brief romantic relationship with her.
Armstrong and Strickland would later reconcile and resume their relationship.
Death and
investigation
On May 11, 2022, Wilson was found dead "shortly before 10 p.m" at a friend's residence in
Austin, Texas, where Wilson had been staying to compete in a big race in Hico, with
multiple gunshot wounds. Hours before her death, she had gone out with
Strickland for a swim at Deep Eddy Pool and afterward ate dinner. Strickland
denied ever going inside Wilson's friend's house after dropping Wilson off and
was ruled out as a prime suspect following a police investigation.
An autopsy ruled Wilson's death a homicide, with two gunshot
wounds located to the head and one in the chest that allegedly occurred "after she was already laying supine on
the floor," according to a search warrant. Police named Armstrong a
person of interest after video surveillance showed her black Jeep Grand
Cherokee arriving to the Austin residence moments before the killing. She was
taken into custody over an outstanding misdemeanor warrant for theft. Armstrong
made no statement to the police when confronted about the video evidence of her
vehicle; however, investigators observed she "turned her head and rolled her eyes in an angry manner"
when questioned about how Wilson was with Strickland. She was released on a
technicality stemming from discrepancies between her date of birth in the
police department's database and the one in the warrant.
Police examined Wilson's phone and concluded that she was
romantically tied to Strickland while he was still dating Armstrong. Strickland
originally denied knowing the victim when first interviewed, but eventually
admitted to the relationship and to keeping communication with Wilson hidden
from Armstrong, going so far as to delete text messages from Wilson on his
phone while saving her phone number under a pseudonym. Armstrong reportedly
became aware of the relationship and expressed a strong desire to kill Wilson,
telling an anonymous tipster that she "had
either recently purchased a firearm or was going to." Strickland
revealed he had bought two handguns for Armstrong and himself. Through a search
warrant, police recovered two firearms from the house Strickland shared with
Armstrong. A spent shell casing from one weapon, a SIG Sauer P365 handgun
belonging to Armstrong, yielded a "significant"
match with one found in the crime scene. The search warrant also revealed that
Armstrong had visited a shooting range with her sister, Christine Armstrong,
allegedly "to learn how to use a firearm". On May 17, an arrest
warrant for first-degree murder was issued for Kaitlin Armstrong.
Arrest and trial
After spending 43 days at large, Armstrong was apprehended
by the U.S. Marshals in a hostel in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica on June 29, 2022.
In a press conference about Armstrong's capture, the U.S. Marshals said that
she had fled to Costa Rica using a passport "that
did not belong to her but belonged to someone who was closely associated with
her", as well as significantly changed her appearance and sought
opportunities to teach yoga under a variety of aliases. They observed that her
hair had been dyed and cut short and her nose bandaged and saw some
discoloration around her eyes, which she reportedly said she obtained from a
surfboarding accident.
Armstrong was arraigned on July 21, 2022, pleading not
guilty to the murder charge. As of May 2023, she is being held on a $3.5
million bond in Travis County Jail. The case is scheduled to go to trial on
October 30, 2023, having been rescheduled at least twice. Armstrong had lost
her bid to suppress evidence of her custodial interrogation with the Austin
Police Department, which she argued was illegally obtained because she was not
apprised of her Miranda warning. A federal charge of Unlawful Flight to Avoid
Prosecution against her was provisionally dismissed as well; legal experts said
such a motion was "routine"
since she had a constitutional right to a speedy trial.
Stacey Castor
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Stacey Ruth Castor
(née Daniels, formerly Wallace; July 24, 1967 – June 11, 2016)
was an American convicted murderer from Weedsport, New York. In 2009, she was
found guilty of intentionally poisoning her then-husband David Castor with
antifreeze in 2005 and attempting to murder her daughter, Ashley Wallace, with
crushed pills mixed in with vodka, orange juice, and Sprite in 2007. In
addition, she is suspected of having murdered her first husband, Michael
Wallace, in 2000; his grave lay next to David Castor's until David's remains
were disinterred in 2016 and buried elsewhere by his son. The story made
national news, and Castor was subsequently named "The Black Widow" by media outlets A special two-hour
edition of ABC's 20/20 aired on April 24, 2009, and again on February 8, 2019,
to provide the full story of the Castor case.
Early life
Stacey, the daughter of Jerry Daniels and Judie Eaton, met
Michael Wallace when she was 17, in 1985, and they bonded immediately. The
couple married and had their first daughter, Ashley, in 1988. In 1991, they had
a second daughter, Bree.
Castor was employed by an ambulance dispatch company, while
Wallace worked nights as a mechanic, but the family had little money. According
to Castor, Wallace was very close to Bree, showing favoritism that Castor made
up for by becoming "best
friends" with elder daughter Ashley. Despite their closeness with
their children, the couple grew apart, and it was rumored that each was having
affairs.
Murders
In late 1999, Wallace began feeling intermittently ill.
Family members variously remember him as acting unsteady, coughing and seeming
swollen. As his inexplicable sickness persisted over the holiday season, his
family encouraged him to seek medical care, but he died in early 2000 before he
could do so. Their daughter Ashley was 12 at the time and had been alone with
him. She had noticed his ill appearance that day, but thought nothing of it.
Physicians told Castor that her husband had died of a heart attack. Although
Wallace's sister was skeptical and requested an autopsy for Wallace, Castor refused,
saying she believed the doctors were correct.
In 2003, Stacey married David Castor, whose surname she used
from that point forward. Castor was the
owner of an air conditioning installation and repair company, and Stacey served
as his office manager. In August 2005, at 2:00 one afternoon, Castor called her
local sheriff's office to tell them that her husband had locked himself in
their bedroom for a day following an argument and was not responding to his cell
phone. When he did not appear at their shared workplace, she had become
worried. She claimed he was depressed. Unable to get a response, Sergeant
Robert Willoughby of the Onondaga County Sheriff's Department kicked in the
door of the bedroom and found David Castor lying dead. Among the items near his
body were a container of antifreeze and a half-full glass of bright green
liquid. Willoughby says he remembers that Castor screamed, "He's not dead, he's not dead."
The coroner reported that David Castor had committed suicide
through a self-administered lethal dose of antifreeze, but when police found
Stacey Castor's fingerprints on the antifreeze glass and located a turkey
baster that had David Castor's DNA on the tip, they began to suspect Stacey
Castor had engineered her husband's death. They believed Castor had used the
turkey baster to force-feed him once he became too physically weak.
The detectives on the case ordered wiretappings on Castor's
house. They listened in on phone calls for any unusual conversations. In
addition, they set up cameras overlooking Castor's house and the gravesites of
her husbands, who had been buried side by side at Castor's request. Detectives
reasoned that if Castor were truly genuine about her love for her late
husbands, then she would eventually visit their graves. They wanted to observe
her behavior while there. Castor, however, never visited. The investigators
soon felt the only way to prove Castor responsible for both homicides was to
have Wallace's body exhumed. A toxicology screening ruled that Wallace had also
been killed through antifreeze poisoning.
Attempted murder
In September 2007, amid mounting evidence that Castor had
murdered both of her husbands, she began to panic. After she learned police had
exhumed Wallace's body and found traces of antifreeze in his system, she was
believed to have devised a plan to set up her daughter Ashley for the murders.
On Ashley's first day of college, investigators came to her
school to question her about her father's death and to inform her that he had
been poisoned instead of having died of a heart attack. An upset Ashley called
Castor. Soon after, Ashley said, Castor invited her to come to the family home
in Liverpool and drink together. Castor said that they had been through enough
emotional stress and needed to relax. Ashley agreed because Castor was not only
her mother but her "best
friend".
The following day, Castor invited Ashley to drink together
at home again. She says that her mother offered her a "nasty-tasting" drink that she at first refused but
eventually drank because she trusted Castor. Seventeen hours later, Ashley was
found comatose on her bed by her younger sister Bree Wallace. Bree demanded
that help be sought, and Castor made the 911 call. Ashley's sister left her
side for a moment and when she returned, she found a suicide note beside Ashley.
The note appeared to be Ashley's "murder
confession", in which she "admits"
to having killed her father and stepfather. Castor quickly took the note
from the sister and later gave it to the paramedics. Tests revealed that
potentially fatal painkillers had been found in Ashley's system, and that she
most likely would have died if taking her to the hospital had been just a few
minutes later. When Ashley woke up, with police questioning her about the
murders and the suicide note found beside her, she said that the last thing she
remembered was her mother making her an alcoholic drink, something she had
never done before. She told the officers that she did not write the note and
was confused about their questions and accusations.
Arrest and trial
For two years, investigators had collected evidence against
Castor for the deaths of her husbands. In 2007, she was arrested for second
degree murder in David's death and for attempting to murder Ashley and frame
her for the murders of David and Wallace.
Prosecutors argued that the computer-generated note where
Ashley "confesses" to
killing Wallace and David had actually been written by Castor. Ashley was 12 at
the time of her father Wallace's death. When brought on the stand, she
testified that she did not murder either her father or her stepfather nor did
she write the suicide note.
Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick and
Chief Assistant District Attorney Christine Garvey argued that David Castor's "suicide" had never made sense
given the lack of his fingerprints on the glass or container tainted with
ethylene glycol, a toxic substance found in antifreeze, and the turkey baster
found in the kitchen garbage bearing both ethylene glycol and his DNA. They
felt that this suggested he was force-fed antifreeze. Given evidence of the
evolution of David Castor's illness, they concluded that Castor had for four
days fed her husband antifreeze through the baster before trying to make it
look like a suicide. She had said that her husband got the idea to kill himself
with antifreeze while both were watching a news report about Lynn Turner, who
murdered two past lovers by using the poison.
The prosecutors presented evidence showing how antifreeze
poisoning can be identified from the growth of calcium oxalate crystals in the
kidneys, and that this was seen with examination of Wallace and David's bodies
as well. In addition, they noted money as one of the main reasons Castor
murdered her husbands. She had murdered her husband’s partly to collect on
their life insurance and estates, and had changed David's will to exclude his
son by a previous marriage from the money left to him by David.
"In 2005, people
started to put it together," Cayuga County Sheriff Dave Gould said. "If Mr. Wallace had been cremated, or
if Mr. Castor had not died, we would never have known we had a homicide."
If there is a ceiling
in terms of evil, she (Castor) is at the ceiling.— District Attorney William Fitzpatrick
Having searched Castor's computer, prosecutors had found
several drafts of the suicide note Ashley was accused of writing. Forensic
investigators found that based on the timestamps, it had been written while
Ashley was in school, proving she couldn't have been its author. They argued
that the "suicide attempt"
had actually been a planned-out murder attempt by Castor against Ashley. On the
stand, Ashley retold how her mother had convinced her to drink the two nights
before she almost died. She repeated that she only drank the "nasty-tasting" beverage
because she trusted Castor. She maintained her innocence of the two murders and
the writing of the note.
Castor's defense team—attorneys Charles Keller and Todd
Smith—was set on creating reasonable doubt in the jury's minds about Castor having
committed the murders. They wanted to "poke
holes" in Ashley's version of what happened and prove that she could
have been capable of murder at age 11. They noted Ashley's father, Wallace,
showing favoritism toward his younger daughter rather than Ashley and cited
jealousy as a possible motive for Ashley having murdered at such a young age.
For her stepfather, they noted his and Ashley's tumultuous relationship and how
they did not get along with each other. Castor's mother believed her granddaughter
Ashley to be guilty. In a final attempt to convince the jury that she was not guilty,
Castor took the stand.
On cross examination, Fitzpatrick pointed out what he felt
were flaws in Castor's version of that night. She maintained that it was Ashley
who murdered Wallace and David, though she would not speculate about motives
beyond implying that her daughter might be mentally ill. Fitzpatrick pointed
out that Ashley's mother had never sought therapy for her and that at 21 Ashley
exhibited no sign of mental illness.
Fitzpatrick asserted that Castor's behavior during David
Castor's and Ashley's illnesses made no sense, given the years she had worked
for a paramedics company. She did not seek care for Ashley for 17 hours and
indicated that David Castor, who was staggering and vomiting and unable to
stand, "looked OK".
Likewise, he questioned how a woman who had lost two husbands to poisoning
would not seek help for a daughter in Ashley's state. Fitzpatrick frequently
shouted at Castor, inspiring Castor's defense attorney Charles Keller to
frequently object and even to request a mistrial.
Prosecutors brought up another piece of "damaging evidence" against Castor when they cited having
heard "typing sounds" while
Castor was on the phone. During one of the wiretapped recordings presented,
"typing sounds" can be heard while Castor talks to a friend, though
Castor denied memory of using the computer that day. Prosecutors argued the "typing sounds" were those of
one of the several drafts Castor had written of the suicide note. Ashley had
already testified to having witnessed her mother working on the computer on
something she had hidden to prevent Ashley's seeing it. Fitzpatrick claimed
this was the day Castor wrote the note, which had Castor's fingerprints but not
Ashley's, to frame her daughter. He told the jury about the word antifreeze
being written as "anti-free"
in four places within the note and noted that Castor had also said "anti-free" during an
interview. Castor said she had cut herself off while saying "antifreeze" because she had
intended to say something else.
Castor's defense team presented a pharmaceutical expert in
an attempt to cast doubt on the prosecution's claim that Castor had drugged
Ashley 17 hours prior to being taken to the hospital. "Professor Francis Gengo testified that after analyzing the traces
of drugs and alcohol found in blood drawn from Ashley at the hospital, Ashley
would have had to ingest the alcohol, Ritalin, and several other drugs just
several hours before she was hospitalized."
On February 5, 2009, Castor was found guilty of second
degree murder in the poisoning death of David and of attempted second degree
murder for overdosing her daughter Ashley with drugs and vodka. With a "jam-packed" courtroom, most
were focused on Castor. She, however, had her eyes closed as the verdicts were
read. Her lead defense counsel, Keller, announced that Castor would appeal the
verdict, including challenging the inclusion of evidence regarding the death of
her first husband, for which Castor had not been charged.
On March 5, 2009, at Castor's sentencing, Chief Assistant
District Attorney Christine Garvey asked Fahey to impose the maximum
consecutive sentences because of the brutality of David's death. Further, she
criticized how Castor had "partied
in her backyard with friends like nothing was happening" as Ashley was
comatose in her room. "She is cold,
calculating and without any emotion for what she has done," she
stated. "Human life is sacred.
Stacey Castor places no value on human life, not even her own flesh and blood.
To Stacey Castor, human beings are disposable."
David's son, whom Castor had cheated out of his inheritance,
pleaded with Judge Fahey for Castor to be severely punished. "Your honor, [Castor] is a monster and
a threat to society," he said. "She
has created so much pain and death with this, creating multiples of pain and
death, in the families of those she has hurt."
Judge Fahey told Castor that he had never seen a parent
attempt to murder their child in order to set their child up for a crime they
themselves committed and declared Castor "in
a class all by [her]self". He sentenced her to the maximum of 25 years
to life for the murder of David Castor, and to another 25 years for the attempt
to kill Ashley. For forging David's will, he ordered Castor to serve an
additional 11⁄3 to four years in prison.
The trial had lasted for four weeks. An emotional Ashley
told the judge she hated her mother "for
ruining so many people's lives" but still loved her for the bond she
originally had with her.
I never knew what hate
was until now. Even though I do hate her, I still love her at the same time.
That bothers me, it is so confusing. How can you hate someone and love them at
the same time? I just wish that she would say sorry for everything she did, including
all the lies. As horrible as it makes me feel, this is goodbye mom. As hard as
you tried, I survived and I will survive because now I'm surrounded by people
that love me. I'm going to do good things in this world despite making me in
every sense of the word an orphan. — Ashley
Wallace
Fitzpatrick said that under New York sentencing guidelines;
Castor would have to serve just over 51 years before she became eligible for
parole—at her age, effectively a life sentence.
Aftermath
Castor, New York Department of Corrections inmate number
09G0209, was placed in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in Bedford
Hills, New York. Even with credit for time served, her earliest possible
release date was June 15, 2055—slightly over a month shy of her 88th birthday.
On April 24, 2009, ABC aired a two-hour 20/20 special about
Castor and the trial, which included interviews. During the trial, Castor had
been dubbed "The Black Widow"
by media outlets, a title previously given to Lynn Turner. Ashley said that she
does not know how her mother, any mother, could try to kill her own child, a
question that the public has also pondered. Castor, who professed to being
shocked at the guilty verdict, maintained her innocence during the on-air 20/20
special, as well as in unaired parts of the program. She said that "Ashley brought this on" and
insists that she and Ashley know what really happened. She did express sympathy
for her daughter Bree. She called Bree an innocent victim, whom she lost along
with her freedom and her husbands. She indicated that her mother, stepfather
and some other relatives still support her.
Bree, like Ashley, never spoke to Castor after the trial.
Bree said that though losing her mother was hard, "I was happy that they said she was guilty, because we all know
that she's guilty." Ashley said, "I
would have done anything for her. But she tried to kill me instead." Both
of Castor's daughters expressed concern that their mother had not yet
apologized to them. Castor maintained that she was innocent of the deaths of
her husbands and the attempted murder of Ashley.
ABC interviewed forensic psychiatrist Dr. James Knoll for
psychological perspective on the case and he answered viewers' questions via
video on April 23, 2009, and via site comments on April 27, 2009. He stated
that while most suicide notes focus on themes of remorse and the person not
being able to go on with life, the note supposedly written by Ashley was
focused on taking the blame off of Castor. He said that this theme was repeated
fourteen times within the note and that he believes Castor will never admit to
guilt of the murders. The code of murderers such as these, he said, is "deny, deny, deny" until the
bitter end. When asked if Castor's behavior and body language on the stand
shows any sort of clue about her mental state and guilt, Knoll reminded that
body language and behavior can be affected by events during a trial (such as "side effects of medications, anxiety,
fatigue and attorney instructions to the defendant on how to behave")
and that their interpretation is not always reliable.
Though Castor was not officially defined as a serial killer,
it is likely that she would have killed again. Knoll said that killers may have
many different motivations. He described Castor as a "black widow" type rather than a typical serial killer.
He described a "black widow"
type as a woman who kills husbands or lovers for material gain, as opposed to
the typical serial killer (those who kill consecutively for sexual or sadistic
motives). He relayed that "psychopathic
traits and histories of childhood abuse have been consistently reported in
these women" and suggested that if Castor were guilty of the crimes of
which she had been convicted and accused, then she would be demonstrating
psychopathic traits, including regarding even her own child as an object to be
used for her convenience.
Forensic Files had an episode titled "Freeze Framed" regarding Castor. In addition to the
Turner and Castor antifreeze murder cases, similar cases were reported in 2008.
In 2002, a man had been convicted of murdering his wife by antifreeze in 1998.
A letter she had written before her death incriminated him as the murderer if she
were to die eventually; the letter led to his prosecution. Series Sex Lies and
Murder, series 2 episode 3 as well as describing the events leading to the
trial included an interview with the district attorney in the case. The DA
pointed out Castor may have murdered her own father, Jerry Daniels, who died
February 22, 2002, shortly after his daughter visited him in the hospital where
he had a minor lung complaint. Castor's first husband's family believes Castor
may have killed her father having brought an open can of soda in for her father
to drink in the hospital. She was the executor of his estate.
Death
Castor was found dead in her cell on the morning of June 11,
2016. It was not immediately apparent how she died and the manner of her death
was listed as undetermined. It was later determined by the D.A.'s office that
Castor died of a heart attack, with no evidence of suicide or foul play.
Television film
Stacey Castor's story was adapted into the Lifetime film,
Poisoned Love: The Stacey Castor Story, as part of its "Ripped from the Headlines" feature-film series; this
made-for-television film was first transmitted on February 1, 2020. The film
starred Nia Vardalos as Castor.
Tuesday, July 4, 2023
Monday, July 3, 2023
Murders of Zachary Turner and Andrew Bagby
Zachary Andrew Turner
(18 July 2002 – 18 August 2003) was a Canadian child from St. John's,
Newfoundland and Labrador, who was killed by his mother, Shirley Jane Turner, in
a murder–suicide. At the time, Shirley had been released on bail and awarded
custody of the infant, even though she was in the process of being extradited
to the United States to stand trial for the murder of Zachary's father, Andrew
David Bagby. The case led to a critical overview of Newfoundland's legal and
child welfare systems as well as Canada's bail laws.
A 2006 inquiry found serious shortcomings in how the
province's social services system handled the case, suggesting that the judges,
prosecutors, and child welfare agencies involved were more concerned with
presuming Shirley's innocence than with protecting Zachary. The inquiry
concluded that Zachary's death had been preventable. The case led to the
passage of Bill C-464, or Zachary's Bill, strengthening the conditions for bail
in Canadian courts in cases involving the well-being of children.
The deaths of Andrew Bagby and Zachary Turner became the
basis for the 2008 documentary film Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son about His
Father, directed by Kurt Kuenne.
Perpetrator
Shirley Jane Turner
(28 January 1961 – 18 August 2003) was a Canadian-American daughter of a U.S.
serviceman and local woman from St. Anthony, Newfoundland and Labrador. She was
raised with three siblings in Wichita, Kansas, but moved to Newfoundland with
her mother after her parents separated; the parents later divorced. In 1980,
Turner enrolled at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John's, seeking
to embark on a medical career.
Marriages and
children
Upon becoming pregnant, Turner married a long-time boyfriend
during Memorial University's 1981 winter recess. The child, a boy, was born on
9 July 1982. Turner's husband raised the child as a stay-at-home dad while
Turner continued her studies. In 1983, Turner moved to Labrador City and worked
as a science teacher. Two years later, she gave birth to a daughter. During
this period, she resumed a previous relationship with a fisherman from Corner Brook.
Following the end of her first marriage on 29 January 1988,
Turner married her boyfriend from Corner Brook the following July. She also
had an abortion that July, but the father was not known. Turner gave birth to
her second daughter on 8 March 1990, one year before she and her second husband
separated. Turner completed her undergraduate education while raising her
children with help from her second husband.
In October 1993, a man boarding with Turner confided to his
therapist that he had witnessed Turner physically and emotionally abusing two
of her children. Newfoundland social service workers interviewed the children,
who stated that their "disciplinarian"
mother punished them with spankings and beatings by belt. Turner's second
husband claimed that she only used the belt as a threat in his interview. The
case was closed on 11 January 1994 without an interview with Turner. Three
years later, Turner and her second husband divorced, and she was granted
custody of their daughter. Within days of the ruling, however, Turner sent her
daughter back to live with her father in Portland Creek while her other two
children were sent to Parson's Pond to live with their paternal grandmother.
Since 1982, Turner had taken out baby bonuses for her
children from a scholarship fund, expecting to send them to college. However,
in the summer of 2000, Turner confessed to a relative that she had spent the
baby bonuses on her own living expenses and doctoral education. Turner insisted
that she would earn "big money"
after completing her post-residency training and would repay the savings for
her children's post-secondary education.
Medical residencies
Turner received her undergraduate degree from Memorial
University in May 1994; four years later, she earned her medical degree.
Between 1998 and 2000, she served as a resident physician at teaching hospitals
across Newfoundland.
During a 1999 residency at a family practice in St. John's,
Turner's professionalism drew harsh criticism by her supervising physician, who
stated she would become "quite
hostile, yelling, crying, and accusing me of treating her unfairly."
During her remedial second residency period in early 2000, Turner missed nine
days of her three-month rotation and falsified clinical reports. A patient of
the clinic refused to return after an encounter with Turner. The staff became "so concerned about Shirley Turner's
approach to confrontation and the truth that we would never give her feedback
or hold any major discussion [with her] alone." These incidents left
the supervising physician with the impression that:
I felt I was being manipulated whenever I spoke with Shirley
Turner. When negative items would come up[,] she would change the topic to one
of my failings. She could be charming[,] friendly and lively, but when caught
in an untruth, she would become angry, accusatory, and loud. I always felt
Shirley Turner was putting on a show as if she were playing the role but had no
feeling for her work. I cannot recall a trainee like Shirley Turner in that her
approach lacked personal commitment, and her relationships with people seemed,
at least to me, to be superficial when compared to the over 400 residents I
have supervised during the past 21 years.
In a later interview with an assessment officer at the
Office of the Child and Youth Advocate, the supervising physician, in
hindsight, described Turner as "a manipulative, guiltless
psychopath." The experience with Turner led that St. John's practice to
make "constructive changes" in its residency evaluation process. By
the summer of 2000, Turner had completed the requirements of her residency
training and was qualified to practice medicine.
Stalking case
In March 1996, Turner began a relationship with a St. John's
resident, Miles Doucet, who was thirteen years her junior. After Doucet broke
up with Turner and moved elsewhere in Newfoundland, she began inundating him
with phone calls. In November 1997, Turner confronted him in Halifax, Nova
Scotia, and struck him in the jaw with her high-heeled shoe. After consulting
with his parents, Doucet moved to Westtown Township, Pennsylvania, United
States in 1998. Turner followed the man to Pennsylvania, leaving threatening
voicemails over the following year and making unannounced visits to his
apartment. On several occasions, he had summoned state troopers to order her to
leave. He expressed fear to police of "what
Dr. Turner would do next."
On 7 April 1999, Doucet found Turner lying semi-conscious
outside of his apartment, having ingested a combined 65 milligrams of
over-the-counter drugs in a suicide attempt. Turner was wearing a black dress,
carried a bouquet of red roses and had two suicide notes on her. One note had
been addressed to Doucet and the other to her psychiatrist; the latter read, "I am not evil, just sick."
Turner was rushed to a hospital, where she received a gastric lavage. The
following day Doucet received a voicemail from a female caller who stated, "Dr. Turner died last night."
Andrew Bagby murder
Background
Beginning in early 1999, Turner began dating Andrew David
Bagby (25 September 1973 – 5 November 2001), an American medical student
studying at Memorial University for his third year. Bagby came from Sunnyvale,
California, and was the son of Kathleen Daphne Bagby (née Barnard), a
registered nurse and midwife from Chatham, England, United Kingdom; and David
Franklin Bagby, an American former United States Navy serviceman and computer
engineer.
In August 2000, Turner moved to Sac City, Iowa, to begin
work for Trimark Physicians Corporation. Meanwhile, after graduating from
Memorial University in May 2000, Bagby landed a surgical residency at the State
University of New York Upstate Medical University at Syracuse, New York.
Despite the distance between states, Turner and Bagby initially tried to
maintain a long-distance relationship.[7] By Turner's account, she visited
Bagby's residence in Syracuse seven times while he visited her once in Sac
City. During one of these visits, Turner is believed to have burglarized
Bagby's apartment. In the fall of 2001, Bagby moved to Latrobe, Pennsylvania,
and began his residency at a family practice under the supervision of T. Clark
Simpson.
On 10 July 2001, less than a year into her ten-year contract
with Trimark, Turner left their Sac City clinic and moved to Council Bluffs,
Iowa, where she was hired by Alegent Health System of Omaha, Nebraska. In
October 2001, Turner obtained a permit to buy a firearm and purchased a Phoenix
Arms HP22 handgun and .22 ammunition, which she used during firearms lessons.
Meanwhile, Turner exhibited possessive behavior towards
Bagby and harassed him over the phone. On 13 October, Turner told Bagby that
she was three months pregnant. Bagby agreed to talk with her about the
pregnancy during a wedding that Bagby was scheduled to attend. When Turner
visited him in Latrobe in late October 2001—immediately after the last of her
firearms lessons in Omaha—the two frequently argued over his relationship with
a new girlfriend. On 3 November 2001, Turner confessed that she had been lying
about her pregnancy in an effort to remain with Bagby permanently. Furious
about this, Bagby drove Turner to the Arnold Palmer Regional Airport and broke
up with her over lunch, sending her on a plane back to Iowa.
Murder and
investigation
On 4 November 2001, Turner made a total of three phone calls
to Bagby's residence in Latrobe. At approximately 1:00 p.m. local time, Turner
embarked on a 16-hour, 1,523-kilometre (946 mi) drive to Latrobe with her gun
and ammunition inside a gun box in her Toyota RAV4. In the early morning of 5
November 2001, she confronted Bagby at his residence, located across the street
from his practice. Bagby arrived at work in an "agitated" state and told Simpson about her appearance
but dismissed Simpson's advice to not meet with her in private; Bagby
subsequently promised to visit Simpson's house after talking to Turner that
evening, but he never showed up. Turner later drove home and left a message on
Bagby's answering machine.
The following morning, Bagby's body was found in a day-use
parking lot at Keystone State Park in Derry Township, Pennsylvania. He had been
shot five times in the face, the chest, the buttocks, and the back of the head
with CCI .22 bullets. Acting on statements by Simpson and others, the
Pennsylvania State Police contacted Turner. Despite her claim to have been in
bed sick on 5 November, cell phone and Internet records showed that she had
made cross-country calls both to and from Latrobe, accessed eBay and Hotmail
from Bagby's home computer, and used his home phone to call in sick. When
confronted with this evidence, Turner claimed that she met with Bagby at
Keystone State Park but that he put the gun in his trunk. Turner alternately
told her shooting instructor that her gun had been stolen.
Investigators interviewed Turner's shooting instructor, who
explained that her handgun ejected live rounds during lessons; this was
consistent with an unspent round recovered near Bagby's body. Later, a Derry
resident reported having seen Bagby's Toyota Corolla parked next to Turner's
RAV4 ten minutes after Bagby made his last phone call to Simpson and the
Corolla parked alone the following morning. The lot number on a box of condoms
found in Turner's Council Bluffs apartment matched a box purchased by Bagby in
Latrobe on the night of the break-up. Also in Turner's apartment were MapQuest
printouts for road directions to Latrobe. Despite the evidence gathered, Turner
had fled the country by the time authorities obtained a warrant for her arrest.
Legal proceedings
The Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador; Shirley
Turner's extradition proceedings were conducted here.
On 12 November 2001, Turner abandoned her residence in
Council Bluffs and flew to Toronto, eventually resettling in St. John's with
her oldest son. Acting in collaboration with the Pennsylvania State Police, the
Royal Newfoundland Constabulary's (RNC) Intelligence Unit conducted
surveillance on her movements. On 2 December, the Unit seized her trash and
discovered printouts for an ultrasound taken on 29 November, showing a fetus
that was conceived with Bagby the previous month.
The RNC arrested Turner on 12 December, the same day
extradition proceedings commenced against her. However, Newfoundland Justice
Gale Welsh believed Turner, then 40, wasn't a threat to society, despite the
murder charges awaiting her in Pennsylvania. Turner was released from Her
Majesty's Penitentiary's Clarenville Correctional Centre for Women, and was
required to post CAD$75,000 bail, turn in her passports, pay weekly visits to
the RNC, promise not to leave the area, and make no attempt to contact Bagby's
family. Turner posted bail with help from her psychiatrist, John Doucet, a
former co-worker from Memorial University.
The news that Turner was pregnant with Bagby's child turned
the extradition case into one involving child custody, and subsequently led to
a complicated legal saga. David and Kathleen Bagby moved to St. John's,
Newfoundland, in order to fight for custody of their son's child, while Turner
eventually moved into her own apartment on Pleasant Street in St. John's.
Custody case
After Zachary's birth on 18 July 2002, Turner initially
refused to allow David and Kathleen Bagby to see their grandson, fearing they
would kidnap him. She went so far as to discharge her family law lawyer because
of his positive attitude towards the Bagbys.
On several occasions, it was noted that Zachary had poor
attachment to his mother and preferred the company of other adults, particularly
his grandparents. This preference was made especially clear during Zachary's
first birthday party at a St. John's McDonald's, after which Turner said to
Kathleen, "He obviously loves you
more than me, so why don't you take him?"
Turner was returned to jail in November 2002 pending a
decision by the federal justice minister regarding whether she should be
extradited to the United States. However, in January 2003 Justice Welsh again
released her, arguing that the murder "was
not directed at the public at large" and that Turner was presumed to
be innocent.
Murder–suicide
On 4 July 2003, Turner met a young man at a bar in St.
John's. The pair dated and was sexually intimate on two occasions afterward.
The man then broke off the relationship after learning from a friend about
Turner's connection to Bagby's murder. Turner subsequently made a total of 200
threatening phone calls to the man over the following month. Turner claimed
that she was pregnant by the man, but no evidence was found showing this to be
the case. The man contacted the RNC on three occasions to complain about
Turner's harassment, which both violated the terms of her bail and was
considered grounds to lose custody of Zachary. However, because the man did not
identify himself and declined to file any criminal complaint against Turner, no
investigation was launched by the RNC. When a constable contacted Turner's
lawyer about the harassment, she denied the allegations.
On 18 August 2003, Zachary was scheduled to be in his
mother's custody. Turner first purchased her prescription of lorazepam from a
St. John's pharmacy. She then drove with Zachary to nearby Conception Bay
South, where the man she had met at the bar lived. Turner left her car parked
near his home in the Kelligrews area of the town, with photographs of herself
and Zachary, as well as a used tampon, on the front seat. Police concluded that
she was attempting to frame the boyfriend for the planned murder–suicide.
After mixing her lorazepam into Zachary's baby formula and
ingesting a toxic dosage herself, Turner strapped the infant to her chest with
her sweater and jumped off a fishing wharf at Foxtrap Marina into the Atlantic
Ocean. Turner drowned. It was determined that Zachary Turner was rendered
unconscious by the lorazepam and did not suffer.
Turner's body was found on a beach by a vacationing couple,
with Zachary's body discovered nearby.
Subsequent events
Investigations and
findings
On 3 May 2006, a disciplinary board convened by the College
of Physicians and Surgeons of Newfoundland and Labrador found Doucet guilty of
professional misconduct for his involvement in helping to post Turner's $75,000
bail. He was ordered to pay a fine of $10,000—covering one-third of the $30,000
incurred by the college for the inquiry—and was ordered to undergo psychiatric
counseling. Doucet said he was "disappointed"
by the verdict, while David Bagby stated that he was happy with the precedent
his case would be setting. According to filmmaker Kurt Kuenne, Doucet later
left Newfoundland and relocated elsewhere in Canada.
In October 2006, Winnipeg-based coroner Peter Markesteyn
released the Turner Review and Investigation, which concluded that Zachary's
death was preventable and criticized Newfoundland and Labrador's social
services system for failing to protect the child from his mother, stating, "Nowhere did I find any ongoing
assessment of the safety needs of the children." Markesteyn
specifically cited poor communication between social services officials, who
worked on the presumption of Turner's innocence throughout the case and became
more concerned for her welfare than for Zachary's. Markesteyn ultimately
concluded that internal disagreements between caseworkers and managers weren't
openly discussed and that an intervention by an outside office should have been
made. The provincial Government of Newfoundland and Labrador accepted the
report's conclusions and its 29 recommendations.
Bagbys' activism
On 23 October 2009, Scott Andrews, then a Liberal MP from
Newfoundland and Labrador, introduced Bill C-464, or "Zachary's Bill", which would change the Criminal Code of
Canada to allow the courts to justify refusing bail to those accused of serious
crimes in the name of protecting their children. The bill received unanimous
support in the Canadian House of Commons, and received support from Liberal
Senator Tommy Banks. It was finally signed into law by Governor-General David
Johnston on 16 December 2010. Andrews later said that the law "gives [the Bagbys] some sense that
someone has heard their cries so this will not happen again, to change the law
to make sure something this tragic will never happen again."
David Bagby penned a book about the case, Dance with the
Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss, which was published in 2007.
Dear Zachary film
Written and directed by Kurt Kuenne, MSNBC Films and
Oscilloscope Laboratories released Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His
Father on 31 October 2008. The film is partly composed of home movies Kuenne
and Bagby shot together as teenagers in California, and features interviews
with Bagby's parents, extended family, friends, classmates, and colleagues,
both before and after Zachary's murder. A portion of the film also shows Kuenne
meeting Zachary in Newfoundland in July 2003 to celebrate his first birthday,
one month before his death; Shirley Turner is present during the visit, but
Kuenne avoids her. The film premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival, and was
broadcast by MSNBC on 7 December 2008.
The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures named the
film one of the five top documentaries of 2008. The organizations that named it
one of the best films of 2008 included: Time Out Chicago, The Oregonian, the
Times Herald-Record, Slant Magazine, and WGN Radio Chicago. The website Film
School Rejects placed the film third in their "30 Best Films of the Decade" list. The Film Vault
included the film on their list of the "Top
5 Good Movies You Never Want to See Again".
The Chicago Film Critics Association nominated Dear Zachary
for its Best Documentary award, and the Society of Professional Journalists
presented the film with its Sigma Delta Chi Award for Best Documentary. The
film also received the Special Jury and Audience Awards at the Cinequest Film
Festival, was named an Audience Favorite at Hot Docs, received the Audience
Awards at the St. Louis International Film Festival and the Sidewalk Moving
Picture Festival, and was named Best Documentary at the Orlando Film Festival.
Scholarships
Two scholarships have been established in tribute to Andrew
David Bagby and his son. The Dr. Andrew David Bagby Family Medicine Scholarship
is for medical students at Excela Health Latrobe Hospital, and almost four
dozen students pursuing Bagby's speciality of family practice have benefited
from the award. The Dr. Andrew Bagby and son Zachary Bursary Fund supports
students at the Memorial University of Newfoundland.
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