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Defense attorneys have filed a motion asking a judge in Berkeley County, South Carolina to dismiss murder charges against the parents of five-year-old Justin Lee Turner – who was killed more than 35 years ago.
In a hearing last Thursday (March 14, 2024), attorney Shaun Kent argued the three-and-a-half decade delay between Turner’s murder and the January 2024 indictment of his client – Justin’s step-mother, Megan Renee Turner (f.k.a. Pamela Turner) – has compromised her ability to receive a fair trial. Megan and Justin’s father, Victor Lee “Buddy” Turner, have been charged with murder in the 1989 slaying of their son.
Kent also dropped a bombshell when he invoked the name of a serial killer – a former member of the U.S. Navy whose ship docked at Charleston, S.C. on the day Justin was murdered. The serial killer he identified? Richard Marc Evonitz of Columbia, S.C. – who committed suicide in 2002 after being linked to the abduction and murder of several young girls.
Evonitz’s crime spree eventually came to an end in 2002 shortly after he abducted 15-year-old Kara Robinson from the front yard of a friend’s home in Columbia. Robinson managed to escape from Evonitz and lead authorities back to his apartment. While the killer fled prior to their arrival, a trove of evidence was uncovered at the scene implicating him in the murders of three girls in Virginia in 1996 and 1997.
(Click to View)
Police also found child pornography in the apartment – and on Evonitz’s computer – including a video of him molesting a young girl and footage of him masturbating to Polaroid pictures of other underage girls. Numerous girls’ panties were also found in the apartment.
If Evonitz is deemed to be a suspect in Justin’s murder, it would mark a departure from what is currently known about him. So far, he has only been linked to crimes involving young girls. Also, prior to 1992 Evonitz had only been linked to break-ins, bad checks and one incident in which he exposed himself to several young girls.
At the time of Justin Turner’s murder, there was no indication Evonitz had committed any violent crimes – although he would later confess to a family member having committed “more crimes than he can remember.”
Kent believes Evonitz’s potential proximity to Turner’s murder should be investigated, citing similarities between Turner’s murder and Evonitz’s modus operandi – which included strangulation, stalking children and sexually assaulting them. Kent also pointed out Evonitz had erectile dysfunction – which could account for why no semen or fluids were found at the scene of Justin Turner’s murder.
Evonitz did not begin taking medication for this condition until the early 2000s …
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FROZEN IN TIME …
Justin Lee Turner should be a forty-year-old man today – living, working and raising a family. Instead, his memory has been suspended in time – forever frozen as the smiling, precocious five-year-old boy seen in numerous stories chronicling a case that went cold – and stayed cold – for decades. In those stories, Turner remained the Moncks Corner kindergartner whose classmates wondered why he never got on the bus to go to Whitesville Elementary School on the morning of Friday, March 3, 1989. He remains the boy who – the night before he disappeared – told his mother on their goodnight call that he had a secret to tell her.
At the time of his murder, Justin Turner was the focus of a contentious custody battle between his father, Victor, and his mother, Vivian Elaine Pace.
His friends suspected the five-year-old boy must be staying home sick. That theory was undone, however, when the bus returned to the neighborhood that afternoon and Justin’s step-mother was standing at the end of the driveway to retrieve him – as was her habit.
When Turner did not get off the bus later that afternoon, his stepmother reported him missing. On the third day of the search, Victor Turner located his son’s body in a storage compartment of a travel camper on the family’s Horseshoe Road property south of Cross Hill, S.C. He had been strangled and molested – although there was no evidence suggesting he had been the subject of ongoing abuse or mistreatment. While the camper had previously been searched by law enforcement, those prior attempts did not reveal his location – prompting suspicions his body may have been placed there after the search began.
For more than three decades, the pictures which captured Justin’s innocent smile have kept him etched in the hearts of many South Carolinians as the investigation into his death continued.
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THE JANUARY 2024 ARRESTS …
On January 9, 2024, the two original suspects in Turner’s murder – his mother and father – were arrested and charged with the crime. The two people who reported him missing – and who found his body – were taken into custody in Laurens County and transported to the Berkeley County detention center to await their first court appearances.
Berkeley County sheriff Duane Lewis said the arrests were made possible due to advances in forensic science. Investigators determined fibers from the suspected murder weapon – a ligature recovered from the Turner’s home many years ago – matched the shirt the little boy was wearing when he was killed.
In 1989, the contentious nature of Turner and Pace’s custody battle meant his mother and her family were not allowed on the Turner’s property to help search for Justin. Pace never stopped looking for answers, though. She never stopped trying to find out the “secret” her son wanted to tell her the night before he vanished.
Sadly, Pace died in the mid-1990s without realizing any form of justice.
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At the time of Victor and Megan Turner’s arrests in January, sheriff Lewis also remarked on something that struck him as a sign of their guilt. In addition to moving away from Cross Hill, the Turners never contacted the sheriff’s office to ask about the status of the case. Unlike members of his mother’s side of the family who were standing side by side with members of law enforcement, the Turners never called to find out if there were any new leads – or any promising new suspects.
Both of the Turners appeared in court in February – and both were granted bond in the amount of $50,000. Megan was released on bond February 8, 2024. Victor was released on bond February 9, 2024.
At a press conference in January, Justin’s relatives – represented by his cousin Amy Palmer – expressed their relief at the conclusion of the lengthy investigation and celebrated the expectation of justice still to come.
Palmer was eight years old when Justin was murdered. As an adult, she founded the “Justice for Justin Lee Turner” Facebook page. Prior to Thursday’s hearing, Palmer said the latest defense move was an attempt by attorneys to “throw garbage around just so they can make a name for themselves.”
“Do not be swayed or dismayed by a high priced fancy lawyer in a suit … the evidence is out there for anyone to base their own conclusion,” Palmer added. “Why are we the only ones to step up in 35 years and push to find the person that brutally murdered our precious little Justin?”
She said family members want to see a jury decide the guilt or innocence of Megan and Victor Turner.
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THURSDAY’S BOMBSHELL …
At Thursday’s hearing, it was revealed the ligature mentioned in the January press conference was a dog collar – and that the prosecution didn’t even have the “murder weapon” as part of their evidence – they bought a collar at a local Walmart 31 years after the crime.
The dog collar theory was further contested when Kent played a recorded call between Berkeley County sheriff’s detective John Plitsch and a forensic expert hired by the sheriff’s office to explore their theory.
“How wedded are you to this leash? Because I don’t think it’s got leash … One of the problems with this is, you get to a certain point where you’re almost making castles out of clouds and stuff,” the forensic expert told the investigator.
Defense attorney Kent also introduced an email from a forensic DNA analyst with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED).
“My recollection is that after explaining that Pamela Turner is excluded as a contributor to a profile, Detective Plitsch said something to the effect of, ‘How can we still make this fit?'” the email noted.
(Click to View)
Prosecutors admitted the evidence introduced by Kent was “explosive” – and asked S.C. circuit court judge Roger M. Young Sr. for time to review it. Young agreed – saying he would be taking the matter under advisement.
“What I do appreciate — believe it or not — is I believe the officer was brutally honest on the stand,” Kent said after the hearing. “And so, sometimes, I appreciate that if you’re going to get on the stand, just tell the truth. Which he did. And he acknowledged the problems with their cases. He didn’t try to say there were, and y’all heard it, he didn’t try to say there was new evidence. He was very clear. There’s the same ol’ evidence looked at in a different way. So yeah, I harbor some resentment, but not as much as I could.”
Kent also noted the FBI sent out a “Violent Criminal Apprehension Program” – or ViCAP – alert on March 14, 2008 asking investigators in multiple jurisdictions to “review ALL unsolved abductions, sexual assaults, and/or murders that occurred in the time-frame Evonitz is documented to have been in your jurisdiction.”
According to Kent, investigators had “tunnel vision” and that there are only two plausible reasons behind their purported lack of knowledge of the 2008 ViCAP alert. Either investigators ignored the report – because they believed it was not an unsolved crime – or they were not investigating the case at all.
Either way, according to Kent, would represent a “direct contravention of their argument” that the pre-indictment delay “was not the state’s fault.”
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THE MOTION …
(S.C. Ninth Judicial Circuit)
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
Callie Lyons is a journalist, researcher, and author whose investigative work can be found in media outlets, publications, and documentaries all over the world – most recently in the Parisian newspaper Le Monde and a German documentary for ProSieben. Lyons also appears in Citizen Sleuth – a 2023 documentary exploring the genre of true crime.
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