Transcribe your podcast
[00:00:08]

Walking around out here in places, there's just nothing. You feel so alone.

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As gorgeous as Lake Mead is, anytime you get a call out on Lake Mead, you know it's not going to be natural. It's going to be a murder. That vehicle has to come from somewhere. If it didn't go somewhere, the people that were driving it did.

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Kelsey definitely had what it took to make it. She was definitely Insta famous.

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And then there's the respected child psychiatrist with an affinity for Beanie Babies and magic.

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So it's this former model and this California doctor, and eventually, they collide in a terrible, terrible way.

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Like the magician he was, Dr. Berchard had managed to conceal from view much of his relationship to the Insta model.

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A lot of people are looking for a pretty girl to have on their arm. They're looking for a fun time. Bad Barbie, she liked being called that. That is the new good for sure.

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And the good doctor had it bad for Barbie.

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He just kept saying he loved Kelsey.

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And he was bankrolling everything.

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But what can that come to? What can that lead to?

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And then one missing model and one missing man.

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And then when you hear about the details, it This is an unfolding storyline of absolute chaos.

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What do you remember waking up to?

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It was a chaotic mess.

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The tension in the house on Puritan Avenue is palpable. It's going to become a tinderbox of mayhem.

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How did these four people come together in this house?

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Sometimes we have to realize there's evil in this world, too.

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This is the annual Babes and Toyland Charity Drive.

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This is the biggest influencer charity event in all of Los Angeles, possibly the entire planet. I'm Michael Sartain. I'm the host of the 2022 Babes & Toyland Toy Drive. We're supporting the Midnight Mission right here in Hollywood, California.

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It's like a charity event, but high profile with a lot of celebrities and powerful people. Being a model can be fun. When you're making a lot of money and you're enjoying what you're doing every single day, social media has made it easier for people to break into the modeling space. Ladies and gentlemen, give yourselves a big round of applause.

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I'm famous, famous.

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This is not the Met Gala. Think of this event like the prom, Instagram Model Prom.

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Did you see me on TV?

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Because of diamonds, Lindsay, Every one of the girls that's on the carpet today, they have to be on Instagram. So yeah, they would be Insta models.

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An Insta model basically is a model that is pursuing modeling through Instagram. And that is a new term now, Insta modeling.

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Kelsey Turner was a rising Insta model when she made her red carpet debut at Babes & Toyland in 2017.

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Kelsey definitely had what it took to make it. She was definitely Insta famous. Let's go. Men wanted to be with her, and women were intimidated by her. Let's go. Kelsey's end goal was for everyone to know who she was, know her name, and know her image. Kelsey definitely wanted to be famous.

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Kelsey Turner was chasing Fame in this new virtual way that people chase Fame on social media. So that meant posting videos and photos of herself on Instagram, hoping to get attention. Because being famous in this environment is the coin of the realm for Insta models like Kelsey Turner. Here.

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And in this particular world, it's all about getting seen and noticed. It's all about the image.

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You used to be famous because agencies made you famous, like William Morris and CAA. Because you went to the Pro Bowl or you're an NBA All-Star because you won an academy award. Now you are simply famous because of the number of social media followers that you have. And it's become a completely different world.

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Don't you want to be famous As an aspiring model myself, having a social media presence is crucial.

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You could post one picture and it could go viral.

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And the idea is that you can make money on social media, just by the right number of followers. If you get enough of them, Insta models like Kelsey can, in theory, earn a healthy living because in part, platforms like Instagram will pay someone based on the number of views that their posts get. So if Kelsey's fans wanted to see her in a tight pink dress, that's what she gave them, and they'd reward her in clicks.

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It could be a lucrative business, and it could be something that brings in a steady cash flow for them.

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There's a whole lot of ways that you could leverage your social media following that I'm sure Kelsey was able to do. And she had amassed already a really big following. I think Kelsey had about 100,000 followers at the time. Kelsey's main Instagram page, Kelsey Turner official, was where There, she showcased her modeling pictures, and she used this platform as her portfolio.

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And then there was also a fan page account, which is Kelsey Turner Bad Barbi.

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I would say that Bad Barbi is a good way to describe her, and she liked being called that. I think Kelsey's Bad Barbie came from when she turned into a boss woman. To me, bad means independent. It means you're doing your stuff, you're owning it. Bad is the new good for sure.

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Kelsey was super barbie-ish. Blonde hair, volumptuous lips going on, and she had a great body.

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I think that all of her photos were pretty risque. Kelsey didn't hold back. When I met her, she had already been on the covers of magazines like Dream Vixen's Conceded magazine. Another magazine called 110. Says, A 10 is what men dream of.

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Kelsey was on Playboy Italia. It's still a valid playmate, but it's not like a Hugh Hefner at the house playmate.

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My reaction when I got sent the picture of Kelsey, I literally smiled as big as I could and said out loud, Holy cow, she's made it. And here she is on a magazine, and it's not just any magazine. This is a Playboy Bunny magazine.

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The way she described herself in her Playboy Italia interview probably tells you a lot about how Kelsey Turner saw herself. Impulsive, fun, living my life fully aware that that it's the only one I've got.

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The persona is what you're trying to sell. So you don't want to give off that you're a stick in the mud that doesn't want to have a good time. Perceptions are nine-tenths of reality.

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I would say that her lifestyle, at least online, looked very lavish.

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Kelsey wanted us to think she was a person living a high status lifestyle, a person living a glamorous lifestyle, a person living the lifestyle of the model that she aspired to be. On social media, the perception The impression of Kelsey Turner is that she's working it and that she's making it. She's got a brand new, beautiful blue Mercedes Coup. She's got a four bedroom house. She's doing something right.

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Having a price tag attached to that, it doesn't come cheap and it doesn't come free.

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The fact of the matter is, Kelsey really isn't making the money from Insta modeling that it appears. So her friends are wondering, How is this working?

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I don't think that she made this money on her own. This was not the same Kelsey I knew. Absolutely not.

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Sometimes these Insta models will do whatever it takes or anything it takes to please their followers.

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So to keep up the façade for her followers, Kelsey turns to a very unlikely source. Monterey is a jewel in Northern California's coastline. I'm looking around here. Are you even allowed to live here if you don't have a boat?

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I don't know. Maybe if you play golf.

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So you can come to Monterey for golf along the shoreline at the courses in Pebble Beach. You can come for the marine life at its world famous aquarium, or for the vestiges of Cannery Road, that once teemed with vivid life, as Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck wrote about in the 1940s. '30s. Judy Erp came here for love, later in life love.

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Tom was the most intelligent man I have ever known. I think it was a pretty immediate mutual attraction between Tom and I.

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A realtor who was divorced with four children, Judy was on a group trip to Las Vegas in the early 2000s when she met Dr. Thomas Berchard. He was a child psychiatrist in Monterey, who was also recently divorced.

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He's a good listener being a psychiatrist, but he was also an extremely good talker, conversationalist. So sometimes I would wonder, did he ever give his patients a chance to talk?

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Their romance once blossom. They'd keep in touch via email. He'd visit her in LA, where she'd go to museums with Tom, and he'd always be looking the bookish part.

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Tom's uniform, which he had worn for 40 years, khaki pants, white dress shirt and a bow tie every day.

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Two years or so into their relationship, around 2004, Judy and her four kids move in with Dr. Berchard, and the couple builds this new life together. One of their favorite pastimes, catching a show at the downtown theater.

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I know we went to a weird Al Yankowitch concert here.

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He was awesome, right?

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I liked that. I really enjoyed that one. Judy would learn just how respected, really even revered Dr..

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Berchardt was in this area by his colleagues and by parents of his patients at Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, where he worked for 40 years. Maria's youngest child was one of Dr. Berchardt's patients.

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My daughter, since she was five years old, had some psychiatric problems, and we struggled for about four or five years trying to find a good psychiatrist who connected with her. He was like a breath of fish air for her. He was a joyful He was always happy.

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I never saw him angry ever or upset or felt like he was being rushed ever.

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He basically, I think, saved her life.

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To help create a one-on-one relationship with his young patients, Dr. Berchard liked to use toys. His office was like something you'd expect in Willy Wanka or something. He had buckets of Costco-sized candy and snacks.

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He had books, piles of books.

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Tom had a collection of Beanie Babies, and his younger patients really enjoyed seeing, Oh, well, do you have this one? And he, Oh, yeah, right here. My daughter, she kept asking for one particular Beanie Baby, and he Held out, held out.

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I think until she was 18 years old, he finally gave it to her.

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Dr. Buchard also had a surprising talent, Magic. He'd frequent the local Magic store, and he'd spend hundreds of dollars every time he went in. And he used Magic to gain the confidence of his young patients, making things appear and disappear.

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He had a trick where he would take a $1 bill and fold it up and blow on it, and then he would turn it into a $100 bill. But he would ask the child if they could name the President on the $100 bill, they could have it. Well, at first that worked because Benjamin Franklin wasn't a President.

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And then hip hop showed up. It's all about the Benjamins. He really cared about his patients. He listened to them.

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He stuck by them.

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He didn't drop them when they turned 18, which happens with a lot of child psychiatrists. Dr. Berchardt's generosity was well known. On his own time and on his own time and on his own dime. He'd often make trips to Costco to buy food or school supplies for his patients and their families.

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If somebody was behind on their rent, he would Loan them money. He felt that most problems in the world were caused from chemical imbalances that medicine could correct or lack of money. He was very mean. Tom thought that he could save the world with his pen, write a check or write a prescription. I believe it was like a Don Quixote.

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Judy had never imagined to imagine just how far Tom's generosity and largesse might go until the day in his car when she saw another woman's name on top of a lease agreement that Dr. Berchardt was signing, and that name was Kelsey Turner.

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I saw her, I said, Hey, what's this? And he explained all about it. And I said, That's not a good idea, Tom. Don't do it. There's no guarantee. And I explained to him, You are responsible. If she doesn't pay, they're coming after According to Judy, Kelsey had once described herself to Dr..

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Burchard in emails as a single mom with financial hardships who just needed a little help getting back on her feet. But it wasn't her feet that Kelsey Turner sent him photos of.

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He believed that everyone could be good, that no one was intrinsically bad. And unfortunately, that's not true.

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So in Cannery Row, John Steinbeck would write, It's all fine to say time will heal everything. This, too, shall pass away. People will forget. And things like that when you are not involved. But when you are, there is no passage of time. People do not forget, and you are in the middle of something that does not change. What are you thinking about now?

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Sometimes we have to realize there's evil in this world, too. And I think that Kelsey Turner personifies evil.

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And now, evil has a new address. The InstaModel is coming to Tom's town, and she's not coming quietly. Get out of my face. You're going to take my heart. East of Monterey, maybe eight miles off the Pacific, is the city of Salina's. Salina's is known as the Salable of the World. The majority of the produce The lettuce that's consumed in the US is grown in this valley. Those who pick the lettuce are some of the hardest working people in America. But nearby, Kelsey Turner is hardly working at all, thanks in part to a lease agreement that's been signed by a child psychiatrist.

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She lived there with her mom, and then Kelsey had two kids.

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They were there pretty much 24/7, and it was just always chaotic. Get out of my face.

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You're going to take my car. To judge from some audio recordings her next door neighbors made one night in 2018, Kelsey doesn't sound all that happy there.

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The window was always open because it was hot. There was a lot of loud talking and banging going on. So I came in and I just had the phone and I just got down and just held it. I held it here for about 10 minutes. No. You.

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That's your fault. You're a whore. Kelsey can be heard angrily berating her mother.

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Mom, you would just hear yelling and swearing and banging.

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Are you kidding me? Hold up.

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Why was the Insta model, the men's magazine cover, Siren, living with her mother and two children in a house funded by a 71-year-old? The answer could be found maybe 2,000 miles to the east, in Jonesborough, Arkansas. That's Kelsey Turner's hometown.

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Kelsey's Instagram world started in Jonesborough. Kelsey would actually come out to the barn with me when I would take care of the horses, but the horses were not her cup of tea. Kelsey definitely wanted to be famous. When she grew up, she wanted people to know who she was and where she came from. Kelsey was not country. She was known as Barbie. Growing up, she idolized wanting to be like a Barbie doll. Kelsey has always been very pretty. She wanted to do her hair. She wanted to do her makeup.

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Kelsey liked to go to pageants, events that she was able to show off at.

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She was very interested in the famous life, and that was what Kelsey was thriving to be.

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It turns out that Kelsey's mother, Samantha, used to be a model. In fact, on her Facebook page, you can see a resemblance between mother and daughter. Her mother even posted this side-by-side shot of them on Instagram, saying, I can't believe how much we look alike.

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I believe that Kelsey got her first taste of stardom from her mother, and she would see all of the attention that her mom got from that.

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So I do believe that that's where she decided that she wanted to follow that role.

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Back then, Bad Barbi went by the Instagram handle, Arkansas 1993.

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She was very sassy. There are her innocent days of wearing a sundress with Calgirl boots, just posing on a chair a little bit sexy. And then once she got out to LA, is when she really started to take away the modest and put herself up there and show off her good body.

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It took her defiantly out of Arkansas, into and then out of a troubled marriage, and then in full glamazon mode onto the Internet. And that's where a new world of red carpets and photos shoots beckon. But what had brought her to Salina's was the older man that her neighbors, the stewards, had started noticing. He was a very stoic man. I mean, whenever Kelsey and the mother were out sunbathing or just being outside, he would just stand there.

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We would try to figure out who he was. And I said, well, maybe he's a grandfather, maybe he's the dad. Who knows who he It was.

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The man was Dr. Thomas Berchard, and he was giving till it hurts because he was not Kelsey Turner's doctor or her kids or her mother's. Friends say Kelsey had become his obsession.

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Well, I heard a couple of their conversations with him with Kelsey, where she said last night was pretty good, wasn't it? There's more. Yeah.

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Like the magician he was, Burchard had managed to conceal from view much of his relationship to the Insta model in residence. But Judy knew what he liked to do online.

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He did like looking at pictures of pornographic pictures.

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What did you ask him about it when you found out he was doing that thing?

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I didn't approve of it in any way. I just didn't realize the danger that it could lead to.

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With Kelsey, Thomas Berchardt had done more than just look.

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Suddenly, here's a real life model right here. Real life.

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Talking to him, connecting with him. And how do you think that made him feel?

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The playboy model and all of that. I think It boosted his ego, actually more than just... I was aware, fully aware that he was going over to her house.

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For But Bernard would tell a different story to his male friends, that his obsession with her made him understand how heroine addicts must feel, and that Kelsey Turner would do anything he wanted.

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He goes, Eddie, I'm in too deep. I'm not going anywhere. I'm with her. She's mine. I'm hers. We're going to have this life together.

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But that meant paying for the privilege of her company because Kelsey Turner had come too far not to get what she was due. If we tried to characterize the relationship he had with Kelsey Turner, we might say an intimate relationship, a transactional relationship. Yes. So no matter what roof Kelsey Turner found herself under, Thomas Bernhardt was paying for it and for everything else, too.

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Usually, it would be preceded by a text from Kelsey Turner asking him to come over or to bring groceries or to bring medicine over.

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Happy birthday to you.

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Remember how Richard was convinced that all problems could be solved with prescription drugs or money? According to text messages between these two, Kelsey Turner felt the same way.

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She would ask for prescription drugs, money, rent for houses, access to cars. She was more like, Where are you at? I need money. I need these prescriptions right now. You better get over here. She would always say, You want some of that love? You better get over here.

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I got suspicious about Kelsey and this relationship when she started to post things like her new vehicles and things for her house that are concerning of where the finances came from.

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There was a BMW for Kelsey.

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She was demanding that he financed her life.

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And to the increasing horror of those close to him, he did just that.

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I would say, Thomas, what are What are you doing?

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Seriously.

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I mean, you're a doctor. What's going through your mind?

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I would definitely say as nicely as I can that Dr. Buchard was Kelsey's sugar daddy. Yes.

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I felt secure in our relationship. I did not see her as a threat to our relationship. Obviously, I was a mistake in not seeing her as serious of a threat.

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Eventually, Judy just became fed up with the cozy and costly relationship between Thomas and Kelsey. What ultimately him, do you finally give Tom?

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I told him. I said, She's got to go. At this point, you're going to have to get her evicted.

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Kelsey didn't like the sound of that. According to text messages, some threats were made.

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She had threatened to kill me. I saw the text. If she gets me evicted, I'm going to kill her.

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And Thomas finally seems to be getting the message. Kelsey gets kicked out of that Selena's house, and her BMW is taken away, too. Judy has a plan to put something between these two. Distance. Lots of.

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Tom took my suggestion that Las Vegas would be a good fit for her, so he gave Kelsey Turner money to go to Las Vegas permanently.

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You must think now things will get better.

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That's what I hoped.

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Las Vegas and Kelsey Turner made for each other, right? But Thomas Berchardt's destructive obsession would soon surface.

[00:24:54]

Hey, moms.

[00:24:56]

Looking for some light-hearted guidance on this crazy journey we call parenting? Join me, Sabrina Kohlberg.

[00:25:01]

And me, Andy Mitchell, for Pop Culture Moms. Where each week we talk about what we're watching.

[00:25:07]

And examine our favorite pop culture moms up close to try to pick up some parenting hacks along the way. Come laugh, learn, and grow with us as we look for the best tips. And maybe a few what not to do's from our favorite fictional moms. From Good Morning America and ABC Audio. Pop Culture Moms. Listen now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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We are in Las Vegas. This is the Las Vegas Strip. What makes people so excited about coming here is the stimulus that you get, all the shining lights and all the shows and all the performers that you can see. Mega casinos. Go Gamble. You can indulge in all of your vices. People come here to reinvent themselves. So after being driven out of Salina's, Kelsey Turner is off to live in Sin City, which allowed her to post photos on social media in a town where she knew how to have a good time.

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Kelsey was part of our Hollywood crew that would go from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, and do those weekend parties with us. We were just all like, lit, just having a good time.

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Her Barbie world was in Vegas. There's a lot more opportunity for money out there, and there's a lot more opportunity for modeling Dressing up, tight dress, figure showing, hair long, hairspray, heels 10 inches tall.

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But one thing was clear, she needed a way to pay the bills, and her Insta modeling career her had stalled out.

[00:27:01]

She was posting less magazines and print modeling photos when she was in Vegas. She was starting to make poor choices, and she was becoming something she was not.

[00:27:13]

With social media models. It's all about the image. And no matter what was going on underneath, she had to post pictures that made reality seem much more lavish.

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Kelsey was spending mad dope, but I never really knew what her source of income was.

[00:27:29]

But who was close to Thomas knew exactly where the money was coming from.

[00:27:34]

I saw several texts where she needed more money, more money for everything.

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Including a new Mercedes to replace the BMW that Judy had made Thomas take back. And Kelsey let Judy know all about that in a photo of the Benz that she texted. So her response is, Thanks for taking the BMW. I look better in the 2017 Benz anyway. And then there are three emojis of a raised middle finger.

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I knew what it was. It's just like, whatever.

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Now, as if the new car wasn't enough, Thomas starts paying rent on this four bedroom house for Kelsey and her four year old son. And irony of all ironies, the house is on Puritan Avenue.

[00:28:22]

She had no credit history, so she couldn't qualify for a lease.

[00:28:29]

After Kelsey When the neighbors moved in, neighbors started noticing a lot of activity at the house. What behavior did they report seeing going on?

[00:28:37]

People coming and going at all hours. Several arguments and quarals that they noticed here on the front steps.

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I know that there were three or four people living in a house that she was claiming she was living in on her own.

[00:28:53]

Diana Pana was one of those people. She was a bartender who babysat Kelsey's son while Kelsey hit the strip looking for men with money. Was she good at getting people to give her money, you think?

[00:29:07]

Yeah.

[00:29:09]

Why do you think people would want to give her money?

[00:29:11]

I don't know. She's a pretty charming person. She's good at manipulating things.

[00:29:16]

Finding men for Kelsey was like shooting fish in a barrel. And Penya says that Thomas was by far her biggest catch.

[00:29:26]

She called him Her Whale.

[00:29:28]

Her Whale?

[00:29:29]

Yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:30]

What was he paying for?

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I don't know. I know that she would once in a while call him, and if she needed clothes, he was a little bit of a pusher.

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And Kelsey kept Thomas in the dark on just about everything, including who was living in a house he paid for. On the ground floor, there was Jeremy Eshrish, a roommate who slept in the bedroom next to the garage. Upstairs was Diana's room, which was next to Kelsey's son's bedroom. And Kelsey was in the master bedroom, and Kelsey was in the master bedroom. Which she would share with her new boyfriend, a 27-year-old former gang member named John Logan Kennison, whom she met in early 2019.

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She liked the little trouble, like gangstery typetype guys. Bad boys.

[00:30:18]

Not only were these two inseparable, they even got matching tattoos. Where did they get their names tattooed on each other?

[00:30:25]

Like right here, I believe.

[00:30:27]

But I think when you look at the relationship from Logan's perspective, you see someone who is completely enamored with Kelsey. Apparently, that meant having to deal with Kelsey's ongoing relationship with Thomas. I think anybody in Logan's position would not want to ask the questions they don't want the answers to. You can see that Kelsey is trying to make sure that her relationship with Dr. Bouchard remains the way it is and that no one can interfere with it and disrupt that arrangement.

[00:30:59]

She never posted pictures on social media that would allude to having a boyfriend or being in a serious relationship.

[00:31:08]

It seems that Kelsey did not post about boyfriends for two reasons. One, she didn't want her family and world to think of her as hooked up with someone. And the other one was that perhaps she wanted Thomas to think her world revolved around him, and she needed his money.

[00:31:26]

When we looked through the phones, we could see extensive cash payments to her. And I would say over the span of the relationship, it was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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I stopped counting at about 750,000.

[00:31:43]

750,000 It was around that.

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A lot of it came out of his 401k, his retirement.

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And Richard was evidently feeling the financial pain. He once texted, Kelsey, I sent over $100,000 for you this year, which was unwise financially for me and clearly not sustainable. Perhaps needing a break, Thomas and Judy decide to take a little getaway to Las Vegas for Valentine's Day, 2019.

[00:32:12]

And it would combine the Valentine's Day, and his birthday was February 16th. Made a long little vacation.

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Despite everything that's happened, Thomas just can't break away. He cannot help himself when it comes to Kelsey.

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So does he wind up seeing Kelsey Turner on this trip?

[00:32:35]

I think he briefly saw her on that trip.

[00:32:39]

Thomas tells Judy that he needs to see Kelsey's son, whom Kelsey says was sick. And while Thomas was at the house, Kelsey made sure everyone else was gone. So it's a couple of weeks later, and Kelsey's money demands are still nonstop. And yet Thomas buys a round trip ticket, Monterey, Vegas, Monterey. He heads back to Sin City to see Kelsey.

[00:33:03]

I think Richard was ready to break it off. He's going to come out here, and he's going to let her know I'm not going to pay the bills anymore.

[00:33:11]

You're thinking maybe, just maybe, you're 6 month long nightmare is coming to an end.

[00:33:18]

I'm hoping. I'm really hoping.

[00:33:20]

But this house on Curendon Avenue would be the place where all hope was lost, and the real nightmare would begin.

[00:33:37]

It's Friday, March first, 2019. In a way, for Dr. Thomas Bruchard, a day of reckoning. So Insta model, Kelsey Turner, is going to get a visit from her so-called Sugar Daddy. This guy has been spending literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on Kelsey so that she could keep up this lifestyle that she so badly wants.

[00:34:03]

Dr. Thomas Berchardt's Vegas trip comes as a totally out of the blue surprise to his longtime girlfriend, Judy Erp, who's back in Monterey.

[00:34:12]

I called him about 5:30, and he goes, Oh, yeah, I'm in Las Vegas. And I go, Why are you in Las Vegas? And his exact words were, Kelsey Turner is such a consummate liar. I just had to Check things out for myself.

[00:34:32]

Kelsey's clearly on edge at this time because Dr. Brishard may or may not have gone there with the intent to break up the relationship.

[00:34:40]

When Richard arrives at the rental he's paying for on Puritan Avenue, Kelsey has allegedly stage-managed the scene, warning her housemates not to alert him about her new live-in boyfriend, John Logan-Kennison. What did Kelsey tell you as far as staying at the house that Friday night when he first arrived?

[00:35:03]

That Logan's name was Jay, and he was her tattoo artist, and not to mention that they were a couple, and not to talk to Dr. Bruchard.

[00:35:15]

I think she was worried that Thomas was going to find out that she was dating Kenison, and she didn't want to lose her meal ticket.

[00:35:26]

After the first day of night, Bruchard sends a Saturday text to Judy back home.

[00:35:32]

Saturday afternoon, he texts me and says he thinks he has effectively resolved the situation here, and he is looking forward to coming home on Monday.

[00:35:45]

But later on Saturday, it starts getting tense at the house after housemate, Jeremy Escherich's girlfriend, Chelsea O'Cartee, shows up.

[00:35:53]

Chelsea O'Cartee is the girlfriend of roommate Jeremy Escherich. This creates all kinds of trouble because she's a young, attractive blonde who suddenly goes on a ride with Dr. Richard to the store, which makes Kelsey absolutely crazy.

[00:36:13]

She freaked out. She was screaming. She was calling Dr. Richard to come back to the house. She figured that Jeremy had Chelsea trying to steal her sugar daddy. Chelsea, and Chelsea got into a bit of a fight in the front lawn, and Mr. Kinnison did as well.

[00:36:36]

Chelsea clearly has no interest in a relationship with Thomas, and she and Jeremy eventually leave in a taxi. By then, an uneasy truce appears to have settled in on Puritan Avenue that evening. Around 11:00 PM, Thomas, Kelsey, and one of her friends head out to the Vegas Strip to pick up Diana after her work shift at Caesars. But on the way back, they managed to lose their way home.

[00:36:59]

I'm not very good with directions, and none of them were. So Kelsey took Dr. Brachard's phone and was trying to get the GPS going. She started going through his phone, and she saw some stuff that she didn't like. Messages between her mom and Dr. Brachard.

[00:37:21]

Why do you think it upset Kelsey so much?

[00:37:25]

Kelsey said that they were talking about maybe taking her children It appeared he was informing her mother on aspects of her living situation, and she was upset that that communication was taking place. She started hitting him and kicking him, getting a little crazy. They were hitting each other pretty bad.

[00:37:51]

You're in the back seat of a car. You've worked a full shift, and the two people who have picked you up are having a screaming physical fight in front of you. Yeah.

[00:38:00]

Once everyone's in the house, Diana is hoping that the situation will be diffused, but it was far from that. Kelsey is still ranting and raving, and she is screaming at Richard and demanding the passcode to his phone. She looks at the phone, but suddenly she goes nuts again. She starts shouting accusations to Dr. Richard that are really troubling.

[00:38:29]

The allegations are made that Thomas Richardd, in fact, has child pornography on his device, on his iPhone. As it relates to the child pornography, there was no pornography material on the device. So Whether that was a false accusation being made by Kelsey in an attempt to harm Mr. Bichard's reputation, I don't know.

[00:38:55]

Still, even the threat of child porn would be devastating to a child psychiatrist with a sterling reputation back in Monterey. So what might a desperate man like Dr. Berchardt be capable of in that situation? You just knew this was a very volatile situation. Yeah. But you couldn't predict where it was going to go. Right. Thirty-six hours later, it's time for Tom Berchard to fly home to Monterey.

[00:39:22]

On late Monday afternoon, I decide to go meet the plane to make sure he gets home. I watched that plane land. I watched every single person get off and kept watching until the next flight boarded the plane, and he was not on the flight.

[00:39:42]

Thomas Brochard, the amateur magician, and seemingly pulled his own disappearing act. And he wasn't the only one who's gone suddenly missing. Kelsey Turner has apparently vanished into thin air, too. When Judy called the police Department here, they actually went out to the house.

[00:40:01]

They knocked on the door. Just nobody was home.

[00:40:04]

This is a crazy story. A beloved child psychiatrist missing. An Instagram model missing. Nobody has a clue until one is revealed in the cold, desolate Nevada desert.

[00:40:17]

Patrol gets a call that there's a car out in the desert. She said it's not the car that should be back there. Judy Earp didn't know where Tom Berchard was. Nobody can get a hold of Kelsey either. She had wiped him out financially.

[00:40:39]

We knew something bad was going to happen.

[00:40:42]

You don't feel like any of it's planned. Like, I know this spot here, and we'll take it there. There was a body in the trunk. When you looked at the body, what did you see about it? The level of depravity here is off the charts. Why aren't you just running out the front door and never coming back?

[00:41:00]

I was really scared, not just for me, scared for my family, my friends.

[00:41:05]

There's a witness to an epic fight between the doctor and the Insta model.

[00:41:10]

They were just wrestling, crazy. I just started screaming at them to stop.

[00:41:17]

Someone who saw it all and lived to tell.

[00:41:21]

I've never been so scared in my life.

[00:41:25]

I'm in terror.

[00:41:26]

And then I just went, no.

[00:41:29]

But Whose murder did she witness? Or was it more than one?

[00:41:40]

Kelsey Turner liked all eyes on her. She liked to be in the center of the pictures, the center of the crowd. She liked the camera.

[00:41:49]

Kelsey Turner was an aspiring Insta model who sought attention and admiration from her followers on social media.

[00:41:57]

Kelsey was extremely open about her body and and love showing it off. She didn't care what anyone thought about her.

[00:42:04]

Kelsey wanted us to think she was a person living a high status lifestyle, a person living a glamorous lifestyle, a person living the lifestyle of the model that she aspired to be.

[00:42:16]

From what I saw, that was true. That was her reality.

[00:42:20]

But it turns out that Kelsey's fancy lifestyle in Vegas, the luxury car, the four bedroom house, was not being paid for by her Insta modeling career. Instead, she was being bankrolled by a highly regarded 71-year-old child psychiatrist from Monterey, California named Dr. Thomas Berchard.

[00:42:40]

I think you can fairly say they were having an intimate relationship.

[00:42:44]

There's at least a text exchange that is very suggestive of the idea that they had a sexual relationship in exchange for money.

[00:42:55]

The life that Kelsey was living was a huge shock. This was not the same Kelsey I knew. Absolutely not.

[00:43:01]

Kelsey's new life in Sin City was a far cry from the one she'd once had, back home in Jonesborough, Arkansas. Friends say Kelsey loved being the center of attention and knew from a young age that she was bound for something bigger, she thought, than working as a waitress in town.

[00:43:18]

Kelsey wanted to be a superstar. She definitely didn't belong here in small Arkansas. I used to joke with her a lot about, Bro, you're not from Jonesborough.

[00:43:29]

Her modeling career began while she was here in Arkansas. No doubt, Kelsey saw herself as achieving a lot for someone in Jonesborough and probably gave her the confidence to move out West.

[00:43:41]

But after arriving in Las Vegas in late 2018, it looks like things are about to fizzle out. The modeling career was not exactly what she had hoped for.

[00:43:51]

She was posting less magazines and print modeling photos when she was in Vegas. By the time Kelsey got to Vegas, her life had already spiraled. We knew something bad was going to happen.

[00:44:05]

And so as March of 2019 begins, it looks like Kelsey's life is about to take a turn for the worse because Thomas Berchardt is fed up with paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to subsidize her party-hardy lifestyle.

[00:44:19]

At that point, it's looking like it's between $700,000 and $750,000, and I just stopped counting.

[00:44:29]

Friday On the eighth, March first of 2019, Thomas pays an impromptu visit to Kelsey's house on Puritan Avenue. That's the house he's paying for. And it turns out there are others living there, too, besides Kelsey's four-year-old son, three housemates in all, including a new living boyfriend, John Logan-Kennison.

[00:44:50]

I always think, what could I have done to prevent him from going to Las Vegas that time?

[00:44:58]

Thomas and Kelsey are left alone in the house on Friday night. Then on Saturday, Judy gets a text.

[00:45:06]

On Saturday, he texted me and he said, I have effectively resolved the situation here, and I really am looking forward to returning home on Monday.

[00:45:19]

But later on Saturday, things turn volatile. There are fireworks triggered by Kelsey's jealousy after Thomas takes a housemate's girlfriend out for a ride. The tension ratchets up again when Kelsey threatens to report him to his hospital after falsely claiming his phone contains child pornography.

[00:45:40]

I think Thomas, knowing that he didn't have child pornography inside his device, was willing to argue that point because it wasn't true and probably recognized you were trying to extort me, Kelsey.

[00:45:50]

Now, by Sunday, Judy's radar is up in the stratosphere because she is having trouble connecting to Thomas in real-time. She finally text, Why don't you answer the phone? And he replies, I'm out to lunch. Now, Judy knew right away that that was odd, but made no sense to her.

[00:46:11]

I said eating and talking on the phone. Never stopped you before. I was texted back, Well, I need to charge my phone. And after that, the phone went dead.

[00:46:23]

Through the day, into the night, there's no response to Judy's increasingly concerned text messages, which he would later provide to Monterey authorities, along with texts between Kelsey and Thomas. Watching the tone of your request that he call change, getting more urgent, more desperate, more really begging him to be in touch.

[00:46:47]

I didn't know what had happened. I didn't know.

[00:46:52]

The following day, Thomas is scheduled to arrive back in Monterey. Judy is anxiously waiting at the airport, and Thomas never shows up.

[00:47:03]

And now I'm just shaking. I'm scared. So I go to the gate agent, and she checked, and she came back and told me that he had not checked in for the flight, and he was not on the flight. So at this point, I know something is wrong, seriously wrong. And so I called the police in Las Vegas and finally, a missing person's report.

[00:47:28]

The local police department did their due diligence in trying to first go out to the house a couple of times. They did a welfare check. They knocked on the door. Just nobody was home. This was just a huge mystery. Judy Earp didn't know where Tom Berchard was. She's trying his cell phone. It's been off. Nobody can get a hold of Kelsey either.

[00:47:51]

On Wednesday, just four days after Thomas' phone had been shut off, suddenly the phone is back on. The way we know this, Eddie Mendoza tried to call him. Someone answers, but it's not Thomas.

[00:48:05]

Some sketchy guy answered and said, Hello? I said, Thomas, this isn't Thomas. Who are you? And he said, I picked up this cell on the Vegas strip, and I said, You know what? You don't know what you're involved in. That belongs to a doctor. So I'd advise you right now to call 911 and get that phone turned in.

[00:48:28]

Police are able to bring in this mysterious curious man for questioning by a detective.

[00:48:32]

And when he tries to do the interview, the guy is really violent. They try to explain, Listen, this guy has been murdered. And he says, Well, I'm the one that killed him. You finally got your man. He says he's the person that killed the owner of the phone, but had no credibility because he had no idea the circumstances, and he was clearly mentally unstable.

[00:48:53]

So for one moment, somebody appears to be confessing to the murder of Tom Berchardt. Yes. It seems like the clues into Thomas's disappearance have dried up. But the very next day in the Nevada Desert, there's a stunning discovery.

[00:49:09]

So we are at the edge of the city limits here.

[00:49:13]

And it's going to shift this case into high gear. Nobody's digging a grave here, anything like that.

[00:49:19]

No.

[00:49:29]

The call comes in March seventh. From here in the Dry as dust state park near Lake Mead. Something unusual has been found deep in the desert here. It's a late model luxury car abandoned. And who had discovered that the car was here?

[00:49:50]

There was a young guy that recently purchased a pickup. He wanted to see what the pickups off-road capability was and just come enjoy the mountains. And that generated had to call.

[00:50:00]

Taking the drive that morning to check it out, Las Vegas Detective Ryan Jaeger from Homicide.

[00:50:09]

So we are as far northeast Las Vegas as you can get. It's the edge of the city limits here. It's a harsh environment out here. Like today, the weather's perfect. But in the summer, it'd be 113 out here. At night, it gets really cold.

[00:50:32]

So on the day of March seventh, 2019, this is the road you're driving down? Yes. And just hours before the Detective's March seventh trip, it was that late model car making this drive. Those inside feeling frantic and desperate to conceal their deadly secret. And the first thing they see, that little kiosk there makes them go.

[00:50:58]

Let's take this But you don't feel like any of it's planned.

[00:51:03]

Like, I know this spot here, and we'll take it there.

[00:51:06]

No, because if it's planned, I think there would be better spots. They're also in a Sedan. Right. It's very low clearance that's made to travel on the freeway and get good mileage.

[00:51:19]

Late model Mercedes. Do you know what time of day they came in?

[00:51:22]

I think it was late hour. The best estimation would have been in under the cover darkness, which out here, for For the most part, it wouldn't be very hard. That wasn't the place they wanted to abandon the car. That's where they ended up having to abandon the car.

[00:51:52]

And just like you said, if the car had been around here because here's this great little thing of concealment.

[00:52:00]

We have a large 10-passenger SUV that we drove out here.

[00:52:05]

You can't see a thing over here.

[00:52:07]

It's 50 feet or so from us. And if you look this way, you can't see a suburban, much less a small Mercedes.

[00:52:14]

But if If they'd gotten that car here, how much time might that have bought them?

[00:52:18]

It may have bought them weeks, days. It would have definitely bought them a lot more time.

[00:52:25]

Instead, the car is found in short order. And when police take a closer look at the abandoned Mercedes, they make a grizzly discovery.

[00:52:33]

There was a body in the trunk.

[00:52:35]

When you looked at the body, what did you see?

[00:52:38]

It looked like someone's grandpa. You could tell it was a square. A square is a person that has a job. He's not a drug dealer. He's not someone involved in the criminal activity. He had a little suit jacket on with a little bow tie and some khy pants.

[00:52:55]

Is this the guy you would normally see in the back of a No, not at all. In what respect?

[00:53:04]

The clean-cut guy in his 70s, he don't normally end up beat to death in trunks of cars.

[00:53:10]

So you'd found Mr. Rogers in the back of the car?

[00:53:13]

Yes, that's a good way to describe him. Little sweater vest on. Exactly.

[00:53:19]

The dead man is Dr. Thomas Berchard, the child psychiatrist from Monterey, California, who's been missing for almost a week. A victim A victim of murder most fouled. What could you tell as far as his wounds?

[00:53:37]

A lot of the blood had dried, so you could tell that he had a lot of defects in blunt force trauma on his head and face.

[00:53:44]

You could tell he still even been hit with something hard? Yes. Inside the truck, detectives find a wealth of evidence.

[00:53:53]

It looked like a total cleanup kit. There was rubber gloves in there. There was trash bags. There was clothes. There was bloody bags. Everything for our murder is going to be in this trunk except the actual murder scene.

[00:54:07]

Detectives also find evidence of a clumsy attempt to cover up the crime.

[00:54:11]

They wanted to set fire to it in hopes to destroy any evidence that was in the car and probably tried to incinerate the body that was in the trunk.

[00:54:18]

Okay. And how did they go about doing that?

[00:54:21]

They lit a small fire on the passenger side seat that maybe burnt about a silver dollar size of the leather seat, and then the fire extinguished itself. Yeah.

[00:54:33]

And they just want to get away from that car and everything it represents.

[00:54:38]

It was obvious just walking up to the scene that the murder didn't happen here.

[00:54:43]

How could you tell the victim hadn't been murdered here?

[00:54:46]

It wouldn't make sense for two people to be in a car together, drive all the way out here, and have something go bad to where one of them gets killed, stuck in the trunk, and then one guy just walk away. We call it a body dump. It's a disposal site. It's not where the actual murder itself took place.

[00:55:06]

Nobody's digging a grave here. There's no sign of a struggle nearby. Nothing like that. No.

[00:55:10]

I know somewhere other than Here, it could be anywhere, valley-wide. There's a murder scene that I don't know about. Where's our crime scene? We have to find out where he was murdered.

[00:55:24]

That search would take detectives from the desert into the city of Las Vegas and to a certain house on Puritan Avenue. And would a piece of evidence found inside that trunk lead cops right to the killer?

[00:55:38]

I'm like, I think we got a guy.

[00:55:51]

March 2019, Judy Earp has been desperately trying to reach her partner, Dr. Thomas Berchard, on his cell phone, but there's been no response. Months. Then four days after Thomas goes missing in Las Vegas, Judy's life, their 17 years of togetherness here in Monterey, is shattered by an unexpected phone call.

[00:56:13]

I see it's a Las Vegas number. Detective Jäger told me that we found Tom, and I'm relieved. And so I asked him, Is he okay? And he said, No, he was deceased. I just can't comprehend it. And I think I'm saying no, no, no, no, no done it 100 % I knew.

[00:56:47]

And you told the police that right away, didn't you?

[00:56:49]

Oh, yeah.

[00:56:50]

Tying Kelsey Turner to this crime scene isn't exactly a stretch for detectives. After all, they have a big, metallic, 3,800-pound clue to work with.

[00:57:03]

It was leased to Kelsey, and Thomas was just paying the bills on.

[00:57:09]

But detectives find evidence inside the trunk, next to Richard's body. That points to another culprit in his killing.

[00:57:18]

So the baseball bat was wedged in there. I'm looking at the bat, and I'm like, Well, this has got to be our murder weapon. And there was a name on it. Greg Hagio was on the bat. And I'm like, I think we got a guy.

[00:57:31]

Greg Hagio is an ex-boyfriend of Kelsey Turner's, and he has a criminal history. But it turns out Greg Hagio is not the guilty party. He has a rock solid alibi. He was in California at the time of the murder.

[00:57:45]

He spoke to us. He was like, I'm not involved in a murder. He's like, I have a poor choice in women. That's for sure.

[00:57:53]

A closer examination of the Mercedes reveals damage to the ceiling of the car, blood on the seat. Leading detectives to conclude, Richardd was killed by a second object as he sat in the car and then crawled along the car's floorboards to evade the assault.

[00:58:11]

At that time, I was focused on the It's like, well, you couldn't even swing that bat inside the car because the car is not big enough. I think there's a different murder weapon. I don't know if it's going to be a hammer because it's a real distinct shape.

[00:58:25]

It would seem likely that the extent of the injuries To speak to a man having performed this heinous act. Who else is in Kelsey's life? Well, there's her current boyfriend, John Logan Kenison.

[00:58:44]

This was the residence that Thomas Prashard was paying for, for Kelsey Turner to live in.

[00:58:51]

And who else lived here at the time, at the beginning of March, when Thomas Prichard came to visit Kelsey here?

[00:58:57]

John, Logan, Kenison.

[00:59:00]

Cell phone data indicate lots of activity in the early morning hours of March third from some of the residents here. Days later, it put some of them on the road to that site in the desert. But now, no sign of Kelsey, Kenison, or housemate Diana Paine. When police search inside, they find signs of foul play.

[00:59:20]

The house was a house full of clues. From the bottom floor to the top floor, there was evidence that something bad had occurred.

[00:59:28]

You could see that in the garage, there was apparent blood.

[00:59:31]

They found the broken door upstairs, blood still on the door. They found a blue and white striped towel that matched one of the towels that had covered Berchardt in the trunk.

[00:59:44]

That means two separate attacks on Berchardt with two different weapons. Detective Jaeger is still hoping one of the residents will return. But when he talks to the neighbors, one of them says a gray sedan keeps driving past the place. And gives the detective a license plate number.

[01:00:02]

It was actually a guy at a cleaning service that had cleaned the house and was coming back because Kelsey refused to pay him. He did acknowledge there was also a large red stain that the cleaning guy thought was just red wine or maybe spaghetti sauce. He was like, Yeah, it probably would be a blood stain.

[01:00:25]

A warrant has been issued for Kelsey Turner. And it turns out that an FBI task force out of Stockton, California, has gotten the goods. They've tracked down Kelsey Turner.

[01:00:39]

So they reached out to the Stockton police who did find Turner living near the railroad tracks and east of downtown Stockton. She was there with her four-year-old son.

[01:00:49]

Kelsey Turner is taken into custody on March 21st, 2019, posing for a photo that won't be posted on her Instagram page. Detective Jäger, flies out to California to interview her in jail.

[01:01:04]

When she walks up to me, she saunters a little bit, and she's acting somewhat seductive. She reaches her hand out, and I was like, I'm Detective Jäger. So once I advised her for rights, she was like, No, I'm not going to talk. But I wanted to leave a little something with her. I was like, You know what you did in Las Vegas, you're going to go to jail for it.

[01:01:27]

What did you see on her face when you said that?

[01:01:29]

She just went blank. The saunter was gone.

[01:01:33]

We're back now with the Playboy model accused of murder. Police say 25-year-old Kelsey Turner killed a psychiatrist with the help of accomplices who are still on the run. Talk about going viral. The InstaModel's face now splashed across TV screens and web pages all across the world.

[01:01:50]

I was shocked when I heard that she was arrested for murder. I was thinking to myself, There's no way that's Kelsey. I would have never imagined in a million years that she would be caught up in this situation.

[01:02:04]

Not long after Kelsey is taken into custody, arrest warrants are issued for John Logan Kenison and for Diana Penya. Kenison, it turns out, is at his mother's house in Las Vegas, where he is arrested. Diana Penya hears that there's a warrant for arrest and does what she thinks is the best thing for her future, turn herself in.

[01:02:26]

Once in custody, Diana Penya starts It's talking. And for the first time, police will have a shocking first-hand account of exactly what went down inside that house on Puritan Avenue.

[01:02:39]

Okay, here we go, Chris.

[01:02:40]

I just wanted to tell the truth. I get to say my piece and have a little bit of closure. Mark.

[01:02:52]

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[01:03:24]

So as she worked her job at Caesar's Palace and looked after Kelsey Turner's young son. Shai Diana Pania tried to steer her clear of all the drama Kelsey loved to stir up. Until the night Diana saw horror unfold before her. A night she would describe to police. A dramatic night she's talking about in detail for the first time, only to 2020. Why did you want to share your story with us today?

[01:03:53]

I just wanted to tell the truth. I get to say my piece and have a little bit of closure, and maybe also other people might have a little closure, too.

[01:04:07]

It was late on Saturday night, March second, when Diana finished her shift at the Coliseum and asked her roommate for a ride home. She got the ride all right. But when Thomas Bruchard got lost and passed his phone to Kelsey so she could use the GPS, all hell broke loose on I-15.

[01:04:30]

She started going through his phone, and she saw some stuff that she didn't like. Messages between her mom and Dr. Bruchard.

[01:04:40]

Why do you think it upset Kelsey so much?

[01:04:42]

Kelsey said that they were talking about maybe taking her children. She started hitting him, getting a little crazy. They were hitting each other pretty bad.

[01:04:56]

So they're going 60 miles an hour, and they're fighting? Yes. Screaming, physical fight in front of you.

[01:05:00]

Pretty terrifying, especially since it was on the highway.

[01:05:06]

As they arrive at the house on Puritan Avenue, the fight escalates. And what happens next?

[01:05:14]

There was a lot of screaming, smacking.

[01:05:19]

Kelsey's rage includes those threats to contact Richard's employer with baseless claims of child pornography on his phone.

[01:05:28]

Kelsey is essentially preparing to extort Thomas on the basis that she is going to release this damaging material to his reputation, that being child pornography, ultimately resulted in Thomas becoming upset and going into the bedroom that he'd been sleeping in and closing the door.

[01:05:52]

What was he expressing at that time?

[01:05:55]

He seemed a little confused. He just kept saying he loved Kelsey, and he didn't know why she was acting like that.

[01:06:02]

Those are the words he was using? Yeah. He's saying, I love you? Yeah. What is John Logan-Kennison doing when he sees that his girlfriend is screaming at this old man?

[01:06:12]

He seemed surprised at first, and then he started yelling and screaming, too.

[01:06:19]

Diana's first thoughts are for the little boy. She has a trusted friend whisk him out of the house as Kelsey's anger intensifies. So she He's just in the red zone, screaming, yelling, throwing things. And you can see that that's having a big effect on John Logan Kenison. He's going to do something about this.

[01:06:40]

Yeah. He ran upstairs and he broke down the door.

[01:06:44]

What are you going through when these acts of anger and violence are starting to take place?

[01:06:49]

Just terror, horrified.

[01:06:52]

So you're screaming for him to stop? Yeah. And Kelsey is doing what?

[01:06:57]

She's on the stairs screaming at him to keep going.

[01:07:01]

What happens when he succeeds?

[01:07:04]

Somehow he got a bat. I don't know where the bat came from.

[01:07:08]

And what can you hear or see is taking place after that?

[01:07:11]

I just seen the bat go up and go in the direction of the doctor, and you could hear it hitting him. So I made my way in there, and I got the bat away from Kenison, and I just started screaming at them to stop and calm down.

[01:07:34]

What condition was he in at that point?

[01:07:37]

He was coherent, but he was hurt pretty good. The doctor's eye was starting to get like... It looked like blood in his eye. And then I just said, let's take him to the hospital. So we got him to the car, and I helped him in the back seat, and he said that he wanted to jacket. So I asked help Kelsey if we could get him his jacket. And so Kelsi and Mr. Kendison went in the house to look for the jacket.

[01:08:13]

Dr. Thomas Berchardt may be dazed and confused, but he's sharp enough to know one thing, he may never make it out of this house alive. What are you remembering?

[01:08:32]

I'm sorry. I just feel a bit that I didn't... I should have believed. You said, You know they're going to kill me.

[01:08:42]

When Kenison and Kelsey return, it's not to return Birchard's jacket. It's to separate the doctor from his only ally. Paine is instructed to go upstairs and clean up the mess created during the bedroom fight while the doctor remains in the garage. The next voice she hears is Kelsey's, demanding that John Logan Keneson attack Dr. Birchard.

[01:09:11]

She called Kenison a bitch. I said that she'd seen men knock out guys easier than he's doing.

[01:09:21]

Kelsey never tries to stop Kenison. To the contrary, she's encouraging Kenison.

[01:09:26]

And she has the ultimate weapon in Kenison, right? He'll hit anything that she wants him to.

[01:09:32]

He has a firearms with him, and he beats Dr. Bouchard to death.

[01:09:40]

A couple of minutes later, she came out and said he's gone. The doctor was dead. Kenison had killed him.

[01:09:48]

Kenison ultimately comes out of the garage, covered in blood.

[01:09:53]

I've never been so scared in my life. It's just...

[01:10:01]

Like, real terror.

[01:10:05]

And then I just went, no.

[01:10:08]

But for Pena, the terror is far from over. What were you scared of?

[01:10:14]

I didn't want them to do what they just did to Dr. Brishard to me, and I just witnessed it.

[01:10:27]

Dr. Thomas Brishard has been murdered in Kelsey Turner's garage. And like a figure from a nightmare, John Logan Kenison emerges, covered in the doctor's blood.

[01:10:39]

I've never been so scared in my life.

[01:10:44]

It's just like, real terror.

[01:10:50]

And then I just went, no. So I just turned around and started washing dishes because that was the only thing I could do to calm down.

[01:11:02]

But Kelsey Turner had received more than half a million dollars from Dr. Berchard. So what was in it for her to murder her meal ticket? Why kill the Golden Goose?

[01:11:14]

Because They didn't want to be her golden goose anymore. He was going to take it all away.

[01:11:20]

He had been her whale.

[01:11:21]

Yeah.

[01:11:24]

According to Penya, he's just lifeless, so now they don't know what the hell to do.

[01:11:29]

I started freaking out, and then they just started yelling that I need to clean the house up. He had a gun in his hand. He's covered in blood. I probably would have jumped out the window if he asked me to. I was scared. I didn't want them to do what they just did to Dr. Richard to me. Kelsey knew him a lot longer than she knew me, and I just witnessed it.

[01:11:52]

Did you ask yourself, even then, why didn't I do more to stop this?

[01:11:56]

Yeah, some days I don't think I could have I've really done anything without chancing putting myself in harm's way. Sometimes I wish I didn't come home early. Maybe that would have changed something. I guess we'll never know.

[01:12:16]

They know that they got a dead guy in a car, so we can't use that car. They're in a panic. They're to try to figure out the next step.

[01:12:24]

They all flee Puritan Avenue, ultimately arriving at the Rio. And along the way, they ditched Dr. Bruchard's phone, which was discovered by the transient who police question, but ultimately released.

[01:12:38]

Even in death, Dr. Bruchard is the gift that keeps on giving as his credit cards are still being used all over town, even to buy cleaning supplies.

[01:12:46]

Now, four days after Bruchard is killed, Logan tries to get rid of the Mercedes with Dr. Brashard in it.

[01:12:54]

What did you hear about what happened to that car?

[01:12:58]

It was Mr. Kinnison and A couple of people that went with him, and he said he set the car on fire and left.

[01:13:06]

But it had been discovered intact, along with a wealth of evidence. The police found a prominent California psychiatrist dead inside the trunk of an abandoned car. When the news breaks about the discovery of the body, Diana, Logan, Kelsey, and her son are all hold up together at the Rio.

[01:13:23]

I went down to the front desk, and then Kelsey came running and grabbed me. She started freaking out. She said that the police found the doctor in the car, and that she thought they were going to come get her. So she just pulled us into a car.

[01:13:40]

They're in such a rush that they leave Dr..

[01:13:42]

Richard's bankbook with his accounts and some passwords, along with identification for Diana and Kelsey's driver's license.

[01:13:51]

From that point on, they bounced around. They stayed at a friend's condo at a Motel 6 down the street from the MGM.

[01:13:59]

Why aren't you just running out the front door and never coming back?

[01:14:03]

I was really scared. Scared for my family, my friends.

[01:14:09]

So what happened next?

[01:14:11]

We went to California. They didn't have any money, and I lied to them and told them that I know people that can get you jobs that you don't really need an ID. If they would just let me go, And I left. They said that they would be watching me. They had Kelsey's friend drive me back to Vegas. I got my dog Snickers, and I got a hold of my mom.

[01:14:44]

What was I don't like to have to tell your parents what had happened? It's horrible.

[01:14:51]

It's horrible because you're terrified, and you can see they're terrified.

[01:14:58]

So we went and turned myself in.

[01:15:02]

Well, eventually, we learned that Diana Pena is a key piece in investigators learning exactly what happened. In time, she takes a plea deal. Her charge is reduced from murder to accessory to murder. And part of that is because she's agreeing to help police and prosecutors piece together the moments of Dr. Brishard's death.

[01:15:24]

Once police get Kelsey in custody, Logan finds his way back to Las Vegas, and ultimately police arrest him here at his mom's house.

[01:15:33]

In July of 2022, Kenison ultimately pled guilty to second-degree murder and conspiracy. He was sentenced to 18 to 45 years in prison. And I think you can hear that he is genuinely remorseful, that he understands that he committed a terrible crime. Before the judge imposed her sentence, Logan spoke.

[01:15:54]

I'm sorry for everything, all the pain I caused and everything that they had to go through the entire time. I hope after today that they'll get the clothes that they deserve.

[01:16:05]

I think that if you look at the situation, there's no universe where Dr. Buchard and Logan meet without Kelsey. And ultimately, there's no violence without Kelsey instigating it. There was definitely a connection between the two. My ultimate impression of her is that she's someone who is capable of getting people to do things for her on her behalf. I agree with Pam that she is able to spin a story for whatever audience that she has in front of her. Kelsey was the the ring leader, the puppet master, and she found people that she could control, and people that he could manipulate not only Dr. Richard, also, Logan. Abc News reached out to Logan Kenison, and in a letter, he told us, I want to help others that were involved in similar situations to hopefully prevent the same from happening. Running, and show people that toxic love situations aren't always what they see. When Logan is talking about toxic situations, I view that as a cautionary tale to mind the company you keep. One more shocking detail about Kelsey Turner has yet to come to light. So all this takes place while she's pregnant with a baby?

[01:17:24]

Yeah, she is.

[01:17:25]

Yeah, very pregnant.

[01:17:26]

Do we even ask who the father was? Former Playboy model, Kelsey Turner, made her appearance in court today. Turner is accused of killing a California psychiatrist.

[01:17:39]

Kelsey Turner embraced the cameras that were covering her pre-trial hearings. She Smiled for the cameras, turned around, messed with her hair, looked like nothing was wrong in the world.

[01:17:53]

Even in court, she viewed her courtroom experiences, at least appeared to me, as part of the extension of her brand. It was almost like a reality show for her.

[01:18:03]

As she's awaiting trial, there's a startling development. Kelsey gives birth. That means she was pregnant during the entire sequence of events leading up to Thomas Berchard's murder. So all this takes place while she's pregnant with a baby? Yes.

[01:18:19]

She is, yeah, very pregnant.

[01:18:21]

The identity of the father remains a mystery, and Kelsey's not talking. But John Logan Kenison raises a lot of eyebrows when he holds up a sign in Court. Love you, little mama.

[01:18:33]

Kelsey Turner, in her hearings, was defiant. She was not going to admit any guilt.

[01:18:42]

She vows to fight it out in court, but then, abrupt Kelly changes her tune as her trial nears.

[01:18:47]

The former playboy model, accused of murdering her ex or boyfriend, is taking a plea deal. Kelsey Turner was set to go to trial for killing her 71-year-old boyfriend.

[01:18:57]

The plea deal comes as a surprise to everyone. To him. And then there's a twist. Kelsey is allowed to enter what's known as an Alfred plea, where she pleads guilty to second-degree murder while still maintaining her innocence. The sentencing for second-degree murder is set by statute, and that's regardless of what police she entered. And so it really makes no difference in our estimation. I think that gives you a lot of insight into Kelsey.

[01:19:24]

She knows that we can prove the case. She just doesn't want to admit to others or maybe even herself that her responsibility in the case.

[01:19:31]

Judge presiding.

[01:19:32]

Good morning, everyone.

[01:19:33]

You can be seated. At her sentencing, it was made clear, Kelsey won't be resuming her Instamodel career anytime soon. Mr. Turner, you're here by the judge, Jilby, of second-duty murder, a felony.

[01:19:46]

You're hereby, sentenced to 10-25 years in the Nevada Department of your corrections.

[01:19:51]

We've always known Kelsey Turner to play to the cameras wherever they were. This time, she'd rather duck the attention.

[01:19:58]

I'll go ahead and let Ms. Turner speak, and I'll call her Kelly. But while Kelsey remained silent, Thomas Bruchard's longtime girlfriend, Judy Erp, spoke out in her victim impact statement. My entire world was viciously ripped with the murder of Thomas K. Richard. I frequently dreamed that Thomas come home, and it was all a big mistake. Then I realized that the real nightmare is waking up and knowing that he will never come home. I never realized such evil existed in this world until this happened. His murder left a huge gaping cold in the whole community. To see him Monterey.

[01:20:49]

Dr. Thomas Bruchard had a public life and a secret life. But those who knew him back in Monterey still stand by the man they knew and trusted.

[01:20:58]

Really nothing Everything that I heard in the news changed my opinion about who he was.

[01:21:05]

I know that he wasn't a bad person at all. And for what happened to him was just his absolute tragedy.

[01:21:17]

I miss Tom every day. Some days it's harder.

[01:21:22]

In your heart, do you still love Thomas Brichard? Yeah.

[01:21:29]

I I don't think there's any real getting over it or moving on or resuming your life. I don't think. I will have to keep going forward, even if it's one step, one foot in front of the other.

[01:21:50]

We should note that John Logan-Kennison appealed his conviction, but it was denied. He'll be eligible for parole in the year 2037.

[01:21:57]

And David Kelsey-Tuner, the one-time model, will be eligible for parole in 2029. That's our program for tonight. Thanks so much for watching.I'm Deborah Roberts.And.

[01:22:07]

I'm David Muir from all of us here at 2020 on ABC News. Good night.