Posted on Thu, 12 January 2023
A 29-year-old former model for International Playboy and Maxim was sentenced Tuesday to 10 to 25 years in prison for killing a California psychiatrist whose bludgeoned corpse was found in 2019 in the trunk of her abandoned car just outside Las Vegas.
In order to avoid trial, Kelsey Nichole Turner agreed in November to an “Alford plea” and a negotiated sentence, by acknowledging that prosecutors could prove second-degree murder in the slaying of 71-year-old Dr. Thomas Kirk Burchard of Salinas, California
Turner made no statement in court.
Her sentencing followed sentencing in July for her 29-year-old former boyfriend, Jon Logan Kennison, to 18 to 45 years in prison. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and conspiracy.
Police and prosecutors said Turner had “an intimate relationship” with Burchard, and Burchard paid the rent on a Las Vegas home where Turner and Kennison lived with a roommate, Diana Nicole Pena.
Police were able to place Kennison, Turner and Pena together at the time Burchard was reported missing by his longtime girlfriend in Salinas, Judy Earp, and said it appeared that the three moved out of the home abruptly after Burchard was killed.
The Clark County coroner found that Burchard was beaten to death with head injuries from an unspecified object that left what police called a “unique pattern.”
Police also found a door broken in half; blood, cleaning supplies and items bearing Kennison’s name in a bedroom in the house; and apparent blood, footprints and more cleaning supplies in the garage. Blue and white bath towels found at the house matched a towel found with Burchard’s body in Turner’s blue Mercedes Benz coupe, police said.
Pena, now 34, a former bartender at a Las Vegas Strip resort, pleaded guilty in June 2019 to accessory to murder. She ratted on the others, testifying that she helped clean the crime scene after the killing and fled with Kennison and Turner.
Turner was later arrested in Salinas and Kennison was arrested in Las Vegas.
Source: Mike South
