[imagesource: Instagram]

In 2019, a California doctor’s corpse was found bludgeoned to death in the trunk of an abandoned car just outside Las Vegas.

Kelsey Nichole Turner, 29, a former Playboy model, and her 29-year-old former boyfriend, Jon Logan Kennison, along with their roommate and post-murder accomplice, Diana Nicole Pena, were all found guilty of the brutal murder.

Turner was sentenced on Tuesday in Nevada to 10 to 25 years in prison for her part in the murder, while Kennison pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and conspiracy in July and received 18 to 45 years in prison.

Pena, a former bartender at a Las Vegas Strip resort, pleaded guilty in June 2019 to accessory to murder. Now 34, she testified that she helped clean the crime scene after Burchard was killed, and then fled Las Vegas with Kennison and Turner.

The tragic killing of the 71-year-old California psychiatrist, Thomas Burchard, at the hands of these wayward people, happened as he was trying to break off Turner and Kennison’s relationship:

Kelsey Turner the 25-year-old accused of killing 71-year-old Monterey doctor Thomas Burchard was in court Monday. The murder investigation has led police to a Las Vegas home Burchard rented where blood and efforts to clean it up were found. The body was found in a car outside LV. pic.twitter.com/w0ZBMBVDux

— Caitlin Conrad (@CaitlinKSBW) April 9, 2019

He had apparently also stopped paying for Turner’s bills, including the rent of the home where the trio lived.

BuzzFeed News reports:

“For her part, she was content to leave someone she knew for a number of years, who supported her and her child financially for a number of years, to rot in the back of the car in the desert that he paid for,” Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Pamela Weckerly said at Tuesday’s court hearing.

CBS News reports that the police put Kennison, Turner, and Pena together when Burchard was reported missing by his longtime girlfriend, Judy Earp:

They said it appeared that the three of them abruptly moved out of the home 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 said they 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.

The police also confirmed that Pena’s and Kennison’s fingerprints were found in the car, along with a baseball bat.

Alarmingly, Turner had done everything she could to get out of the mess, including blatant lies and deceit:

According to prosecutors, Turner made false accusations that Burchard possessed child sexual abuse material and she falsely identified herself as a victim of domestic violence.

Prosecutors also said in court that Turner attempted to monetize the incident after her initial arrest by setting up a GoFundMe to fund her defense and unsuccessfully negotiating to appear in the TV show Love After Lockup.

Earp accused Turner of forging Burchard’s signature and stealing money from him when he was alive too, a sum upwards of $300 000:

“She printed on her home computer checks with Tom’s name and account number and her address. She also went online and made many charges paying her bills,” Earp said to the court, according to CBS affiliate KLAS-TV. “His last words to me were, ‘she’s such a pervasive liar that I had to see for myself.'”

Earp also claimed that Turner had “lured” Burchard to Las Vegas in 2019 by saying she was sick and couldn’t afford to take care of her child and he had threatened in a text message to kill her, too.

“I never realized such evil existed in this world until this happened,” Earp said.

[sources:buzzfeednews&cbsnews]