By Lisa Sweetingham Court TV
PERRY, Ga. Just a month after her marriage to a police officer, Lynn Turner urged her husband to name her the beneficiary of his $100,000 life insurance policy, according to an insurance agent who testified Wednesday in Turner's murder trial.
Lynn Turner, a former 911 operator, is charged with the 1995 antifreeze-poisoning death of her 31-year-old husband, Glenn, and is a suspect in the 2001 death of a firefighter with whom she was having an affair at the time of Glenn's death. She faces life in prison if convicted.
Vince Turley, a former sales agent for Metropolitan Life said that Glenn Turner called him in late September 1993 and stated that, at his wife's request, he wanted to change his policy to name her rather than his mother as the primary beneficiary.
"I didn't do it right away so he called again," Turley, former police officer who knew Glenn personally, testified. "He said Lynn was all over his back to get it changed."
According to the policy documents, which were entered into evidence, Lynn phoned an 800 number on March 7, 1995 — the day after Glenn's funeral — to inquire about benefits, and signed a claim form on April 12, 1995, eventually receiving more than $110,000 in benefits and interest.
Glenn Turner, who friends say worked constantly to support his wife's spending habits, reportedly died with 78.7 hours of unused vacation time, for which Lynn received a check for about $1,000. Two months after his death, she received a check for $47,587.50 from his employee benefits and will continue to receive $788 per month from his pension, until her own death.
 | | Vince Turley, a former sales agent for Metropolitan Life, said Glenn Turner changed his life insurance policy at his wife's request. |
Turner was admitted to the emergency room on March 2, 1995, complaining of flu-like symptoms. When he died at home the next day, medical examiners initially determined the cause of death to be an enlarged heart. But six years later, when Lynn Turner's boyfriend, Randy Thompson, died under similar circumstances, a deeper investigation found that both men had ethylene glycol — the toxin found in antifreeze — in their tissues.
When investigators arrived at the scene of Glenn Turner's death on March 3, 1995, Lynn Turner told them she had awoken at about 3 a.m. to find Glenn hallucinating and attempting to jump off a second-story balcony thinking he could fly, lead detective Charlie Mazariegos told the jury Wednesday.
She told Mazariegos she had to coax Glenn out of the basement, where he tried to drink gasoline because he said he was thirsty, the detective testified. She said that in the morning, she fed him some Jell-O and left to do errands, returning at about 2 p.m. to find him dead in his bed.
Jurors saw a photo that Mazariegos had taken of the couple's basement, which showed a red gasoline can and a blue bottle of antifreeze sitting on the floor. He testified that he did not smell gas on Turner's breath.
During cross-examination, the defense team attempted to illustrate shoddy investigative work on the part of police. Mazariegos was unable to recall simple details about the layout of the home and admitted that he did not collect or examine the bottle of antifreeze to see if it had been opened, that he had not looked in the refrigerator or kitchen sink to examine or collect any Jell-O, and that he had only taken notes, but did not officially interview Lynn Turner, or anyone else about the mysterious death.
"As a detective, you are trained to look for everything?" defense lawyer Jim Berry asked.
"That's correct," Mazariegos said.
Crime-scene technician Kathy Richardson also observed Turner's lifeless body in his bed, and described evidence collected from his nightstand: an empty prescription bottle of Phenergan suppositories, Phenobarbital pills, a bottle of Kaopectate, a package of soda crackers and a spoon — items at his disposal during his illness. But Richardson did not examine or collect any items from any other rooms.
"Why didn't you do more?" Prosecutor Patrick Head asked her, apparently anticipating defense scrutiny.
"There was nothing at the scene to indicate any foul play," Richardson said. "There was nothing else to do based on the information we had."
At one point Wednesday, jurors were shown a photograph of Turner in his bed, moments before he was strapped to a gurney and transferred to the medical examiner. Family members in the courtroom remained composed, but some lowered their heads or touched each other comfortingly.
In the photo, Turner's partially clothed body was in the early stages of rigor mortis, his face was splotchy and blue, and there was a slight froth around his mouth.
Robert Tressell, an investigator for the medical examiner, testified that the froth present was an indication of fluid build-up in Turner's lungs, which can occur in cases of both poisoning or heart failure.
Tressell said during cross-examination that Turner's blood and urine were put through routine drug screening, but no tests were conducted for the presence of ethylene glycol. When it was discovered that Turner had an enlarged heart, nothing more was done to determine an alternate cause of death.
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