What did Kelsey Turner do? Former model sentenced over California doctor’s 2019 killing

Kelsey Turner, an ex-playboy model, agreed to a plea deal for the 2019 murder of a California child psychiatrist. Turner, who has been in custody since 2019, was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison on Tuesday.

According to Court TV, Turner entered an Alford plea on a second-degree murder charge in the death of Dr. Thomas Burchard in November. A definition by the Cornell Law School describes the Alford plea as:

"(The defendant) registers formal admission of guilt towards charges in criminal court, while simultaneously expresses their innocence toward those same charges."

Though the negotiated sentence allows the former model to avoid trial, she acknowledged in court that prosecutors could prove second-degree murder in the death of the 71-year-old psychiatrist.

Police and prosecutors had previously found intimate as well as monetary connections between Turner and Dr. Burchard. The latter was found beaten to death by an unspecified object.

Kelsey Turner's former boyfriend, 29-year-old Jon Logan Kennison, was sentenced to 18 to 45 years in prison in July after he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and conspiracy.

KLAS-TV reported that Turner was tearful in court but did not make any statements.

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Prosecutors believe that Kelsey Turner had an "intimate relationship" with California psychiatrist

In March 2019, California psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Burchard was reported missing by his longtime partner Judy Earp after he never got off his plane from Las Vegas.

Days later, Burchard's mangled body was found in the trunk of Kelsey Turner’s blue Mercedes-Benz C300. The car was abandoned in the desert near Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

According to the Clark County coroner’s office, Burchard died of blunt force injuries to his head after he was attacked with an unidentified object. The prosecution stated that the former Playboy Italia model had an intimate and “transactional” relationship with Burchard, and that his death came after the psychiatrist stopped paying the rent on Kelsey Turner's Las Vegas home.

Police have further stated that Turner lived in the house with her then-boyfriend, Jon Logan Kennison, and a roommate, later identified as Diana Nicole Pena. All three of them had coincidentally moved out of the Vegas house after Thomas Burchard was killed.

In a bedroom in the Las Vegas house, police reportedly found a broken door, blood, cleaning supplies, and items bearing Kennison's name. Blood, footprints, and more cleaning supplies were found in the garage of the house. Further evidence such as blue and white bath towels found at the house and a similar towel found with Burchard's body tied Turner to the murder.

Pena and Kennison's fingerprints were found in the car, along with a baseball bat, and Diana Pena, a former bartender at a Las Vegas Strip resort, pleaded guilty in June 2019 to accessory to murder.

She admitted to having helped in cleaning the crime scene. She also left Las Vegas with Kennison and Kelsey Turner following the murder.

During the sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Chief Deputy District Attorney Pamela Weckerly addressed the kind of relationship that existed between Kelsey Turner and Dr. Thomas Burchard and said:

"There’s certainly room for a lot of salacious speculation as to what the nature of the relationship was. I think the facts of this case demonstrate though that with regards to Ms. Turner, that this was a transactional relationship, to whatever extent."

During the hearing, Chief Deputy Special Public Defender Ashley Sisolak stated that both she and her client agreed that the plea deal was the best resolution of the 2019 murder case.