Cheating is F'd Up - Part One

Explicit content warning

08/13/19 • 46 min

F'd Up

Cheating Is F'd Up Part One Recap
Written by Brandi Abbott

This episode starts with a content warning for sexual assault/domestic violence/violence.

In 2010, while the NC SBI Crime Lab audit was happening, a defense attorney named Brad Bannon was concerned about a recent case of his. Brad was the type of lawyer who always thought just 30 more minutes of work would break the case – those 30 more minutes would often turn into hours, days and even weeks. The infamous Duke Lacrosse Rape Case was one of these. A woman accused David Evans, Reade Seligmann, and Collin Finnerty of sexual assault. Then District Attorney Mike Nifong supplied thousands of pages of DNA evidence done by an independent lab because he didn’t like that the SBI investigation revealed that the boys were innocent. Brad noticed that the images of the DNA didn’t match and did a ton of research into DNA so that he could understand it. This led to him being able to tear apart the expert witness in court and the boys were found not guilty. So, that’s the kind of lawyer Brad is.

In 2007, Kirk Turner was a successful dentist who had been married to Jennifer Turner for 23 years. Jennifer was a horse lover who wanted to start a breeding farm. She had nine horses and this took up a lot of her time, and occasionally Kirk would help her out after work. Everyone was shocked when Kirk announced he was leaving Jennifer and their daughter asked him if he was cheating on Jennifer. He denied it but he was lying. Jennifer took him to court and he was ordered to pay her $30,000 a month. She then found out about the affair and sued the other woman in an alienation of affection suit. North Carolina is one of the few states who recognizes alienation of affection and it allows a spouse to sue a third party for wrongful acts that deprived one of a lack of affection from their spouse. This lawsuit pissed off Kirk and he told Jennifer that there was more than one way to end a marriage... Which is ominous.

On September 12, 2007, Kirk and his friend, Greg Smithson, went to pick up some welding equipment from the garage/shed (pretty sure here in NC, we would just call it a “shop”) at the house that he and Jennifer had previously shared, but now it was just Jennifer living there. Within a couple of minutes, Greg heard screaming or fighting, and a couple of minutes after that Greg limped out of the shed, covered in blood. Smithson didn’t know what was happening and ran into the shop to call 911 – and that’s when he found Jennifer’s dead body.

The police arrived at the scene and eventually Chief Deputy Jerry Hartman was called and he arrived a few hours after both Kirk and Jennifer’s body had been taken to the hospital. Hartman went into the shop and examined the scene. There was blood everywhere. He saw clothes in the office area including Kirk’s t-shirt and jeans, which had to be cut from him. Hartman left the scene to get a search warrant so he could check everything out properly. Keith wants to know why he needs a search warrant at an obvious crime scene and Priya is like well we have scientists not being scientists so at least the cop is acting like a cop!

Hartmant got the warrant and was back within a few hours which is when the shirt and jeans were photographed. Because there was blood on the boxes, table, floor, and basically all over the place, a discussion took place between Hartman and the on scene investigator, they wanted to bring in a bloodstain pattern analyst and called in the SBI Crime Lab.

The bloodstained clothing was taken to the sheriff’s office and Hartman went over to the hospital where Kirk was. Kirk had been stabbed twice in the leg and had lost a ton of blood. Kirk told Hartman that Jennifer had attacked him with a decorative spear that was leaning against the wall. Priya takes a moment to ask what the fuck is going on in North Carolina with all of these rich white people just having decorative weapons laying around – first Michael Peterson with “The Staircase” and now this! Kirk said that Jennifer shoved the blade into his left leg and then stabbed him again. The second stab was about an inch away from hitting his femoral artery. According to the News and Observer, Kirk reached into his right pocket, pulled out his knife and slashed at her. He slashed her neck twice and severed her carotid artery. According to testimony at the trial, her trachea, windpipe and jugular were cut. His story is basically that Jennifer attacked him and he just started flailing in self-defense.

On September 14th, 2007 SBI Special Agent Gerald Thomas went to the crime scene to investigate the bloodstain patterns covering everything. This was two days after everything had taken place and a lot of the evidence had been taken to the sheriff’s office so he headed there next.

They switch over to a “Science Sidebar” real quick and Priya gives us a quick definition of blood stain pattern analysis and how t...

Cheating Is F'd Up Part One Recap
Written by Brandi Abbott

This episode starts with a content warning for sexual assault/domestic violence/violence.

They switch over to a “Science Sidebar” real quick and Priya gives us a quick definition of blood stain pattern analysis and how t...

Previous Episode

The Lab is F'd Up

The Lab Is F'd Up
Recap
Written by Brandi Abbott.

This week’s episode starts with a quick reminder of where Priya, Jess and Keith left off last week. Duane Deaver had just revealed that he hadn’t reported tests confirming that the spot on Greg Taylor’s truck was not blood. Deaver said that the systems that were in place told him to write his reports the way he did and he was just following protocol. We’re reminded that in the NC SBI Crime Lab there was a practice in place wherein analysts could and would withhold secondary tests that confirmed a substance initially believed to be blood... was not blood. The Attorney General at that time, Roy Cooper, ordered an audit of the lab but that would take months to complete. During that time investigative journalists for the News & Observer had begun looking into the lab and published a 4 part series called “Agent’s Secrets”. The SBI director was quoted as saying, “if any questions are raised, at the time the SBI goes backs and checks. Our goal is to be accurate and find the truth. There is no hidden agenda.” She stated this in response to three other convictions in 2005 where the SBI Crime Lab had bungled evidence - five years before Greg Taylor was released from prison.

At this time, lawyers filed a complaint accusing the SBI of royally F’ing these three cases up. One of the lawyers who was a defense lawyer in one of the three capital cases, Diane Savage was the chairman of the Forensic Science Task Force in the criminal defense section of NC Academy of Trial Lawyers. She hoped that there would be a full investigation and that they would shut down the lab until they came up with better quality control.

One of the three aforementioned capital cases was a woman named Leslie Lincoln who lived in North Carolina and moved back in with her mother, Arlene, after she went through divorce. In 2002, she had finally started getting her life back on track. She had a job and a new place and everything was really looking up. On March 17th of 2002, Leslie went to do some errands and her mom and brother, Duffy, were at Arlene’s home watching basketball. Duffy left around 4:30. After her errands, Leslie stopped back in to see her mom. She left around 7:30 and stopped at Walmart for dog food on the way home, which was confirmed by several surveillance cameras.

The next night Duffy went to his mother’s house where he found the door unlocked and poor Arlene Lincoln’s body in her bedroom on the floor. She had been stabbed over 30 times.

At this point we know that the SBI is not unbiased. Priya gives us some background into the establishment of the SBI lab and tells us that the lab’s link to law enforcement plays heavily into all of the cases F’d Up will cover, but especially into the case of Leslie Lincoln.

Arlene led a pretty active life. When her neighbors noticed she hadn’t been in her yard, they thought it was weird and called Duffy. Duffy went to check on her, discovered her body and called 911. There were three footprints in the blood by her body and quite a bit of evidence left behind. The police took several things from her home for evidence. They later learned that her credit card was missing. They discovered there had been no forced entry and the killer had had an intense fight with Arlene, one of the stab wounds to her neck was fatal. The police didn’t check Leslie and Duffy for wounds until later that week but they fond none. Duffy’s wife, Sharla said she can remember the day when Leslie realized she was the prime suspect. Initially there had been an inexperienced investigator on the case but within a few days he was replaced by Detective Ricky Best. He had a reputation as a detective who saw the big picture. For some reason, he locked onto Leslie as a viable suspect and about six months after Arlene’s death, the Greenville PD arrested her. She thought she was going in for questioning - then the police chained her to a wall and told her she was under arrest. Soon after the DA filed notice that he would be seeking the death penalty. Leslie was jailed under no bond. She said that for the first three days, they put you in isolation to make sure you don’t hurt yourself and she cried for three days straight. Those three days turned into three years.

Priya takes over to tell us about how she and Jess have spoken with a few former SBI agents from the lab. One of the agents told her that he had been in law enforcement for over thirty years and “insinuated things would happen to her if she wasn’t on the up and up”. Jess mentions that it’s telling that he considers himself a law enforcement agent instead of a lab technician. Jess also remembers him saying that “he’s the one who wears the white hat”. This isn’t comforting as he’s supposed to be the guy looking at the evidence and pulling out facts objectively. In 2009, the National Academy of Science issued a report with recommendations, one of which was that forens...

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Cheating is F'd Up - Part Two

Cheating Is F'd Up - Part Two
Recap
Written by Brandi Abbott

After a quick update of what happened last week, Jess tells us that Gerald Thomas met with Duane Deaver, Chief Deputy Jerry Hartman, a lawyer from the DA’s office, and the DA’s investigator to try and find evidence proving that he killed Jennifer on purpose instead of in self defense. Deaver and Assistant District Attorney Brown hadn’t actually seen Kirk’s bloody T-shirt yet; just photos. They quickly noticed a pointed tip in one of the bloodstains. Priya and Jess show Keith a picture of the shirt (which you can also see on the Facebook page @Effed Up) and he says it looks more like someone placed the knife on the shirt instead of wiping it. This stain led to a theory that Kirk killed Jennifer with the knife and then staged the scene by stabbing himself in the leg with the spear – twice. Because of this conversation, Thomas no longer believed it was the stain of a bloody handprint.

Keith wonders why you would stab yourself somewhere that could be potentially fatal – this question leads to the information that the spear went all the way through Kirk’s leg and Keith, who’d previously thought as the DA did, changes his opinion about suspecting that Kirk had staged everything.

Thomas now believed the stain was actually a knife being wiped across the shirt - even though his initial report said it was a hand.

In April of 2009, prosecutors supplied the defense with some discovery including Thomas’ updated interpretation of the blood evidence that Kirk killed Jennifer and wiped his knife on his T-shirt. The defense attorneys, Joe Cheshire and Brad Bannon, hired their own forensic experts, Stuart James and Marilyn Miller. Kirk being a rich white guy, had the money to hire forensic specialists. Both of these experts thought the SBI Crime Lab was wrong and the bloodstain was a mirror stain, which basically is created when an item is folded together, transferring blood from portion of the item to a fresh, unmarred spot. Stuart was hired to do the analysis and Marilyn was hired to do the reconstruction, but because Marilyn also had experience with bloodstain analysis, she helped Stuart out. They determined that the stain was created by the fabric folding when the EMT’s were cutting off his shirt. The EMTs were focused on saving his life and just cut all his clothes off and tossed them to the side. The experts’ opinion was forwarded to the prosecutors, and Gerald Thomas claimed the ADA asked for additional testing to disprove that the bloodstain was a mirror image.

A month later he sent an email to a colleague saying he would conduct tests to “shore up” his conclusions, and he and Deaver got a replica knife and T-shirt to try to recreate the stain. The local paper reported that there was a video of Thomas wearing a clean shirt, dipping the knife in blood only getting blood on the edges and carefully wiping the blood on his shirt in an attempt to duplicate the stain. They performed this test twice on camera with Deaver’s director-like commentary audible at the end of the tape. Deaver went so far as to conclude the tests by saying “that’s a wrap, baby.”

Along with the fact that the knife’s blade would be covered in blood, not just the edges, Thomas and Deaver using brand new T-shirts instead of an older worn T-shirt like Kirk was wearing means that the fabric would have responded differently. Nevertheless, the tests were performed and they solidified Thomas’ new conclusion: The bloodstain was made from a pointed object being wiped on the shirt.

In May of 2009, Thomas and Hartman from the sheriff’s office had a phone conversation, which Thomas included in his notes – as was protocol. He wrote down that Hartman told him that he was present when the EMTS cut off Kirk’s shirt, that the bloodstain was already on the shirt, and that he laid it flat to dry so the stain wouldn’t be impacted by any handling of it.

In July of 2009, Brad Bannon, the defense attorney, called Thomas into his office because he wanted copies of all of his files. Although SBI analysts are discouraged from speaking to the defense, Brad had gotten permission from the DA’s office. Thomas gave him a copy of his complete file and Brad went through everything. While going through the file, something grabbed his attention. The copy of the initial report from September 2007 in the file was different from the copy he already had. He noted that the copy he had, had the numbers 24, 25, and 26 in the corner of the page - which appeared to represent page numbers. The second copy he had just been given had the same title but he noticed the page numbers where different, they were 1441, 1442, and 1443. At first glance it seemed to be the same report, but upon closer examination, one line where Thomas states his opinion about the shirt had changed. The first report had referred to the bloodstain being consistent with a bloody hand being wipe...