Cold Hearted

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Speaker 6 A young fireman's untimely death raised suspicions. When a young policeman died the same way, it was no coincidence.
Scientists wondered if these tiny crystals were the cause.

Speaker 6 A fireman's job is exceptionally dangerous, and for Randy Thompson, the year 2000 was particularly troublesome.

Speaker 6 First, he fell off a fire truck in Cumming, Georgia, and broke his nose. When he had surgery to repair the damage, he developed a life-threatening staph infection.

Speaker 7 The doctors told him, this is a very, very serious situation.

Speaker 8 You can die from this very easily.

Speaker 6 Randy survived that, but his health problems continued.

Speaker 6 One of his friends found him sprawled on his kitchen floor, vomiting and incoherent.

Speaker 8 He started hallucinating. He looked at me and said, get back in your damn cage.
I looked at him and said, what are you talking about, Randy?

Speaker 6 I said, get in your cage.

Speaker 8 Then I realized he thought he was talking to his bird.

Speaker 6 This was diagnosed as a severe stomach virus.

Speaker 6 But gradually he improved thanks to help from his common-law wife, Lynn.

Speaker 8 Every time I talked to him, he sounded stronger and stronger. And he said, Lynn made me grilled cheese with sweet tea.
He said, I held it down, didn't throw it up. I said, well, good, Randy.

Speaker 8 I said, that's good. So maybe you're

Speaker 8 on the uphill side of this.

Speaker 6 Two days later, his condition deteriorated and Randy Thompson died.

Speaker 8 Horrible. A daddy taken from his children.
for no reason. A man taken from a career that he loved for no reason.

Speaker 6 At Randy's autopsy, toxicology tests found no trace of drugs or alcohol in his system. But the medical examiner found evidence of heart trouble.

Speaker 9 He did have an enlarged heart. He did have some significant coronary artery disease.
And so as a consequence, then I ascribed this gentleman's sudden and unexpected death with his heart disease.

Speaker 10 That was hard for us to swallow because he had never had any heart problems before.

Speaker 10 I was devastated. It was an experience I don't ever want to have again.

Speaker 6 Randy left behind his common-law wife, Lynn, and their two young children. He was just 32 years old.

Speaker 8 The very last thing he asked me was, do you think I'm going to die?

Speaker 6 As time passed, Randy Thompson's friends and family gradually came to terms with his untimely death.

Speaker 6 Until a few weeks later, when Randy's mother got a letter from a total stranger, the mother of a dead policeman from the next town over.

Speaker 6 The contents of the letter were shocking.

Speaker 12 I want to share my sorrow in the loss of your son, Randy. My son, Glenn, died six years ago, mysteriously.

Speaker 10 I didn't really know what to think. Everything she told me was exactly what happened to Randy.

Speaker 6 A few weeks after Randy Thompson's death, his mother got a letter.

Speaker 12 I want to share my sorrow in the loss of your son, Randy.

Speaker 6 It was from a woman who claimed her son died under similar circumstances and suggested the two deaths were somehow related.

Speaker 10 I was shocked that her son and my son died the exact same way. The report from the hospital, the autopsy reports, everything was just the same.

Speaker 13 Nita Thompson did not believe me. She kept saying, that can't be true.
That can't be true.

Speaker 6 Six years earlier, Glenn Turner, a police officer, had the same symptoms as Randy Thompson.

Speaker 7 He was so sick. I could hear his voice shaking when he talked to me.
He just said he had an unbelievable stomach virus. He couldn't get rid of it.
He was vomiting, couldn't stop vomiting.

Speaker 7 He had diarrhea. And he just basically said to me, man, I've never been this sick like this.

Speaker 6 He was also incoherent and hallucinating.

Speaker 7 His wife said he'd had a really bad night, that in the middle of the night, he had got up, began to hallucinate. He began to run around the house.
He pulled out his weapon.

Speaker 7 He thought there was intruders outside, intruders trying to get inside the house.

Speaker 6 Glenn's wife coaxed him back into bed. The next morning, he appeared to be better.

Speaker 6 But a few hours later, Glenn Turner died.

Speaker 13 The medical examiner made the statement in the autopsy that he died with an irregular heartbeat. That was nothing that he ever had a problem with.

Speaker 6 Glenn's mother immediately suspected foul play.

Speaker 6 She asked his friends in law enforcement to investigate his death, but she got nowhere.

Speaker 13 They kept telling me that he died of natural causes and there was no reason to go into any further because it cost too much money and that there was no foul play in his life.

Speaker 7 I still had strong suspicions that there was something else involved in it, but The ME stated that's what it was, and I'm not a medical examiner, so I pretty much had to accept it.

Speaker 6 And that's how it stood, until six years later, when the Turner family learned that Randy Thompson died the same way.

Speaker 6 It was difficult to fathom how two civil servants in two neighboring towns, both in their early 30s, died so suddenly. until both families realized they had something else in common.

Speaker 6 The two men were both living with the same woman when they died. Lynn Turner.

Speaker 7 I couldn't turn to get on the phone quick enough. I called the lead investigator and I just basically said, you need to go out there and seal off the apartment.

Speaker 7 Do what you need to do because I'm telling you, there's no way.

Speaker 7 You can have two young guys like this pass away.

Speaker 6 When questioned, Lynn Turner claimed it was just a tragic coincidence. And local prosecutors found no evidence the two deaths were connected.
After all, Lynn Turner had no criminal history.

Speaker 14 I actually just thought that it was real, really bad luck that Lynn had been involved with two men who had died that way.

Speaker 6 And friends pointed out. that Lynn's common-law husband, Randy Thompson, had very little life insurance, just $35,000, hardly enough to kill for.

Speaker 6 And toxicology tests on both Randy Thompson and Glenn Turner found no evidence of drugs or alcohol in their systems.

Speaker 7 We still had strong suspicions that something she had done to him that caused his death, but not on ME. I couldn't prove it.

Speaker 6 Then, investigators made a startling discovery. Even though Randy Thompson had only $35,000 worth of life insurance, Lynn was in a big hurry to collect it.

Speaker 11 We were able to determine through cell phone records that on the day of Randy's funeral, between the time of the service in the church and the service that was held at the cemetery, Lynn was on her cell phone trying to contact the insurance company.

Speaker 6 Maybe there was more to the death of these two men than first appeared.

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Speaker 6 What are the chances that two civil servants, both in their early 30s, would die under mysterious circumstances from heart disease?

Speaker 9 The southeast part of the country leads the nation in cardiovascular disease. And in our office, it is not uncommon that we see young men, men of Mr.
Thompson's age, who have bad heart disease.

Speaker 6 Toxicology tests on the first victim, policeman Glenn Turner, showed no signs of alcohol or illegal drugs in his system.

Speaker 6 But during Randy Thompson's autopsy, the medical examiner found calcium oxalate crystals in his kidneys. These could be the result of prescription medications, or It could be a sign of poisoning.

Speaker 9 The first thing I did was reach across my desk and pick up the phone and call the toxicology department and ask that an ethylene glycol test be performed.

Speaker 6 Ethylene glycol is the chemical name for antifreeze.

Speaker 7 When we ran the sample from Randy Thompson and analyzed it for ethylene glycol, the results came back negative for a significant quantity of ethylene glycol.

Speaker 6 But the medical examiner had a hard time believing that.

Speaker 9 So I thought that was very, very strange and bizarre.

Speaker 6 Then Dr. Caponin learned what happened to Lynn Turner's first husband, Glenn, six years earlier.
On a hunch, he reviewed Glenn Turner's autopsy report.

Speaker 9 I looked at all the tissues and polarized the lung in the kidney, as I do in all of my cases. And to my surprise, there were oxalate crystals in Glenn Turner's kidneys.

Speaker 6 So Dr. Caponin went back to the toxicology lab and asked them to recheck the test results on Randy Thompson's tissue samples.

Speaker 6 And the lab discovered they'd made a mathematical error.

Speaker 7 I immediately realized that I had made an error in calculating the original concentration of ethylene glycol in Randy Thompson's blood and in fact it was off by a factor of 10.

Speaker 7 When we made the appropriate correction for the mathematical error that I had made, it suddenly became

Speaker 7 a lethal level of ethylene glycol.

Speaker 9 I've been doing this for

Speaker 9 almost 20 years now, and this is the first time that such a mistake

Speaker 9 has ever been brought to my attention.

Speaker 6 The medical examiner now knew that Randy Thompson's death was a homicide.

Speaker 9 Based on the corrected toxicology report then, it was quite obvious that Mr. Thompson died as a consequence of an acute ethylene glycol intoxication or poisoning.

Speaker 7 When I found out Randy had died from antifreeze poisoning, I knew when they exhumed Glenn's body, when they took those tissues, I knew they were going to find out he died from the exact same causes.

Speaker 6 And that's precisely what happened.

Speaker 6 Officials exhumed Glenn Turner's body, retested his tissue samples, and confirmed there was a lethal amount of antifreeze in his system.

Speaker 13 It's a mixed feeling because you're happy that you've got something happening, but you're not happy to hear what you hear.

Speaker 6 Investigators did some digging into Lynn Turner's background and uncovered more incriminating evidence.

Speaker 6 First was her visit to an animal shelter shortly before Brandy Thompson's murder.

Speaker 11 Lynn had inquired about what the animal shelter uses to euthanize animals, what chemical they use.

Speaker 14 She had claimed that she had a stray cat problem and was wondering what it was that she could do about them.

Speaker 6 And the manager of Lynn Turner's bank told investigators Lynn had serious financial problems.

Speaker 11 She had a lot of debts outstanding. A lot of credit cards were, she was being charged for insufficient funds or late charges, adding up to several thousands of dollars monthly.

Speaker 7 Lynn had a middle-class income, but she spent like she was a millionaire. I mean, she she lived well beyond her means.

Speaker 6 And that wasn't all.

Speaker 8 Lynn had gone into the bank a few weeks before Randy died and told one of the bank officials that she would have everything taken care of, all her payments, mortgages, everything, etc., taken care of in just a few weeks.

Speaker 6 Prosecutors believe the motive for both murders was money.

Speaker 6 Lynn Turner was the beneficiary of her first husband's $150,000 life insurance policy and also received his pension payments of $750 a month.

Speaker 6 And she was all set to collect $200,000 from Randy Thompson's life insurance policy. But investigators found evidence that Randy double-crossed her.

Speaker 10 Lynn had talked Randy into buying life insurance of $200,000.

Speaker 10 But after Randy passed away, she found out that the policy had lapsed and that she would not be getting that money.

Speaker 6 This also raised the possibility that Randy might have suspected Lynn was trying to harm him.

Speaker 6 Investigators also learned that a container of anti-freeze had been found in the home Lynn shared with her husband, Glenn Turner. Although at the time, no one found this suspicious.

Speaker 6 So Lynn Turner was arrested on two counts of first-degree murder. She insisted she was innocent and was sure there wasn't enough evidence to convict her.

Speaker 7 Lynn was smart. Lynn wanted to be a police officer.
She knew a lot. She knew how to commit the crime.

Speaker 7 She knew what they'd look for, and she knew how to create an alibi.

Speaker 6 Lynn Turner met her first husband, Glenn, while working as a 911 operator. But less than two years later, Glenn told friends the marriage was in trouble.

Speaker 7 He said that they'd only had sex twice after they were married. He said that she had some kind of female problem and she wasn't able to have sex.
Of course, we're all thinking to ourselves, well,

Speaker 7 I could name three or four other guys she's seeing that she's having sex with. Of course, I couldn't say anything to him.

Speaker 6 Glenn also told friends Lynn was spending money faster than he could earn it.

Speaker 7 He said, here I am working 365 days, working all these part-time jobs, sometimes two or three jobs a day. I've about got it paid off.
And here she just wrung them all back up again.

Speaker 7 I mean, she just had a stack of credit cards and just spent, spent, spent, spent.

Speaker 6 While Lynn was married to Glenn, she met Randy Thompson, a fireman from a nearby town. Randy's family says Lynn lied about her marital status.

Speaker 10 Lynn had told us she had been married, but that she was divorced. She told all of us that, told Randy that.
We assumed she was divorced.

Speaker 14 Lynn's primary motive for murdering Glenn was for the money.

Speaker 14 I think his secondary motive was to be with Randy Thompson.

Speaker 6 The forensic evidence suggests Lynn put antifreeze in Glenn's food, possibly in gelatin, since this was found in his stomach during his autopsy.

Speaker 6 Glenn fell violently ill and died.

Speaker 6 Lynn collected $150,000 from his life insurance along with his pension of $750 a month.

Speaker 7 I knew she didn't love him. I figured she'd use him for everything she could use him for, then she'd spit him back out.
But I never thought that she'd kill him.

Speaker 6 Just a few weeks after Glenn's funeral, Lynn moved in with Randy Thompson. Although they had two children together, they were never legally married.

Speaker 6 Probably because Lynn would have had to forfeit Glenn Turner's pension.

Speaker 7 I believe that's why she didn't marry Randy. She'd have lost Glenn's pension by remarrying.

Speaker 7 So she didn't marry.

Speaker 9 She's smart.

Speaker 6 She knew. That money was out.

Speaker 6 It wasn't long before Randy Thompson told friends, just as Glenn Turner had, that he was unhappy with Lynn.

Speaker 7 It was almost comical the way they fought, cat and dog, just back and forth.

Speaker 8 And I asked him, why do you keep calling her?

Speaker 8 Why do you even take the phone calls?

Speaker 8 Well, she's the mom of my kids and all.

Speaker 6 Okay, whatever.

Speaker 6 An employee of a local animal shelter said that Lynn wanted to buy the chemicals they used to euthanize cats, but they refused to sell them to her.

Speaker 7 She didn't want to use antifreeze again. She checked around.
She wanted to use something different to kill Randy, but she wasn't confident enough to use anything else.

Speaker 7 She went back to what she used before.

Speaker 6 Randy told friends, Lynn prepared his lunch shortly before he became violently ill: a grilled cheese sandwich and sweet tea.

Speaker 6 Investigators think the antifreeze was in the tea.

Speaker 6 Within a day, Randy was dead.

Speaker 6 It was only after his death that Lynn learned that Randy allowed his $200,000 life insurance policy to lapse just 11 days earlier.

Speaker 6 When these murders happened, antifreeze had a taste that could easily be masked with sweet-tasting foods. The industry has since modified antifreeze so that it is now unpalatable.

Speaker 16 We, the jury, find the defendant, Julia Lynn Womack Turner, guilty of malice murder.

Speaker 6 In May of 2004, Lynn Turner was convicted for killing her husband, Glenn.

Speaker 6 Three years later, in 2007, Lynn was also convicted of Randy Thompson's murder.

Speaker 6 She is currently serving a life sentence. with no chance for parole.

Speaker 13 To hear the guilty verdict was very difficult.

Speaker 13 You don't like to hear that your daughter-in-law has done something like this to anybody.

Speaker 6 Despite the mathematical misstep by the toxicology lab, scientists eventually discovered the truth about what happened to both Randy Thompson and Glenn Turner.

Speaker 14 It was a challenging case to get it all out there, even though it really was quite simple in that you had two men who had been involved with her and both had died the exact same way.

Speaker 7 Forensic evidence, without it, we had nothing. We wouldn't have had a case.
It had been just a bunch of hearsay and rumors. But the forensic evidence, it was all the nails in the coffin.

Speaker 7 It was the hammer that put everything away.

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