Tell Virginia Governor McDonnell it is time to Free Dusty Turner
In 1995, Dustin Turner and Billy Joe Brown were in the final weeks of 15 months of training to become U.S. Navy SEALs. Handsome and athletic, Turner and Brown were paired first as “swim buddies” (a SEAL term), later as roommates and best friends. At 20-years-old, Turner was a blond-haired, blue-eyed former high school swimmer from Bloomington, IN, widely regarded as a polite, popular kid. Brown, then 23, was a former Coast Guard drop-out from Huber Heights, OH, who had been raised in a broken home and at times seemed aloof and distant from his SEAL teammates. Jennifer Evans was a petite, sweet-natured 21-year-old from Tucker, GA, the only child of Al and Delores Evans. She was a gifted student at Emory University in Atlanta approaching graduation, and was in Virginia Beach for summer vacation.
On the evening of June 18, 1995, Jennifer Evans was with her girlfriends at a popular Virginia Beach bar when she met Dustin Turner. She was seen holding hands with Turner at 1 a.m., and had arranged to meet her friends one hour later in the bar’s parking lot. When her friends returned at 2 a.m., both Evans and Turner were gone. Her girlfriends searched the parking lot, rattled by their friend’s uncharacteristic disappearance. In the span of one hour, a harmless evening out had become a living nightmare.
An intense missing person investigation was launched as Virginia Beach police scoured streets, homes, beaches and bars, seeking leads. A missing tourist in a community driven by hospitality increased the stakes; reputation and commerce were potentially on the line.
Turner and Brown were interrogated separately but police lacked solid evidence linking them to Evans, until increased pressure led Turner to crack, giving police the confession they were seeking.
According to Turner, he, Brown and Evans sat in his car waiting for Evans’ friends to return. Brown, who was extremely drunk, suddenly attacked Evans from the back seat in an inexplicable rage. Turner claimed he panicked and drove away. He eventually led police to Evans’ abandoned body, half-buried in the woods and badly decomposed from eight days in the humid Virginia weather. Turner was released; Brown was arrested.
When confronted with Turner’s version of events, Brown angrily countered and gave police a confession that put the blame on Turner as the perpetrator. Turner was quickly arrested. Now police had two alleged killers, once loyal friends, each man claiming he had merely assisted in disposing of the body and concealing the crime.
Virginia Beach police charged Billy Joe Brown and Dustin Turner for the abduction and felony murder of Jennifer Evans. They alleged that Brown and Turner had acted in a “concert of action” to commit the crime, and which man actually murdered Evans was irrelevant under Virginia law. They portrayed the SEAL trainees as sexual predators in search of a target, and alleged the crime occurred when Evans did not cooperate.
Despite intense local media coverage and community outrage over the Evans murder, defense attorneys for both Brown and Turner were unable to move their trials to an alternate jurisdiction. Brown was tried first, and he maintained he did not murder Evans. He now claimed, “she was dead when I got to the car,” and that all he had done was protect his swim buddy Turner, whom he “loved like a brother.” Brown was convicted and sentenced to 72 years in prison. In a separate, televised trial, Turner faced the daunting task of proving his innocence after his co-defendant had been found guilty. Jurors did not believe his version of events, and three months later, Turner was convicted and sentenced to 82 years in prison.
In May 2002, Brown made an audiotape confession and signed an affidavit stating that he alone had killed Jennifer Evans in a drunken rage after he had entered the car, where Turner and Evans sat. Rebuffed after a sexual advance, Brown reacted by snapping Evans neck from the backseat. Shockingly, he also revealed that he had attempted to sexually assault her corpse, before Turner stopped him. David Hargett, Turner’s attorney, spent the next six years trying to enter Brown’s confession into evidence and overturn Turner’s conviction.
In May 2008, Turner was granted an evidentiary hearing by the Commonwealth of Virginia to evaluate Brown’s credibility. Brown took the stand, explained his lifelong issues with anger and lack of conscience, and exonerated Dustin Turner of everything but hiding the crime.
In a landmark ruling in August 2009, the Virginia State Court of Appeals 3-judge panel overturned Dustin Turner’s murder conviction, making him the first convicted killer to be declared innocent without DNA evidence. However, the Commonwealth of Virginia State Attorney General’s office quickly filed an appeal to keep Turner incarcerated. The “en banc” Court of Appeals on which the former prosecutor of this case, Robert Humphries, now sits, ruled that the panel was wrong and that a jury could have still found Turner guilty even with Brown’s credible confession to committing the murder without Turner’s acting in concert. The case went to the Supreme Court of Virginia, however they denied him and did not honor the Writ of Actual Innocence.
It is an outrageous attempt to maintain a monstrous miscarriage of justice against a brave and dedicated young man that was willing to give his life in defense of his country in the most dangerous and elite fighting force in the world. When faced with exposing his friend and swim buddy to criminal charges for what he perceived as drunken act of rage, he panicked and hid the crime for 8 days. When police explained to him that Evans family needed to know where she was, he took police to the body without consulting a lawyer. For this he is spending 82 years in prison without the possibility of parole. Why? Because the Commonwealth of Virginia does not want to admit that they made a mistake. Please sign our petition to let the Commonwealth of Virgi...
