Kelsey Turner

A psychiatrist's murder sparks an investigation in the Las Vegas desert. This looks like somebody's grandfather here. We knew right away that it was a different type of murder. When evidence points to a playboy model, investigators delve into a world of fame, money, and manipulation. The place that she would be out with me are literally the number one nightclubs in all of Hollywood. She goes by the nickname Bad Barbie, she ends up on the covers of a couple of magazines. As the strange case unfolds, the surprises never stop. She told me he was like her sugar daddy. I initially had estimated expenses at about 300,000. I said, you know, this is bad, you need to get out of this. She had control over him. He was just a male ticket. But more suspects emerge. We found a bat with his name on it. This is a slam dunk. We discovered her boyfriend had recently completed a prison term here in Nevada. He had a gun. That was covered in blood. She was kicking him, hitting him, screaming at him. He told me that he hopes that they don't kill me too. Las Vegas, Nevada, is internationally known for its gambling and nightlife. Las Vegas is a place where you can, you know, calm and let loose. It ends up staking with people and it ends up carrying them to another place. But on March 7, 2019, it seems one visitor's stay has taken a turn for the worst, when police receive an unsettling call. We had a citizen about four wheeling in his new pickup. And he sees a Mercedes Benz, a little two-door coupe, where no little two-wheel drive coupe should be. He thought the car was stolen. When Petrolman arrived at the scene, the caller is gone, but the car is right where they said it would be. They were going to do an inventory of the car and just have it towed out of there. They opened up the doors. There was a lot of blood spatter evidence within the car. The blood was found primarily in the backseat, behind the driver's seat and on the headliner. The officers immediately call for backup and check the rest of the vehicle. And when they opened up the trunk, there was a bunch of batting. When they were able to part some of the batting, they came across what appeared to be a human arm. They made notification to the homicide section and that's how my partner and I became aware of the call. My partner, Detective Ryan Jager, and I drove out to Eastern Clark County. We carefully documented everything that's in the car. And then we told the whole car with the body in it back to the CSA, our crime lab. Once it was in our garage where it was a more controlled environment, we removed the body. I remember looking at it, it was just kind of like this looks like somebody's grandfather here. He was wearing like a sweater vest with a bow tie. This didn't look like a guy who would make bad life choices to put him in a situation where someone would kill him. Investigators leave the body for the medical examiner to assess and they conduct a more thorough search of the car. In the trunk of the car, I found a credit card with the name of Thomas Prashard on it. We ran that name and it came up as a missing person. The report gave a description white male adult in his 70s and it matched very closely the person we had in the trunk. However, when police run the car's plates, they discover it does not belong to Thomas Prashard. The name that was associated with the registered owner from San Francisco was an Asian name and his build was much smaller. The San Francisco Police Department attempted to go and make contact but the registered owner was out of the country at the time. While questions surrounding the vehicle multiply, detectives try to get to the bottom of who Thomas Prashard is. I was able to conduct a records check and learned that Thomas Prashard had been recently reported missing by Judy Earp. So I instructed some fellow homicide detectives to reach out to her and have casual conversations with her without giving away that this might have become a homicide investigation. Judy said that he missed the flight so Judy filed the missing person's report so her concern was something must happen to him because he would always come home. Thomas Prashard was a man who always seemed destined to make a difference in the world. He was born in Boston in 1948. His father taught at Harvard and his mother was a librarian so he was surrounded with academia. He went to medical school at UVA University of Virginia in Charlottesville for child psychiatry. And after that he did several, you know, residencies, mass general, Cincinnati Children's Hospital, UCLA. He loved children and for the longest time, Tom was the only child psychiatrist in Monterey County. Some people called him Santa because of his large white beard. And like Santa, Thomas was extremely generous. His former patients talk about what an incredible human being he was and how he assisted them through some very difficult times in their lives. Over the years, I believe Tom has helped hundreds of people. Due to his generous nature, Thomas developed close relationships with all of his patients. But by the time he was in his early fifties, he still didn't have a family to call his own. That changed in 2002 when he met Judy Earp, a single mother whose own marriage had recently ended. We met here in Las Vegas with a group. While everybody else was out gambling, we were just kind of left to ourselves and we talked and chatted, went to shows, and just hit it off. For about a year, we dated. It was kind of long distance. And eventually we moved in together, my three youngest children. He was, you know, the father figure in their life. Eventually, they got engaged. And over the course of the next 17 years, Thomas and Judy built a life together in Salinas, California. But they often returned to the city where they first met. We would come to Las Vegas every year for medical conferences. In 2019, at the age of 71, Thomas was still seeing patients, but his health forced him to start planning for retirement. The last 18 months of his life, he started having problems. I highly suspect that he's in the early stages of Alzheimer's or some form of dementia. During this time, Tom went on a trip to Las Vegas. It was a very spur of the moment thing. He booked a flight on Friday and to return on Monday. He didn't come home on the airplane. Then I knew something was, something terrible had happened. When initially reported Tom missing, I told him maybe he's got lost or something. Las Vegas police begin their investigation by contacting Thomas' partner, Judy. Judy says Thomas went to Vegas to visit a friend named Kelsey Turner. He was well known in the community for helping. He had received a text from Kelsey Turner that she was very sick. He went to her house. House to talk to her. The next day, I get a text from him, which is Saturday. And he says, I look forward to coming home. See you on Monday. OK. But I don't hear from him. Judy goes on to tell police that Thomas has been missing for almost a week. She had requested what is known as a welfare check. That patrol officers go to Kelsey Turner's home. They knock. There is no answer. There's mail piled at the door. And as a detective, what it suggested to us is that the residents has now been suddenly vacated. And we cannot account for Kelsey Turner, living or dead. So it's imperative in this investigation that we find her to determine if she is in fact still alive, because somebody that she's closely connected to is deceased. Coming up, detectives find a crucial piece of evidence. There was a baseball bat. And on the baseball bat, written in marker was a name. We were able to determine it was her boyfriend. And Thomas' partner believes she knows why she was killed. She's trying to use whatever she can to keep his money coming. Investigators have found what they believe is Dr. Thomas Graschard's body in the trunk of a car. And the following morning, they attend an autopsy to confirm. Through fingerprints, they were able to confirm that in fact the body of the deceased was Thomas Graschard. The medical examiner decided that the cause of death was blunt force trauma. Closer inspection of the Mercedes provides clues to how the murder occurred. You could see defects in the headliner where you could tell. Something was being swung. And he was hitting the ceiling of the car. In the trunk of the car was probably one of the most complete body disposal kits that I've stumbled across in my career. There was leather gloves. There was rags. There was garbage bags full of cleaning products. There was potential DNA evidence. There were latent prints. Greg Hodgell. Now that they have more information and Thomas is officially identified, detectives called Judy to break the news. I received a phone call. It was Detective Jager. And he told me that they'd found Tom. I asked him, well, can I talk to him? Is he OK? And he said, no, he was deceased. And at that time, in my world crashed in. By virtue of her alibi, we were able to determine that Judy had nothing to do with the murder of Thomas Bashard. Detective Jager told me that he'd been found in the trunk of a Mercedes. After learning this detail from detectives, Judy reveals valuable insight. Judy tells investigators that the Mercedes found in the middle of the desert belongs to Kelsey Turner. I suspect that she's involved in this somehow. So I told him everything about Tom's small history with Kelsey Turner. Judy says Thomas met Turner two years ago. She was a 25-year-old single mother who was struggling financially. He starts helping her out with her finances and helping her out with rent. According to Judy, Turner quickly became a problem. He did this for so many people, and a few of them took advantage, but nothing to the extent of this. It was always, oh, I need money for medicine for my son or this or that. I initially had estimated just what I had known from rent and car and some of the credit card expenses at about 300,000, but when I actually delved into the records, I stopped counting at about $750,000. I told Tom, I said, you know, this is bad. You need to get out of this. He said, OK, I will tell her. He wanted to move her out of state to kind of quell the waters a little bit to keep everything to friction down between Judy and her. So he rented a house in Las Vegas. Judy says when she found out about the new arrangement, she convinced Thomas to cut Turner off for good. That was the purpose of his trip when he left for Vegas on March 1. The next day, I get a text from him. I have effectively resolved the situation here, and I'm looking forward to returning home on Monday. But on Sunday, Judy got a strange message from him. I received this text saying he wanted to send me money, and I'm thinking this is fishy. The language, the grammar, was not his. I think she's stolen his phone and is trying to get my information. And so I texted back, I said, you need to call me. I don't believe this is you. And after that, the phone went dead. Now, Judy is convinced Kelsey Turner had something to do with Thomas's death. Based on the circumstances of his visit, investigators are starting to share that suspicion. After Judy's interview, investigators get in touch with the registered owner of the Mercedes in San Francisco. He explained that he turned over the lease of the vehicle to Kelsey Turner, and that transfer process was facilitated by Thomas Bashard. And according to Miss Urb, Thomas had traveled last minute to Las Vegas for the sole purpose of cutting her off. So that's when the focus began to narrow. On Kelsey Turner, through local records checks, we found an incident that was about a month before the murder that involved Miss Turner in an individual by the name of Greg Hageo. We're able to determine that Greg Hageo was a boyfriend of Kelsey Turner. If he is the boyfriend at the time and this individual is coming to visit his girlfriend, you can see that we had the potential for even a love triangle that went terribly awry. I had a restaurant ready to go. I'm like, dude, we found a bat with his name on it, with blood on it. Come on, this is a slam dunk. We speak with Greg and that appeared that Greg and Kelsey broke up. Greg Hageo wasn't happy with the kind of life that Kelsey was leading with, with the partying. And so he left. And he left all of his belongings in Kelsey's house. We looked at historical phone locations. On him, he was actually working as a deck hand on a fishing boat when the murder happened. So we were able to rule Greg Hageo out of the equation. Since Kelsey Turner is the only connection left to track down, investigators obtain a search warrant for her home in Las Vegas. Some uniform patrol officers showed up and were able to make entry through an unlocked door. They determined that the house was unoccupied. We could establish very quickly that was our crime scene. Police find blood stains. They find blue and white towels that match the towels that were found inside the car in the desert. They find a door that was almost off of its hinges completely broken. There's also a smell of cleaning products and some sort of attempt of a cleanup inside the home. Despite all the evidence in the home pointing to foul play, investigators still can't find Kelsey Turner. We would have fully expected her to have reached out to law enforcement because Thomas's role in her life is so important. But there's no effort. No effort whatsoever for Kelsey Turner to make contact with law enforcement. None. It's not like she's involved or she's dead. It's more like she's likely involved and we have to find her. The evidence in Kelsey Turner's home suggests Dr. Thomas Bershard might have been killed there. So detectives contact the landlord of the property to see if they know where she is. When police talk to the landlord, they confirm that Thomas Bershard had been paying the rent there, and that Kelsey Turner lived inside the home. Police discover Kelsey had two roommates, a woman named Diana Peña and a man named John Kennisin. Uncertain of their connection to Kelsey, investigators take a closer look at the roommates. So once we determine everybody that's staying at the house, that's when we start investigating. To get good phone numbers for them. While waiting for cell information, investigators also put out a BOLO alert for all three. They then track down Turner's loved ones to learn more about her. So as police are talking with acquaintances, friends and family members of Kelsey Turner, they learn that Kelsey comes from Arkansas, had divorced parents, and kind of grew up with a little bit of a rough upbringing. People always said she did not seem like the type of woman who would stay in Arkansas. They knew she had big dreams, she wanted to be in front of a camera. Turner married and had two children, but when the relationship ended, she took the children and moved to California to pursue her dreams. Kelsey Turner was an aspiring model. She had a very involved social media platform that she was utilizing to move her modeling career forward. She ends up on the covers of a couple of magazines, including Playboy Italia and Maxim, but a lot of her work is through Instagram. She has hundreds of thousands of followers. She goes by the nickname Bad Barbie and really kind of leans into that persona. About porting to Kelsey's friends, she was doing more than just modeling. I'm a celebrity DJ, and I first met Kelsey when she started coming out with other girls that were in our Hollywood kid's circle. The places that she would be out with me are literally the number one night clubs in all of Hollywood. Most of the girls that would come out with me were there to find someone else that could help them get to another level. Kelsey seems like another needy L.A. girl. You know, that's just trying to find someone to latch onto. That's just all it seemed to me. And it seems Kelsey eventually found what she was looking for. About a year after that Playboy appearance is when she starts reaching out to Dr. Thomas Pershard for help with finances. Pershard was kind of her sugar daddy, paying for the residents, paying for the car, paying for car insurance. I believe that Thomas Pershard and Kelsey Turner had some kind of a physical relationship, you know, a lot of people were able to keep that to themselves. Even without confirmation on the exact nature of their relationship, it's clear to investigators Kelsey leaned on Thomas. It appears that after Playboy Italia, she didn't really have any big publications or any great gigs in modeling. Thomas says, "Hey, you know, I'll pay you to move to Las Vegas, thinking that it would be a better spot for her." They determined that it might be best for her to relocate to Las Vegas to help advance her modeling career in this city. Kelsey's daughter stayed in California with family and her son joined her in Vegas. Pershard confirmed she was sharing the house, Pershard, provided with her friend Diana Peña and new boyfriend, John Kenneson. When we looked into the background of John Logan Kenneson, we discovered that he had recently completed a prison term here in Nevada for drug-related offenses. Now we have other names of people that are intimately connected to the home. We need to be able to get a hook into them and have an opportunity to interview them and figure out what's going on. In March 2019, the search for Thomas Pershard's killer continues, as Detective Sapina the data of Kelsey Turner and her roommates hoping to build a timeline. Thomas arrived in Las Vegas on March 1st during the evening hours. His body is found at the 7th and it's apparent by March 4th something happened when he didn't return home to California. So the first to the fourth are very, very important dates as it relates to devices being at or near the Puritan address. We have Diana Peña, Kelsey Turner and then John Kenneson. We know our all living in the house. We get good phone numbers for them. We do a location history on those phone numbers. Everybody was at the house late night hours of March 3rd into early morning hours of March 4th and then Diana Peña, John Kenneson, Kelsey Turner, they all leave the house. Based on the phone records, their phones all appeared to be shut off around the same time and ended in the area of the Rio Hotel. Detectives contact the Rio Hotel hoping the three might be there. We find out that Diana Peña had rented a room at the Rio and they just abruptly left and left all of their items. Upon learning that information, we generated a search warrant to go into the storage room at the Rio to search for what items that were left. They found personal items of Diana Peña, some prescription drugs and a black notebook belonging to Thomas Pershardt. They also found the ID of Kelsey Turner. Inside what appears to be Thomas' notebook, they find his account of how desperate Kelsey had been to maintain his financial support. She was threatening him, accusing him of child pornography, totally unfounded and absolutely untrue. But if you could imagine a man that his whole life has been a children's psychiatrist, how devastating just those accusations would be. I'd submitted Thomas Pershardt's phone to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Internet Crimes against Children. They found no evidence of child pornography on the device. So Kelsey Turner's allegation was completely unfounded. But if that information were to be released to the public, it would be incredibly damaging to Thomas' reputation. Being attractive and providing companionship to Pershardt is paying for her house. It's paying for her car and she doesn't want to get off the gravy train. Because police were able to find that connection of the car to Kelsey Turner, the home with blood stains inside and the towels, matching the home and the car and a black notebook from Thomas Pershardt inside that hotel room. That gives them the green light for an arrest warrant. The search for Miss Turner was turned over to a criminal apprehension team. It took them about a week, but they were able to identify her living out in California at a residence that belonged to one of Kelsey's friends. When she was apprehended, she was in the company of John Logan, Keneson. We did not have a warrant for Keneson at that particular time, so they had to let him go. Turner refuses to speak with investigators, but on April 4, they receive new evidence that implicates both of her roommates in the murder as well. The fingerprints that were gay. gathered from the vehicle, had been analyzed, and came back belonging to Diana Pena and John Kennisin. - With that, we established probable cause to get an interest warrant for Diana and Kennisin. Both of them were charged with murder with use of a daily weapon. - But a week later, Diana turns herself in, and in hopes of a deal, she agrees to tell her story from the beginning. (upbeat music) - I met Kelsey from a friend of a friend, and then she asked me to move in not too long after that. I think she was very new to Vegas, so Dr. Bersharge financed quite a bit of her expenses. She told me that he was like her sugar daddy. She would call him, message him, send him videos, and he would send her money. - He was just a meal ticket. She called him her whale. - Coming up, Diana's interview provides shocking insight. - There were messages about taking her son away from her, and possible motives are revealed. - He told me they were gonna kill him, and that he hopes that they don't kill me, too. (upbeat music) - On April 13th, 2019, detective sit down with Diana Peña, who says when Dr. Thomas Bersharge showed up in Vegas on March 1st, Kelsey Turner knew he was there to end their arrangement. - Kelsey had told me probably about a month before he had come out that he was talking about cutting her off, but he was having a hard time actually doing it. She kinda had control over him. And Dr. Bersharge said that Kelsey needed a lot of help. He said that he loved Kelsey, but she needs to get her life together, stuff like that. - According to Peña, it led to heated arguments between the two, which she experienced firsthand the day after Thomas arrived. - The next morning, I went to work. Kelsey messaged me and she's like, "Can you please come home early? I'm upset." And she said she would come pick me up. I got in the car, I was in the back seat. Kelsey was in the front seat. Dr. Bersharge was driving. So Kelsey took Dr. Bersharge's phone and was trying to do the GPS, and while she was on his phone, she kinda looked through his messages and seen messages between him and her mother about taking her son away from her. Peña says the discovery caused Turner to snap. - She was kicking him, hitting him, screaming at him. Eventually, we did make it back to the house. Dr. Bersharge went up to the room that he was staying in and just shut the door. Fearing the situation might escalate, Peña asked a friend to take Kelsey's child who was at the home to a hotel. Hours later, her intuition proved correct. - After he went upstairs, Kelsey would randomly go up there and start screaming at him and then Kennisin would go up there and start screaming at him. And then I would tell them to go downstairs and calm down. Eventually, she yelled at Kennisin to knock Dr. Bersharge out and Kennisin ran upstairs, broke down the door. I'm not sure where the bat came from, but I knew he had a bat. You could hear it. At that point, I ran upstairs into the room and I just kinda tried to get Kennisin to get off of Bersharge. I told Dr. Bersharge to stay on the floor because his left eye was like filled with blood. He said he needed to go to the hospital and offered to say that he had been munked. I helped him downstairs, kind of helped him clean up. Peña says early the next morning, Turner and Kennisin eventually agreed to take Thomas to the emergency room. I helped him into the backseat of Kelsey's car. Dr. Bersharge said he wanted his coat. So Kelsey and Kennisin went back into the house. That's when he told me they were gonna kill him and that he hopes that they don't kill me, too. And just told him that's not gonna happen. They're taking you to the hospital. Why would they kill you? And then Kelsey came back into the garage and she told me to go into the house and clean. So I went back into the house and I was cleaning. I started hearing Kelsey screaming again. She was calling Kennisin a bitch and a (beep) and to knock Dr. Bersharge out. So I came running down the stairs and told her to stop. But Peña says she was too late. Kennisin had a gun that was covered in blood. Kelsey told me that that was what he used to beat the doctor's face. I was like, is everything okay? And she's like, he's dead. I was pretty scared and just not sure what to do. Terrified that Thomas was right and she might be next. Peña went with Turner and Kennisin to a hotel to hide out. Kennisin left with the car, with the body in there to drive her car somewhere and do something with it. We sat in the hotel room for days. Kelsey was constantly Googling, turning on the news. And she had seen on the news that the car had been discovered. They just knew that it's Kelsey's car. It's her sugar daddy in the trunk like Kelsey was freaking out. Knowing it's very easy to connect those dots. Diana Peña says the plan was for all of them to flee the state, but she decided to turn herself in. After the interview, she was booked into Clark County Attention Center on her warrant. When they put me in a jail cell, that's probably when I felt the most safe, because who's gonna break into a jail to hurt somebody? She confirmed a lot of things that we already knew and opened her eyes on a lot of other things. I assumed I would have to testify at some point. I was there. So it was the right thing to do. It's been a month since Dr. Thomas Bershard was found murdered. And Las Vegas police have two of their three suspects in custody. Kelsey Turner has acquired legal representation. Diana Peña went to police to help them piece together exactly what happened. But the other man who's involved here, John Kennisin, is still out on the loose. We established through fingerprints on the bat, probably cause for Kennisin. So based on that, we had an arrest warrant. The Cats team was looking for him using his phone. They determined that John, in fact, returned from California to Las Vegas, went back to his mom's house. And that's where the authorities were able to locate and apprehend him. Like Turner, Kennisin refuses to talk. But Peña agrees to plead guilty to being an accessory and testify against the other two. I was sentenced to three years of probation and a felony accessory. (dramatic music) I don't harbor any ill feelings towards her. I wish she had called 911. But I do understand that she was very frightened and probably in shock. And I believe Kelsey Turner probably was using her just like she used everybody. In May, 2022, three years after Dr. Thomas Bashard's murder, Kennisin decides to plead guilty as well. Logan is accepting full responsibility for his actions. He knows that he committed a terrible crime and he is remorseful for that. The total sentence, the aggregate sentence, will be 18 to 45 years in the Nevada Department of Corrections. Later that year, Kelsey Turner makes a deal of her own. Do you understand you're being charged with second-degree murder? Yes, ma'am. How do you play to that charge? Guilty pursuant to Alfred or not guilty? Guilty pursuant to Alfred? To explain an Alfred plea, you're not confessing to it. You're just acknowledging that the state has enough evidence to convict you of it. Ms. Turner, in accordance to the laws of the state and Nevada, you're hereby judged guilty of second-degree murder of felony. You're hereby sentenced to 10 to 25 years in the Nevada Department of Corrections. In the initial court hearings, she's smiling and laughing and posing for the cameras. Even if she was not guilty, somebody that you knew was murdered. That's just evil, just evil. I never realized such evil existed in this world until this happened. Physically, it has been very difficult for me. The emotional turmoil I have experienced was and is literally gut-wrenching. No matter what Dr. Bouchard's motivations were for trying to help a single mom in need, it's just terrible that someone who had helped so many people in his life and seemed to only try to help people in his life ended up paying the ultimate price for it. I think Kelsey Turner is a danger to society. Honestly, I don't think she should ever get out of prison.