Trial's lawyers lay out opposing views

MOCKSVILLE

Prosecutors and defense attorneys gave two vastly different versions of what led to the death of Jennifer Jean Wittwer Turner during opening statements yesterday in the murder trial of Dr. Kirk Alan Turner.

But at the center of both versions was the stormy end of the couple's marriage.

Prosecutors said during the trial in Davie Superior Court that Turner was so rattled by the divorce and the lawsuit his wife filed against his girlfriend that he brutally killed his wife, Jennifer Turner, on Sept. 12, 2007.

Defense attorneys painted an opposing portrait, saying that Turner was defending himself from his estranged wife, who they say stabbed him with a 7-foot-long spear. The spear had a 16-inch blade. Yesterday, Brad Bannon, one of Turner's attorneys, displayed a spear similar to the one Jennifer Turner is alleged to have used in the attack.

Both sides described a marriage that was ending amid allegations of infidelity.

As defense attorneys showed graphic photos of the crime scene, Turner wiped tears from his eyes. He hugged supporters after the hearing as he made his way out of the courtroom.

Turner, 52, a dentist who practices in Clemmons, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of his 54-year-old wife. He could face life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted.

Assistant District Attorney Greg Brown said that at the time of Jennifer Turner's death, her husband was paying $21,000 a month in spousal support, another $3,000 a month to maintain the mortgage on the couple's house at 627 Jack Booe Road in Davie County and $6,000 toward attorney's fees.

He had moved out of the 10,000-square-foot home that he shared with his wife and was living with his son, Gilbert Richard Turner, in an 800-square-foot apartment, Brown said.

He was dealing with a lawsuit that Jennifer Turner had filed against his girlfriend, Tondja Woods Colvin.

And Jennifer Turner feared her husband, Brown told the jury.

"There's more than one way to end a marriage," Kirk Turner had told his wife, according to Brown.

On the night of his wife's death, Kirk Turner went with Greg Smithson to the house to pick up furniture Smithson had left in the shop building. Smithson had left the items there while living with the couple.

The men, driving separate vehicles, arrived at the house unannounced, Brown said. At 9:35 p.m., Smithson called 911, and deputies with the Davie County Sheriff's Office arrived about 15 minutes later. They found Jennifer Turner's body in a room of the shop building, lying on a concrete floor in a pool of blood, he said.

Kirk Turner was in another room, leaning on a wall with injuries to his left arm and left thigh. He was taken to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, where he told authorities that he had been stabbed, but offered no other details, Brown said.

Whatever happened that led to Jennifer Turner's death occurred within one to two minutes, he said.

That was enough time for Kirk Turner to kill his wife with a pocketknife, leaving gashes so deep that they severed her windpipe and went clear to the spine, Brown said. Her carotid artery was hit, causing an arterial spray that shot 12 to 20 inches into the air, he said.

Jennifer Turner also had a blunt-force injury on the back of her head, Brown said, and wounds on her left palm that are consistent with defensive wounds.

Defense attorney Bannon painted a different picture of what happened that night and the events that led up to Jennifer Turner's death.

He said that Smithson had told Jennifer Turner the week before that he planned to come by, and on Sept. 12, 2007, he knocked on Jennifer Turner's front door and told her that he was there with Kirk Turner.

She got on an ATV and drove to the shop building where her husband was, Bannon said.

"All of the evidence will show that if Jennifer Turner did not want to see Kirk Turner that night, she would not have seen Kirk Turner," he said.

Bannon described Jennifer Turner as emotionally distraught over the end of her 20-year-plus marriage. Bannon that she had fits of anger both at Turner and Colvin.

She didn't want her marriage to end, at one point telling her husband that he could still see his mistress as long as he stayed married to her, Bannon said.

But Kirk Turner refused and took steps to move the divorce proceedings forward, including getting a court order to force the sale of the house.

A judge had ordered the sale more than a year ago before her death, but Jennifer Turner refused to leave, Bannon said.

Although prosecutors said that Jennifer Turner feared her husband, she never mentioned any physical abuse in court papers or in conversations she had with her civil attorney and her therapist, he said.

According to Bannon, when Smithson left the shop building on the night of the killing, Jennifer Turner was in a corner near the spear. Kirk Turner was on the other side, near a table where he had placed several documents pertaining to the divorce.

Less than two minutes after Smithson left, Jennifer Turner grabbed the spear and stabbed her husband twice in the thigh near his groin area, nearly missing the femoral artery and digging the spear in deeper the second time, Bannon said.

"She just kept stabbing me. She said she was going to stab my pretty parts," is what Kirk Turner said on a 911 tape, Bannon told the jury.

Kirk Turner, in return, took out a pocketknife and stabbed his wife until the threat was over, Bannon said.

"That's the textbook definition of self-defense," he said.

The trial will resume Monday morning at 9:30 a.m.

■ Michael Hewlett can be reached at 727-7326 or at mhewlett@wsjournal.com