The wife of a dentist on trial on charges that he killed her had told her husband several times after they separated that she was happy in their marriage, was sad that it was ending, and angry that he had had an affair, according to testimony yesterday in Davie Superior Court.
Dr. Kirk Alan Turner, who has a dental practice in Clemmons, is on trial on a charge of first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Jennifer Jean Wittwer Turner.
She was found dead Sept. 12, 2007, in the shop building at the couple's house at 627 Jack Booe Road, just north of Mocksville. Her throat had been slashed.
Prosecutors have argued that Kirk Turner was so rattled by a divorce and a lawsuit that his wife had filed against his girlfriend, Tondja Woods Colvin, that he killed his wife with a pocketknife.
Defense attorneys have argued that Kirk Turner was defending himself after his wife attacked him with a 7-foot-long Viking-like spear, stabbing him twice in the left thigh near the groin. Kirk Turner had bought the spear.
During cross-examination of Capt. J.D. Hartman of the Davie County Sheriff's Office, one of Turner's attorneys, Brad Bannon, presented several letters and e-mails that Jennifer Turner had sent to Kirk Turner
One note is dated April 2, 2007, about a year after the couple separated. In it, she tells him that she was looking through pictures that reminded her of the happy times in their marriage.
"We still had graduations, weddings and grandchildren to look forward to," she wrote. The couple had two children, Gwendolyn Elizabeth Turner and Gilbert Richard Turner.
In another note, dated April 28, 2006, she told her estranged husband that the end of the marriage was making her sad.
"I don't understand why you don't love me anymore," she writes.
She appears angry at Kirk Turner's girlfriend in another note she wrote on Aug. 21, 2006. She accuses Colvin, who had been the couple's personal banker, of only being after Kirk Turner's money.
Bannon also introduced the divorce complaint that Jennifer Turner filed in June 2006, and under cross-examination, Hartman said that those papers as well as Jennifer Turner's letters and e-mails to her husband never mentioned that Kirk Turner had physically abused her.
In the divorce papers, Jennifer Turner mentions an incident on June 16, 2006, when Kirk Turner came to the house unannounced after he had moved out. She asked him to leave and then called police. She said she feared for her life. Kirk Turner denied the allegations in a response that he filed.
Jennifer Turner, in a later response, said she was scared because Kirk Turner was known to carry a gun. Hartman acknowledged under cross-examination that the divorce papers do not cite an incident in which Kirk Turner was violent toward her.
In other testimony, Dr. William Woodruff III, the chief of radiology at Lexington Memorial Hospital, talked about the wounds that Kirk Turner had. Woodruff testified under direct examination that the two stab wounds from the spear did not hit the femoral artery. That artery starts in the lower abdomen and goes down into the thigh.
Defense attorneys had argued that the stab wounds nearly missed the femoral artery and that Kirk Turner lost a lot of blood from his wounds.
Under cross-examination, Woodruff said that the wounds were serious.
Testimony in the case will continue this morning.
■ Michael Hewlett can be reached at 727-7326 or at mhewlett@wsjournal.com.
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