Playboy Model Laughs in Court, Confident She’ll Walk Free — Then Her Roommate Testifies
She sits in that courtroom smiling and laughing, confident she will walk free. This Playboy model and mother of two had convinced herself that keeping distance from the facts was a strategy. Her attorneys had spent nearly 4 years arguing she was a peripheral figure, a woman caught in the orbit of a violent boyfriend, not the architect of anything they claimed.
And for a while, it almost worked. But the prosecution had something no defense attorney could fully prepare for. And once it came out, the carefully constructed version began to collapse in real time. She was content to leave someone that she knew for a number of years who supported her and her child financially for a number of years to rot in the back of a car in the desert that he paid for.
This is the chilling case of a social media personality and Instagram model who turned her own home into a crime scene. And every detail you’re about to hear has been verified through court records, grand jury testimony, and law enforcement findings. If you’ve never heard this story before, prepare yourself.
Because what happened inside that Las Vegas home on March 3rd, 2019, will challenge everything you think you know about manipulation and how dangerous the wrong kind of trust can be. To understand what really happened, you first need to know the man at the center of it all. Dr. Thomas Burchard had known Kelsey Nicole Turner for years before March 2019. They had met online.
Everyone who knew him said he was a lonely, generous man. Burchard was a 71-year-old psychiatrist who had spent his whole life helping other people’s troubled children. He had worked for nearly 40 years with Natividad Health in Monterey, California, a child psychiatrist, part of their behavioral health program.
He’d see them from childhood into adulthood, then treat their children, too. Multi-generational care. The kind of doctor who you could be sure truly cared. Even past retirement age, Dr. Burchard couldn’t leave his patients. He cut his work week from 5 days to 4, but he kept working, kept showing up. He had tricks to engage his younger patients, little knickknacks, candy, magic tricks.
He once gave a patient’s father a penny magic trick during a session. He was extremely kind, and according to his girlfriend of 17 years, Judy Earp, he was known to send money to women he encountered on the internet. He was always helping people, anybody with a sad story. Some people took advantage of that.
His relationship with Turner started when she was 23, 2 years before his death. At the time, she was a model who had already posed for Playboy Italia and Maxim. On Instagram, she went by BadBarbie and had amassed tens of thousands of followers. She was attractive and charismatic, too. But she had a problem, a perpetual financial crisis that Burchard moved to resolve.
Burchard began paying Turner’s rent on a home she shared with her mother and her two kids in Salinas, California, $3,200 a month. The payment stopped at some point, then they started again. The whole thing lasted for a year and a half. By early 2019, Turner moved to Las Vegas, this time living with her boyfriend, John Koneson, and their roommate, Diana Pena.
Burchard kept paying the rent. Over the course of the relationship, Judy Earp believed Burchard had spent more than $300,000 on Turner and her lifestyle. Keep this number in mind, because in March of 2019, Burchard decided he was done being the financial foundation of Kelsey Turner’s Las Vegas life. And that decision set everything that followed in motion.
In early 2019, Burchard decided to make a surprise last visit to Las Vegas. Burchard had grown suspicious of Turner’s explanations and wanted to see things firsthand. He told Earp these exact words, “Kelsey Turner is such a consummate liar. I just had to check things out for myself.” There was something significant about the timing of this visit.
Turner had reportedly reached out to Burchard shortly before his arrival, claiming she was sick and unable to care for her child. She needed him. She needed money. She needed him to come. Earp knew something was wrong the moment he failed to get off his flight returning from Las Vegas. What Earp did not know was that Burchard would never come home.
Burchard arrived in Las Vegas around March 1st, 2019. Diana Pena, Turner’s roommate at their Puritan Avenue house, worked part-time as a nanny for Turner’s 4-year-old son. In exchange, she lived rent-free. And on that fateful night, she had just finished a bartending shift at the Coliseum Theater at Caesar’s Palace that evening when Turner texted asking for a ride. Burchard was driving.
Pena got into the car. There was a friend named Katie riding with them as well. On the way back to the house, Turner reached across and took Burchard’s phone to use as a GPS. She started going through it and saw messages on Burchard’s phone, communications between Burchard and Turner’s mother that appeared to discuss concerns about Turner’s fitness as a parent and the possibility of having her children removed from her care.
Turner went ballistic. The argument continued all the way back to the house on Amigo Street in the southeast Las Vegas Valley. That’s when the prosecution revealed what Pena told the grand jury about what happened next. Once they were inside the house, Turner escalated. She threatened to contact Burchard’s employer and report that she had found child pornography on his phone.
She would destroy his career. She would make calls. Think about that for a moment. A man who’d given her hundreds of thousands of dollars, paid her rent for years, supported her and her family, and she was about to accuse him of something that could destroy his life. In that moment, inside that house, the accusation was a weapon.
Burchard was confused and frightened. Pena said, “He seemed a little confused. He just kept saying he loved Kelsey and he didn’t know why she was acting like that.” The violence was coming. Pena could feel it. She pulled Turner’s young son out of the house and had a trusted friend take him somewhere safe.
Burchard, unsure of how to respond, went into a bedroom and slammed the door. Pena would later describe what she witnessed. After Burchard slammed the door trying to get away from Turner, John Koneson, Turner’s boyfriend, suddenly came running. He had a baseball bat. He kicked in the door. It broke in half. Then Koneson raised the bat in the air.
Pena said she saw the bat go up, but she didn’t see it hit Dr. Burchard. Instead, she heard the sound of impact, then Burchard’s crying. Pena helped Dr. Burchard get cleaned up afterward. He was bleeding, badly injured. He rinsed off in a bathroom. Then Dr. Burchard told Pena that if anyone asked what happened, he would say he got mugged so Kelsey wouldn’t get in trouble.
Turner and Koneson told Dr. Burchard they’d take him to the hospital. He got into the back of Turner’s Mercedes waiting for the ride. Pena had been terrified. Turner started yelling at Koneson, calling him names, demanding he do something. Pena was upstairs when she heard Turner screaming at her boyfriend, telling him that he needed to knock Thomas out, that she’d seen other people knock people out.
It shouldn’t be a problem. Pena ran downstairs to tell Turner to stop, but when she got there, Turner ran into the garage, came out and said it was too late. Then Koneson emerged from the garage, badly battered. Still, there was no indication Dr. Burchard was shot, but the gun had been used as a weapon to beat him, to finish what the baseball bat started.
The Clark County Coroner’s examination of Dr. Thomas Burchard found multiple blunt force injuries to the head. The injuries were consistent with being struck repeatedly by an object that left what police described as a unique pattern. He had defensive wounds on his arms. The skull had been fractured. The trauma was fatal.
The baseball bat, bloodied as later found inside the trunk of Turner’s Mercedes-Benz alongside the body. Then came the cleanup. Under coercion by the killer couple, Pena helped clean the scene. The cleaning supplies came out. Bleach, towels, mop buckets. The house on Amigo Street became a crime scene that two of its occupants tried to scrub into silence.
Remember this detail about the cleanup, because when investigators arrived at that house days later, what they found told them exactly what had happened. They wrapped Burchard’s body in blankets, then loaded it into the trunk of the blue Mercedes, the same car he’d been helping her pay for. Police stated the attack had happened inside the vehicle.
Blood evidence showed he’d been beaten in the car. Then his body was removed through the passenger side and placed in the trunk. Clothes and bedding were piled on top to conceal him. Turner, Koneson, and Pena then fled Las Vegas, headed to California. The Mercedes was abandoned on Nevada State Route 147 near the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, left on the side of the road with a window smashed to make it look like a random abandoned vehicle.
Dr. Burchard’s body remained in the trunk in the desert heat for days. Turner and Koneson headed toward California. Pena went with them initially, then separated. On March 7th, 2019, a man driving through the Lake Mead area with his children noticed a blue Mercedes-Benz sitting alone on the side of the road.
One of the windows had been broken. He called the authorities. When officers arrived, they detected a foul odor coming from the vehicle. They opened the trunk. Dr. Thomas Burchard was inside, partially wrapped, his body showing severe head trauma. Initial reports showed he’d been dead for at least 4 days, possibly even more.
But here’s what destroyed Turner’s claim she had nothing to do with it. Investigators ran the car’s plates. It was registered to Kelsey Nicole Turner. Investigators moved fast, quickly driving to the house on Amigo Street. The landlord told them immediately Burchard had been paying the rent.
Inside the house, what police found confirmed what they suspected. There was blood, extensive and incompletely cleaned, along with bleach, cleaning supplies, and footprints in the garage. A broken door, apparently the result of a violent struggle, and items bearing John Koneson’s name in a bedroom. Remember that detail about the unique pattern police found on Dr.
Burchard’s head? Here’s why it mattered. The gun handle and the baseball bat both left distinct marks, proof of what weapons were used. Forensic testing matched the blood to Dr. Burchard. Inside the car, they found fingerprints, DNA blood samples. Turner’s fingerprints were found in the car, so were Pena’s.
The baseball bat found with Dr. Burchard’s body had blood on it. And while the gun Koneson had been holding was never recovered, Pena described seeing it covered in blood. Then detectives obtained Dr. Burchard’s phone records. His phone had last been used on March 3rd, the same day Pena testified he was murdered.
Turner’s cell phone records showed her phone had been at the house from March 1st through March 5th. The phone left the area on March 5th, then again on March 6th, and the phone was shut down around the time it became public in the media that a body had been found. Investigators also noted something significant. The house was empty.
Turner, Kennison, and Pena had moved out quickly, abruptly after the murder. The abrupt departure was itself evidence of consciousness of guilt. A nationwide warrant was issued. Turner was arrested on March 21st, 2019 in Stockton, California by FBI agents and Las Vegas Metropolitan Police. She was 25 years old.
Kennison was arrested approximately a month later. Pena, after initially fleeing with the couple, surrendered to detectives in Las Vegas in April 2019. Through her attorney, Brian Smith, Turner issued a statement the day of her Las Vegas court appearance. She categorically denies any role in the death of Dr. Burchard. The defense was already drawing the line. Turner knew nothing.
Turner did nothing. Kennison acted alone. The prosecution wasn’t buying it. They charged Turner with open murder with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to commit murder. The death penalty was initially considered, but by July 2019, Clark County prosecutors had decided against seeking capital punishment. Then investigators found something that locked Turner’s position in the events of that night even more firmly.
It was not a physical item from the house. It was a text message. Court filings showed that after the murder, Turner had texted contacts asking for help cleaning the house. She was reaching out, coordinating, and managing. The woman who claimed no knowledge of what had happened was texting people to come sanitize a crime scene.
The defense claimed Turner was manipulated by Kennison. Kennison’s own attorneys would later argue in filings that Turner was a master manipulator he could not rebuff, and that his attack was a crime of passion. Each side was pointing at the other. But there was still Diana Pena, and Pena had already made her choice. In June 2019, barely 2 months after her arrest, Diana Pena struck a deal with prosecutors.
She pleaded guilty to one count of accessory to murder. In exchange for a significantly reduced sentence, she agreed to provide truthful testimony about what she witnessed on March 1st, 2019. She described the phone in the car, the messages Turner found, the explosive argument that followed. Kennison emerging from the garage, Turner issuing the instruction, “Knock Thomas out.
” While Burchard was still in the Mercedes, Burchard injured and conscious telling her they were going to kill him. Then the cleanup. The blankets. The drive to the desert. The defense claimed Kennison acted independently, driven by jealousy and rage. Pena’s testimony showed Turner directing the violence.
The defense claimed Turner was not at the center of what happened. Pena’s testimony placed Turner at the center of every decision that night. And yet Turner maintained her plea of not guilty. The case sat in the court system for 3 years. Continuances, pre-trial hearings, pandemic delays, the wheels of the Clark County District Court ground slowly.
Then in June 2022, Kennison pleaded guilty. John Logan Kennison, Turner’s boyfriend, the man who had swung the bat, also pleaded guilty to second-degree murder with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to commit murder. He accepted a sentence of 18 to 45 years in Nevada State Prison. The ground beneath Turner’s defense shifted. With Kennison’s plea on the record, Turner’s attorneys began serious negotiations with prosecutors.
In July 2022, movement started. By November 9th, 2022, Turner signed the agreement. It was an Alford plea, not a guilty plea. Turner would not say she did it. She would only acknowledge that the state had sufficient evidence to prove she was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In exchange, she received guaranteed parole eligibility after 10 years.
The Alford plea is a specific legal mechanism that allows a defendant to maintain their personal innocence while accepting the legal consequences of conviction. Turner used it to close the case without ever standing before a jury and hearing the word guilty. The defense framed the plea as Turner taking the pragmatic path, not the confession of a killer.
The prosecution framed it differently. Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney, Pamela Weckerly, did not mince words at the sentencing hearing. She was content to leave someone that she knew for a number of years who supported her and her child financially for a number of years to rot in the back of a car in the desert that he paid for.
Think about that for a moment. The car, the desert, the man who had spent $300,000 left in a trunk he had effectively purchased. Sentencing was set for January 10th, 2023. Judy Erp stood up to address the court. Tom was under a lot of stress. And I sincerely believe he was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia.
So much so that two county social workers had come to the house that week prior inquiring if he was showing any signs of dementia. I told them how Kelsie Turner was manufacturing checks on Tom’s LLC account and forging his signature. I highly suspect Wells Fargo was who reported the situation to senior social services.
When Tom had told her repeatedly he would not give or loan her any more money, she resorted to stealing. She printed on her home computer checks with Tom’s name and account number and her address. She also went online and made many and made many charges paying for bills. The bank caught the fraud and immediately took action.
When that did not work, she began extortion. Remember the phone Turner found in the car on the way home from picking up Pena? The messages between Burchard and Turner’s mother about her children? That was the trigger. Everything that happened in that house afterward traced back to those messages on a phone that wasn’t hers to read.
Judge Carly Kearney sentenced Kelsie Turner to 10 to 25 years in Nevada State Prison. Turner was also ordered to pay legal fees. Ashley Sislak, Turner’s defense attorney, told the court that Turner accepted the plea because she and Turner believed it was the best resolution available.
Diana Pena was sentenced to 3 years of probation. Kelsie Nicole Turner is currently serving her sentence in Nevada State Prison. She will be eligible for parole after serving 10 years. The earliest possible parole hearing would fall in 2033. Kennison remains in Nevada State Prison serving between 18 and 45 years on second-degree murder with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to commit murder.
Diana Pena completed the terms of her probation. Judy Erp has not stopped speaking. She appeared at both Kennison’s sentencing in July 2022 and Turner’s sentencing in January 2023. She told the court she feared retaliation. She said Turner had described Burchard as her golden goose and had become enraged when the goose threatened to stop producing.
Turner is currently held at a Nevada Department of Corrections facility. Her parole eligibility date remains 2033. The Alford plea stands.
