Background to this story
A pair of roommates have been put under arrest and jailed in Las Vegas during a murder investigation. One of the women is a former Playboy model who is reportedly pregnant. The investigation involves the murder in March of 71-year-old psychologist Dr. Thomas Kirk Burchard, who was paying the women’s rent. The boyfriend of the model is still at large.
The former model is 25-year-old Kelsey Nicole Turner and her roommate is 30-year-old Diana Nicole Pena. Turner’s boyfriend is 27-year-old Jon Logan Kennison. The three have been charged with murder and conspiracy to murder.
Arrest made
Turner was arrested on March 21 in Stockton, California. She was with her boyfriend and child at the time. The boyfriend was not a suspect then, but he has gone missing in the meantime.
On April 5, the names of both Pena and Kennison were put onto the homicide complaint, according to a redacted warrant from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
Turner was brought to Nevada to be jailed and Kennison was supposed to meet with detectives but he was a no-show. The preliminary hearings for the two women will take place on June 3.
Burchard’s body was discovered on March 21 in the trunk of a car in a desert near Las Vegas. The case was deemed to be a homicide by the Clark County coroner. Burchard had been hit numerous times on the head with an object that has yet to be identified.
The car was registered to Turner and fingerprints of each of the suspects were found in the vehicle. There was also a Caesar’s Palace bartending card from Pena’s job found in the vehicle.
How did they know each other?
Burchard was a psychiatrist in Salinas, California, who knew Turner for about two years. In that time, he reportedly gave her about $300,000, according to the doctor’s longtime girlfriend.
She said that Burchard had signed the lease for a Salinas, California, home in which Turner was living with her children and mother. She reportedly told Burchard that she could not sign the lease because of her poor credit score. The model had previously worked for Maxim and Playboy Italy. She moved to Las Vegas in 2018.
What happened?
According to the police reports, Burchard went to Las Vegas from Salinas on March 1 to visit Turner and he made a rent payment for the place where the model and her roommate were living. According to the police, the doctor was having an intimate relationship with Turner.
An incident was reported at the Las Vegas residence on March 2 when a drunken woman came to the place and began arguing with Turner. This led to Burchard taking the woman on a ride down the block to try and calm her down.
According to police reports, Turner was worried that the drunken woman might tell the psychiatrist that Turner was seeing Kennison.
The reports say the murder took place on March 3 and the following day Turner offered $20 to someone to clean red stains at the residence. She told him it was red wine. The police found significant amounts of blood in the residence, particularly on and around a mattress in one of the bedrooms upstairs.
The suspects fled, staying for a short time at the Rio All-Suites Hotel and Casino before they disengaged their mobile devices after they heard that the body was found by police on March 7. They then went on the run to California.