Clinic’s Evidence Plays Role in Dismissal of S.C. Murder Charges

Challenging a murder conviction is part science, some gumshoeing, a lot of law and a hefty dose of psychoanalysis, as Professor Deirdre Enright ’92 knows well from the 13 years she spent running the Innocence Project at UVA Law before stepping aside to create a new clinic in 2021.

To free an earlier Innocence client from prison, Enright had to go deep into the life and mind of a deceased serial killer — who was not her client — to establish his genetic composition, his physical whereabouts, his modus operandi and his fetishes. The information she’s collected on the known serial killer, Richard Marc Evonitz, is enough to fill dozens of file cabinets, but it also helped clear someone else’s clients, an aging couple accused of killing their 5-year-old son, Justin Lee Turner, decades ago.

On June 7, a judge dismissed murder charges against Victor Lee Turner and Megan R. Turner “with prejudice,” meaning the couple cannot be charged for the same crime again, citing a lack of new evidence and eyewitnesses 35 years after the crime. Months earlier, Enright sent a letter to the Turners’ lawyer to tell him about Evonitz, who killed himself in 2002 before police could arrest him. The serial killer has been matched to three other kidnappings and murders of children in Virginia.

“Evonitz’s final words were, ‘I committed more crimes than I can remember,’ but federal agents maintained he only killed three little girls — and that he only liked little girls,” Enright said. “I’ve been through everything he owns more than once — including his extensive pornography collection — and I don’t believe he was only interested in little girls.”

As part of a book project, Enright and her students have plotted a timeline of places Evonitz lived and visited during his years in the Navy and as a traveling salesman, and created a digital database of evidence. Through her new clinic, the Project for Informed Reform, students have been searching for unsolved cases, disappearances and murders in specific times and places Evonitz was known to be.

Jacint Horvath, a third-year student who participated in the clinic during the last school year, searched for incidents that may have taken place in South Carolina in 1989, when Evonitz’s ship was docked in Charleston, about a 50-minute drive from the site of the Turner murder.

“I came across Justin Lee Turner’s murder that occurred on or about March 3, 1989, the same day Evonitz arrived,” said Horvath, who is awaiting results from Freedom of Information Act request on the exact time the ship arrived. “Strangely enough, a couple months later, Justin’s stepmother and father were charged with his murder — 35 years later.”

The boy’s stepmother had previously been charged with the murder in 1990, but the charges were dropped for lack of evidence. In 1992, prosecutors once again presented the case to a grand jury, but the jury rejected the effort, finding the evidence insufficient to sustain a verdict. The charges could be brought again, if prosecutors obtained additional evidence. And on Jan. 9, 2024, they said they did.

Enright has been writing a book about her efforts to link Evonitz to crimes that others have been accused or convicted of. But with Turner’s parents under renewed scrutiny, she decided to act.

“I knew I couldn’t hold this information for my book, so I picked up the phone on a Friday night and I left a message for their court-appointed defender,” she said.

Her message promised the attorney, Shaun Kent, that this would be “the weirdest message you’ll have received in a long time.” She can’t prove this couple is innocent, she told him, but Evonitz’s record matched the timeframe and details of the murder fairly closely.

“My evidence certainly makes this serial killer look like a better suspect,” she said. “I can tell you he’s a known serial killer. I can tell you his ship came in sometime in that 24-hour period, I can tell you he followed children’s school buses and I can tell you he abducted them.”

Evonitz also raped his victims, which matched with Turner’s autopsy results.

Kent was in the middle of writing a 100-page brief moving to dismiss the charges because of the lack of evidence against them and the dearth of available witnesses. Enright’s letter to Kent detailed the type of evidence she has from Evonitz, and outlined her reasons for believing he should have been a suspect in Turner’s death.

As it turns out, the local sheriff’s office had been previously warned about the Evonitz possibility. In 2008, the FBI had sent an alert to state law enforcement describing the characteristics of his crimes and advising them to “review ALL unsolved abductions, sexual assaults, and/or murders that occurred [during] the timeframe Evonitz is documented to have been in your jurisdiction.”

Local investigators do not appear to have acted on that alert, Enright said.

Enright’s letter seemed to shock observers when Kent introduced it in court in March along with the ignored FBI alert. At the prosecution’s request, the judge held off on his decision to allow time for further investigation.

“This is pretty explosive evidence and obviously everyone needs time to explore that and digest that and investigate that,” prosecutors said at the time, according to local news reports.

In a Zoom meeting on June 14 with the Turners and their lawyer, Kent told Enright and Horvath the information they provided was key to helping his clients.

“The information didn’t just save their freedom, I think it shaped their reputations and their lives, because people look at it differently now,” Kent said.

Victor Lee Turner described losing a job when police came to his workplace to interrogate him. He had to keep a part of his life hidden to avoid the judgment of others, and could not properly mourn and memorialize his son.

“I couldn’t put no pictures out of my son because people would have asked about it,” he said. “I couldn't turn around and express anything about my life. I was afraid that somebody was going to know about it.”

The Turners said they are grateful to be free from further prosecution, but are still haunted by the experience.

“My son was my life,” Victor Lee Turner said. “It is over in a way, but not over. Every time [I] get to thinking about it, [I still] get choked up.”

“I’m just so glad this happened to give you time to be free of it,” Enright replied.

With additional reporting by Josette Corazza