This 29-year-old former Playboy model had her benefactor killed with a baseball bat and a knife. The reason ? After spending nearly €285,000, he no longer wanted to maintain it.
This morning of March 7, 2019, Judy Earp wakes up with a bad feeling. She has been alerting the authorities for a week. A week that Thomas Burchard, his companion for seventeen years, no longer answers his calls or his texts. So when the phone rings at 9 a.m., Judy, 59 years old, picks up the receiver, shaking like a child. The white voice of the policeman states the facts: Dr. Thomas Burchard, 71, was found dead in the trunk of an abandoned car in the Nevada desert. No, it is better not to come immediately to recognize the body.
“They had not yet been able to restore his face and, given his condition after the beatings, they advised me to wait,” recalls the widow. To fully understand what happened, we have to go back. After attending medical school in Virginia (United States) and becoming a child psychiatrist, Thomas Bur-chard ended up in the community hospital on the Monterey Peninsula, from which he never moved. He loves his work and his patients, to whom he often gives money to improve their daily lives…
“If he saw someone in need, he could, literally, give them his shirt”
With his generosity, his white beard, his glasses and his cheerful smile, “he looked like a kind of medical Santa Claus”, recalls Judy, whom he met in the early 2000s during a group trip to Las Vegas. . “He was extremely generous. If he saw someone in need, he could literally give him his shirt,” she recalls. Thomas especially loved helping single mothers on the verge of marginality, “drug addicts or prostitutes, or on the way to becoming one, explains Judy. To help them change their lives, he said.”
In Monterey, his reputation as a “women’s philanthropist” precedes him. How did the meeting happen? Mystery. But it is with this soul of Santa Claus that in 2017, Dr. Burchard takes Kelsey Turner under his wing. Playmate who enjoyed a quarter of an hour of fame in the pages of magazines Playboy et Maxim, at 25, his “career” is over. A party girl who lives off odd jobs, she now posts daring photos on social networks. She has two young children, nowhere to stay, no means to sign a lease. Thomas, as a good white knight, offers to sign one for her. He will end up paying, each month, his rent in full. She wants a BMW convertible, but can’t get a loan? He does it in his place, and ends up, of course, by paying the monthly bills.
The ex-Playmate blackmails him and threatens to file a complaint
After long months on this diet, under pressure from Judy who thinks the young opportunist malicious, even dangerous, the good Samaritan decides to stop the costs, which already amount to $300,000 (€285,000). In retaliation, the ex-Playmate blackmails him and threatens to file a complaint for violence against his children, which would devastate the professional life of the child psychiatrist. So when the one who calls herself “Badd Barbie” on social networks decides to leave the region to move to Las Vegas, he agrees to pay all the costs in the hope of getting rid of it.
Alas, shortly after, she calls him back. She is ill and cannot work or take care of the children. She needs money. The good doctor decides to go and see what’s really going on. “Don’t do that,” implores his companion. But nothing helps and, the 1is March 2019, it takes off to the city of sin. On the morning of March 7, an abandoned blue Mercedes-Benz coupe will be found about 30 km northeast of Las Vegas. The seats are covered in blood, and in the trunk lies Thomas Burchard. Bruises and cuts dot his face and body. Part of his ear is missing. He was slain with a baseball bat and a knife.
In revenge, the young woman had her benefactor beaten to death
The police quickly discover that the Mercedes belongs to Kelsey Turner. The fallen playmate could not bear that Thomas, noting her good form, refused to finance her. To take revenge, she had him beaten to death by her new boyfriend, 30-year-old Jon Logan Kennison. Very quickly confused, the couple first began to deny. Kennison cracked the first and received 25 years in prison during the trial held in July 2020. It took two more years for Kelsey Turner to admit responsibility. On Wednesday, November 9, 2022, as authorized by American law, the playmate accepted a plea agreement: while refusing to plead guilty, she agrees to comply with the court’s decision. The quantum of the sentence will be decided on January 10, 2023. She risks 10 to 25 years in prison.
