THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, May 30, 1996 TAG: 9605300359
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON FRANK, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 123 lines
The two Navy SEAL trainees charged with killing Georgia pre-med student Jennifer L. Evans last June once engaged in a group sex session at a Navy barracks in Coronado, Calif., a member of SEAL Team Eight testified Wednesday.
Todd Ehrlich, an operations specialist, said that Billy Joe Brown and Dustin A. Turner were part of a group of several men and one woman that engaged in an orgy-like sexual encounter in the Navy barracks on July 12, 1994.
Ehrlich said that Brown tried to involve him in the session.
``But I absolutely refused,'' Ehrlich told Circuit Judge A. Bonwill Shockley with the jury out of the courtroom in the third day of Brown's murder trial. ``I told Billy that this is the kind of thing that could come back to bite me in the ass, and I left.''
Prosecutor Albert Alberi argued that Ehrlich's story helped establish that Brown and Turner made a ``hobby'' of picking up women for group sex. Jennifer Evans was one of them, Alberi said.
``We are not interested in people's sexual behavior,'' Alberi said, ``except when there is an alliance to regularly and routinely make arrangements to have sex with the same woman. . . . (Brown) had made it part of his lifestyle. . . . It shows there was an affinity between Turner and Brown that is out of the ordinary.''
But defense attorney Andrew Sacks objected to the testimony, saying it was not relevant to the charges against Brown.
``If a woman is willing to go with two men for a threesome, why is that anyone's business?'' Sacks asked. ``That doesn't make him a rapacious murderer.''
Shockley refused to let the jury hear the testimony.
On Wednesday, Ehrlich and another member of SEAL Team Eight, Greg Balsmeier, recounted numerous episodes where Turner and Brown appeared to work in tandem to pick up women for group sex encounters. All of them, except one instance related by Balsmeier, were told out of the presence of the jury and not allowed into evidence by Shockley.
Ehrlich said he first met both men in California during SEAL training at the Coronado base in 1994. Turner and Brown were best friends, Ehrlich said.
Ehrlich said ``it was standard operating procedure'' for Brown and Turner to pick up, and talk about picking up, women for group sex.
The first instance that Ehrlich learned about was soon after he met the men in 1994.
``A girlfriend of Dusty's was also a girlfriend of Brown's and I guess Dustin didn't know about it for a while,'' Ehrlich said. ``Once he did, they started having group sex.''
Later that year, the orgy occurred the night before Ehrlich was scheduled to return to his home in Connecticut to recover from an injury he received during training.
Brown, Ehrlich said, came to his door and banged on it. ``He told me I had to see something because it was amazing,'' Ehrlich remembered.
Brown escorted Ehrlich to another part of the barracks, where Ehrlich began hearing the sounds of a woman engaged in sex. ``I thought they were playing a joke on me,'' Ehrlich said. ``I thought they were playing a porno movie.''
But when Ehrlich turned a corner in the hallway and entered a room in the barracks, he realized that Brown was not playing a joke. ``It was the real thing,'' he said.
Ehrlich said he saw a very drunk Turner on a bed engaged in sex with a woman. There were several other men in the room, but Ehrlich did not identify them. He said the barracks is where Navy SEALs live during training.
Two other men also engaged the woman in sex, he said. ``Sort of like a crowd starting forming,'' Ehrlich said. ``It became an event.'' He said Brown told him earlier that he, too, had had sex with the woman.
Ehrlich said the incident was written by Turner into a humorous SEAL narrative, known as the Book of Woe, at the base.
Ehrlich also related another incident that happened at a bar in Fredericksburg last year where he met Turner and Brown while all three were working at Fort A.P. Hill near Richmond.
Ehrlich said Turner was trying to pick up a woman at the bar. Every few moments Turner would come over to Brown, Ehrlich and another man and give them a kind of ``progress report,'' he said.
``Basically, what the conversation was about is that they wanted to have group sex with her. . . . They both wanted to pick this girl up,'' Ehrlich said.
Balsmeier said he also witnessed an episode in California where Turner and Brown were in a room together with a woman. All three were naked. Balsmeier said other people also were in the room.
The testimony came just before the prosecution rested its case Wednesday. The defense began late in the day.
Brown, 23, and Turner, 21, are charged with abducting Evans in the early morning of July 19, 1995, from The Bayou, an Oceanfront bar on 19th Street. Each accuses the other of strangling Evans. Both admit throwing her body into a gully in a Newport News park.
Turner, who goes on trial June 25, appeared briefly in court late Wednesday. He exercised his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination by not answering five questions, all pertaining to what he did on the night of June 18 and the morning of June 19. MEMO: THE BROWN TRIAL
THE CRIME: Brown, a Navy SEAL trainee, is on trial for abducting and
killing Evans, a pre-med student from Atlanta who died last June while
vacationing in Virginia Beach. She was last seen alive leaving an
Oceanfront bar.
CHARGES AGAINST BROWN: Murder, abduction, attempted rape, penetration
with an animate object.
PENALTY: Up to life in prison.
WHAT HAPPENED WEDNESDAY: Navy SEAL Todd Ehrlich testified that Billy
Joe Brown and Dustin Turner often engaged in group sex. On one occasion
in July 1994, Ehrlich said, Brown and Turner were involved in a group
sex session in a Navy barracks at Coronado, Calif. Other men, possibly
other SEALs, also were involved, along with one woman, he said. On
several other occasions, Ehrlich testified, Brown and Turner prowled
Virginia bars looking women for group sex. Prosecutors think Jennifer
Evans was killed in Virginia Beach last June when she was picked up by
Turner for a group sex encounter with the two SEAL trainees. ILLUSTRATION: Drawing by ALBA BRAGOLI
Todd Ehrlich, an operations specialist, said Billy Joe Brown and
Dustin A. Turner were part of a group encounter in a barracks.
Color photos
Billy Joe Brown, left, and Dustin A. Turner worked together to pick
up women for group encounters, two witnesses say.
Photos
Billy Joe Brown Jr.
Dustin A. Turner
Jennifer L. Evans
KEYWORDS: MURDER TRIAL by CNB