THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 31, 1996 TAG: 9608310372
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B01 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON FRANK, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 111 lines
Taking the witness stand in his own defense Friday, former SEAL trainee Dustin A. Turner tearfully told a jury that he tried to pry the arms of Billy Joe Brown from the neck of Jennifer L. Evans to save the Emory University student's life.
But the grip of his drunken SEAL swim buddy was too strong in the early morning hours of June 19, 1995, Turner said, and before Turner knew what had happened, the 21-year-old Evans was lying limp in the passenger seat of Turner's Geo Storm.
Moments later, Turner said, he knew Evans was dead when he felt no pulse in her neck and smelled her urine on his car seat. Bending to the pressure of Brown, who kept hollering from the back seat of the car for him to ``drive'' and ``go,'' Turner began driving to Newport News, he told the jury.
``I was confused, scared, panicking,'' Turner, 21, told the jury. ``The only advice I was getting was from Brown. . . . So I drove.''
Less than an hour later, Turner said, he helped Brown throw Evans' body into a wooded ravine in Newport News City Park.
During almost three hours of testimony Friday, Turner claimed he was stunned by Brown's violent outburst and was sickened by Brown's callous reaction to Evans' death, especially when Brown said he wanted a sandwich as soon as the two arrived back at Little Creek from Newport News.
``I couldn't believe that he was wanting food,'' Turner said.
But under cross-examination, Turner's claims that he was emotionally devastated came into question.
He admitted that later on the morning of Evans' death he and Brown signed a lease and made a down payment on an apartment in Virginia Beach they planned to share.
And later that week, prosecutors claimed, Turner laughed casually with other SEALs when a police-generated composite drawing meant to look like Turner was published in a local newspaper.
As the first week of Turner's trial ended, prosecutors tried to further undercut Turner's story by reintroducing the ``tag-team sex'' theory of Evans' death, which Turner denied. It is the same theory they used to convict Brown of first-degree murder, attempted rape and abduction in June. Brown was sentenced to 72 years in prison and fined $63,000.
During the cross-examination of Turner, prosecutor Al Alberi alleged that Turner lured Evans from The Bayou nightclub to his car in an attempt to involve her in a ``threesome'' with Brown. Once in the car, Alberi said, Brown applied a ``sleeper hold'' on Evans to incapacitate her.
The two SEAL trainees, Alberi said, then took Evans to a Virginia Beach back street, where they tried to force her to have sex with them.
She was strangled, Alberi said, out of pure ``meanness'' by Turner because she resisted and ``fought too well and too hard.''
Turner admitted that, during the eight days between Evans' disappearance and the discovery of her body, he lied continually to police about what happened June 19, 1995. But he did it, he testified, because Brown asked him to.
``I just felt that since I helped Brown, I was a part of it and was getting deeper and deeper and couldn't turn back,'' Turner testified. ``Basically, at this point, I was involved. I just felt like I couldn't turn back at that point, so I lied to police to cover up for Brown.''
He also said Brown pleaded for his cooperation in hiding the truth. Brown, Turner testified, told him: `` `I know what I did was stupid, but we have got to stick together. We are both in this now.' ''
The two SEAL trainees, who were in the last phase of training at Fort A.P. Hill near Richmond before they were to become full-fledged members of Little Creek-based SEAL Team Four, told police they left The Bayou together June 19, 1995. Turner admitted to having met Evans, who was vacationing in Virginia Beach with friends when she disappeared, but he denied any other involvement.
Turner stuck with the story until June 27, 1995, when he finally broke during questioning at FBI headquarters in Richmond by Virginia Beach police.
He then led police to Evans' badly decomposed body, which the two men had placed near a jogging trail in the Newport News park.
Dr. Leah Bush of the state medical examiner's office testified Thursday that decomposition of the body made determining an exact cause of death impossible. Bush said, however, that several types of choke-holds could have caused Evans' death, including a ``sleeper hold'' that compresses the sides of the neck and cuts off blood flow to the brain.
On Friday, Dr. Warren H. Foer, a Virginia Beach neurosurgeon, testified that another kind of choke-hold could have caused almost instantaneous death. Foer said it would have required a sudden, forceful pull from behind the head, causing a hyperextension of the neck.
Turner, who described the SEALs as ``the most elite warriors in the world'' who ``worked hard and played hard,'' admitted to being ``very close'' to Brown since they first met in California in 1994 during underwater demolition training.
But he denied that the two commandos-in-training made a hobby out of picking up women and engaging them in three-way sex.
He said the stories of group sex that have swirled around him and Brown, which at least two other SEALs have confirmed during Turner's trial, all stem from one incident that occurred in California.
But a former girlfriend of Turner's, 21-year-old Anitra Branyan, testified Friday that she also heard a discussion about three-way sex while in the company of Turner and Brown. ``They spoke of it,'' Branyan said, while the three had breakfast at a Virginia Beach restaurant in the spring of 1995.
Testimony is scheduled to continue Tuesday. ILLUSTRATION: BETH BERGMAN
The Virginian-Pilot
Color
Dustin A. Turner told a jury Friday: ``I was confused, scared,
panicking. The only advice I was getting was from Brown. . . . So I
drove.''
BETH BERGMAN
The Virginian-Pilot
Andria Burdette, who was with Jennifer Evans the night she was
killed, embraces Evans' mother, Delores, outside the courtroom in
Virginia Beach after former SEAL trainee Dustin A. Turner testified
in his trial Friday.
KEYWORDS: MURDER TRIAL by CNB