Pod Insights Murder With My Husband 276 - The Sugar Baby Murder About this episode In this episode, Payton and Garrett dive into the case of a retired doctor with a secret obsession that ultimately leads to his downfall.
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Case sources:
Oxygen.com - https://www.oxygen.com/snapped/crime-news/playboy-model-kelsey-turner-helps-kill-doctor-over-money
ABCNews.go.com - https://abcnews.go.com/US/witness-recalls-night-instagram-model-badd-barbie-murdered/story?id=97334479
TheCalifornian.com - https://www.thecalifornian.com/story/news/2019/06/21/california-doctor-killed-salinas-thomas-burchard-kelsey-turner-playboy-vegas/1515878001/
8NewsNow.com - https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/former-las-vegas-model-sentenced-to-minimum-of-10-years-in-death-of-california-doctor/
Wikipedia.com - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelsey_Turner
CBSNews.com - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kelsey-turner-former-playboy-model-plea-deal-beating-death-doctor-thomas-burchard/
ReviewJournal.com - https://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/courts/former-model-sentenced-for-2019-killing-of-psychiatrist-2709807/
AYMag.com - https://aymag.com/murder-mystery-badd-barbie/
ABC.com - https://abc.com/episode/56e5b1be-ff2b-4f83-9174-1196c1200192
KSBW.com - https://www.ksbw.com/article/new-gruesome-details-released-about-murder-of-chomp-doctor/28110614
Elle.com - https://www.elle.com/culture/books/a29329307/sugar-daddy-murder-elle-november-2019/
Happyscribe.com - https://www.happyscribe.com/public/20-20/a-model-murder
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:45 Payton Moreland? You're listening to an Ono Media Podcast. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with my husband. I'm Peyton Morland.
0:52 Garrett Moreland? And I'm Garrett Moreland.
0:53 Payton Moreland? And he's the husband.
0:54 Garrett Moreland? And I'm the husband.
0:55 Payton Moreland? If we sound a little different, it is because we are currently recording in a different place, but don't worry, we are here with another episode.
1:02 Garrett Moreland? For those who are watching on YouTube, we don't know what we're gonna do about video yet, because we brought our set, we brought our camera, and it is just not working. I could get into it technically, but it's just, it's not working. It's bugging out. It's wigging out, really frustrating, because they are not cheap cameras.
1:19 Payton Moreland? I just don't understand how it's 2025 and we're literally sending people into space, but have yet to figure out all of the technological glitches that happen, like, almost every time we record. Just how is this still happening?
1:34 Garrett Moreland? Yeah, and I know it's not just us. We have friends in the podcast industry, friends in photography, videography, whatever it is. There's just, stuff happens and it's annoying, but we will figure something out for video. I don't know if it'll be us. It probably won't. For the, for those who are on YouTube, I'm so sorry. Go and listen to the audio if you want. We love you guys. Thank you, everyone, for being here. We are on just a little fourth of July. I don't know, we're just out of town. We're in nature, hanging out for a few days.
2:06 Payton Moreland? Daisy, Daisy jumped in the pond. Now she smells like pond water, so she's gonna have to take a bath every day this week.
2:12 Garrett Moreland? She smells so bad. But thank you for supporting us and let's get into this week's episode.
2:21 Payton Moreland? Our sources for this episode are oxygen.com, abcnews.go.com, thecalifornian.com, eight news now.com, cbsnews.com, reviewjournal.com, ay mag.com, ksbw.com, l.com, and happyscribe.com. So, most of us can understand how great a feeling it is to help someone in need, whether that's volunteering, making a donation, even just lending a hand to a friend or a stranger when you see them struggling. And sometimes, all it takes is one good deed to realize, I want to help more people. It's easy to see why some people literally dedicate their lives to these acts of service. But what we rarely ask ourselves during those
3:02 Payton Moreland? moments when we're volunteering or helping someone we don't really know is, what are their intentions? Do they have an ulterior motive? Because helping someone can be a vulnerable thing, and when help is offered to the wrong person, that can be a slippery slope. Especially if you put your foot down to the wrong person, they might just keep taking from you anyway. And as today's case will prove, that might even mean taking a life. So, let's head now to the picturesque coastal town of Salinas, California, where in 2019, the 71-year-old Dr. Thomas Bouchard is living with his fiance, Judy Earp. Now,
3:47 Payton Moreland? that year, Thomas is finally starting to talk about full retirement after working for decades as a child psychiatrist and being 71 years old. Thomas spent years working at some of the top hospitals in the country, from Cincinnati Children's Hospital to Massachusetts General and even UCLA. But for the last 40 years, he has been a staple at the community hospital of the Monterey Peninsula. In fact, Thomas had been there for so long, he was now seeing the kids of the kids that he had once treated. So, it's safe to say, Thomas Has dedicated his life to helping people, particularly children. And it doesn't get much more altruistic than that.
4:32 Payton Moreland? Which may be why Thomas is having a hard time just letting the job go. While he likes to tell people he's retired, he still treats his patients about four hours every week. He feels like there is some patients that really need him and he's willing to put full retirement on hold just to help them out. But working only four hours a week does give Thomas plenty of time to enjoy the other things that he loves in life, including magic. He had been practicing for years and loves cheering up his patients with the tricks he learned. Thomas takes it pretty seriously, too. He's a member at an exclusive magic club in Los Angeles
5:15 Payton Moreland? called the Magic Castle and has been going to magic conferences for years. For his fiancee Judy, who was 12 years younger, that was part of the charm when she met him back in the early 2000s. At the time, Judy was a realtor who had been divorced with four kids. And she was actually on a trip with some friends in Las Vegas when she met Thomas for the first time. The two connected over the fact that they had both been recently divorced and were embarking on new chapters in their lives. And after a few great conversations by the pool, the two stayed in touch over email. Thomas would actually travel down to LA all the time to visit Judy at her home. But around 2004,
6:00 Payton Moreland? Judy decided to move with her kids up to Salinas and in with Thomas. So safe to say, things are getting pretty serious. There was just one quality of Thomas's that Judy both loved and hated. And that was how generous Thomas was with his money.
6:20 Garrett Moreland? Okay, which? Wouldn't they like that because they're spending it on them?
6:25 Payton Moreland? I think with other people.
6:27 Garrett Moreland? Okay.
6:27 Payton Moreland? But she loves and hates it. Thomas was the kind of person who never really spent much money on himself. He pretty much always wore a variation of the same set of clothes, khaki pants, a white dress shirt and a bow tie. But buying things for himself was not really what brought Thomas joy. He preferred to spend his money on other people to make them happy. And you know those magic tricks I told you about? Sometimes they ended with letting the patient keep the $100 bill that Thomas used for the trick.
6:57 Garrett Moreland? Wow, that's cool.
6:58 Payton Moreland? In fact, he was generous with his patients in other ways, too. If they couldn't afford things like their medication or books and supplies for school, he often chipped in to help, no questions asked. This is the kind of guy you want as your doctor. But it wasn't just his patients. Thomas seemed to have a soft spot for helping other women in need, particularly people who were going through addictions, were single mothers struggling to make ends meet, maybe even sex workers. But there was something else going on with Thomas beginning around 2018 that Judy started to notice. So they've been together for quite a long time at this point.
7:40 Payton Moreland? One day she was approached by a social worker who seemed to be tipped off by one of Thomas's colleagues. And that social worker told Judy that someone was worried Thomas might be experiencing the early stages of dementia. Though I will say this didn't really come as a shock to Judy. She had noticed Thomas getting lost in parking lots, forgetting where he had left his car. Judy's daughter said Thomas didn't recognize her when she ran into him at the grocery store. He was even forgetting how to use the TV remote. And while it seemed gradual, it definitely sent Judy into a panic when Thomas set off on a trip in March of 2019
8:25 Payton Moreland? and didn't tell Judy where he was going.
8:28 Garrett Moreland? So heartbreaking because I'm sure you guys listening as well. Like we know a lot of people with dementia and it's heartbreaking. It's, it's hard. It's one of those things that is honestly, it's hard to put in the words. But it is heartbreaking.
8:43 Payton Moreland? You grieve someone who's still alive.
8:45 Garrett Moreland? Correct. Yes. I think that's a great way to put it.
8:48 Payton Moreland? So on March 1st, Thomas got on a plane and headed to Las Vegas. And he didn't tell Judy that he had done that until he landed at about 5:30 PM that night. And for the next few days, Judy had a hard time getting in touch with him again. He wasn't really answering his phone. He was seeming a bit cagey. So by Sunday, she texts him saying, why aren't you answering me? And he replies with something pretty strange. He just says, I'm out to lunch. Now Judy thinks this is weird because he's called her and chatted plenty of times during a meal before. So she says to him, well, that's never stopped you before. And then he says, I need to charge my phone. And then after that, his phone goes dead.
9:32 Payton Moreland? So Judy keeps texting him throughout the day, but the texts aren't going through. She's getting more and more frantic, especially when she doesn't hear from him that night. But on Monday, the 4th, he is supposed to be headed back from this spontaneous trip. So Judy goes to the airport and waits for his flight to get in. And after all of the passengers get off the plane, there is still no Thomas. Now this is really freaking Judy out. So she goes to the desk and says, hey, I just need to know if my fiance ever even got back on the plane. And they tell her, no, he never checked in for his flight and he actually wasn't on the manifest.
10:11 Garrett Moreland? Are you allowed to, this might be a dumb question. I'm just not sure. Are you allowed to drive if you have dementia?
10:18 Payton Moreland? I think so.
10:19 Garrett Moreland? Are you allowed to fly? Like, like, you know what I'm saying?
10:22 Payton Moreland? Technically, I think you're allowed to do anything. It's just for like your safety.
10:27 Garrett Moreland? No, I get, yes, that I mean, aren't you like, are you a danger to other people? I don't know.
10:30 Payton Moreland? I think your family or your caretakers might decide that.
10:34 Garrett Moreland? Interesting. Yeah.
10:35 Payton Moreland? So Judy at this point decides to call the Las Vegas police. She's like, this whole trip has been so weird. I've barely been able to talk to him. And now he wasn't even on the plane back that he said he was going to be on. She thinks Thomas is missing. Now with Thomas's age and possible dementia, the police actually take it pretty seriously. But they don't have a lot of information to go off of right now. Though on Wednesday, two days after he didn't come home, a friend tries his cellphone again randomly. And now it's turned back on. Only it's not Thomas who answers Thomas's cellphone.
11:15 Garrett Moreland? No way.
11:16 Payton Moreland? The person says, oh, I found this cellphone on the Vegas strip. So wherever Thomas is now, he doesn't have his cellphone with him.
11:25 Garrett Moreland? Okay, okay, anyways.
11:27 Payton Moreland? Though it's not until the following day, March 7th, that there's a real break in this missing persons case. And it's not one anybody was hoping for. So that morning, someone calls 911 to say that they spotted a blue Mercedes abandoned on a dirt road. It's about two miles off the highway, kind of closer to the Lake Mead area, which is about 20 miles away from the Las Vegas strip.
11:52 Garrett Moreland? Good old Lake Mead. We already know enough about that.
11:55 Payton Moreland? Yeah, now when police get there, they see that both of the windows on the Mercedes are rolled down, but there's no one in any of the seats of the car. What they do find inside is a pair of blue latex gloves. There's blood in the backseat of the abandoned car. And on the driver's side, headrest was also blood. And what looks like evidence of a small fire in the passenger seat, like someone had tried to burn the car, but it clearly didn't work. And when they open the trunk, they find a bunch of clothes. They find bedding, they find bloody towels, and it smells terrible. So when they move those things aside,
12:38 Payton Moreland? they already are kind of figuring what they're going to find in this trunk. And they are right.
12:43 Garrett Moreland? No way.
12:44 Payton Moreland? There is a body in the trunk of this abandoned car.
12:47 Garrett Moreland? Okay.
12:48 Payton Moreland? And once they check the pockets and find the ID and credit cards that are still inside, they confirm that this is the missing elderly Dr. Thomas Bouchard.
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14:50 Payton Moreland? Simply Safe, ahead of crime in real time. Also, inside that car, they find what they're pretty sure is the murder weapon, a bloody baseball bat. And obviously, I mean, it goes without saying, this is homicide because dead people can't put themselves in trunks and close it. So they find the bloody baseball bat, and it's a detail that is somewhat confirmed from the autopsy the next day, which states that the cause of death was in fact blunt force trauma to the head. But they also find repeated marks of a small circular shaped injury, which kind of almost looked like the barrel of a gun. So basically, we have a ton of evidence here.
15:33 Payton Moreland? So the next step for police is to find out, okay, well, who does this Mercedes belong to? Which isn't too hard for them. Because after quickly running the VIN number on the vehicle, they find it's registered to a woman named Kelsey Turner. Now, when police start looking into Kelsey, they aren't exactly sure what she and Dr. Thomas have in common. Because Kelsey is a 25-year-old model. She was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, in May of 1993. She was a country girl who was raised on a farm with dreams of one day moving to a big city and finding fame.
16:13 Garrett Moreland? She's country.
16:14 Payton Moreland? She began doing pageants and then turned to modeling, which eventually brought her out to Los Angeles, where she landed a few magazine covers. But Kelsey found most of her fame through Instagram, where she called herself Bad Barbie. She would pose in bikinis. She showed photos of her gun tattoo. She took selfies.
16:35 Garrett Moreland? Wait, like the? Bad Barbie?
16:38 Payton Moreland? Are you thinking Bad Baby?
16:39 Garrett Moreland? Oh, that's who I'm thinking is Bad Baby. The one that was on Dr. Phil, right? Catch Me Outside?
16:43 Payton Moreland? Yes.
16:44 Garrett Moreland? Okay.
16:44 Payton Moreland? Not the same girl.
16:46 Garrett Moreland? Okay, okay, thank you. I was like, wait, this isn't making sense.
16:49 Payton Moreland? Bad Barbie would take selfies in wigs and lingerie. She tried to portray herself as someone who was on the up and up in her career. A woman who was finding success in a tough industry, who was living this glamorous model life. But in reality, Kelsey wasn't making much money from her dreams at all. She was a single mother of two kids, and at 25 years old, had already been divorced twice with no steady income. So a lot of people who knew the real Kelsey wondered, how was she even able to afford some of the things that she was posting about online? Like a brand new house in the Salinas area of California.
17:27 Garrett Moreland? Hmm, okay.
17:28 Payton Moreland? A brand new BMW. She always had new clothes, bags, jewelry, accessories. And the answer to that is Dr. Thomas Bouchard. So remember how I mentioned that Thomas did love to help people?
17:40 Garrett Moreland? Yeah.
17:40 Payton Moreland? Well, a lot of those people were attractive young women that he met on the internet. And while I'm not totally sure how or when Kelsey and Thomas first stumbled upon each other's profiles, I do know that shortly after they began chatting, Thomas seemed to fall for Kelsey. Not only was she a beautiful blonde model, she was a single mom of two just trying to get on her feet. The perfect recipe for disaster for Thomas, who was attracted to both her and the fact that she was down on her luck. This was his sort of thing. So at first, their relationship was just online, transactional, as Kelsey called it. She would send Thomas pictures of herself, and he would send her some cash to help pay her bills.
18:23 Payton Moreland? So this isn't exactly a good old doctor helping.
18:28 Payton Moreland? Someone out, there is definitely some transaction going on here. Eventually, the two began to meet up in person. Thomas would bring her prescription drugs she asked for, then a new bag, and then a new car, then rent on a house not too far away. Thomas told a friend of his that he finally understood what it was like to have a drug addiction. Only Kelsey was his drug of choice. He became obsessed with her. He would do anything she asked of him, even though apparently their relationship never was sexual. Kelsey said it stayed transactional, no matter how much money Thomas gave her. He was her sugar daddy, as she described.
19:13 Payton Moreland? Now, apparently, this wasn't the first time Thomas had found himself in a situation like this. Some sources claimed this was something that happened during his first marriage as well, and might have been what ended it too. But obviously, for a time, he was keeping this relationship of sorts from Judy, his fiance.
19:35 Garrett Moreland? Well, yeah.
19:35 Payton Moreland? Though around 2017, his secret was finally exposed. Judy found some paperwork in Thomas's car one day back in 2017, and it was a lease agreement to a rental property for a woman named Kelsey Turner. And Thomas was the one co-signing for it. Thomas seemingly told Judy the truth about the situation. He's like, no, things aren't sexual. She, I just help her out financially. But it also seemed like Kelsey had been manipulating him into doing a lot more than he was comfortable with. She told him that because she had bad credit, she couldn't qualify for a lease. And if someone didn't co-sign for her, she and her two kids and her mother would be homeless.
20:18 Payton Moreland? So Thomas agreed to sign the lease, but then she left him on the hook for the rent each month. And then the same thing happened with the BMW he got her. According to her, she had nothing to get to work in, so Thomas helped her take out a loan for this vehicle, but then she wasn't making the payments, which obviously leaves Thomas responsible. Meanwhile, Judy noticed the large amounts of cash that were draining quickly from Thomas's accounts. By 2019, Judy says Thomas had given Kelsey at least $750,000 for various things.
20:55 Garrett Moreland? Whoa, seven, is it 750 grand?
20:58 Payton Moreland? Yes, is in total what he had given Kelsey over the years.
21:01 Garrett Moreland? That is a lot of money, dude.
21:03 Payton Moreland? Judy, who was seemingly very dedicated to the relationship and not willing to leave Thomas over the matter, finally came up with a solution she thought might fix things. Get Kelsey out of the Selena's house. In fact, get her out of this state. So she told Thomas to put some distance between himself and Kelsey and to take away that BMW that he was making the payments on. And so after talking to his fiance, he did. But he rented Kelsey a new house in Las Vegas instead. Though Kelsey didn't really seem to mind this change. In fact, she was living it up in Vegas. She had new friends, a new house, a new flashy lifestyle, one that was still being funded by Thomas,
21:47 Payton Moreland? who just seemingly couldn't kick his habit of Kelsey. He even bought her a new car in Vegas, even though he had taken her old one away. It was a blue Mercedes Benz. And so Thomas buys Kelsey this new car and then Kelsey texts Judy, Thomas's fiance. Now, remember, Kelsey's a young girl. She texts Judy and says, quote, "Thanks for taking back the BMW. I look better in a Benz anyways," followed by three middle finger emojis.
22:19 Garrett Moreland? Holy crap.
22:20 Payton Moreland? So Kelsey does not like Judy, who is trying to stop her paychecks from coming in.
22:25 Garrett Moreland? That's insane.
22:26 Payton Moreland? But the harassment between these two didn't stop there. Apparently Kelsey had told Thomas a few times that she would kill Judy if she threatened to take away her home or her car again. By the way, that house she moved to in Vegas, the one Thomas is paying for, she's not living there alone. She's also there with one of her kids, her four-year-old son, two roommates, one of which is like a part-time nanny of her kid, and her 27-year-old boyfriend and former gang member, a guy named John Logan Kennison, who she met in early 2019. But by the end of February, Thomas had apparently had enough. This had really kind of caused an uproar in his life. Because even though Kelsey was now hundreds of miles away, she
23:11 Payton Moreland? was still finding ways to get to his money. Apparently, she had stolen some of his passwords to his online accounts and was using his money to help pay for other things in her life. So by March, Thomas decided he was gonna fly to Vegas and cut Kelsey off in person. And this is why he doesn't really tell Judy where he's going and what he was doing there. He didn't even tell her he was going to Vegas until he was already there that night. It seems like maybe he didn't want her to worry about the fact that he was going to see Kelsey in person. He had innocent motivations, but would Judy be able to understand that after the toxic relationship she had with Kelsey? Which
23:53 Payton Moreland? obviously Judy has a right to be worried, because as we know, Thomas never made it back on that return flight home. And then on March 7, Thomas was found dead in the trunk of Kelsey's car.
24:05 Garrett Moreland? What?
24:05 Payton Moreland? That Mercedes-Benz he had purchased for her.
24:07 Garrett Moreland? It just seems crazy to me that, I mean, I guess all these cases are crazy, but she just killed him?
24:13 Payton Moreland? So, once Judy...
24:16 Payton Moreland? Here's from police. Yes, your husband was found murdered and he was in the back of this girl Kelsey's car. She obviously has no doubt in her mind that Kelsey is responsible for this. And the police are obviously feeling the same way. They just aren't sure why or how. But they quickly get a search warrant for the house Kelsey was living at, the same place that Thomas was staying when he came to visit Vegas. And when they get there, the place is vacant. Neither Kelsey nor any of her roommates are there. But the police do find a few other things of note inside that house. Like an identical set of blue and white striped towels that actually matched the ones in the trunk of the car that were covering Thomas's body.
24:57 Payton Moreland? So now you've tied evidence from the crime scene at the car back to the house that he was staying at with Kelsey. And they also noticed the door to the upstairs bedroom is broken. And it has blood on it. There's also blood in the garage and a very apparent and poor cleanup job. They also find something in there belonging to Thomas, though. It's a notebook of his. It kind of seems like a journal. And in it, Thomas writes about some sort of extortion plan Kelsey was keeping over him. Which actually kind of explains a lot because apparently when Thomas threatened to cut Kelsey off financially a few months earlier,
25:36 Payton Moreland? she actually said that she would go to the police and tell them that she had found child sexual abuse material on his devices.
25:44 Garrett Moreland? Which is so crazy because we see this a lot in cases where a victim is killed and the person who killed them will, they'll continue to drag their name.
25:55 Payton Moreland? Right.
25:55 Garrett Moreland? Because they're not alive to defend themselves.
25:57 Payton Moreland? Right, because I do want to say this is completely unfounded. There was never anything of the sort found on anything Thomas owned.
26:05 Garrett Moreland? We see it happen a lot, even in like courts, even in the courts, like when there's a trial and stuff, right? They'll just continue to drag someone's name and make stuff up to try to get the person who is in question off and
26:18 Garrett Moreland? I don't know, it just, it really irks me.
26:20 Payton Moreland? But in Thomas's mind, he was like, okay, even though this isn't real, just these allegations alone in today's day and age will ruin my career, my reputation, my legacy, everything. No one's gonna wait around to get to the other side to find out that it wasn't true.
26:37 Garrett Moreland? Yeah, which, I mean, he's right.
26:40 Payton Moreland? So Thomas couldn't let her even utter such a horrible falsehood about him. So this is why he moves her to Vegas and keeps paying for things. So at this point, he's kind of locked into this. He doesn't want to be doing it anymore.
26:51 Garrett Moreland? I mean, it's illegal at this point, right? It's blackmail. Like, yeah, he could go to the cops and stuff, but then she's still just gonna talk trash on him.
26:59 Payton Moreland? And it's probably why he never even went to the police after he found out that she was stealing from him by getting his passwords. Not to mention, a lot of it had to do with some shame Thomas was feeling over having been suckered into this sugar daddy relationship with a 25-year-old woman while he had a fiance. This is a woman he fell for and was willingly helping out at first that was now kind of blackmailing him. So as I mentioned, Kelsey and all of her roommates fled the house the second news broke that Thomas's body was discovered. And they all turned off their phones too, which kind of implicates all of the roommates in the house, not just Kelsey, when all of them leave and try to cover up their tracks.
27:44 Payton Moreland? So an arrest warrant is issued for Kelsey Turner. And an FBI task force actually finds her back in California in the Stockton area, hiding out with her four-year-old son. So she's finally taken into custody on March 21st, 2019, but she's not willing to talk. At this point, they also find Kelsey's new boyfriend, John Kennison, who's been hiding out at his mom's house. And it's the same deal with him. Then they put out a warrant for one of Kelsey's roommates, whose fingerprints were found inside the Mercedes, which just like, which she cannot basically explain. A woman named Diana Peña, the one who was acting as the part-time nanny for the kids. So boyfriend's arrested, Kelsey herself is arrested, and her nanny Diana is also arrested.
28:29 Payton Moreland? She actually turns herself into police. And Diana comes in, willing to tell detectives everything that went down in the days leading up to Thomas's death, which...
28:39 Garrett Moreland? It's pretty funny because I feel like this actually happens a lot now where... And the police know it. If there's multiple people involved, someone's gonna crack. One of them will crack and will spill everything at some point.
28:52 Payton Moreland? And it's most likely gonna be the nanny, not the actual person connecting you to the victim and their boyfriend. All right, guys, we are jumping into an ad and it is for Wayfair. For all things hosting, Wayfair delivers high-quality, customer-trusted products for your home so you can host and celebrate without the stress, which is so, so important with the holidays coming up. Wayfair helps you create a home that stands up to real life with quality products, great value and trusted reviews. Products are high-vetted by product specialists using a 10-point quality inspection. And you can shop thousands of products across every style and budget, whether you're simply replacing an appliance or transforming your home from top to bottom for the holiday season.
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31:42 Payton Moreland? Thomas showed up at the house on March 1st, as we know. And while it seems like he tried to have some tough conversations with Kelsey that night, he literally flies out there to talk to her in person to try to figure this out. These conversations didn't appear to be productive because Thomas stayed at the home that evening and was still there the following day. That night, Kelsey and Thomas went to pick Diana up from the Vegas Strip where she was also working as a bartender. And on the way back, Kelsey asked Thomas if she could use his phone to plug in the GPS for directions. And apparently while she had his phone, she found something. Text messages between Thomas and Kelsey's mother were on Thomas's phone.
32:26 Garrett Moreland? Wait a second.
32:27 Payton Moreland? No, these conversations were more about the well being of Kelsey's four year old son. So basically, Thomas is texting her mother saying like, hey, here's what's going on. I'm really worried about Kelsey. This, she doesn't seem to be in a very good stage of life. I'm worried about the little boy. And Kelsey found these messages as basically him threatening the custody of her child. And this sent Kelsey into a rage. She began hitting Thomas as he tried to calm her down. Eventually, they do make it back to the house, but things just get worse from there. Kelsey continued screaming at Thomas, again, bringing up the false accusations of child exploitation material and that she planned to ruin his life if he did anything to take away her son.
33:11 Payton Moreland? As things looked like they were gonna turn violent again, Thomas actually ran and locked himself in Kelsey's son's bedroom to try and escape the situation.
33:20 Garrett Moreland? Wow.
33:21 Payton Moreland? Luckily, the four-year-old boy was with another one of Kelsey's friends at another house this night, so he didn't witness what came next. Because at this point, Kelsey's boyfriend, John, got involved. I want you to keep in mind, this is an elderly person with onset symptoms of dementia.
33:39 Garrett Moreland? Yeah.
33:39 Payton Moreland? That these young kids are...
33:43 Garrett Moreland? They killed. I mean, there's no other way to put it. Yeah.
33:46 Payton Moreland? Ganging up on, I mean...
33:48 Garrett Moreland? It's horrible. It's absolutely horrible.
33:50 Payton Moreland? So, apparently, John, at this point, kicks in her son's door and went in with a baseball bat and began violently beating the doctor.
33:58 Garrett Moreland? Get out of here.
33:59 Payton Moreland? So Diana claims, when she's talking to police, that at this point, she steps in. She took the bat away from John, got Thomas a glass of water, told him she was gonna get him to a hospital. She got him downstairs and into the backseat of Kelsey's Mercedes. And I guess Diana doesn't drive because she said she waited for Kelsey to calm down and then come drive him to the hospital. Now, at this point, Thomas starts pleading with Kelsey, saying he won't report her. He'll tell the doctors he was mugged. He won't mention her name at all. He's like, "Listen, just get me to the hospital." Mainly because he's terrified at this point that he's not gonna make it out of this house alive. And unfortunately, his fears are founded.
34:38 Garrett Moreland? Oh, I am so heartbroken right now, cuz that is so sad.
34:42 Payton Moreland? Because Kelsey comes down to the car.
34:43 Garrett Moreland? Oh, my gosh.
34:44 Payton Moreland? She doesn't calm down. Instead, she gets more erratic. She orders Diana to get back inside the house, start cleaning everything up, the blood, out of her son's room. And Diana, who is terrified of these people who just started beating a 70-plus-year-old man, does what she's told. Meanwhile, Diana hears another argument breakout downstairs. Kelsey starts yelling for John to knock Thomas out. And by the time Diana goes downstairs to try to intervene again, she sees John coming back in from the garage, and he has blood all over him, and he has a bloody pistol in his hand. That's when Kelsey looks at Diana and says, Thomas is dead. Which, if you think back on the autopsy, this does make sense. They believe Thomas was hit with
35:27 Payton Moreland? a baseball bat and also a pistol of some kind.
35:30 Garrett Moreland? I bet you, she thought that she was gonna get killed as well. She's like, what do I do now?
35:35 Payton Moreland? Right. So afterwards, I mean, I guess we can't really, we can only take her story that she gave police, which she totally could have altered. But afterwards, Kelsey starts coming up with a cover story for all of them, something about Thomas going back to California with some guy they had never seen. Meanwhile, Diana, Kelsey, her son, and John all go to stay at the Mandalay Bay for the next day or so. And during that time, Kelsey and John talk about getting rid of Thomas's phone, but Diana says she's not sure what they actually ever did with it. Though it seems they just left it on the strip somewhere, and that's when that random stranger answered when Thomas's friend called a few days later. Then the next day, March 4th, Diana says John drove off in Kelsey's Mercedes,
36:18 Payton Moreland? and Diana says she never saw the car again after that. At the same time, Diana, Kelsey, and her son went back to the house, hired a cleaning service to come by, told them they had a party that had gotten out of hand. After that, they all left the house and stayed at another hotel before Kelsey eventually went off to California with her son, where she was finally arrested a few weeks later on March 21st. Kelsey and John both pled not guilty to the murder charges. And Diana actually accepts a plea deal to the lesser charge of accessory to murder for not reporting the crime in the first place. Diana received three years probation for her role. She later tells the press, "If I could go back and change how I handled the situation,
37:00 Payton Moreland? I would, but I don't know exactly how I would because I was scared, but being scared is not really an excuse." Finally, in May of 2022, John Logan Kennison also pleads guilty to murder. He's given 18 to 45 years behind bars. But before that, while Kelsey was waiting for her trial, she actually gave birth. Based on the timing of events and the way John held up a sign during one of her hearings that read, "Love you, little mama," people believe he was the father and that she might have actually been pregnant when they killed Dr. Thomas Bouchard.
37:36 Payton Moreland? But Kelsey never ended up making it to trial because she later accepted an Alfred plea to second degree murder and was given 10 to 25 years in prison.
37:45 Garrett Moreland? Oh, that's it?
37:46 Payton Moreland? Yeah.
37:46 Garrett Moreland? Are you kidding me?
37:47 Payton Moreland? Listen to this. She'll be eligible for parole in March of 2029 at just 36 years.
37:52 Garrett Moreland? Oh my gosh. No, no, that's not okay.
37:55 Payton Moreland? Sorry, 26 to 36? Like, that's not nothing.
37:58 Garrett Moreland? No, no, no. You either sit in there for life or...
38:00 Payton Moreland? Yeah, that's not like...
38:01 Garrett Moreland? Get out of here.
38:01 Payton Moreland? She's gonna get out and be able to live life. Her whole life has not passed her by.
38:06 Garrett Moreland? I'm not okay with that. That's wild. That's so messed up.
38:10 Payton Moreland? Judy, obviously, Thomas's fiance thinks this is a terrible idea. She pointed out that during the early hearings, Kelsey was smiling and laughing, posing for cameras. It's clear she wasn't taking anything seriously. Judy called her an evil person who deserves to spend the rest of her life behind bars. And honestly, I don't really disagree here. For Judy, Kelsey did irreparable damage to her life, her love, and her livelihood. She took things from Thomas and Judy that they will never get back. In the end, Thomas's generosity was both maybe his greatest quality and his downfall. And now, the woman who truly loved him is left to suffer the consequences.
38:50 Payton Moreland? This case truly, truly broke my heart because I, I think the way life unfolds and the trauma that people have, there is probably some reasonable explanation for why Thomas was wanting to help out these young women in the first place. And the fact that at some point he said, "Hey, I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore." And him saying no led to his death as an elderly man is actually so devastating because Kelsey was in her twenties. She literally could have just wiped her hands and moved on. Like, you have a sugar daddy. It's over. Move on. It's worth killing over? It's disgusting.
39:32 Garrett Moreland? It's horrible. I just, oh, it makes me so sad. I mean, especially when people... I mean, like, he can't defend himself. He can't do anything. Like, it's... It's just horrible. It's absolutely horrible and they should both be in prison until they die. I don't really care. Like there's no other, I don't have any other words for it. They should be in prison till they die and that should be that, but here we are.
39:55 Payton Moreland? There's just a different level to something of killing children, differently abled people, elderly people. It takes a different level of evil to be able to do that and then laugh in the cameras about it afterwards. I truly hope that Judy receives justice at some point, but from the sounds of it, it doesn't seem like we're ever gonna get there. All right, you guys, that was our case for this week and we will see you next time with another one. I love it.
40:24 Garrett Moreland? And I hate it.
40:24 Payton Moreland? Goodbye.
40:32 Speaker 01 You know that feeling. Too many updates, too many meetings, too many things falling through the cracks. Monday.com was built for that gap. The AI work platform designed from the ground up for people and agents to work side by side and deliver more together. Drafting the brief, flagging risks, running a competitive scan, your agent can do it all. And the best part, anyone can build one, even you. Try it. Create your first Monday agent today at monday.com.
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