Julia Niswender’s roommates are gone for the weekend, but then one stops by the apartment on Monday to pick up some things for class.
She heads out without seeing or talking to Julia. The next day the roommate realizes she hasn’t seen or talked to Julia in two days. The bedroom door is locked so she calls security at the apartment complex to check on her roommate. The guard shows up with police, and using a master key to open the door, walks into Julia Niswender’s room. It appears as if a home invasion has taken place.
Calling out for Julia and getting no reply, the officer walks toward the bathroom door, finding a pair of white latex gloves on the floor in front of the bathroom door. They are twisted and intertwined with each other.
Opening the bathroom door, officers discover Julia’s lifeless, nude body, face down submerged in the bathtub filled with water. Her hands are pulled behind her back, her feet are together, and her cell phone is found underneath her body. Niswender’s clothes have been cut off, except for a sleeve, and are left on the bathroom floor.
Niswender’s room looks like it has been tossed. Clothes are all over the floor of the room, drawers are left open, contents from a plastic organizer drawer have been dumped on the floor, and the contents of Niswender’s purse is dumped out onto her bed.
A black-and-white zebra-striped pillowcase is missing from a pillow, her keys to the apartment are missing from a lanyard, and police note that it looks like a home invasion took place, but wrapped Christmas presents, an iPod, computer, and tv are not taken from the room.
The night her body is found, officers note how her mother is pacing back and forth at the police station, while her stepfather seems stoic as he sits in the lobby.
The first of several red flags that led investigators to take a closer look at Jim Turnquist. Looking at Turnquist, the police ask for his laptop, and he complies, they ask for a polygraph, and he complies twice, and passes twice. Investigators consult with the FBI and are encouraged to take a good look at Turnquist. Turnquist is named a Person of Interest, and he is charged, and not in the death of Julia Niswender, but in child pornography.
There are 300,000 pictures on his laptop, 7 of which lead to charges of child porn. At trial, experts testified the 7 photos are in temp folders and could have been pop-up ads, and you can’t even tell the age of the people in the pictures.
Turnquist is acquitted of the child porn charges. The murder case of Julia Niswender turns cold.
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[Feature Photo: Julia Niswender/Handout]
