Megan Renee Turner, Victor Lee Turner, and Justin Turner (Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office)
The father and stepmother of a 5-year-old South Carolina boy who was sexually assaulted and killed have been arrested more than three decades after the child’s body was found stuffed into the cabinet of the couple’s camper. Victor Lee Turner and Megan Renee Turner were taken into custody on Monday and charged with capital murder in the 1989 slaying of young Justin Turner, authorities announced.
According to a news release from the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office, authorities believed that Justin on March 3, 1989, left his home at about 11 a.m. and was on his way to a friend’s house to catch the bus for school when he vanished. Megan Turner, who at the time went by the name Pamela Turner, told authorities that she did not feel well that day so she remained at the house and did not accompany her stepson to the bus as she normally did.
“That afternoon when Pamela Turner went to meet the school bus she found that Justin was not on it nor had he been at school that day,” the sheriff’s office wrote. “The neighbor whom Justin was supposed to meet that morning had gone outside with her grandson to meet the bus but never saw Justin that morning.”
It was later revealed that Justin never made it to the bus stop that morning and was absent from school.
A multi-agency search of the surrounding area, which included civilian volunteers, went on for two days before Victor Turner found the boy’s dead body “in a cabinet located in a camper in the yard of the residence.” A subsequent autopsy determined that Justin’s manner of death was a homicide and the cause of death was ligature strangulation. Authorities also said that he had been sexually assaulted with some kind of cylindrical object.
In court documents obtained by Charleston CBS affiliate WCSC, authorities said that both of the Turners exhibited “deliberate actions and obvious behavior” indicating they “knew exactly” where Justin’s body had been hidden. Documents also detailed Victor Turner’s demeanor after he located his son’s body.
“Rather than react to finding his son and personally checking for any indication of life whatsoever, (Victor Turner) instead backed out of the camper commenting, ‘He’s in there, my son is in there. Somebody’s hurt him,’” a warrant reportedly states. “(Victor Turner) later told investigators, ‘He looked dead. I could feel that something was wrong with him. I did NOT touch him.’”
Victor Turner also allegedly made inculpatory statements prior to the discovery of the body, such as asking authorities what would happen if a family member had “done harm to the victim, such as killed him.”
“Within this transparent question, an apparent awareness of (Justin’s) fate was revealed prior to the discovery of (Justin’s) body,” authorities wrote.
About nine months after the body was discovered, Justin’s stepmother was indicted by a grand jury and charged with his murder. However, prosecutors later dropped those charges due to insufficient evidence.
The sheriff’s office said that its Cold Case Unit reopened the case in 2021 and began reevaluating evidence utilizing new technology that was not available at the time of Justin’s murder.
“We have a lot of forensic evidence. We got here because of new technology and forensic medicine,” Sheriff Duane Lewis said during a Wednesday afternoon news conference. “We all know how things have progressed over the years and we kept pushing and plugging and pulling to finally get what we needed to make an arrest.”
Lewis, who at one point said, “I can’t think of a more tragic, horrendous murder,” also told reporters that the Turners haven’t taken much of an interest in their son’s death, moving away and cutting off communication with the community.
“Isn’t that strange? I never got one phone call, one phone call from his daddy or stepmother (saying) ‘What are y’all doing about my son’s death?’ Not one,” Lewis said. “What does that tell you?”
The Turners are currently being held in the Hill-Finklea Detention Center without bond, jail records show.
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