Cheating is F'd Up - Part One

Cheating Is F'd Up Part One Recap
Written by Brandi Abbott

This episode starts with a content warning for sexual assault/domestic violence/violence.

In 2010, while the NC SBI Crime Lab audit was happening, a defense attorney named Brad Bannon was concerned about a recent case of his. Brad was the type of lawyer who always thought just 30 more minutes of work would break the case – those 30 more minutes would often turn into hours, days and even weeks. The infamous Duke Lacrosse Rape Case was one of these. A woman accused David Evans, Reade Seligmann, and Collin Finnerty of sexual assault. Then District Attorney Mike Nifong supplied thousands of pages of DNA evidence done by an independent lab because he didn’t like that the SBI investigation revealed that the boys were innocent. Brad noticed that the images of the DNA didn’t match and did a ton of research into DNA so that he could understand it. This led to him being able to tear apart the expert witness in court and the boys were found not guilty. So, that’s the kind of lawyer Brad is.

In 2007, Kirk Turner was a successful dentist who had been married to Jennifer Turner for 23 years. Jennifer was a horse lover who wanted to start a breeding farm. She had nine horses and this took up a lot of her time, and occasionally Kirk would help her out after work. Everyone was shocked when Kirk announced he was leaving Jennifer and their daughter asked him if he was cheating on Jennifer. He denied it but he was lying. Jennifer took him to court and he was ordered to pay her $30,000 a month. She then found out about the affair and sued the other woman in an alienation of affection suit. North Carolina is one of the few states who recognizes alienation of affection and it allows a spouse to sue a third party for wrongful acts that deprived one of a lack of affection from their spouse. This lawsuit pissed off Kirk and he told Jennifer that there was more than one way to end a marriage… Which is ominous.

On September 12, 2007, Kirk and his friend, Greg Smithson, went to pick up some welding equipment from the garage/shed (pretty sure here in NC, we would just call it a “shop”) at the house that he and Jennifer had previously shared, but now it was just Jennifer living there. Within a couple of minutes, Greg heard screaming or fighting, and a couple of minutes after that Greg limped out of the shed, covered in blood. Smithson didn’t know what was happening and ran into the shop to call 911 – and that’s when he found Jennifer’s dead body.

The police arrived at the scene and eventually Chief Deputy Jerry Hartman was called and he arrived a few hours after both Kirk and Jennifer’s body had been taken to the hospital. Hartman went into the shop and examined the scene. There was blood everywhere. He saw clothes in the office area including Kirk’s t-shirt and jeans, which had to be cut from him. Hartman left the scene to get a search warrant so he could check everything out properly. Keith wants to know why he needs a search warrant at an obvious crime scene and Priya is like well we have scientists not being scientists so at least the cop is acting like a cop!

Hartmant got the warrant and was back within a few hours which is when the shirt and jeans were photographed. Because there was blood on the boxes, table, floor, and basically all over the place, a discussion took place between Hartman and the on scene investigator, they wanted to bring in a bloodstain pattern analyst and called in the SBI Crime Lab.

The bloodstained clothing was taken to the sheriff’s office and Hartman went over to the hospital where Kirk was. Kirk had been stabbed twice in the leg and had lost a ton of blood. Kirk told Hartman that Jennifer had attacked him with a decorative spear that was leaning against the wall. Priya takes a moment to ask what the fuck is going on in North Carolina with all of these rich white people just having deco