Ex-Playboy model is sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison for role in the ... trends now
A former model accused of murdering a California psychiatrist and stuffing his body in the trunk of a car after he stopped paying her rent has been sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison.
According to Las Vegas-based reporter present during the proceedings, 29-year-old Caroline Bleakley, who has posed for both Playboy and Maxim, wept as the sentence was read.
The blonde pinup's conviction comes two months after she owned up to the murder of 71-year-old Dr. Thomas Burchard, a California psychiatrist the said she had been dating before his body was found in her car in March 2019.
The grim discovery saw Bleakley and then boyfriend Jon Kennison arrested, with the former eventually entering an Alford plea in November.
An Alford plea refers to a guilty plea in which a defendant maintains their innocence but admits the prosecution's evidence would likely result in a guilty verdict.
The legal maneuver had allowed Bleakley to skip trial, while also receiving a slighter sentence for the second-degree murder charge. She has the right to appeal the sentence.
Former model Caroline Bleakley, seen here in court in 2019, was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison Wednesday
The 29-year-old former pinup, who has posed for both Playboy and Maxim, had been accused of murdering a California psychiatrist and stuffing his body in the trunk of a car after he stopped paying her rent
Bleakley, maintains her innocence of the heinous murder, but accepts the punishment of a guilty verdict for the sole second-degree murder charge.
Kennison last year already pleaded guilty to the same charge, admitting to prosecutors that he bludgeoned Burchard to death with a baseball bat and helped Turner hide the doctor's corpse in Turner's blue Mercedes-Benz C300.
After more than a year of insisting on his and Turner's innocence, the suspect was sentenced to 18 to 45 years in prison.
Prosecutors said that strange love triangle began with a May-December relationship between Turner and Burchard, a well-known, semiretired child psychiatrist in nearby California.
The decomposing body of 71-year-old Dr Thomas Burchard (left) was discovered in the trunk of Turner's (right) car on March 7, 2019, on a deserted road in rural Nevada
Renowned for his generosity, the doctor often entertained patients at his practice with magic tricks, and even after retiring, kept up a four-day workweek so that his patients would have the care they needed.
The apparently well-off practitioner's generosity, attorneys said, would ultimately lead to his untimely death.
Investigators said Turner and Burchard at some point before his death began dating, and entered an arrangement where the child psychiatrist was paying her rent for at least a year.
During that time, prosecutors said the former supermodel amassed a small fortune of more than $300,000 from her much older beneficiary, who was also paying the $3,200 monthly rent for her and her other beau's posh Las Vegas apartment.
However, in November of 2019, the payments suddenly stopped, and Burchard traveled from California to Vegas to tell Turner that he could no longer foot the bill, which spurred a physical altercation on a desert road in rural Nevada.
Turner and her then-boyfriend allegedly bludgeoned Burchard to death with a bat, and stuffed his body into the trunk of Turner's luxury vehicle.
Accomplice Kennison last year already pleaded guilty to the same charge, admitting to prosecutors that he bludgeoned Burchard to death with a baseball bat and helped Turner hide the doctor's corpse in Turner's blue Mercedes-Benz C300
Quickly tracked down and within days arrested, the ex-pinup's fate had been up in the air for almost three years prior to today's ruling - which she has a chance to appeal
Judy Earp, Burchard’s other girlfriend of 17 years, said her then-partner had been providing for the model over the course of several years, and described Turner 'as evil as Charles Manson' in a brief interview to Las Vegas ABC affiliate KTNV.
'The last conversation I had with him, he had to go to Las Vegas to check things out because she was a compulsive liar,' the grieving woman said back in 2019.
When Buchard failed to get off a flight returning from Las Vegas in March 2019. Days later, he was found inside the trunk of Turner’s abandoned car.
The car, found on Silver State Route 147, was reported to Las Vegas police after a man driving through the area with his children saw that it was parked alone, with one of its windows shattered by a rock.
As investigators inventoried the car further, however, the psychiatrist’s body savaged body was discovered, stuffed inside the trunk. At the time, police revealed to the public that Burchard had been bludgeoned to death by some kind of a blunt instrument.
Turner and Kennison were quickly tracked down and within days arrested, paving the way for the
