2 sought in killing of doctor whose body found near Las Vegas
Warrants have been issued for two more suspects in the killing of a 71-year-old California psychiatrist whose body was found in the trunk of an abandoned car last month near Las Vegas, court records show.
The warrants for Jon Logan Kennison and Diana Nicole Pena were granted Friday in Las Vegas Justice Court, according to the records. They face charges of conspiracy to commit murder and murder with a deadly weapon of an older person in the death of Dr. Thomas Burchard .
Their co-defendant, 25-year-old Kelsey Nichole Turner, faces the same charges. She was arrested March 21 in Stockton, California, and remained in custody at the San Joaquin County Jail on Monday awaiting extradition to Clark County.
Turner’s connection to Kennison and Pena was not clear.
The psychiatrist’s body was found March 7 in the trunk of Turner’s Mercedes-Benz C300 in a patch of desert along East Lake Mead Boulevard, about 7 miles east of Los Feliz Street, Las Vegas police said. He died of blunt force injuries to the head, according to the Clark County coroner’s office.
According to Turner’s arrest report, Burchard had flown to Las Vegas to visit her on March 1, but the report does not say how the two knew each other.
In a phone interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal last month, Burchard’s longtime girlfriend, Judy Earp, also did not elaborate on the pair’s relationship but said that Burchard had been paying Turner’s rent in Salinas, California.
Before Burchard recently had decided to stop paying her rent, Earp said, Turner had gotten about $300,000 from him over the time they knew each other.
“The reason he quit paying the rent was because the lease was up,” Earp said of Burchard. “He has told her several months before that he was not going to continue. He actually paid her money to leave.”
Turner’s Facebook and Instagram accounts identify her as a model who has appeared in magazines such as Playboy Italia and Maxim.
Clark County Detention Center records show that neither Kennison nor Pena were in custody as of Monday morning.
Contact Rio Lacanlale at rlacanlale@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Follow @riolacanlale on Twitter.
