Forensic Files - Season 12, Episode 3 - Cold Hearted - Full Episode | Forensic Files

a young farmen's untimely death raised suspicions when a young policeman died the same way
it was no coincidence scientists wondered if these tiny crystals were the cause [Music]
a fireman's job is exceptionally dangerous and for randy thompson the year 2000 was particularly troublesome
first he fell off a fire truck in [ __ ] georgia and broke his nose when he had surgery to repair the damage
he developed a life-threatening staph infection the doctors told him this is a very very
serious situation you can die from this very easily randy survived that but his health problems continued
one of his friends found him sprawled on his kitchen floor vomiting and incoherent
he started hallucinating he looked at me said get back in your damn cage now look
i said what get in your cage what are you talking about randy i said get in your cage then i realized
he thought he was talking to his bird this was diagnosed as a severe stomach virus
but gradually he improved thanks to help from his common-law wife lynn every time i talk to him he sounded
stronger and stronger and he said lynn made me grilled cheese with sweet tea he said i held it down didn't throw it up
i said well good right now so that's good so maybe you're on the you're on the uphill side of this
days later his condition deteriorated and randy thompson died horrible a daddy taken from his children
for no reason a man taken from a career that he loved for no reason at randy's autopsy toxicology tests
found no trace of drugs or alcohol in his system but the medical examiner found evidence
of heart trouble he did have a large heart he did have some significant coronary artery disease
and so as a consequence then i described this gentleman's sudden unexpected death
with his heart disease that was hard for us to swallow because he had never had any
heart problems before i was devastated it was a an experience i don't ever want to have again
randy left behind his common-law wife lynn and their two young children he was just 32 years old
the very last thing he asked me was do you think i'm gonna die as time passed randy thompson's friends
and family gradually came to terms with his untimely death until a few weeks later
when randy's mother got a letter from a total stranger the mother of a dead policeman
from the next town over the contents of the letter were shocking i want to share my sorrow in the loss of
your son randy my son glenn died six years ago mysteriously i didn't really know what to think
everything she told me was exactly what happened to randy [Music] a few weeks after randy thompson's death
his mother got a letter i want to share my sorrow in the loss of your son randy it was from a woman who claimed her son
died under similar circumstances and suggested the two deaths were somehow related i was shocked that her son
and my son died the exact same way the report from the hospital the autopsy reports everything was just the same
nita thompson did not believe me she kept saying that can't be true that can't be true
six years earlier glenn turner a police officer had the same symptoms as randy thompson
he was so sick i could hear his voice shaking when he talked to me he just said he had an unbelievable stomach
virus he couldn't get rid of it he was vomiting couldn't stop vomiting he had diarrhea and he's just basically
said man i've never been sick like this he was also incoherent and hallucinating
his wife said he'd had a really bad night that in the middle of the night he had got up began to hallucinate he began
to run around the house he pulled out his weapon he thought there was intruders outside intruders
trying to get inside the house glenn's wife coaxed him back into bed the next morning he appeared to be
better he'd called me he was going to go to work the next day and i thought that you know he was sounding
good and i thought that he was going to be fine but a few hours later glenn turner died
the medical examiner made the statement in the autopsy that he died with a irregular heartbeat
that was nothing that he ever had a problem with glenn's mother immediately suspected
foul play she asked his friends in law enforcement to investigate his death but she got nowhere
they kept telling me that he died of natural causes and there was no reason to go into any further because it cost
too much money and that there was no foul play in his life i still had strong suspicions that there
was something else involved in it but the me stated that's what it was and i'm not a medical examiner so i pretty much
had to accept it and that's how it stood until six years later when the turner family learned that
randy thompson died the same way it was difficult to fathom how two civil servants in two neighboring towns both
in their early thirties died so suddenly until both families realized they had something else in common
the two men were both living with the same woman when they died lynn turner i couldn't turn to get on the phone
quick enough i called them lead investigator and i just basically said you need to go out there and seal off
the apartment do what you need to do because i'm telling you there's no way uh you could have two young guys like
this pass away when questioned lynn turner claimed it was just a tragic coincidence
and local prosecutors found no evidence the two deaths were connected after all lynn turner had no criminal history i
actually just thought that it was really really bad luck that lynn had been involved with two men who
had died that way and friends pointed out that lynn's common-law husband randy thompson had
very little life insurance just 35 000 dollars hardly enough to kill for and toxicology tests on both randy
thompson and glenn turner found no evidence of drugs or alcohol in their systems
we still had strong suspicions that something she had done to him that caused his death but at the time
i'm not i'm just a police officer i'm not an m.e i couldn't prove it then investigators made a startling
discovery even though randy thompson had only 35 000 worth of life insurance lynn was in
a big hurry to collect it we were able to determine through cell phone records that on the day of randy's
funeral between the time of the service in the church and the service that was held at the cemetery
lynn was on her cell phone trying to contact the insurance company maybe there was more to the death of
these two men than first appeared glenn must have had something to do with some of this
because there is no way two young man police officer and a firefighter dying at a young age without somebody doing
something what are the chances that two civil servants both in their early 30s would
die under mysterious circumstances from heart disease the southeast part of the country leads the nation in
cardiovascular disease and in our office it is not uncommon that we see young men men of mr thompson's age who
have bad heart disease toxicology tests on the first victim policeman glenn turner showed no signs
of alcohol or illegal drugs in his system but during randy thompson's autopsy the medical examiner found
calcium oxalate crystals in his kidneys these could be the result of prescription medications
or it could be a sign of poisoning the first thing i did was reach across my desk and pick up the phone and call
the toxicology department and ask that an ethylene glycol test be performed ethylene glycol is the chemical name for
antifreeze when we ran the sample from randy thompson and analyzed for ethylene glycol the results came back negative
for a significant quantity of ethylene glycol but the medical examiner had a hard time
believing that so i thought that was very very strange and bizarre then dr caponen learned
what happened to lynn turner's first husband glenn six years earlier on a hunch he reviewed glenn turner's autopsy
report i looked at all the tissues and polarized the lung in the kidney as i do in all of my
cases and to my surprise there were oxalate crystals in glenn turner's kidneys so dr caponen went back to the
toxicology lab and asked them to recheck the test results on randy thompson's tissue samples
and the lab discovered they'd made a mathematical error i immediately realized that i had made
an error in calculating the original concentration of ethylene glycol and randy thompson's flood and in fact it
was off by a factor of 10. when we made the appropriate correction for the mathematical air that i had made
suddenly became a a lethal level of ethylene glycol i've been doing this for [Music]
almost 20 years now and this is the first time that such a mistake has has ever been been brought to my
attention the medical examiner now knew that randy thompson's death was a homicide
based on the corrected toxicology report then it was quite obvious that mr thompson died as a consequence of an
acute ethylene glycol intoxication or poisoning when i found out randy had died from
antifreeze poisoning i knew when they exhumed glenn's body when they took those tissues
i knew they were going to find out he died from the exact same causes and that's precisely what happened
officials exhumed glenn turner's body retested his tissue samples and confirmed there was a lethal amount of antifreeze
in his system it's a mixed feeling because you're happy that you've got something happening but
you're not happy to hear what you hear investigators did some digging into lynn turner's background
and uncovered more incriminating evidence first was her visit to an animal shelter
shortly before randy thompson's murder lynn had inquired about what the animal shelter uses
to euthanize animals what chemical they use she had claimed that she had a stray cat
problem and was wondering what it was that that she could do about them and the manager of lynn turner's bank
told investigators lynn had serious financial problems she had a lot of debts outstanding a lot
of credit cards were she was being charged for uh non-sufficient funds for late charges
adding up to several thousand dollars monthly lynn had a middle class income but she
spent like she was a millionaire i mean she lived well beyond her means and that wasn't all
lynn had gone until the bank a few weeks before randy died and told one of the bank officials that she would have
everything taken care of all her payments mortgages everything etc taken care of
in just a few weeks prosecutors believe the motive for both murders was money lynn turner was the beneficiary of her
first husband's 150 000 life insurance policy and also received his pension payments of 750 a month
and she was all set to collect 200 000 from randy thompson's life insurance policy but investigators found evidence
that randy double-crossed her lynn had topped randy into buying life insurance of 200 000
and she was the beneficiary of that policy but when after randy passed away she found out that the policy had left
and she would not be getting that money this also raised the possibility that randy might have suspected lynn was
trying to harm him investigators also learned that a container of anti-freeze had been found
in the home lynn shared with her husband glenn turner although at the time no one found this
suspicious so lynn turner was arrested on two counts of first degree murder she insisted she was innocent
and was sure there wasn't enough evidence to convict her lynn was smart lynn wanted to be a
police officer she knew a lot she knew how to commit the crime she knew what they'd look for and she
knew how to create an alibi lynne turner met her first husband glenn while working as a 9-1-1 operator
but less than two years later glenn told friends the marriage was in trouble he said that they'd only had sex twice
after they were married he said that she had some kind of female problem and she
wasn't able to have sex of course we're all thinking to ourselves well we we i could name three or four other
guys she's seeing that she's having sex with of course i couldn't say anything to him
glenn also told friends lynn was spending money faster than he could earn it he said here i am working 365 days
working all these part-time jobs sometimes two or three jobs a day i've about gotta paid off and here she just
rung them all back up again i mean she just had a stack of credit cards and just spent spent spent spent
while lynne was married to glenn she met randy thompson a fireman from a nearby town
randy's family says lynn lied about her marital status lynn had told us she had been married
but that she was divorced she told all of that told randy that we assume she was divorced lynn's
primary motive for murdering glenn was for the the money i think his secondary motive was to to
be with randy thompson the forensic evidence suggests lynn put antifreeze in glenn's food
possibly in gelatin since this was found in his stomach during his autopsy [Music]
glenn felt violently ill and died lynn collected a hundred fifty thousand dollars from his life insurance along
with his pension of seven hundred fifty dollars a month i knew she didn't love him
so i knew it was pending gloom for him and i figured she'd use him for everything she could use him for then
she'd spit him back out but i never thought that she'd kill him just a few weeks after glenn's funeral
lynn moved in with randy thompson although they had two children together they were never legally married
probably because lynn would have had to forfeit glenn turner's pension i believe that's why she didn't marry
randy she'd have lost glenn's pension by remarrying so she didn't marry she's smart
she knew that money was out it wasn't long before randy thompson told friends just as glenn turner had
that he was unhappy with lynn it was almost comical the way they fought cat and dog just back and forth back and
forth back and forth my ass was why do you keep calling her why do you even take phone calls
well she's the mom of my kids and my wife okay whatever an employee of a local animal shelter
said that lynn wanted to buy the chemicals they used to euthanize cats but they refused to sell them to her
she didn't want to use antifreeze again she checked around she wanted to use something different to kill randy
but she wasn't confident enough to use anything else she went back to what she used before
randy told friends lynn prepared his lunch shortly before he became violently ill
a grilled cheese sandwich and sweet tea investigators think the anti-freeze was in the t
within a day randy was dead it was only after his death that lynn learned that randy allowed his
two hundred thousand dollar life insurance policy to lapse just eleven days earlier
she gave him the the ethylene glycol i think that uh it's very slow cruel death uh
it's not like uh you shoot someone and you immediately change your mind and start getting on
first aid i mean there was no no aid given and she had plenty of opportunity to give aid and she didn't on either
case when these murders happened antifreeze had a taste that could easily be masked with sweet tasting foods
the industry has since modified antifreeze so that it is now unpalatable we the jury find the defendant julia
lynn womack turner guilty of malice murder in may of 2004 lynn turner was convicted for killing
her husband glenn three years later in 2007 lynn was also convicted of randy thompson's murder
she is currently serving a life sentence with no chance for parole to hear the guilty verdict was very difficult
you don't like to hear that your daughter-in-law has done something like this to anybody
despite the mathematical misstep by the toxicology lab scientists eventually discovered the
truth about what happened to both randy thompson and glenn turner it was a challenging case to get it all
out there even though it really was quite simple that you had two men who had been involved with her and both had
died the exact same way forensic evidence without it we had nothing we wouldn't have had a case it had been just a bunch
of hearsay and rumors but the forensic evidence it was uh all the nails in the coffin it was the hammer that put
everything away [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] you

When a young fireman died from what appeared to be serious but undiagnosed heart disease, his family and friends were devastated but they had no proof of foul play.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

Two men died under mysterious circumstances, linked to their partner Lynn Turner, who was later convicted of their murders.

Key points

Randy Thompson's Tragic Death. A firefighter's sudden death raises suspicions of foul play.
The Shocking Letter. Randy's mother receives a letter linking her son's death to another officer's.
Discovery of Poisoning. Toxicology tests reveal lethal levels of antifreeze in Randy's system.
Lynn Turner's Motive. Investigators uncover Lynn's financial troubles and possible motives for murder.
Lynn Turner's Conviction. Lynn is convicted for the murders of both her husbands.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

You can die from this very easily.

Doctors warning Randy about his serious situation.

1:12WatchJan 27, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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