Kentucky Parole Board decides Elizabeth Turpin will serve full life sentence
Elizabeth Turpin will serve out her full life sentence for the murder of her husband with no more chances for parole, the Kentucky Parole Board decided Monday.
The parole board’s ruling means that Turpin won’t have more parole hearings and won’t be released from prison unless there is a court action, said corrections spokeswoman Lisa Lamb.
Turpin, Karen Brown and Keith Bouchard were convicted of murder in 1986. They have all been in prison since then. Prosecutors said at trial that Turpin had convinced Bouchard and Brown to kill her husband so that she could get $60,000 in life insurance money.
Michael Turpin, 22, was stabbed 19 times in February of 1986 before his body was dumped in a pond at Lexington’s Lakeside Golf Course.
Last week during a hearing, Elizabeth Turpin told two parole board members that she’d changed since the death of her husband. But the parole board members highlighted prison incidents involving Turpin that mirrored some actions that led to her husband’s murder.
Turpin convinced her new husband, who she married while in prison, to send her money which she then used to try to have people assaulted. In another instance, Turpin convinced a teacher in the prison to look up information on three fellow inmates for her. That teacher was fired.
Last week, Michael Turpin’s family begged two parole board members to require Elizabeth Turpin to serve the remainder of her life sentence with no future possibility of parole. Family members were forced to relive Michael’s death every time they periodically had to fight to keep Turpin and Brown in prison, the family said.
The lead detective from the case and the prosecutor who tried the case in 1986, now both retired, told the two parole board members that Elizabeth Turpin did not deserve to be released from prison.
Brown was scheduled to have a parole hearing last week, but her hearing was postponed until January because of COVID-19 related issues. The parole board previously decided that Bouchard would serve out the remainder of his life sentence with no future chances of parole.
Michael Turpin’s family members hope that Brown also will be ordered to serve her full life sentence.
A petition on Change.org that is calling for Brown’s release has been signed more than 950 times. People who signed the petition wrote that they believe she was manipulated by Elizabeth Turpin and had changed since conviction.
Brown was last up for parole in 2015, and it was deferred five years.
Don Turpin, Michael Turpin’s father, said that his family has been to six parole hearings.
“We’ve had to live the last 35 years without a son, brother, grandson and friend to many,” he told the parole board members. “The only thing that makes it worse is living in fear that these killers may escape or be set free by a sympathetic board or even a governor’s pardon on his exit out the door with no accountability, as with the past governor.”
This story was originally published December 21, 2020 at 12:07 PM.
