Dusty Turner spent 31 years in prison for murder. But he didn’t kill anyone.
In 1996, jurors found the Navy SEAL trainee guilty of murder and abduction with intent to defile, despite his claim of innocence. A Virginia judge sentenced the Bloomington native to 82 years.
Turner’s co-defendant and SEAL partner Billy Joe Brown was convicted as well, of the same charges plus attempted rape. His prison sentence was a decade shorter than Turner’s.
Brown testified in 2008 that he alone killed Jennifer Evans and that Turner’s role was helping him bury the pre-med student’s body in Newport News Park. He confirmed Turner’s story that he tried to pry Brown’s hands from the woman’s neck to save her.
When a Virginia Beach judge found Brown’s confession credible two years later, Turner’s mother celebrated the ruling with Champagne. But Turner remained behind bars for 16 more years, until March of this year.
He returned to Bloomington in May as a 51-year-old. He’s living in his childhood home with his mom.
“No one held a gun to my head. I take full responsibility for my actions,” Turner said. “I helped him (Brown) cover up a horrible crime, a terrible crime that caused huge harm and trauma to her family, the community. My family.”
But that doesn’t mean he believes his punishment was appropriate — he’s fighting for exoneration.
"Dusty's long-overdue release marks a milestone in his fight for justice, following three decades of wrongful incarceration driven by a false narrative, ignored evidence, and decisions that prioritized finality over truth,” a statement released by family and supporters said.
‘I’m moving forward’
Linda Summitt is breathing easier with her son out of prison, sleeping in his childhood bedroom that she kept ready in the basement of the bi-level house where he grew up. His old twin bed is against the wall across from the desk he painted black in high school. His Cub Scout handbook, now vintage, is nearby.
“I still can’t believe he’s home,” Summitt said. “Home. I knew in my heart it would happen. Someday.”
Turner is on parole and wearing a GPS monitor, but he’s free. He starts most days working out at a local gym and escapes to Lake Monroe to boat and swim. He’s taken up golf and pickleball.
Everything in his mom’s house, Turner says, seems so small. He paces the living room after sitting too long on an unfamiliar couch. His right hand dips into a glass bowl filled with smooth stones he passes through his fingers to relax as he explains that now that he’s out, the next step is being exonerated of the murder.
Driving past Bloomington South High School, he recalls so clearly going in his Ford Escort to pre-dawn swim team practice on frigid winter mornings. The purple entry doors to the pool are unchanged decades later.
Passing by the site where his dad’s Penguin ice cream parlor used to be, Turner paused. He remembers being 14 and working alone, sometimes letting his buddies come behind the counter to create their own treats while he waited on customers. It was a lifetime ago.
“Think about returning to your hometown after 31 years of living in a concrete box. It’s not the same Bloomington I left,” Turner said. “People tell me about things we did that I ought to remember and I don’t. It’s the trauma of my military experience and the trauma of this judicial experience and the long-term incarceration.”
A July 11 welcome-home party at Fairfax Beach brought together family and friends who supported Turner all these years. It was a day he knew would someday come.
![Dusty Turner hugs childhood friend Rick Ferguson during his welcome-home party July 11, 2026, at Fairfax Beach by Lake Monroe in Bloomington, Ind. “I’ve known Dusty since we were kids,” Ferguson said. Turner was in his core group of friends, according to Ferguson. “I’ve followed this since the day it happened. I’ve always been heartbroken and crushed for him and Linda [Turner’s mother]. It just means the world to me to have them reverse that injustice.”](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/8ae6930/2147483647/strip/true/crop/400x246+0+117/resize/880x542!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fa9%2Fa7%2Fab8df4ea4bda86c3e9f9e19d72c3%2F20260707-dusty-turner-bp-16.jpg)
Dusty Turner talks with friends and family members during his welcome-home party July 11, 2026, at Fairfax Beach by Lake Monroe in Bloomington, Ind. Kathy Jo Flinsbaugh, Turner’s older cousin, took her sons to visit Turner when he was in prison. “I told my boys Dusty shouldn't be in prison and that we were fighting tooth and nail to get him out.” No words, she said, can describe her joy.
Jack Flinsbaugh, 22, remembers playing the board game Sorry with Turner in the Virginia prison’s visiting room when he was 4. “As I grew up, part of me worried that maybe he would never get out,” he said at the party.
Brian Stryker was on South High School’s swim team with Turner, who he said inspired his decision to join the Air Force special tactics team. He had followed Turner’s case and never believed his friend was a killer.
When they saw each other at Kroger the day Turner came back to Bloomington, Stryker offered his hand and friendship, inviting him out to Lake Monroe on his boat. The two swam a long distance. “The water was 62 degrees that day, but he didn't care,” Stryker said.
‘Where is she’
The Bayou Bar anchoring the 19th Street Radisson Hotel in Virginia Beach was a drinking and dancing destination in 1995. Brown and Turner, who were training together at the nearby Fort A.P. Hill Army Training Center, arrived around 10 p.m. on June 18.
A Coors Light in hand, Turner met 21-year-old Evans, who was staying at a nearby beach house with friends. The two talked late into the night and left the bar holding hands.
They were sitting in Turner's silver Geo Storm when Brown arrived and crawled into the compact car’s back seat. He was drunk and belligerent, and when he reached forward to touch Evans, she slapped his hand away.
An angry Brown reacted as if he had been attacked. Turner said he tried to intervene.
“I told him to get out of the car, and he snapped,” Turner said. “I turned my head and saw his arms around her neck. I grabbed his arms to try and pry them off, like a fulcrum, but I couldn't. He used a maneuver that shook the whole car and left her completely lifeless. She had no opportunity to defend herself. Here was this young lady, so full of life and beautiful just moments before, slumped against the passenger door.”
After Evans was killed, Brown and Turner drove north, stopping to carry the body deep into a wooded area where they hoped it would never be found. The next morning, they signed a lease together for an off-base apartment.
The plan: continue as if nothing had happened and abide by a sacred Navy SEAL pact that no matter what, you never leave or betray another SEAL.
Detectives interviewed people who had been at The Bayou the night Evans disappeared, and her friends helped compile a composite sketch of the man she left with. Brown’s former girlfriend, who was at the bar that night, recognized Turner and called police.
Turner denied involvement until interrogators demanded he tell the truth for the sake of Evans’ family and friends.
“That was the first time I had considered the impact this was having on her family and that really got to me emotionally,” Turner said recently. “Their final question was ‘Where is she?’ and I drew a map. They wanted me to take them to where she was and I did.”
Brown stuck by his story: Turner killed Evans. He watched Turner get convicted and handed a prison term 10 years longer than the 72 years he got.
Two weeks after the murder, 100 mourners gathered inside a Georgia Baptist church for Evans’ funeral. She was an only child who aspired to be a pediatrician and planned to start medical school that fall. Her turquoise casket was buried in a family cemetery in the small town of Fitzgerald, Georgia.
‘A tragedy what happened to you’
Over a decade later, when Brown confessed, Summitt expected justice to prevail. Her son would soon be freed.
She embarked on a mission to tell the world about Turner’s plight, employing legal experts familiar with Virginia law and maneuvering the appellate process. She never considered giving up.
“It’s been my life’s focus,” Summitt said after her son’s prison release. “For 30 years.”
Court rulings that would have ended Turner’s imprisonment were overturned by higher courts or ruled invalid. The recommendation Turner received in 2010 for what’s called a writ of actual innocence, which can release a prisoner in light of new evidence, was denied by the Virginia Court of Appeals. The Virginia Supreme Court denied the writ as well.
After a judge upheld Turner's 82-year sentence in 2008, Evans’ mother, who died in 2024, told an Associated Press reporter Turner should remain behind bars.
“God has helped heal my broken heart,” Delores Evans said. “It keeps getting reopened — the wound does — every time one of these court appeals comes up.”
In 2014, a Navy investigator who reviewed the case said Turner witnessed a brutal killing and panicked, which led to a pardon petition.
“He’d just seen the woman murdered in front of him, and he made a very bad decision,” former Naval Special Warfare staff officer John Floyd said at the time.
But then-Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell denied clemency.
A 2013 documentary, “Target of Opportunity: The U.S. Navy SEALs and the Murder of Jennifer Evans,” presented the premise that Turner had served enough time in jail given his part in the crime. A 2022 episode of the “Southern Fried True Crime Podcast” that featured Turner’s story questioned his experience with the criminal justice process. He even has supporters around the world in a Free Dusty Turner group on Facebook.
After serving 31 years in prison, Turner moved back into his childhood home as he assimilates back into society. During Turner's January 2026 parole hearing, Virginia Parole Board member Lloyd Banks called the murder of Evans a terrible tragedy.
"At the same time, it's also a tragedy what happened to you,” Banks said. "I believe you have served far more time than you should have served. I believe what Billy Brown said was true. He killed her.”
Banks said Turner could have instead been charged with being an accessory to murder after the fact, a misdemeanor that could have gotten him up to 12 months in jail.
A few weeks after being released in March, an allegation that Turner violated his parole for having sex with a woman without telling her about his convictions sent him back to jail.
He was released, again, 30 days later.
When he was finally westbound toward home, at the Virginia-West Virginia state line, Turner got out of the car and flung his right hand toward the state where he had spent more than half his life imprisoned.
He cursed, shook his middle finger, then got back on the road.
There was a lot to leave behind.
‘Convicted for what he did’
For 18 months, Turner and Brown had trained side by side in extreme circumstances that bound them together.
When Brown was sober, “I generally didn’t have any concerns about him,” Turner said. “But when he was drunk he became aggressive and violent.”
He said the Navy SEAL code kept him from exposing a killer. “I was duty bound to protect him and didn’t know how to get out of that. He said later he was so angry I broke the code that I deserved to go down with him.”
They haven’t spoken since being arrested. Turner says he has nothing to say to the man who lied and derailed his life. His eyes blaze with anger at the mention of Brown.
“I stand here convicted for what he did, being held accountable for a murder he committed. It’s 100% wrong.”
Brown, now 54, is serving his sentence at Virginia’s Deerfield Correctional Center. His release date is June 28, 2057 — 31 years from now.
In 1995, Kiz Ray got a letter from Turner, her cousin, expressing optimism he would be released soon, when the truth came out. Three decades later came an email saying parole, finally, would send him home.
She stood outside the prison gate when the warden walked Turner to freedom. “What a beautiful day,” she said.
This article first appeared on FPI News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.