“The totality of circumstances known to police prompted the focus on Michael Turney as the suspect,” Sgt. Friends and family who had allegedly never been initially contacted by police in 2001 began to make disturbing allegations to authorities concerning Turney’s relationship with his stepdaughter. Hymer’s story, and the attention it got, did bring renewed heat to Alissa’s case. He later admitted that he might have been mistaken. Hymer was sentenced to life in prison in 2003 for her murder.Īccording to the Phoenix Police, detectives with the Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit questioned Hymer, but it was determined that Hymer’s description of Alissa was not viable and his story was false. Goodman had been found the day before, strangled, stabbed and wedged under a bed in a Fort Lauderdale hotel. At the time of his arrest, Hymer had been driving a vehicle belonging to a woman named Sandra Goodman. He had been arrested in 2001 in Gary, Georgia, a few months after Alissa’s disappearance. According to the Arizona Republic newspaper, Thomas Hymer told a prison guard he had killed Alissa Turney. In 2006, a Florida man’s confession brought Alissa’s case back into the spotlight. Sarah told Dateline that it wasn’t unusual for kids who lived in their area to want to head to California.īut as each year passed with no sightings, Alissa just leaving to start a new life seemed less likely. Alissa Turney and her younger sister, Sarah. The note stated that Alissa was running away to California. The phone was on the dresser, along with a note in Alissa’s loopy handwriting, Sarah said. When they tried to call her phone again, they heard it vibrate in the room. Sarah said they found Alissa’s usually tidy room a mess.

Alissa and her stepfather, Michael Turney. Michael Turney also had three sons, who were already out of the house by that time. The girls’ mother, Barbara Strahm, died of cancer when Alissa was just eight years old and Michael legally adopted her.

Sarah and her older half-sister Alissa lived with Sarah’s father, Michael Turney, in Phoenix, Arizona. But as Sarah played at the water park with her classmates on that hot Arizona day back in 2001, she had no idea that her family’s life was about to change forever.

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