Mike Turney - do his words reveal what happened to his stepdaughter Alissa?

A statement investigation into his 2009 TV interview

Alissa Turney was 17 when she was last seen on her final day of school in May 2001. In August 2020 her stepfather, Michael Turney, was arrested, charged with her murder and cleared at trial.

In 2009, Michael gave an interview to ABC. You can watch it in full here.

Let’s break down his words

Interviewer:

You have a background in law enforcement?

Turney:

Yes, I did.

The question is asked in present tense, which makes sense, he always HAS a background in law enforcement because he DID work in law enforcement.

Turney turns the answer into the past tense with “I did”. He wants to put distance between himself and law enforcement, either consciously or subconsciously.

I:

You know that oftentimes the first person they look at suspect might be family members?

T:

They always look at the family members, that’s just standard 101 investigation.

We begin to see Turney’s character with this answer. In essence, he is agreeing with the point that is put to him, but he doesn’t give a compliant answer. Instead, he wants to show off his intelligence by saying it’s “just standard 101 investigation”.

It’s also noticeable that the question states that family members are “often” looked at as suspects, Turney changes that in his answer to “always”. In other words, there’s nothing unusual or untoward about police looking at him, it’s just standard, it does happen to anyone.

I:

So, why take it as such an insult?

T:

I didn't take it as an insult. I took it as fighting with someone for six or seven years to get them to do what I wanted them to do.

In this response, Turney displays two concepts that he will return to again and again in this interview: fighting and control.

The conversation so far has been about law enforcement, which is either a large single entity or many people. Turney talks about fighting with a singular “someone”.

Negative

I:

But Mr. Turney, by refusing to answer their questions as a former law enforcement officer yourself…

T:

I didn’t refuse to answer their questions

If you watch the interview you’ll see this is Turney showing his controlling tendencies again as this answer comes as an interruption to the question.

The reply is a statement in the negative. Instead of saying “I answered all their questions” he says “I didn’t refuse to answer their questions” which is not the same thing and, as we’ll see, he means something different.

Turney wants to come across as being helpful to law enforcement, but he can’t honestly say that, so he has to resort to a statement in the negative to attempt to get his impression across.

Turney says “their questions” showing that he can refer to law enforcement as a multiple people, although he is mirroring the interviewers words.

I:

Don't you see how that would raise eyebrows?

T:

No, that because that's a lie. I didn't refuse to answer questions. I ca.., they were calling me every day, asking me questions every single day.

Once again, we’re seeing him answer in the negative. He can say, truthfully, that he was asked questions “every single day”, he can’t say that he answered them.

Before Turney says “they were calling me every day”, he appears to start saying “I call” or “I called”. I’ve no idea why, but I’m intrigued with what he was going to say.

I:

But they wanted to sit down with you…

T:

And they would have gotten that, all they had to do was set the time and the place and it would have certainly occurred

We see the controlling nature of Turney again in this answer. If someone’s stepdaughter is missing, and they truly wanted them to be found, we would expect them to answer all the questions needed to help move that investigation on.

I:

Well, let's clear some of the things that they're saying about you. At the beginning, that detectives were very focused on Hymer. They thought maybe he had done it. But as they began to interview her friends, some disturbing things start to surface, and they say that among them was the feeling that you were obsessed with her. You've heard this before.

T:

It's on the affidavit

I:

That you were very controlling, and very strict, that you had her sign contracts. You followed her around. You interviewed parents of any new friends of hers. Do you feel that went far beyond what a normal parent would do?

T:

All depends who you talk to.

If it would have avoided anything happening to my daughter, yes, I don't think it went far beyond … at the time I look back at it because she ran away as a result of that. Yeah, of course I feel bad about it.

This is a straightforward yes, no or don’t know question, but Turney’s answer is far from straightforward. He says it “depends”, he says he doesn’t “think” so, “yes” and that he feels bad about what he did.

I worry about the phrase “anything happening to my daughter”. The “happening to” part suggests he’s thinking that someone has done something “to” her. He claims that Alissa ran away by her own choice, which is someone making something happen for themselves rather than something happening “to” them.

“At the time I look back at it” is very strange wording. Is it a misspeak of “I look back at the time”? That would make sense. Otherwise, it’s a muddy phrase, it comes before he says, “she ran away” which is widely thought not to have happened so perhaps the stress of saying that caused him to jumble his words as he heads towards it.

The question that is asked is was his behaviour normal. At the end of the answer, he says, “I feel bad about it”. It’s Turney who introduces the concept of guilt to this answer, which is worth noting.

Absolute Lie

I:

Other people said you were demeaning to Alissa, that you made her feel stupid.

T:

That's an absolute lie. I wouldn't allow that with Alissa because I want Alissa to have good…eh… self-esteem of herself.

First, make a note. Turney says that saying he was demanding to Alissa, or he made her feel stupid, is “an absolute lie”. Why say it that way? It contains the word “absolute” which is a red flag of deception. Why the need to say it’s an “absolute lie”, why not say “that’s a lie”? Because he is attempting to convince us it is a lie.

Look at the strange mix of tenses in this response. Turney says, “I wouldn’t allow” (past tense) “that…because I want” (present tense) “Alissa to have good self-esteem”.

In general, when someone talks about a missing person, it’s reassuring to hear them speak about the person in the present tense. It indicates they don’t think of the missing person as dead or gone.

The way Turney uses it is less assuring, he mixes it with the past tense. He has already said something has happened to her. We know he has said elsewhere he thinks she is dead.

Why the present tense? Turney is ex-law enforcement, maybe he’s trained himself to mention Alissa in the present tense so as not to raise eyebrows.

Finally here, we see more controlling language with “I wouldn’t allow that with Alissa”. Someone with self-control may say “I wouldn’t allow myself to do that with Alissa”, Turney’s words just reinforce his controlling personality.

I:

When a friend said that you were demeaning to her you called her stupid and a phone call that has surfaced since then. You called Alissa, a bitch.

T:

Really? See I weren’t aware of that.

I:

It's on record.

T:

Well then fine, let's bring all the recordings then, I got no problem with that.

Confronted with evidence, Turney sets out to delay having to deal with it by saying he wasn’t “aware of that”. He doesn’t say what he wasn’t aware of. It could be the friend’s allegation, the fact there is a recording, or that he called his daughter a bitch. He doesn’t say.

What he also doesn’t do is deny he did it, previously when the interviewer had raised how he spoke to Alissa, Turney said the allegations were lies, now he isn’t denying anything. He’s just not aware. Of something.

Turney’s delaying tactics buy him time to think carefully about the next words he says, he’s pretty sure the interviewer is going to press harder. And he does.

Mad at her

I:

Did you call her that?

T:

Did I call Alyssa a bitch? I don't remember. I very well could of one time when I was mad at her, who knows?

Turney still answers the question with a question. This time he doesn’t deny demeaning Alissa, he simply can’t remember. If the answer was “no” we’d expect him to say so, therefore we can be pretty sure the truthful answer is yes.

And then another indicator that Mr Turney has poor self-control. So far, he has been guarded and vague about his actions towards Alissa, but it seems he has spent so much time thinking about how to wiggle out of the question he lets slip he was regularly “mad at her”. If his madness at her was infrequent he wouldn’t refer to “one time” and, if he was being truthful, he would recall that time he went off the deep end.

“One time I was mad at her” strongly suggests he was mad at her frequently. The “who knows” suggests that these incidents were so frequent or so out of control that he can’t remember what was said during them.

I:

That's demeaning.

T:

I guess it is.

Just 40 seconds before this, Turney said allegations he was demeaning towards Alissa were “an absolute lie”. Now he’s agreeing he’s been demeaning. Beware the word “absolute”, it is so often used in deception, as it was here.

I:

So what were you planning to do?

T:

Just bring attention to Alissa

I:

How are you going to do this?

T:

Take a shotgun, blow my head off. That's what I tried to do in ‘94.

I:

And what about the firecrackers and the bombs? And the explosives?

T:

What bombs? You mean a few little flash things that would make some noise, just to make noise. You can't kill anybody with a pipe bomb unless you stick it in eh… down their throats.

Turney goes straight to his question to a question technique that he uses when trying to buy thinking time to a difficult question. Sadly for him, he doesn’t ask the best question. He asks “what bombs?” before going on to describe his pipe bombs.

The tenor of the question was what did he plan to do with his cache of explosives. There are many things you can do with an explosive, cause damage, cause chaos, use the fact you have them in bargaining, plant them on someone else, the list goes on.

The only use that Turney thinks to deny, the immediate thought that enters his head, is to deny they were for killing someone. This indicates killing as something high on his mental lists.

More so, he was asked what he was going to do with the explosives, he doesn’t say what he was going to do, so that must be sensitive to him. Instead, he doesn’t even say what he wasn’t going to do, but what “you” not “I” cant do with “you can’t kill anybody with a pipe bomb”.

To further push the feeling that killing is high in his mind is that after saying you can’t kill someone with a pipe bomb, he then lays outs a grisly way that you can. And it’s his second choice thing to do, as before he said, “down their throats” he was going to say “stick it in…” somewhere but stopped himself from finishing that thought.

I:

Police say you were going to bomb the local union hall.

T:

Sure they did that because they don't understand that you can't take that building down with a bomb. You can't burn it down. It’s an inflammable building.

I:

So you weren’t going do that?

T:

What?

If you watch the interview, you will see that this is his first question to a question where it appears he genuinely didn’t hear what was said.

Want to murder

I:

you weren't gonna do that

T:

Not in the least, why would I want to murder a bunch of innocent people? That sounds insane.

This answer displays all Turney’s favourite tactics in one line:

- A week denial, why “not in the least” instead of “no I wasn’t going to do that”?

- A question in response to a question, he can’t speak a reason for himself

- Introducing the thought of murder again. This time the murder of “innocent people”.

This is grim again. He doesn’t think that the building could be empty. He has said his explosives couldn’t kill anybody, he has said the building can’t be bombed. But he can’t help but jump to the thought of killing.

Turney says only that it “sounds insane”, not it would be insane.

I:

Mr Turney you say the government's out to get you the union's out to get you the Phoenix Police Department is out to get you. It sounds like you think the world is out to get you and it sounds a little delusional.

T:

That's what they investigated. I just went and talked to the governor's forensic psychologist. She said I had a paranoid personality. But she didn't say delusion.

I don’t have all the facts of the police investigation, but I’d put money on the fact they investigated him for murder and planning to blow up a building. Not for being delusional.

Turney’s desire for control shows up here. He can’t accept the premise of the questions, so he’s quite happy to say he’s been diagnosed as being paranoid rather than cede the point that he’s delusional.

This backfires on him.

I:

Do you think you have a paranoid personality?

T:

You ever wore a badge and a gun? Ever been in the military?

I:

No

T:

Guarantee you’d have a paranoid personality after that. For The rest of your life. That just comes with it, the experience.

I'm sure you’ll have spotted a question to a question again. This time it allows him to take control so that he doesn’t have to answer the question.

When he has control, he evokes his familiar themes of conflict and violence.

I:

Tell me why we should believe you.

T:

Why you should believe me?. Ah, let's see. I don't know, probably because the fact that sometimes when people tell us things seem to be so irrational. Sometimes Sometimes they are true.

Why should we believe you is a great question. It’s hard for truthful people to answer, they feel they’re telling the truth, they don’t think about how to justify it because it is simply true.

Turney’s first answer is “I don’t know”, he then goes with the little convincing logic of very rarely irrational things are true. It’s not a solid answer.

Not capable

I:

You're not capable of killing your stepdaughter.

T:

I didn't kill my stepdaughter. I'm not capable of killing my stepdaughter.

“I didn’t kill my stepdaughter” is what I class as a very believable denial. It has ownership with the word “I”, it is very clear as to what it refers to “kill my stepdaughter” and it has no needless words meant to convince us that it is true.

A very convincing response… but…

He wasn’t asked that question. He was asked if he was “capable” of killing her. Once again, Turney has introduced the notion of killing by moving the question from capability to answering about actually killing her.

While Turney freely mentions murder and killing through the interview, he shows no concern for Alissa. Not that she may be alive and suffering, or that she may be dead and suffered before that.

Conclusion

Mr Turney likes to be in control but displays little self-control. He sees the world in terms of conflict. He admitted to being demeaning to his daughter (I’d call it abusive) and has thoughts of killing and murder high in his mind.

He was cleared in court of having anything to do with his daughter’s disappearance. What he says in this interview doesn’t show me why that would be.