Over the course of nineteen ninety four and ninety five, Dusty Turner and Billy Joe Brown trained together to become Navy seals.
I know this guy because I've been training with for a year and a half, from islands into Pacific to jumping out of planes and throwing hand grenades over each other's backs and diving in pitch black waters in the middle of the oceans. And one of the things that beats into my unconsciousness is, no matter what, I have to protect this guy. I don't even have a choice to protect him. I have to protect him.
But that training left Dusty ill prepared for partying off base with Billy. On June nineteenth, nineteen ninety five, Dusty met twenty one year old mid student Jennifer Evans on the dance floor while Billy, who had alcohol related anchor issues,
had a night that devolved into rage. After spoiling his ride home, Billy tried to squeeze into Dusty's car behind Jennifer, and after she didn't respond well to his belligerence, Billy attacked and killed Jennifer right next to Dusty, But in the intense moments following her death, he protected Billy.
That was absolutely brainwashed to protect this psychopath. I know what I would do now, It's easy be hindsight. I could have jumped out the car or took off running somewhere. I could have drove someone different. I could have done something different right.
But eventually Dusty turned Billy in and with the death penalty looming, Billy then flipped the tables.
My name was Dustin Turner and I was incarcerated for thirty years and seven months. To be specific, that's eleven two hundred and eight days.
From Lava for Good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today, Dusty Turner.
I grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, and I have three brothers and a sister. And my mother was a elementary school teacher and my stepfather, who I really grew up with, was an insurance salesman. I suppose I had a very typical Midwestern Indiana who's your upbringing? I played sports all my life as a kid. You know, we were rough and tumble and we would run around playing all those games.
And my family was very outdoorsy. We gardened and we hunted for mushrooms and for simmons, and my family members were hunters, and a lot of my family were veterans or they were in the military, and so I think my upbringing was colored by that experience. It was just built into fabric of my family going back really quite a few generations.
And Dusty also grew up with a love for the water.
So I was swimming from before I was conscious. I guess my mother had me in the pool, probably why I was still in diapers. I was a swimmer and I was always interested in water sports. And when I'll share this with you, when I was very young, I found a book and there was a photo in the book that intrigued me, and it was a sunken ship with a treasure chest and it might have been a pirate or something, and he had a knife between his teeth and he was diving free diving down to the
sunken chest. And I just thought this guy was the ultimate badass of the water. And I think somehow that really influenced my getting into scuba diving.
So around what age were you solidified like I am enlisting, And I guess even though my partner was in the army, he still tries to explain like enlisting and then joining Special Forces. So this might be when did you decide to enlist and then become a seal?
A good question. I did enlist when I was still seventeen, still in high school. My mother had to sign for me because I was under eighteen. I don't want to speak for her. She may have been a little apprehensive, but she knew that's what I wanted to do, and she signed the necessary papers and allowed me to join
under the delayed entry program. Before I was eighteen, I was into a lot of sports and growing up through high school and especially towards the end of high school, I was a competitive state swimmer in Indiana and I had an offer for a scholarship, but I chose the military. I actually initially wanted to be a diver, a scuba diver for the Navy, and then later on I heard more about the seal teams. I wanted to be in the seal teams, but I didn't know how to get
myself there. So when I was in boot camp, and that was in Orlando, Florida, I had an option need to take the physical test to become a diver, but I actually snuck into another line. That was the guys that were wanting to be in the seal teams. I was one of just a few people that passed it. And the seal that was there taking in the scores, he looked through his clipboard and he said, wait, you took the wrong test. You were supposed to take the
other one. And I said, I know, However, I'm desirous of being a seal, and he said, I'll tell you what. I'm going to make sure you get to the training and he saw the fort two that I had and desire I had. So that's how I got into seal training out in San Diego and Corneatto Island.
And it was during seal training that he was paired with the actual perpetrator of the murdering question, Billy Joe Brown.
Early in training, they pair people up in boat crews by your height, and so we were the exact same height, and at some point we were literally paired up as with a call the swim Buddies training partners. And this was prior to even prior to Hell Week. So over a year and a half of the most excruciating military training perhaps in the world, we're bonded through that fire. We were trained to or at least in my mind to be prepared to give our lives in the defense
of this nation. And I was okay with that. I was prepared for that. And I have to say there's a lot of mental manipulation. Yes, if you want to call it brainwashing or whatever. I was nineteen years old. They totally shaped my mind when it came to these ideas of brotherhood and the culture of military and special forces and maybe specifically in the seal teams.
Which may go a long way in explaining Dusty's behavior in the aftermath of what bill Is eventually did two Jennifer Evans. But before that, despite Billy Joe Brown not going as far as murdering someone, there was definitely a history of violence.
Two times previous I saw his attempt of violence or aggression I should say, towards women. And once was in Puerto Rico, and thankfully there was multiple people around to restrain him. Another time it was just me and I was able to restrain him. But yeah, so you know, I've seen that aggressive behavior of him often having to ensure that he gets out of trouble. Right, this is only going on when he's drunk and when he's sober. It was never like this right. When he's drinking, he's
like a ticking time bomb. And so there was multiple times in which I had to extract him from situations at a concert. At one time he attacked a guy and really messed him up, and I had to jump in and pull him out. And it ended with later in the night, we were fleeing from the police. I haven't told many people this, but we ended up in a pond, literally underwater.
Now, for our audience, I urge you to count yourself lucky if you've never had to be the caretaker of this kind of friend. Some folks are not that lucky. And unfortunately, Dusty had not yet cut ties with Billy Joe Brown, and at this time, well completing their training in Virginia, Billy Joe Brown was drinking a lot as he was on June nineteenth, nineteen ninety five, when a few Seal trainees were set to head out to party in Virginia Beach.
There was originally I think three of us that were supposed to be there that night, and it ended up it was just Billy Brown and myself. Well. We went to a club that we had been to.
It was called the Bayou Nightclub and as Dusty told Jason in previous coverage which we'll link to in the episode description, Dusty had separated himself from Billy that night, and then he met twenty one year old med student Jennifer Evans on the dance floor. She was on vacation and her friends had moved on to another place. They were planning to circle back at closing time, and Dusty
had also arranged with Billy's ex girlfriend to get him home. Allegedly, the night progressed and Jennifer and Dusty went out to the parking lot to wait for her friends. When Billy stumbled over to the car, Dusty morange, Jennifer, just don't engage with Billy if he's belligerent or obnoxious, and then he gets into the backseat behind her.
I saw that he was in the mode which I've seen before with him, that he could become violent, and so I was doing everything I could. And really, I say that I won't say everything I could, because in hindsight there's other things I could have done, But at the moment, I thought by speaking to him calmly and trying to get him to relax, and hey, look, let's just find Kristen his friend who was supposed to take him home. Let's just find her, she can take you home.
But he was completely belligerent, completely belligerent.
Apparently Billy had done something to cause his ax to leave, So while Dusty tried to de escalate, Billy allegedly said some nasty things and touched Jennifer's hair. Allegedly, she brushed him off, and then Billy lashed out.
His initial maneuver was explosive enough to literally shake the whole vehicle, and I wasn't looking directly at him. It took me a second to realize what has just happened. Her head was twisted towards the car window, and he had his own arms locked around her. I started grabbing his arms and screaming at him, and Jennifer was completely limb.
It was that quick. So I just immediately grabbed his arms and trying to pull him off of her, and at first I couldn't, but he was screaming at me, just fucking dry and screaming at me, and I was screaming at him to just let her go. And I literally had to put my fingers under his fingertips and pry his first hand from his arm as he was locked and pry his arms off of her. And then when I get his arms off of her, he's still
screaming at me. Now he's up in my ear, just dry, just from here, and Jennifer's limbs, she's gone, She's completely gone, and she's slumped into his seat. I know this guy sitting behind me because I've been training with him a year and a half through all this stuff, from islands into Pacific to jumping out of planes and throwing hand grenades over each other's backs and diving in pitch black waters in the middle of the oceans. And the only thing I know for a fact that is beat into
my unconsciousness is this man. No matter what, I have to protect I don't even have a choice to protect him. I have to protect him. That's what colored my decisions that I made at that point. I was absolutely brainwashed to protect this psychopath. I shouldn't have been in that position. He should never have been in that position. He should have never been in the military, let alone in the special forces community never. But ultimately, regardless of all, it's
still my decision. I could have jumped out the car, took off, run in somewhere. I could have drove someone different. I could have done something different right at that point, but.
He didn't, and that decision became a key point of scrutiny.
I didn't know Virginia Beach areat. I literally didn't know where to turn when I left the parking lot. In fact, he was yelling directions at me, turn left, turned right.
Dusty drove them onto Interstate sixty four, and then they exited near a wooded area by Newport News, where they left Jennifer's body about thirty yards into the woods. Over the next week, Dusty says, guilt weighed heavily on him. Then detectives caught up with them. Both seals initially denied involvement, but after speaking with his commanding officer, Dusty decided to confess,
leading authorities to the body and to Billie Brown. Facing the death penalty, Brown seemingly created a story implicating Dusty in the murder. Yours leader, Dusty, says Brown explained why he believed that decision was justified.
He said he thought I was going to do two weeks in jail before the authorities realized the truth of what happened, and instead, the authorities used his false stories to convict me of his crimes. How do you even wrap your head around them? But all he had to do is come clean. See, he knew, he knew that there was this code, and he called it the Seal Team code, that I couldn't tell the authorities what he had done.
He said that to.
You years later, he said, that's the whole reason he made up the story to implicate me is because I broke the Seal Code, and therefore I deserved to be unjustly put in prison because I broke the Sealk Code by telling the authorities of what had happened. That's it. If he would have told the truth from the beginning, i'd obviously never been convicted of these crimes.
Meaning the ones he says he didn't do. First degree murder and abduction. Billy Brown received seventy two years, while Dusty got eighty two and then even more insult to injury.
From what I understand, the authorities within the military had told guys that I had been around that they are to have no contact with me or my family. That's difficult, to be honest. There's a lot of things that I still have a hard time with concerning the military and the way I was treated it was wrong. And I will say I've heard from a couple of the former Silting guys, which is nice and I really appreciate that.
But there had been a kind of a hand washing of both myself and Billy Brown, as if we were the same people, as if we were in Caho says, if we deserved the same fate. But beyond that, I'm past it.
And perhaps Dusty had help. In two thousand and two, Billy Brown found religion and made a confession that Dusty had nothing to do with the murder and corroborated what Dusty maintained all along, that he protected his training partner, whom he says he should have immediately exposed for his crime.
You know, it's kind of ironic. That's a stale team investigator for the military. He is a very strong advocate for me for years. He's a strong advocate because again he investigated my case, but he didn't do it for the civilian side. He did it for the military. His reports were destined only for the military leaders. But what he found was basically the same thing that now everyone knows, right, and that is I had no role in the murder. I had no role in abducting Jennifer.
Dusty's legal team filed a writ of actual innocence, citing the confession as new evidence, and his conviction was overturned in two thousand and nine, but the Attorney General appealed and his murder and abduction convictions were reinstated and he served sixteen more years. How did you survive thirty years in prison?
So?
I guess there's a lot to this. I mean, you're convicted of a crime you did not commit, and even the thing that you did do is only punishable by up to twelve months in prison, So that is completely unjust. How do you survive prison in a place that you know you shouldn't be? How did you do that?
I think it was, I guess, the same thing that allowed me, I guess to survive steal training resolved of love, and I have to say, maybe even hate, the love of my family and supporters. That alone got me through some very difficult times. I have a persistent, maybe we'll just say hatred towards Billy Brown and if that's the right word, but it's never subsided. And part of that is obviously, first of all, what he did to Jennifer in her family, and secondly what he did to me
and my family. He has written to my mother and through my mother trying to asking or begging for me to forgive him. And here it is thirty one years later, almost and my hatred for him still burns deep in my chest, and I can't look at all the at my family, everything that we've been through and not feel that hatred towards him.
I understand that you're one of the first people out of how many wrongfully convicted people I've spoken to, that has not forgiven. And I think you're the first person that I relate to because I can't imagine forgiving somebody who did that to me.
And sometimes I think maybe it's maybe I'm failing there, but that I should forgive. And I've even wrote an essay on forgiveness. It may even be posted on my website because I was exploring it. And one of the things I think it's in my little essay that I had a chaplain come to me and he said, just completely assuming because he knew me. I had a lot of interactions with him, and he's like, well, you're a smart guy. You know that forgiveness is not about him.
It's about you, and he just assumed that I had forgiven him, and because I'm not so stupid to not forgive him, because what that suggests is it's just putting more upon myself, you know. But I don't forgive him. And I feel like that that anger and that burning hatred, that really maybe in some ways it helped me get through some of the more difficult times of my prison senters.
I one relate to that. I tell people, like, the reason I can keep going is because I want vengeance on people, and for me, it's the prosecutors that hurt all of you guys. That's why I keep listening to these stories.
You know, listenance. Vengeance is in our vernacular for a reason, right, It's an ancient idea of just desserts. But regardless, obviously I'm not seeking to exact some kind of vengeance myself. But there needs to be accountability.
That's such a better word.
Yeah, And that goes beyond Billy Brown, because there's others who knew that I had no role in those crimes, and they either loud or were actively involved in convicting me or keeping me in prison.
A cellmate of yours once said, quote, you were a little too talkative about plant life. I think this was perhaps one of yours for parole.
I know who you're talking about too.
And so I want to ask you about that. How did you get into horticulture?
You know, I grew up, like I said, I was in a family that was very outdoorsy and we had a decent family garden growing up, and so I learned a lot from my stepfather about horticulture. Therefore, I thought I knew quite a bit about horticulture. So I joined a horticulture of course, and then I realized I don't know anything about horticulture right. So, over the course of a year and then I got through that program, I took an advanced horticulture program. This was well in prison, yeah, absolutely,
Soon thereafter I was tutoring incarcerated students horticulture. But I found it to be an opportunity not simply just to speak, Hey, here's how you germinate seeds, and here's how you grow a plant, and here's the names of these different species. But there's a therapeutic element, especially for those in prison who are surrounded by nothing but concrete and still there's a therapeutic aspect to the idea of being able to
grow things or see growing things and living things. And it was I got to say, relatively speaking, it was beautiful. I'm in garden spaces that I helped create, and I'm out there with all these students, and they come from all all over Virginia, all walks of life. I had a lot of inner city guys who are like, you know, when I go home, I am creating a community guard and I'm going to do it, and I know exactly where I'm going to put it, and this is my goal.
Dusty's former sell me wrote a letter to the parole board supporting his release, saying what a good person Dusty is and his largest complaint about him is that he talks about plants too much. In twenty twenty, a new law was passed in Virginia and Dusty was released in March of twenty twenty six.
I didn't invite all my family because first of all, most of my family is in Indiana and in other states. And I hope it didn't hurt some people's feelings. But I didn't invite all my family. I have a very large family. I can't invite everybody, right, but I did have some of my family and some of those who maybe I've been closest with throughout the years and they've really been there for me. And then my advocates, right those who have fought so hard for so much of
their time and energies and money and everything else. They recognized the injustice and that drove them with a passion. I absolute wouldn't be sitting here without them. They would not have given me parole without my advocates fighting for me, period. And so its beautiful to see everybody and to embrace everyone, and it was emotional. It was overwhelming, and it still is overwhelming. I do not have my feet on the ground.
I'm working on it. I wish you could be in my shoes or last thirty hours or so, just to experience what I'm in. Such an amazing place right now. I'm in such an amazing place right now. I was in a side by side vehicle a few hours ago driving through just amazing countryside, the outskirts of a property. I'm blown away. There's a river it just runs right through here. And I'm unfortunate in that respect, so fortunate and grateful, and I'm going to soak it all in.
How do you think your life would have been different. Maybe if none of this happened and you stayed a seal instead of becoming a horticulture mauster. I don't know what to call it.
I'll say that, yeah, not there yet, but you know, I don't know. Listen, my plan was to do two deployments and then apply try to get into what's now referred to as Seal Team six. That's what I want. I want to be the best operator for the military. I loved it, and that's what I had a passion for. But I have some friends that I trained with who died not long after I was incarcerated.
You probably would have wound up in Iraq. Do you think about that?
No, I don't think about it because who knows, right, I don't have a clue what could have happened. I also could have been dead, and who knows what could have happened. And I don't think it really matters at this point, right All that matters is now and moving forward. I would I would drive myself nuts thinking about that.
What has surprised you the most? Maybe, like yesterday we were talking and you were facetiming with me on a cell phone. What are some of the things that so far in your very short time, have really surprised you.
Ohoul, have surprised me how big everything is? Thing is it just looms large, everything from just the buildings and the sky and the clouds, and everything just seems so big. It's surreal. Through a good portion of this past day and a half, I felt like I've not even been inside my body, Like I'm just hovering and just watching. And I got to say it again, I'm fortunate to have all my people around me. I don't have to
worry about the things. I know so many people who are getting out of prison I have to worry about. And so I'm so fortunate for that right I have those resources. Not many people do. And I recognize that. So my family, my supporters have provided so many things for me that I'm able to really just absorb things right. And they've given me that opportunity to just really sit back and absorb things, and they're taking me around. I
walked into my first small grocery store today. I walked down the aisles and before I went in, I said, I'm not going to I'm not touching nothing. I'm not going to buy anything. Y'all can get what you want I'm just gonna look all right, and there's they had already purchased so much stuff, and I got fruit baskets and beef jerkeys and I don't know all kinds of stuff. By the way, good advocate friend has brought some New
York strip We're going to be really amazing. Yeah, and he's got some rabbis and they're doing I don't know, they've got just the whole work. So we had a beautiful feast last night, and tonight it's gonna be no less.
Were the flavors of like real food like surprising.
It's all everything I taste, everything I smell, everything I see is so incredibly different that it's a lie. It's like maybe four we'll say, a normal person to be given like hyper stimulus, to be overwhelmed with hyper stimulus. All my senses are overwhelmed.
Yesterday you mentioned the smells. That was one of the first.
Yeah, that was the first structure I walked into. I was in the lobby of the hotel. But it's every since everything I see and everything nice smell and taste and touch and yeah, it's a lot. And I'm glad that my close friends and loved ones are able to be with me, to experience that with me, because it's special for them too.
I know you've mentioned step by step, So what is something you're looking forward to if you want to tell me big picture, even like later today, what are you looking forward to?
Well, I told you here very shortly. We're going to have a bit of I guess a bonfire, small fire, campfire, and I think someone even brought some s'mores. We're going to be toting smores after the feast. I look forward to settling in a little bit and I'm going to be doing some real work out here on farm and the property, and I look forward to contributing. I look forward to learning. This is in some way in intermediate
or short term ideas. I look forward to continuing experience the things I've been experiencing, because they've been great long term. I'm not done fighting. I'm not exonerated, as you brought up early on. If I'm not exonerating, I'm simply given parole. That's not a just remedy in my case.
People know you're still a convicted felon.
Not just a convicted felon, but the abduction charge. Years and years later, they determined that they made that into what they call like a registering offense. Right. Oh wow, Yeah, so that comes with a whole host of things, every bit of it's horrible and it's unjust. I'll be fighting, and I hope and I expect I'm going to have some people on my team that care about justice and they're going to help me out.
We're definitely on your team, so we will be here. Dusty. One of my last questions for you is just it's been over thirty years. You've been reported on in the media multiple times, there have been documentaries. What do you want people to know about you? Oh?
I would like for people to know that I'm just a genuine guy. And maybe as they hear my experiences and what led me to sitting right here speaking to you the whole way, through my childhood, through my experiences in the military, and the tragic events that led me to be incarcerated and the horrible hell that I went through, I guess I may now have a unique perspective online and maybe that holds some value somewhere for someone, and I hope it does.
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as executive producers Jason Flam, Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wortis, and Jeff Clyburn. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all so media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can
also follow me on all platforms at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for Good podcast in association with Signal Company Number One. We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good