page_title: Murder of Zachary Turner
section_title: Murder and investigation
hierarchical_section_title: Murder of Zachary Turner / Andrew Bagby murder / Murder and investigation
caption_attribution_description: English: Duckworth Street facade of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador (Trial Division entrance)
context_page_description: Zachary Andrew Turner was a boy from St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada who was murdered by his mother, Shirley Jane Turner, in a murder–suicide on 18 August, 2003. Turner drugged the infant with Lorazepam, which had been prescribed to Turner a month earlier, and jumped into the Atlantic Ocean. At the time, Turner had been released on bail and awarded custody of the infant, even though she was in the process of being extradited to the United States to stand trial for the murder of Zachary's father, Andrew David Bagby. The case led to a critical overview of Newfoundland's legal and child welfare systems as well as Canada's bail laws.
  A 2006 inquiry found serious shortcomings in how the province's social services system handled the case, suggesting that the judges, prosecutors, and child welfare agencies involved were more concerned with presuming Shirley Turner's innocence than with protecting Zachary Turner. The inquiry reached the conclusion that Zachary Turner's death had been preventable. The case led to the passage of Bill C-464, or Zachary's Bill, strengthening the conditions for bail in Canadian courts in cases involving the wellbeing of children.
context_section_description: On 4 November 2001, Turner made a total of three phone calls to Bagby's residence in Latrobe. At approximately 1:00 p.m. local time, Turner embarked on a 16-hour, 1,523 kilometre (946 mile) drive to Latrobe with her gun and ammunition inside a gun box in her Toyota RAV4. In the early morning of 5 November 2001, she confronted Bagby at his residence, located across the street from his practice. Bagby arrived at work in an "agitated" state and told Simpson about her appearance but dismissed his advice to not meet with her in private; Bagby subsequently promised to visit Simpson's house after talking to Turner that evening, but he never showed up. Turner later drove home and left a message on Bagby's answering machine.
  The following morning, Bagby's body was found in a day-use parking lot at Keystone State Park in Derry Township, Pennsylvania. He had been shot five times in the face, the chest, the buttocks, and the back of the head with CCI .22 bullets. Acting on statements by Simpson and others, the Pennsylvania State Police contacted Turner. Despite her claim to have been in bed sick on 5 November, cell phone and Internet records showed that she had made cross-country calls both to and from Latrobe, accessed eBay and Hotmail from Bagby's home computer, and used his home phone to call in sick. When confronted with this evidence, Turner claimed that she met with Bagby at Keystone State Park, but that he put the gun in his trunk. Turner alternately told her shooting instructor that her gun had been stolen.
  Investigators interviewed Turner's shooting instructor, who explained that her handgun ejected live rounds during lessons; this was consistent with an unspent round recovered near Bagby's body. Later, a Derry resident traveling through the park reported seeing Bagby's Toyota Corolla parked next to Turner's RAV4 ten minutes after Bagby made his last phone call to Simpson; the resident later saw the Corolla parked alone the following morning. The lot number on a box of condoms found in Turner's Council Bluffs apartment matched a box purchased by Bagby in Latrobe on the night of the break-up. Also in Turner's apartment were Mapquest printouts for road directions to Latrobe. Despite the evidence gathered, Turner had fled the country by the time authorities obtained a warrant for her arrest.
caption: The Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador; Shirley Turner's extradition proceedings were conducted here.
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