YouTube/ABC News 4
- South Caroline authorities announced this week they'd solved the cold case murder of a 5-year-old boy.
- Justin Lee Turner was strangled in 1989, and news footage captured his father discovering his body.
- Sheriff S. Duane Lewis said the Turners created a "staged scene" after killing the child.
Authorities in South Carolina have arrested the father and stepmother of a 5-year-old boy who was strangled to death in 1989.
The Berkeley County Sheriff's Office announced January 10 that Victor Lee Turner and Megan Renee Turner are charged with murder in the death of Justin Lee Turner, whose body was found by his tearful father in a scene that authorities now say was staged.
Archival footage shot on March 5, 1989, by the local NBC affiliate WCBD showed Victor Lee Turner emerging from a camper and sobbing in apparent grief after purportedly discovering his son's corpse. At a news conference this week, Berkeley County Sheriff S. Duane Lewis told reporters authorities now believe the Turners killed the child inside their house, then moved his body into the camper.
"When you look at the scene, you can assume by looking at it that it was somewhat a staged scene, to make it look like something that it wasn't," Lewis said. "There's a lot of inconsistencies in the story."
Lewis said investigators have been working for at least a year and a half straight — and for many years on and off — to solve the cold case. Lewis said due to more advanced technology, investigators were able to collect more physical evidence and submit it to forensic pathologists for analysis.
Lewis told reporters that initially, the Turners told authorities that Justin got on his school bus on the morning of March 3, 1989, and never returned. But Lewis said that was a lie.
"Justin never made it to school that morning. He never got on the bus, he never arrived at school. That's because he had been murdered. And he'd been murdered by his stepmother and his father, and left in a camper behind their house," Lewis said. "I can't think of a more tragic, horrendous murder. A five-year-old boy."
An attorney representing Megan Renee Turner did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment. BI could not immediately reach an attorney representing Victor Lee Turner.