48 Hours Mystery: A Killer Defense
Produced by Paul LaRosa, Chuck Stevenson and Susan Mallie
Nearly two years after Jennifer Turner was killed, Greg Brown, a North Carolina prosecutor, lays out the case against her husband, Dr. Kirk Turner.
"Sept. 12, 2007, was reckoning day for the defendant: a pending divorce, unresolved property settlement, huge support payments was on his mind," District Attorney Greg Brown tells the court. "The physical evidence will speak loud and clear that the defendant is guilty of first-degree murder."
But Defense Attorney Brad Bannon says the last thing on Dr. Turner's mind that night was murder.
"'She stabbed me with a spear, she just kept stabbing me,'" he said of his client's actions. "The most primal human impulse that we have is that of self preservation and that is what this case is about."
Brad Bannon says Kirk Turner stabbed his wife with a knife only after she attacked him with a seven-foot spear.
"This is where she stabbed Kirk in the arm. This is where she stabbed him twice in his leg," Bannon tells jurors, referencing a photo of Kirk's injured leg.
"There is no way that could have been my mother. I can't imagine her with a spear in her hands," Kirk and Jennifer's daughter, Wendy tells "48 Hours Mystery" correspondent Peter Van Sant. "My mother was to me just the epitome of a gentle soul."
Friends Linda Ernst and Susan Doran believe they knew the real Jennifer Turner.
"There is no way that Jennifer would attack Kirk," Doran tells Van Sant. "She never would have done that," adds Ernst.
"Could Jennifer be a violent person? Could there have been a part of her that you didn't know?" he asks Doran.
"I never saw that side," she replies. "I can't believe it even existed or ever would have."
Anne Gould rode horses with Jennifer nearly every day. "She handled her horses very well. She took care of them. She absolutely adored them," Gould says. "At the time of her death, she owned nine horses. It was her dream to start a breeding farm, but it was her husband who put that dream into reality and encouraged her to make this a business… a moneymaking business…"
That would be another money making business since Kirk was already a very successful dentist with an annual salary of $650,000.
"Any time you ask a patient what they thought of Kirk Turner as a dentist, they all thought he was a great man," says Jennifer's friend, Tara Whittaker, who worked at Kirk's dental practice.
"[He] always treated us very well… always took us out to lunches… he was a very generous man towards all of us and he talked about his wife, how much he loved her and about the children, about vacations they would all be taking together," Whittaker tells Van Sant.
Kirk and Jennifer seemed like a terrific match. And that's why everyone, especially Jennifer, was shocked when Kirk announced he was leaving her after 23 years of marriage.
"He insisted on coming to my school and telling me to my face that they were going to be separated," Wendy says of learning of her parent's marital problems. "I asked him that night if he was cheating on my mother, and he said he was not."
But that was a bald-faced lie.
"My mom had video evidence of him cheating on her," says Wendy of the video taken by a private investigator her mother hired.
Jennifer was shocked to see that Kirk was frequently at the home of another woman - a woman who once was the family's personal banker, Tondja Colvin.
"I would have been so angry and I think most women would be angry to find out your husband is seeing your personal banker," Ernst says. "Yeah, I think I would have been very angry and she was just hurt over it."
"Did she ever say anything to you, 'I'm gonna get that SOB?'" Van Sant asks.
"No, no," Ernst says. "I think she was just tryin' to figure out how to survive and where to go next."
A lot of money was on the line: a 10,000-square-foot house, a 35-acre horse farm and Kirk's collection of vintage Corvettes.
"He liked to collect things, a lot of different things," Wendy explains. "He had a lot of guns. That would be another collection."
Jennifer stayed in the house after Kirk moved out. A court ordered him to pay her more than $30,000 a month.
It was a lot of money, but friend Anne Gould says Jennifer needed it to operate the horse breeding business that she and Kirk owned together.
"She was clearing pastures on her own. She was putting in fences. It was a 12 hour-a-day job. She was running a business," Gould explains.
And then there was the human cost; Kirk's actions splintered the family. Son Richie left his mother's home and he eventually moved in with his father.
"People wonder how you could support your dad after there was another woman in his life," Van Sant says. "He had so hurt your mother emotionally…"
"He was still my dad. My mom was still my mom. It was still family to me," Richie replies.
Wendy, away at college, sided with her mother and cut Kirk out of her life.
"I stopped talking to him because he was cheating on my mom," she says.
Kirk retaliated.
"He cancelled all of my credit cards and stopped paying my tuition," Wendy says. "I think he thought that I would talk to him if he would give me money, but I was doing what I thought was right, which was standing up for my mother. And no amount of money would've changed that."
Jennifer filed for divorce, but was also determined to go after Kirk's lover, slapping her with an unusual "alienation of affection" lawsuit.
Jennifer was suing Tondja Colvin for stealing her man.
"It was a suit against the other woman," Gould explains. "She felt like this woman had come in… not only ruined Jennifer's life, but was going to ruin her children's lives too."
If Jennifer had wanted to get under Kirk's skin by filing that lawsuit, it worked.
"I know that he really wanted the alienation of affection suit to disappear," says Wendy. She also says that Kirk kept pressuring her mother to drop the suit.
"When your father is upset, is he a menacing man?" Van Sant asks Wendy. "Very scary. Very scary," she replies.
Jennifer began to take precautions. Alone in her big house, she bought Mace and at night, she sealed herself off in her bedroom with a baseball bat, an extra cell phone and a lock on the bedroom door.
What was she afraid of? According to Anne, "Jennifer was afraid that he was gonna hurt her or kill her… She was afraid of him blowing up and losing control."
Two years later, Wendy Turner tells a spellbound courtroom the exact words spoken by Kirk that made her mother cringe with fear: "She told me that he said that 'there was more than one way to end a marriage.' She thought that he was gonna try and kill her."
"My mother loved horses. She spent a lot of time with them and felt lucky to do so," Richie Turner says of his mother, Jennifer. But, he says, that passion for horses turned into an obsession.
"When we moved out to the ranch, horses really took over her life," he says. "She was out working with the horses all day, feeding, mucking stalls."
Richie could see his parents drifting apart.
"I think the love was still there, but there was no time spent with each other," Richie continues. "The relationship just seemed to go nowhere. It just stood where it was."
Facing life in prison if convicted of murdering his wife, Dr. Kirk Turner makes the bold and risky decision to take the stand to explain the events that led up to that fateful night.
"Jennifer really wanted to raise horses," he says on the stand.
Kirk is questioned by his own high-priced attorney, Joe Cheshire, who earned national attention in 2006, when he defended the wrongfully-accused players in the Duke lacrosse rape case.
Cheshire: Why did you agree to purchase the Jack Boo property and move?
Kirk: Make her happy.
Cheshire: Was that important to you?
Kirk: Yes.
Kirk says his desire to make Jennifer happy proved to be the undoing of their marriage.
"I was working and then when I came home I had to work on the barn. It was pretty consuming," he testifies. "We spent no time at all together."
Two years after buying the horse farm, Kirk was lonely. That's when he began spending time with the other woman - the family's former personal banker, Tondja Colvin.
Kirk:We were friends and we started talking more about our marriages and kind of commiserated about how bad our marriages were becoming.
Cheshire: And that relationship became an adulterous relationship at some point?
Kirk: It did. Yes. I'm ashamed to say it did.
Just two weeks after beginning his affair, Kirk told Jennifer he was leaving.
"I knew my marriage had been over a long time," he says in court. "I thought it best to just ask for a separation and move out of the house."
Even though it was Jennifer who filed for divorce, Kirk says she offered to drop the whole matter if he agreed to stay married on some pretty easy terms.
"She'd offered that if I moved back home I could keep Tondja as a girlfriend and see her and even vacation with her," he says.
Kirk turned down Jennifer's unusual offer. But something he said to her would end up becoming a focal point of this case.
Cheshire: Kirk, have you ever said to your wife, "There's more than one way to end a marriage?"
Kirk: I have. She'd asked me if I wanted a divorce. I said, "No, there was more than one way to end a marriage."
Cheshire: And what were you referring to?
Kirk: Separation, as my parents have done.
But Wendy testifies her mother took Kirk's statement as a threat on her life.
Wendy: She knew he carried a knife and a little gun.
Prosecutor Rob Taylor: And did she indicate to you what type of fear that caused in her?
Wendy: Oh, terrible fear. She'd be very shaky and scared. And her eyes would have tears in them.
Then came Sept. 12, 2007, the last day of Jennifer's life. Family friend Greg Smithson called, telling Jennifer he needed to pick up some equipment at the ranch.
"Jennifer to me was a wonderful person. She always treated me real good - never had any problems with her," he tells Peter Van Sant, adding that the Turner children even call him "Uncle Greg."
Smithson asked Jennifer if he could bring Kirk along to help him load up his equipment. Surprisingly, Jennifer put her fears aside and said yes.
"I walked up to the house to get Jennifer and inform her that we were there," Smithson explains.
"When you told her that what was her reaction? That Kirk was there on the property," Van Sant asks.
"She told me, she said it was fine."Jennifer actually helped Smithson and Kirk move some furniture. Then they went to a shed on the property to pick up a welder. Smithson says Jennifer wasn't fearful. But the conversation soon got personal and he got uncomfortable.
"I heard the word sex. And you know, I'm like, "OK, these are just things that I just don't wanna hear," Smithson says.
"But you heard the word?" Van Sant asks.
"Yeah. Sex and reconciliation," Smithson confirms.
Smithson headed out to his truck with the welder, leaving Kirk and Jennifer alone. Kirk says he used the private moment to change the subject to some papers he'd brought with him.
Kirk: I took two documents with me.
Cheshire: What documents did you take?
Kirk: I took - an order that we were going to file with the court to force the sale of the farm. And I took an affidavit from her first husband that spoke of their marriage.
That affidavit claimed that Jennifer's first marriage nearly 25 years earlier had failed because of her obsessive love of horses. Jennifer's ex also alleged that she had been unfaithful.
"I just wanted to show Jennifer that I didn't want this to get ugly and if we had to proceed in court that it wasn't going to be nice for either one of us," Kirk testified.
"I don't think he thought these papers would inflame Jennifer," Cheshire tells Van Sant. "They did inflame her."
Kirk says an enraged Jennifer grabbed a seven-foot-long decorative spear that was leaning against a wall… and took him by surprise.
"I remember turning around and seeing a symmetrical silver thing in my leg," Kirk says on the stand.
Kirk says that 'silver thing' was the tip of the spear.
At 5' 11," and 187 pounds, Jennifer was a strong, athletic woman. Kirk says he defended himself. His knife was just four inches long, but razor sharp.
Cheshire: Do you remember going into your pocket and getting your knife?
Kirk: No. (breathing hard) I remember going like this. (Kirk gestures.)
Cheshire: Do you remember Jennifer falling?
Kirk: No.
Cheshire: Do you remember standing over her?
Kirk: I remember looking down and seeing her eyes.
Greg Smithson says about two or three minutes had passed since he'd last seen Kirk and Jennifer together. Then he heard a noise.
"I heard Kirk hollering," Smithson recalls. "Just screaming… At several points in time I heard him say that she had attacked. From what I'd seen, he was bleeding."
Smithson ran into the shed to call 911. That's when he made a gruesome discovery.
"I saw Jennifer laying there. I'm so shook up," he testifies. "I couldn't tell if she was alive or not."
The 911 operator instructed Smithson to give Jennifer CPR.
"I went back and forth between the telephone and Jennifer multiple times," he explains on the stand. "I grabbed her nose; I put my hand under her neck and started blowing."
But there was no saving Jennifer. She had nearly been decapitated by Kirk and had bled out. Kirk was hospitalized, going into shock from blood loss and requiring a transfusion. Through it all, Kirk told anyone who would listen that Jennifer attacked him first.
"I would never have killed my wife unless I thought I was gonna die," Kirk testifies.
District Attorney Greg Brown says this is not a case of self defense. "It was a cold-blooded murder."
Richie Turner could barely find the words to tell his sister, Wendy, the unimaginable news.
"It was probably one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life," he says. "I couldn't tell her. You know, I sat there and I cried."
"He asked if I was sitting down," Wendy recalls. "He said that my mom had died. And I was frantic."
"She said, 'I have to go, I have to go.' That was very hard to do," says Richie.
Their mother was dead and their father lay in a hospital bed in serious condition.
"Did you want to rush to your father's side? Van Sant asks.
"No, no. Absolutely not," Wendy replies. "I knew that when they said that my mom had been killed, that it was him. Nobody had to tell me that. I knew that."
"I saw it on the news and my first reaction was, 'Kirk did this,'" says Jennifer's friend Susan Doran. "Nobody else would ever try to harm Jennifer. Nobody. So I knew immediately… it was him."
"The long drawn out divorce… the fact that he had a girlfriend… the fact that he was a millionaire, the fact that this was an embarrassment to his practice. All these things are called motive," District Attorney Greg Brown tells the court.
Prosecutor Greg Brown could not wait to challenge Kirk when he took the stand.
Brown: Can you tell this jury at what point did you decide to kill your wife?
Kirk: I could not tell you that.
But Brown is convinced Dr. Turner is lying. He believes Kirk made a conscious choice to kill Jennifer just moments before their fatal encounter.
"She had no idea what was coming," Brown tells Van Sant.
By Brown's reckoning, Kirk Turner was itching for a fight that September night when he arrived at the farm.
Kirk's aim was to get Jennifer to drop her embarrassing lawsuit against his girlfriend, Tondja Colvin.
"The defendant came with the purpose to confront her," Brown says. "He was devastated because of the alienation of affection lawsuit."
So Kirk sprung a surprise on Jennifer: the damaging affidavit from her ex-husband to show that Kirk, too, could play dirty.
Says Brown, "He had a particular purpose; and that purpose was to threaten his wife with these documents."
"I'd never thought of it as a threat," Kirk testifies.
Alone in the small shed that night, tempers flared; especially, Brown says, after Jennifer read over those documents.
"She crumpled them up," Brown tells Van Sant. "She may have said something offensive to him. She may have scratched his face. And at that point in time, he made a decision that he was going to kill his wife… The defendant took out his knife, stabbed his wife and murdered her."
"I always have a pocketknife on my person… I just remember my hand like this," Kirk gestures, waving it in the air just above shoulder height.
"This was not self-defense?" asks Van Sant. "That's correct," Brown replies.
Brown:You do remember your wife's eyes being open when you killed her?
Kirk: I remember her layin' on the floor, and seeing her eyes. And they were open.
Kirk insists he had no choice but to protect himself once Jennifer began stabbing him with that seven-foot spear.
Prosecutor Rob Taylor is not buying Kirk's story.
"All the physical evidence at the scene did not show an attack by Jennifer Turner on her husband," Taylor says.
Or that she even touched that spear. "No fingerprint that we can say was lifted that absolutely puts that spear in her hands," he says.
With Jennifer dead at his feet, prosecutors believe Kirk needed a way out. They say he staged the scene to make it look like self-defense. Then, he did the unthinkable.
"He grabs the spear, sits down in a chair or some location, and puts those wounds into his leg," Taylor says.
Kirk's attorney, Joe Cheshire, says that's ludicrous. "I've had doctors say to me, 'If you were wild and crazed on PCP, maybe you could do it once but you could never do it twice.'" It does sound unbelievable. But, Taylor says, consider those injuries to Kirk's thigh.
"Two wounds going through and through the leg with no twisting of the blade. It appeared no ripping of the skin. They appear to [be] pretty clean wounds through and through and that's not consistent with someone in a spear battle trying to dodge, maneuver, trying to avoid the contact to get away," he points out.
Brown: Mr. Turner, isn't it a fact that you inflicted those two wounds to the fat part of your leg so you could give a convincing reason why you butchered your wife, so you could claim self defense. Isn't that correct?
Kirk: That is not correct.
The mystery of what happened to Jennifer Turner can actually be found right where she died," Van Sant points out from the crime scene. Jennifer's blood, and some of Kirk's as well, got shot up on the side of a wood worktable. Why it happened and how it happened is at the heart of this case.
Johnny Marks, the prosecution team's lead investigator, thinks the blood evidence contradicts Kirk's story.
"Now, if you believe Kirk's story that he was facing her, the knife goes in, he rips across… there's a second wound across there. Now we all know that when the carotid artery is cut, each beat of the heart, blood shoots out of the body… So there should be blood, your investigation claims, there should be blood right up here," Van Sant notes, referencing the top of the worktable, where there is no blood spatter.
The blood was found on the side of the work table just inches above the floor. Police say that proves Jennifer was not standing when her throat was cut.
According to Brown, "He knocked her backwards; he went down on top of her. She was defenseless. She did not have the spear."
"He had to bury that knife in her neck and rip it across her neck over to her breast area," says Taylor. "That's not a defensive thing to do. That's an attacking murderous event to do."
And it was not only the blood spray that led them to that conclusion.
"One of the most important things that we looked at when we looked at any of the evidence was these bloody footprints," says Taylor.According to Kirk, he was stabbed first. But crime scene investigators determined that some of Jennifer's blood was dried or drying before Kirk's fresh blood began falling on top of it.
"Her blood should be on top of his because he claims he was attacked first," Van Sant remarks.
"That's correct," says Marks.
"But it's just the opposite and that makes you suspicious."
"Right. You're correct."
The drying blood is evidence, prosecutors say, of an elaborate cover up. And they allege that Kirk had some help from his best friend, Greg Smithson.
"We really had to show that he was not telling the truth," Brown tells Van Sant.
"I think they were on a witch hunt," says Smithson.
Defense attorneys Joe Cheshire and Brad Bannon say Greg Smithson is the most genuine guy you can find.
"Greg Smithson is a salt of the earth human being," says Bannon. "He is not terribly educated. But he's very, very wise - from experiences that he's had in his life."
"He's what we describe down here in the South just a good old beer drinking boy," adds Cheshire. "He became Kirk Turner's best friend - which says a lot about Kirk too because he comes from this educated background making lots of money."
"Kirk Turner is a dentist. You're a body shop guy," notes Van Sant. "Some people - they would think that's kind of an odd couple, but it's really worked for you guys."
"Kirk is a down to earth kinda guy," Smithson says. "He's just a super nice guy."
In fact, Smithson is quick to tell jurors that he was a friend to all the Turners.
"The one thing I enjoyed about the whole family, I just a working class stiff and of course they have money, but they never acted like they were better than anybody else. Jennifer was one of those - a very kind person and I really loved her," he says.
Smithson has become a key figure in this first-degree murder trial because he's the closest thing either side has to an eyewitness.
"It's really, really simple. If Greg Smithson is telling the truth, Kirk Turner's not guilty of homicide," says Bannon.
That's because Smithson swears the fatal encounter between Kirk and Jennifer happened in a flash; in the two or three minutes Smithson left the shed. And he insists there was no coverup… no time for Kirk to stab himself, as prosecutors allege.
"My only concern at that time was talking to the people on the phone and trying to help Jennifer," he says on the stand.
"We absolutely do not buy Mr. Smithson's version," says Prosecutor Greg Brown.
When asked if he thinks Smithson is lying, Brown replies, "We think that he told an untruth."
Brown says there is a problem with Smithson's story.
"He participated in developing a timeline that didn't fit the evidence," he says.
Smithson figures it was around 8 p.m. when a wounded Kirk came stumbling toward him from the shed. But he didn't call 911 until 9:35 p.m., leaving 90 minutes unaccounted for.
"We believe that during that time period, a plan was developed to cover up this brutal murder," says Brown.
Smithson, who became visibly upset when his eyeglasses broke while testifying, says he falls apart anytime he thinks about that night and says he was simply confused about the time.
"I didn't take a stop watch. I don't know how long we were there," he says.
But if there's one thing Smithson is sure of that night, it's that he gave Jennifer CPR.
Brown: Did you hear sounds from Jennifer?
Smithson: I heard some noise. I thought maybe she was breathing. I don't know. Only thing I remember were her eyes.
Brown doesn't believe Smithson gave Jennifer CPR.
"He indicated that he gave chest compressions," Brown tells Van Sant. "There are no impressions consistent with someone giving chest compressions… he would have had blood all over him and there would have been bloody handprints on Jennifer's open chest."
Of the prosecution's allegation, Smithson says, "I don't care too much for the prosecution in this case. I know what I tried to do."
Despite branding Smithson a liar, prosecutor Rob Taylor admits there is not enough evidence to charge him with a crime.
Taylor says police never name Greg Smithson as a suspect.
"If the lead investigators don't think he was involved, why should you?" asks Van Sant.
"We continually found places in the physical evidence that just didn't match what his statements were," Taylor replies.
When asked if he lied to police about what happened in that building, Smithson says, "No. I cooperated with everybody."
When it's the defense's turn, Marilyn Miller, a forensic scientist, describes what she found inside Kirk's front jeans pocket - the pocket where he kept his knife.
"That is Dr. Turner's DNA and only Dr. Turner's DNA," Miller testifies.
"The fact that there was only his blood on that pocket definitively shows that he had suffered all of his wounds before he ever went to defend himself," says defense attorney Brad Bannon.
"If he had killed Jennifer first and then tried to cook up a tale - wounded himself for a cover story," says Van Sant, "you're telling me when he put his hand in his pocket, Jennifer's blood would have been in there as well?"
"Absolutely," says Bannon.
"So in terms of important evidence that's in this room, how important is that blood in his pocket?"
"Critical," Bannon says. "It's probably the key fact in the case."
Watching this all play out are the Turner children: Wendy who thinks her father is guilty and Richie who believes in his innocence.
"I'm really sad for him… he's stuck in a position he can't get out of," Wendy says of her brother. "My mother was the one that really stood up for Richie, and Kirk was really hard on Richie. Really hard."
When asked why she calls her father Kirk instead of dad, Wendy explains, "He took my mom from me. I can't call him dad when he did that… he doesn't deserve to be called that anymore."
"Can you see your mother going after your dad with a spear?" Van Sant asks Richie.
"Well, she's come at me with a horse whip before," he says. "She wasn't swinging it as hard as she could but yeah, she was.
"Does it make you wonder today that maybe she was capable of pickin' up that spear in a moment of rage and attacking your dad?"
"It does," he says.
While the children remain divided, the jury unites - delivering a verdict that stuns the state of North Carolina.
Kirk Turner's month-long murder trial has been a gut wrenching experience for all those who cared about Jennifer.
After just six hours of deliberation, the jury reaches a verdict, finding Kirk not guilty by reason of self defense.
The verdict sends shockwaves through the courtroom. Wendy runs out in tears.
Kirk Turner is vindicated.
"I want to first thank God for all that He's done for me. I want to thank the jurors," he tells reporters.
When a reporter asks, "Can you say anything about Wendy right now?" Kirk says, "She's a great girl."
But Wendy tells "48 Hours" she's "crushed" by the verdict. "I really thought he'd be guilty of something."
"It's OK to kill your wife. That's the message that was sent," says Jennifer's friend, Susan Doran.
Jennifer's friends, the community and even the local newspaper all expressed outrage at the jury's decision.
"48 Hours" brought six of the jurors together to discuss their controversial verdict.
"One guy wrote that it's North Carolina's O.J. Simpson case. Would you like to respond to that?" Van Sant asks the group.
"I was just stunned that they would say things like that to sell papers - that we were a bunch of dumb country bumpkins that were fooled by the big, flashy lawyers from out of town," says a male juror. "That was not the case at all. I heard the evidence in the courtroom and went with what we were shown."
Both sides offer reasonable interpretations of blood spatter, but the jury focused on the blood inside Kirk's jeans.
"The only blood in the pocket was his blood," the male juror says. "He'd already been cut when he went in there and grabbed the knife. That convinced me who was stabbed or cut first."
And the jurors also came to the conclusion that Greg Smithson - who was with Kirk that night - was a stand-up guy.
When asked if they believe Greg Smithson, a female juror says, "Absolutely."
"And what do you think of the prosecution's attempt to cast aspersions on him to suggest he may have been part of a conspiracy?" Van Sant asks her.
"I thought they were graspin' at straws," she says.
But there was one person who really rubbed these jurors the wrong way - Prosecutor Rob Taylor.
"I mean, he was making his point on top of us," says another male juror, who describes his reaction as "borderline anger."
And as for Kirk Turner, these jurors saw nothing wrong with him carrying a knife that night.
In fact, when asked how many of them carry a pocketknife, two of the six jurors said they do.
"And matter of fact, I had the same knife he killed her with," the first male juror says, showing his pocketknife. "Mine's bigger than the one he had."
The not guilty verdict has only widened the gap between Wendy and Richie.
"I am nervous that if I talk to him, that he will tell Kirk about me. And, to me, I can't risk that," she says of her estranged relationship with her brother.
"What do you want people watching this to know today about your father?" Vant Sant asks.
"He's a good man. He loves me. He loves my sister," Richie says. "And, you know, if Wendy came back right now, he'd let her in with open arms."
But Wendy won't be coming back any time soon.
"If you had an opportunity to speak with your father, have one last conversation with him, what would you want to say to him?" Van Sant asks Wendy.
With a pause, she says, "Was it worth it?"
Jennifer's sister filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Kirk Turner, which was settled out of court. Wendy and Richie Turner are the beneficiaries.
Kirk Turner and Tondja Colvin are still together.