A woman’s search for her sister led to the arrest of their father. She sat down with him to ask him what happened
Alissa Turney has been missing for more than two decades but her sister Sarah hasn’t given up her mission to get answers. Even if that means sitting down with the one and only suspect in the case – their father. Andrea Cavallier reports
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Your support makes all the difference.The last time Sarah Turney saw her father Michael Turney was in a Maricopa County courtroom when she testified against him during his trial for the murder of her sister Alissa.
Now she’s sat down with him to get answers for herself.
Arizona teenager Alissa Turney went missing on May 17, 2001. It was the last day of her junior year in high school. The 17-year-old told her boyfriend that she was going to lunch with Turney, her stepdad. She hasn’t been seen or heard from since.
The story of Alissa’s mysterious disappearance went viral years later when her sister shared it on TikTok, sparking millions of viewers to follow along.
“It was so healing to finally put everything out there, and kind of get it straight in your mind, and tell the story from start to finish in your own words,” Sarah previously told The Independent about sharing Alissa’s story.
The attention resulted in the arrest of their father for second-degree murder in 2020 and a trial in 2023. Michael was acquitted on all charges.
But Sarah was still left with so many questions.
In a raw and unedited interview released Friday on Sarah’s podcast, Voices for Justice, she sat down with her father for the first time in years, and questions him about whether he sexually assaulted Alissa and whether he had a premeditated plan to kill her for over a year before her disappearance.
At one point during the interview, Turney scolds his daughter: “If you continue on with your attitude, Sarah, I’ll leave, I’m serious.”
Sarah pushes back with: “I can stop this interview right now if you can’t be civil.”
When he accuses her of being hostile, as he does multiple times throughout the hour-long interview, she fires back, “I’m not being hostile. You’re trying to gaslight me. You’re continuing your abuse and I’m not gonna take it.”
“What does gaslight mean,” he asks, looking from her to the film crew.
“Look it up,” she responds.
Turney also asks if the longtime detective on Alissa’s case is Sarah’s new “daddy”.
Portions of the interview will be featured in a new documentary Family Secrets: The Disappearance of Alissa Turney on October 13 at 8pm on Oxygen True Crime. Peacock will stream an extended version on October 22.
Viewers will see as a suited Turney, 76, is patted down for weapons before he hobbles into the interview carrying a cane and sits across from his daughter, who is backed by a production crew. He pulls out his phone and aims it at Sarah to record her, which he later posts on YouTube.
“There’s something palpable about seeing them together,” Ricki Stern, one of the directors of the documentary, told The Independent.
“It’s a story that looks at memory and manipulation,” Stern said, including exclusive interviews with Alissa’s friends and never-before-seen archival footage.
At one point, Turney tells Sarah to calm down and she tells him that she’ll calm down when he tells her the truth.
Turney says he has told the truth and that Alissa’s case was over when he was acquitted in July 2023 and all charges were dropped. Alissa’s body has never been found.
The last day
Sarah, who was 12 years old in May 2001, remembers being on a field trip at the waterpark for her last day of school.
But everything changed when her father picked her up from school: her sister, a student at Paradise Valley High School, was missing.
Turney would later tell the Phoenix Police Department that during their lunch, they had argued over some of Alissa’s behavior and about her desire for more freedom.
The former sheriff’s deputy had to raise six children on his own after his wife, Barbara Strahm, died of cancer nine year earlier. He had three older boys from a previous marriage, and his wife had Alissa and her older brother John when they became a family in the 1990s. Together they had Sarah, his only biological daughter.
Sarah would later remember how Turney treated her differently than Alissa, who always seemed to be getting into trouble.
Turney always claimed that when he and Alissa got home from lunch that day in 2001, she went straight to her room. He says he then went to pick up Sarah from school, and called Alissa on her cell phone but she didn’t answer.
When they got back to the house, Alissa was gone. A note found on her dresser allegedly in her handwriting stated she was running away to go live in California. Her cell phone was also there.
Alissa was first reported as a runaway, which Sarah has said she believes hurt the case from the beginning.
In the interview with her father, she questions him about why, as a former law enforcement official, would he report her as a runaway, knowing police would not investigate.
Turney told her that Alissa’s plan had been to move to California and live with family – but when she never showed up, it was clear that something was wrong.
No searches were conducted for the teen, but Turney passed out fliers and traveled to California multiple times.
“He was always frantic about her,” Sarah told Dateline in 2020. “Always had to know where she was and what she was doing. He was very overbearing. But he wasn’t like that with me.”
A sister’s search for answers
While going through footage of old home videos, Sarah became aware of the way her father was with Alissa.
A video in which Alissa could be heard yelling “Sarah, dad’s a pervert”, reached more than 21 million views on TikTok and was the catalyst to bringing more attention to the case in 2020.
One of the directors for the documentary, Jesse Sweet, told The Independent that new footage reveals “little moments in the old home videos that haven’t been played before,” and that it shows the “cumulative effect of Mike’s control and abuse.”
Sarah trusted him in the years following Alissa’s disappearance.
But deep down, she knew how close Alissa was to her family, her friends and her boyfriend, and although her sister dreamed of living in California — where she could drive a Jeep just like in the movie Clueless — she never mentioned running away, and she would never leave Sarah alone in that house.
A father on trial for murder
Police initially found no evidence of foul play involved in the teenager’s disappearance.
But years later, a fresh look at the case led to the discovery of allegations of sexual abuse and the case was reopened.
When investigators searched Turney’s home in 2008, they found “26 pipe bombs and three incendiary devices,” according to the FBI.
They learned Alissa had around $1,800 in savings when she disappeared. But the money was never touched, according to ABC News.
Their brother, James, told Dateline in 2020 that just months before she disappeared, Alissa told him she was “afraid” of Turney.
“I told her she could come stay with me. And then when I found out she was missing, we 100 per cent believed she had run away,” he said. “She got away from him and that’s what she wanted. But she never came to me. Or to her aunt’s house in California. She had so many options of places to go. But she just vanished.”
Several people came forward with allegations of sexual abuse between Alissa and Turney — claims he has adamantly denied.
Turney had Alissa sign notarized contracts where she agreed to rules or certain claims, including one that stated that he had never physically or sexually abused her, according to NBC News.
In 2010, Turney pleaded guilty to possessing the 26 explosives and was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison, but was released in 2017.
That same year, Sarah met with her father and recorded a conversation where she confronted him about what happened to Alissa.
“Be there at the deathbed, Sarah,” he told her, according to People. “I will give you all the honest answers you want to hear.”
But when Sarah again confronted her father in this new 2024 interview, he laughed and told her that she had taken his words out of context and that he had meant that the story that was told would not change.
In August 2020, Turney was arrested on second-degree murder charges in the disappearance and death of Alissa.
He was acquitted of the charges in July 2023 after a six-day trial at the Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix.
The acquittal means that Turney cannot be tried again for second-degree murder – but it’s possible that he could be tried for other crimes.
Detective Anderson, who appeared in the documentary, said the options are limited and it’s likely that Turney will remain a free man for the rest of his life.
After a heated back and forth between Turney and Sarah during their interview, Turney asks her, “Why are you doing this, Sarah? To make money off your dead sister,” he says before catching himself and adding, “If she is dead.”
A sister at peace
After several hours with her father, Sarah ends the interview and walks out.
“I’m at peace with what I’ve done for Alissa,” she says in the documentary.
Earlier this year, Sarah launched a new podcast Media Pressure, which is aimed at helping the families of missing persons.
Sarah told The Independent that the “whole goal of the network Voices for Justice Media is to carve out space for families like me ... It’s time we had some space in true crime.”
She explained that there are many families who have gone through the same things – begging for media pressure, attention on their loved one’s case, traveling to events such as CrimeCon to spread the word, and countless interviews.
“It’s something we’re not used to seeing in true crime. We’re so used to being interviewed. And having our stories cut and edited to fit the algorithm,” Sarah said. “At some point, when do you start creating the content yourself?”
Family Secrets: The Disappearance of Alissa Turney will air at 8 p.m. on Sunday, October 13 on Oxygen. An extended version of the documentary will be released October 22 on Peacock.