Another Lyle youth confessed to slaying

By Bill McAuliffe
Southern Minnesota Correspondent

Austin, Minn.
The 14-year-old charged in the shooting death of Lyle, Minn., school teacher Sharon Turnbull was not the first to confess to the crime, according to testimony in the youth's murder hearing Wednesday.

A Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) agent testified that a 15-year-old son of a friend of Turnbull's, who also lived in Lyle, told investigators that he killed the 33-year-old teacher with a .22 caliber rifle as she sat on the floor of her living room around midnight Aug. 5.

But BCA agent Duane Luttring also testified that investigators didn't believe the 15-year-old's confession because it wasn't consistent with the facts in the case.

On cross-examination by Bruce Hanley, defense attorney for the 14-year-old, Luttring admitted that the 15-year-old had a "plausible and strong" motive for killing Turnbull. Luttring said the boy was distraught over his family life and Turnbull's involvement in it. But Luttring said that the weapon the 15-year-old said he used was not the same as the alleged murder weapon, and that there were no traces of him having approached Turnbull's house as he said he had.

Both youths are former pupils of Turnbull's.

The hearing, which started at the Mower County courthouse Monday, is the juvenile equivalent of an adult murder trial. However, no jury nor spectators are present. News media representatives have been admitted under order of Olmsted County Judge Harold Krieger, who is hearing the case.

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Krieger has ordered the media "not to disclose the name, physical characteristics, relatives, addresses, family history, or any other facts that may tend to identify, directly or indirectly, the juvenile defendant of his family." Yesterday Krueger prohibited the naming of any juveniles called as witnesses or mentioned in testimony.

The hearing cannot result in a murder conviction, but rather will determine if the youth committed a delinquent act. Penalties range from counseling to placement of the youth in a juvenile detention center until he turns 19.

Luttring testified yesterday that the 15-year-old boy was upset and wept as he was interrogated Aug. 12. Under cross-examination by Hanley, Luttring testified that the boy had been emotionally disturbed for several years since the death of his father, and resentful of the time Sharon Turnbull was spending at his family's home.

Luttring said the 15-year-old may have been "telling his story to please me, to get me off is back. I think (he) was at that point that afternoon."

A search warrant executed Aug. 12 at the home of the 14-year-old led to his arrest.

Although there has been no testimony regarding the 14-year-old's confession, Assistant Mower County Attorney Charlotte Peterson said in her opening remarks Monday that she would "simply try to prove he (the defendant) committed the murder, based on the evidence and his own confession."

The hearing is expected to continue into next week.