Murdered by a jelly!
Angie Bollinger was devastated when her brother Ryan, pictured, died suddenly
Thursday 28th February 2008
Dropping my shopping bags on the kitchen table, I was just about to flick on the kettle, when I spotted a note stuck to the fridge by a magnet. Popped round to say hello, but you weren't in. It was from my brother, Randy Thompson, then 32.
'Looks like we missed Randy,' I called to my husband, Doug, who was getting our kids, Jacob, 5, and Kendall, 2, out of the car.
He only lived a few streets away, so Randy often popped round for a cup of tea.
We were close and chatted on the phone most days, too. That's why I hadn't thought twice about giving him a key to my house.
'He says he's going to the doctor again,' I said, reading the rest of his note. 'I hope he gets better soon.'
Lately, Randy had been suffering from a sinus infection and had been on antibiotics.
'It's really getting me down,' he'd confessed, when I'd popped round to see him a couple of weeks earlier, in December 2000. He was a firefighter, so normally, Randy was super-fit.
'Just take it easy,' I'd told him. 'And make sure you eat well.'
That's when he'd mentioned his ex-girlfriend, Lynn Turner, 25, had been visiting.
'She's been bringing round jelly and soup to cheer me up,' he'd said.
Lynn was the mother of Randy's two kids, Ella, 4, and Sam, 2. They'd split up 18 months earlier, but stayed on good terms. Randy saw the kids every weekend, and Lynn popped round now and then.
But, although we appeared to get on, I knew Lynn and I would never be friends.
'Her credit card is her best friend,' Randy had once joked.
A shopaholic, Lynn had spent the entire four years she was with Randy getting the pair of them deeper and deeper into debt. So I admit, I was very relieved when Randy told her it was over.
Still, it was good to know she was looking out for my brother when he wasn't feeling so good. I must pop round and see him soon, I thought, pulling his note off the fridge.
But I was five months pregnant, and felt so tired.
A week on, I still hadn't managed to catch up with Randy. I must call him, I thought, as I went to meet Doug from work, on 22 January 2001. But when I got there, Doug had some shocking news.
'The police called,' he said, sitting me down. 'Randy's been found dead at his flat by a friend.'
I was too stunned to speak.
'It–it doesn't make any sense,' I stammered. 'He only had a cold.'
I called to tell my dad, Perry Thompson, then 52, who was in Florida working as a truck driver. A couple of days later, I went to Randy's flat in Cumming, Georgia, with his friend, Barry Head.
When we got there, we were met by a police inspector, who told us that because Randy's death was unexplained, police were treating his flat as a crime scene. We weren't allowed in. Sobbing, I asked if I could collect some photos. They were all I had left of Randy now. Back home, our family was in bits.
'I can't believe it,' Dad wept. 'He was so young.'
Lynn wasn't there, but I knew she and the kids had been told.
Poor loves, I thought. They must be heartbroken. While we all waited for the postmortem results, I kept busy by arranging the funeral. Finally, on 25 January, Randy's body was released for burial. All his colleagues from the fire service were there, complete with a fire engine and full honours. I felt so proud.
Then, in the crowd, I saw Lynn for the first time since Randy's death. I hadn't spoken to her since Thanksgiving, in November 2000.
'Are you OK?' Dad asked her.
'Fine,' she said, matter-of-factly. 'But the kids are with my family.'
She seemed so offhand.
'People handle grief in different ways,' Doug reminded me.
True. Poor woman must have been as shocked as the rest of us. The service was so heartbreaking, I went straight home afterwards.
'I don't want you upsetting yourself too much,' Doug said, gently stroking my swollen tummy.
But next day, I received a phone call that shocked me to the core. It was from a woman called Kathy Turner. I'd never heard of her before.
'I'm sorry to hear about Randy's death,' she said. 'But there's something I need to ask you. Do you think Lynn Turner had anything to do with it?'
'What?' I spluttered into the receiver, completely shocked. Why on earth would she say something like that?
'Lynn used to be married to my son, Glenn,' Kathy explained. 'He also died suddenly, in March 1995.'
Now I was really confused. Lynn had mentioned she'd once been married to a police officer, but said he'd died years before she'd met Randy in 1994.
'So she was still married to Glenn when she started seeing Randy?' I said slowly. 'I'm sure he didn't know.'
Kathy agreed that Randy probably didn't.
'I just think it's a bit suspicious, both of them dying suddenly,' she said. 'Don't you?'
Right then, I didn't know what to think. I'd never been Lynn's biggest fan. But a killer? It seemed a ridiculous idea. So I was very relieved when the postmortem showed Randy had died from heart problems. Now we could move on, and in May 2001, I gave birth to my son, Garrett.
But a month later, I received another shocking phone call.
'We're reinvestigating Randy's death,' a police officer told me.
Kathy Turner wasn't the only person with suspicions. Her son Glenn's old police colleagues were pointing the finger at Lynn, too.
'I can't believe it,' I gasped.
Though I had no contact with her, word soon spread that Lynn was denying all knowledge. But when the police decided to retest some of Randy's tissue and exhume Glenn's body, they made some shocking discoveries.
'Both men had calcium oxalate crystals in their kidneys,' police told us. 'It's a telltale sign of the fatal substance ethylene glycol, which you find in antifreeze.'
Our whole family was stunned. Had Lynn really poisoned both of her lovers?
The police certainly thought so. And, in November 2002, while officers continued to investigate Randy's death, Lynn was charged with Glenn Turner's murder. Rather than putting her in jail, officers put her under house arrest at her parent's house in Cumming, along with Ella and Sam. She also had to wear an electronic ankle-tag. Despite everything, I still couldn't believe she was capable of murder.
But when the case began at Houston County Superior Court, in Perry, Georgia, in April 2004, I finally began to realise just what a cold, calculating character she really was. The court heard that on 3 March 1995, several months after she'd started seeing Randy, Lynn had found Glenn, 31, dead in their cellar. She claimed that the night before, she'd found him down there in a deluded state, trying to drink petrol.
But the prosecution didn't agree. They claimed instead that she'd fed her husband lime jelly laced with odourless antifreeze. My skin prickled.
'Randy said Lynn brought him jelly when he was poorly,' I whispered to Doug.
But that still didn't explain why Lynn would want to kill anyone.
Glenn's friends provided an answer to that one. It seems that in the months before his death, Glenn had been complaining a lot about Lynn's out-of-control spending. She was literally thousands in debt. Sounds familiar, I thought to myself grimly.
After Glenn's death, though, a life-insurance payout of £78,000 had meant Lynn's debts were completely wiped out. So, with the slate clean, she buried her husband and, four days later, she moved in with Randy. It wasn't long before she'd secured a £102,000 insurance policy on his life, as well.
And just like Glenn, my brother later died after being fed poisoned jelly and soup.
But unfortunately for Lynn, her haul was only £18,000 because Randy had defaulted on his insurance premiums. Lynn swore she was innocent throughout, and refused to testify. But in May 2004, she was found guilty of murdering Glenn Turner and sentenced to life in prison.
Four months later, in October 2004, Lynn was charged with Randy's murder, too.
And in March 2007, she appeared at Whitfield County Court, Dalton, Georgia, where she was convicted and sentenced to life without parole. Now, a year later, I'm still struggling to understand how Lynn could be so callous as to kill the two men who loved her, just for money.
Yes, I knew she was greedy and wanted only the finer things in life. But I never dreamed for one moment that her love of money would lead her to murder the father of her own children. That's not just greed, it's pure evil.
The full stories appear in Pick Me Up magazine, out every Thursday. For more great true life, try these crackers from the Pick Me Up Story Library instead:
I forgot I was married!
I married a toyboy convict!