The Day Alissa Disappeared

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A new era is here, it is go time.

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Tonight on Dateline.

You're looking out at Alyssa going to prom.

She looked really beautiful.

Was that the last time you saw her?

Yes, it was.

When he told me she was missing, I was shocked.

I was called by my father, she had run away. I want to find out what happened to my kid.

Sarah has become this big podcaster and advocate for her sister.

This is insane, it should never happen to anyone.

We found hundreds of VHS, tapes and audio recordings.

I made a foolish, stupid mistake in trying to talk to Alyssa.

How often is he coming to her work and recording her?

He comes on a regular basis.

That's stalking.

This whole other side is emerging of this family.

Dark secrets now coming to light.

I saw them digging, so I took my camera, my phone and just started taking pictures.

They were gasping out loud.

He had enough explosives to take out our whole neighborhood.

After a teenager goes missing, a chilling discovery pulls a family apart and turns an investigation upside down. I'm Lester Holt. This is dateline.

They're out there somewhere, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, people who vanish without a trace. Ten years ago, Dateline posed a question on Facebook Have you ever known someone who simply disappeared?

Can we please just get justice for Alyssa now?

It's a dark family drama with explosive allegations and a case with an ending that no one saw coming.

In all my years at Dateline, this is the first time I'd ever seen this happen.

It was a shock.

It all started on May 17, 2001, in Paradise Valley, a desert oasis just outside of Phoenix. Alyssa Turney's father, Mike, scrambled to get the kids out the door.

Well, we got up and I think we were running late, so I took. Alyssa and I always sat in the parking lot at Paradise Valley High School until she got in the building.

It was the last day of school, there were parties to go to friends, to hang out with friends like Chris Ridenour.

She's a good soul, yeah.

A good friend, Yeah. Alyssa was a junior, but she was planning to go to the graduation ceremony that night to see Chris, a senior, walk the stage.

End of high school and Alyssa was really excited for you.

Yeah, she wanted to come see me graduate and that was the plan we made.

Alyssa left school early that day. Her dad picked her up. Mike says. They had important things to talk about, like what she'd be doing that summer.

I wanted Alyssa to get a driver's license so she could help me out to a certain extent.

Mike was a widower, raising Alyssa and her 12-year-old sister Sarah, all by himself. As a retired army specialist and former deputy sheriff, he had a lot of roles in the house for Alyssa. He expected her to check in with him often and kept close tabs on where she went.

What was going on with Alyssa that you felt you needed to be so on top of her as far as where she was going, what she was doing?

She's very naive, very easily influenced and could be talked into just about anything.

He says They got lunch that day and then headed home.

Then, after that, a discussion started going bad because she wanted to go to a party.

Mike says their argument got heated and Alyssa stormed off to her bedroom. He left to run errands and later picked up her sister Sarah from a friend's house. And when they got home, Alyssa wasn't there and she wasn't answering her cell phone.

And then eventually, it was by her room, we hear the buzzing, and Sarah and I went in together.

So her phone's in her room.

Her phone's in her room.

And right there, on her dresser, something else. A note. It said Dad and Sarah, when you dropped me off at school today, I decided that I really am going to California. Sarah, you said you didn't want me around. Look, you got it, I'm gone.

How concerned are you that you found this note saying that she's gone?

Does panic fit the description? So I immediately started calling.

Who were you calling?

Anybody. I could get a phone number from her yearbook, her address book, I was called the day of by my father that she had gone missing.

Growing up, Alyssa's older brother, James, had been like a second father to her.

You thought that, yes, she's run away.

Yeah, definitely.

James no longer lived at home and didn't know where Alyssa was, but he did know she had an aunt in California, and Alyssa kept in touch with her by phone.

At that initial stage, that's what I thought, maybe she had gone there.

Had her aunt heard from her, from Alyssa?

Mike also checked in with his next-door neighbor, Judy Wacker. She told him not to worry. When she was a teenager, she'd run away, too.

She'll come back, just let her have some space, you know, she's a teenager, she'll come home.

How was he handling it?

He seemed really anxious.

Chris noticed Alyssa didn't show up for graduation or the party after.

At first I thought her dad wouldn't let her leave or something like that, you know? But after the party, I get a phone call from Mike like, Hey, have you seen Alyssa?

So this is strange.

Yeah, this is weird, yeah.

Alyssa's dad went to the police, of course, but he says they told him there wasn't much they could do. They assigned the case to a detective in the missing persons unit and added Alyssa's name to a long list of teenage runaways.

I was trying to convince them that Alyssa was an endangered runaway. You know, I'm worried about my child. We hear that all the time, Mr. Turney.

A week went by and nothing from Alyssa, no calls, no sightings. Until very early one morning, the home phone rang. Mike says. It was hard to hear, but he was sure it was Alyssa.

And Alyssa said some cuss words and stuff, saying that, You know, leave me alone. It sounded like she was talking away from the mouthpiece, you know? And then it just ended abruptly.

Does she sound like she's okay? Does she sound like she's in danger?

No, she didn't, She sounded upset.

Where was Alyssa Turney? A mystery that would stretch over decades was just getting started.

You wanted to find out where that call was made from?

I wanted to find out where it was. Phoenix PD didn't help me at all.

Police knew at 17, Alyssa was almost an adult. If anything, a call from her meant she was alive and well.

So I started calling Quest all up through the power chain, all the way to Denver.

The phone company.

I wanted the phone number, begged, pleaded.

And did they help you? No.

The phone company said it couldn't turn over the records without a subpoena, so Turney went to court to get one. Meanwhile, he continued to look for Alyssa everywhere.

He was driving out to places to canvas the area to see if she was around, handing out flyers, driving to California, talking to her friends.

James says his dad became obsessed with finding Alyssa, who was the oldest girl in their blended family. Mike wasn't her biological father. He met and married Alyssa's mother, Barbara, when Alyssa was 2 years old. Barbara also had an 8-year-old son named John.

You decided to adopt Alyssa and John. Make it official. Why take that extra step and not just be stepdad anymore?

Because I love Barbara. I mean, you know, it's a package. If you love somebody, you have to accept what they have with them.

Mike had three sons from a previous marriage, including James. James says his dad always had the video camera out. Here's Alyssa at the center with her large family.

When she first came into the family, she was just this little box of energy. She zoomed everywhere, she was constantly on the go, always in between. Whatever u.S. brothers were currently at that moment doing.

Sarah was born a few years later.

Did you all click really well, given the fact that you're a blended family?

Yeah, I would say pretty quickly. We were all pretty close with each other.

And they stayed close when tragedy struck. Alyssa was in second grade when her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Barbara died a year later.

How did you help her get through it? Was there anything that you did for Alyssa or said to Alyssa that made it a little easier?

Well, at that time, my father was kind of, I would say, really out of it. He seemed to be in shock. I was the person that she was kind of leaning back on. I remember at the funeral specifically, she understandably completely broke down. I remember taking her out and going into one of the church's classrooms in order to comfort her, until she was able to return back to the funeral.

By the time Alyssa was in high school, her older brothers were grown and on their own, it was just Mike and the two girls.

She had a really bubbly, friendly personality.

Her friend Chris lived down the street and they worked together at a jack in the box near the high school.

Would you hang out a lot when you weren't at work?

We would go to school together, so I would walk by her house and get her and maybe hang out sometimes at her house, waiting for her to get ready.

He remembers Alyssa and her father argued a lot.

You know, he was always, always trying to demand what she was doing, you know, always trying to see her phone. You know, things like that, like heavy-handed parenting, like, you know, helicopter style.

Mike said it was for her own good. He worried about her, especially after he believed Alyssa had been giving out their home phone number to guys she met while working the jack in the box drive-thru.

How did you find that out?

The phone calls that came in.

And you would ask them, How'd you get this number?

Well, try to. Most of the time, they just hung up.

Molly Claycamp met Alyssa in seventh grade.

Oh my God, she was so much fun.

She says Alyssa was a bit of a rebel, but in a good way independent, outspoken.

She didn't care what anybody like, thought she just did her own thing. I think that's what I really liked about her because I wasn't like that very much until I got older.

What did you all do for fun?

Listened to a lot of music, we, like, talked a lot in class, talked about boys a lot. She just made me smile all the time, made me laugh.

Did you do homework together since you had so many of the same classes? Yeah, who was helping who?

I would say she was probably helping me more, yeah.

After sophomore year, Alyssa transferred to a different high school, and she and Molly lost touch, but Molly often thought about her friend. She still has these photos Alyssa gave her, with notes written on the back.

What would she say? She'd be like, Hey, Molly, I'm glad you know you're my best friend. And she'd put like, 2002, which is when we were supposed to graduate 2002. Rock Love, Alyssa.

That summer, Alyssa disappeared. No one knew if she would be back to start senior year, much less graduate.

It's unsettling, you know, It's very sad, You know, you're like, what happened? You know? You kind of think the worst, but you got to keep the hope alive.

There was some good news. The court issued that subpoena and Alyssa's dad got the phone records.

What'd you find out? Where'd that call come from?

The error code suggested California, and they didn't give me the location, just gave me the number, and so I just kept calling it and finally somebody answered.

It was a convenience store clerk. The number Mike had been calling was from a payphone outside of a store in Riverside, California, not too far from L..A. Mike grabbed Sarah and drove the 320 miles from Arizona to California and found the payphone.

I went ahead and took pictures of the phone just to keep my memory straight, and then I started going to the various police departments giving out flyers.

But no one remembered seeing her back home. Mike pushed to get Alyssa's case noticed. He worked with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and with their help, he was able to get Alyssa featured at a NASCAR event. Her face appeared on the hood of a race car.

I did whatever I could, even out of desperation, to get and keep the attention of Alyssa.

That included pressuring the police for updates and peppering them with suggestions people they could talk to, but nothing came of it.

As time started to move on and no sightings of Alyssa, are you starting to get concerned that something bad has happened?

Yeah, I love my sister, but I don't think she had the ability to completely wipe her life and disappear into nothing.

That's hard to do.

Holidays and birthdays passed, one year turned into two, then into many.

I can't emphasize enough that she would have called somebody, you know, that was so out of character for her to not call.

Alyssa's missing persons file was passed from one detective to another. Small steps were taken, like collecting her dental records and DNA from the family. They never did any interviews, but soon a new detective was on the case and he had questions for everyone.

As Democrats unite around Vice President Harris, they'll gather in Chicago to endorse their presidential ticket.

A new era is here, it is go time.

Stay with MSNBC for insights and analysis.

The race is going to be close, everybody should prepare themselves for that.

Plus, reporting on the ground from the convention hall.

Extraordinary levels of enthusiasm from Democrats for the fight ahead.

The Democratic National Convention Special coverage this week on MSNBC. Hey guys, Willie Geist, here, reminding you to check out the Sunday sit-down podcast on this week's episode. I get together with the one and only Billy Joel to talk about a half century of writing and playing some of the most famous songs in the history of music. You can get our conversation now for free, wherever you download your podcasts.

Thousands of people are reported missing every year in Phoenix, many of them considered runaways for years. The case of missing teenager Alyssa Turney sat gathering dust in the Phoenix Police Department.

She remained listed as a missing person, but there wasn't an overt effort to track her down.

That was about to change. Seven years after Alyssa vanished, Detective Will Anderson joined the Phoenix PD's Missing Persons unit.

I was assigned a portion of the alphabet and started working.

So this came about because of the alphabet.

Yes.

T for Turney quickly led him to Alyssa's case, and when he started reading the file, he felt an instant connection with her father, Mike.

Mike's the same age as my father. Mike served in the army, just like my father. When Mike got out of the army. He briefly worked at Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant. So did my father. Wow.

This is unreal. The parallels.

It is, it is, and he's former law enforcement. So I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that we give them a resolution because they deserve that.

Even if the resolution would be devastating. Because the detective's instincts were telling him that Alyssa, who would have been 24 when he got the case, was not just hiding out somewhere.

She's an adult, she can do anything she wants. At that point, she's going to seek out her ID, she's going to contact family and get a copy of her birth certificate.

But that didn't happen.

That did not happen.

Which is a huge red flag.

Absolutely something has interrupted that pattern of life. My name's Anderson, I'm a detective here.

One of the first people Detective Anderson talked to was Alyssa's sister Sarah. She was 19 now. When Alyssa disappeared, she was 12..

Your sister's case is new to me.

I'm reviewing it.

I'm going to go over it, I want to give it the attention it deserves.

Like her father had, Sarah described Alyssa as rebellious and naive.

I've heard stories of like, Hey, you know, get into our car, let's go to a party. And she's like, All right, let's go. And her friends will be like, No, Alyssa, we don't know these guys.

Like strangers rolling up to her.

Yeah, exactly like that stupid kind of stuff.

She told the detective her sister had issues with their father's rules, she'd even talked about leaving home.

All the time.

All the time.

Mm-hmm. was that directed towards dad?

Yeah, mostly when they would fight.

What did they fight over?

Her not being able to do stuff like like go out whenever she wanted, or if she didn't check in or something like that.

Do you think he's, like, overly protective? Compare him to other parents of your friends.

Other parents with her, he was, he was very overprotective of her because.

That's his oldest daughter.

Yeah, exactly. And you know, she was the type, Oh, I'll just get in your car, I don't know who you are.

The detective covered every topic he could think of, including any security precautions at the house.

Any cameras, anything like that?

Didn't have them then.

Oh no, no, no, we did have them then.

That's right. Security cameras were rare. In 2001, she said her dad installed them after a theft at their house.

The cameras, they would record, the main door that you guys used, yeah, coming in and out.

Excellent.

She said they also had a recorder to tape phone calls. The reason? In the past, her dad had worked as an electrician but had a falling out with the electrical union. He told Sarah he had enemies.

I know he was really politically outspoken, he was really like a whistleblower, do-gooder. Some people would do things bad, he would tell.

Retaliation?

Yeah, exactly.

The detective wondered if there was security footage from the day Alyssa went missing. A day. He went over with Sarah in detail.

I went to my room, I thought it was no big deal, whatever, she's probably just somewhere, and I found a note.

That note bothered the detective. In his experience, it's unusual for a runaway to leave one. On top of that, she didn't take her cell phone or the silver jewelry she always wore.

She left a lot of it, I raided it, obviously, I was 13 and stuff. She didn't take much with her at all, except for clothes and the one set of jewelry she was wearing.

Just what she had on, and then she left.

She only took her regular jeans and then a few t-shirts.

Still, Sarah held out hope and encouraged her dad to do the same.

For all I know, she's sitting on the beach drinking a pink water, and he's like, Okay, well, that's how I'm going to think of it too now, you know, so.

Detective Anderson thought all options were on the table. Either Alyssa ran away and something tragic happened, or maybe she hadn't left on her own, after all. Maybe someone close to her knew something they weren't telling. That would include Alyssa's many friends and her high school boyfriend, John Lackman.

How steady of a boyfriend was he?

They were dating. it was probably her most serious relationship I ever saw. They were dating for a long time.

So pretty much the entire junior year.

I believe so.

How about your dad? How did he feel about John?

He didn't like him, he didn't like him because something happened. Her finger got slammed in a door and he thought,....

Car door?

Yeah, a car door. Then he thought John did it on purpose, something like that. He didn't like the way John treated her either, the talking down to her and stuff like that.

Slamming car doors, talking down to her, the boyfriend went to the top of the list of people he wanted to interview, and there were others.

I want to get to as many friends of hers, as many friends that your father talked to.

From the beginning, Mike Turney had given police names of people he wanted investigated, and now detectives were finally tracking them down. Would one of them hold the key to what happened to Alyssa?

Mike brings up an individual that he thinks might have actually killed Alyssa. Yes.

Wind blowing.

In the years after Alyssa's disappearance, her brother James had moved away from Phoenix. But carried with him a sense of loss and uncertainty that only grew with time.

How are you feeling when you find out? There are fresh eyes on this case, new detectives?

I was ecstatic, I was incredibly happy. I had been constantly calling over and over with the previous detectives that were incredibly unresponsive, unhelpful and basically not doing anything.

Detective Anderson started knocking on doors, including Alyssa's old friend Molly's. It had been 9 years since she last spoke to Alyssa, and she was stunned to hear from the detectives that Alyssa was missing.

I can't even imagine just the feeling that you would have in that moment. Yeah, it was like, what?

I didn't even know how to say anything because I was like, it's been a long time. What did they say? They said that he had found my name in yearbooks and address books.

They told her they were looking for anything with Alyssa's writing on it. Molly went in search of those class pictures, the ones with Alyssa's writing on the back.

He took those and he said, I need to do because she wrote a note and we need to analyze her writing on the back and everything.

Alyssa had left that note, but also her phone, clothes and money in the bank $1,800.

Were you concerned that John might be involved in her disappearance?

Yes, and I tried to get that through to the Phoenix PD.

Mike had been suspicious of John because he and Alyssa had a nasty fight a few weeks before she disappeared. It was recorded on the tourney's home security cameras.

What happens in the video?

From what I could see, Alyssa throws the phone, he's upset and then you can hear the squealing of the tires of John leaving.

Did you have your idea with him, sir?

Now, years later, Detective Anderson and his partner ask John to come in for an interview.

I've talked to her family, but family knows one thing.

Boyfriend probably knows more.

I hope so.

And friends, how did you guys meet?

I met her at school, we had a class together, this is at Paradise Valley. We were together for the whole year, pretty much nine months through that year.

The detective wanted to know about that fight, of course. John said he was mad because he'd just found out Alyssa had cheated on him.

So no physical violence between you guys, no.

In fact, after their fight, he says, the two of them made up and went to prom.

Were you worried about her? Yeah, I was real worried about her.

Detectives thought he was telling the truth, but just to be sure, they ran his vehicle to see if he'd left the state around the time Alyssa disappeared.

There's no break in his life pattern that suggests he has any missing time where he'd have the opportunity to do anything with her.

Anderson moved on from the boyfriend.

There was another worker, co-worker of hers that you felt might have aided in her running away?

He was her shift supervisor, Mike Stanley, and he'd given her a ride home.

He was the guy Alyssa had been with while dating John. Mike had video of that, too. Alyssa and Mike Stanley kissing.

At night, I always turned the recorder on to record the night while we were asleep, and it was unfortunate I caught the makeout on the tape.

Detectives asked him to come in for an interview.

Was there anything suspicious with him?

No, he voluntarily comes in, he's cooperative, nothing as far as means motive and opportunity to suggest that he's responsible for this.

Another dead end. But there were more names on Mike Turney's list. Mike brings up an individual that he thinks might have actually killed Alyssa.

Yes, Paul Abbott is the name he provides. This was a person who was doing wiring at the school.

Alyssa's school, Abbott, also frequented the Jack in the Box, where she worked.

Had they argued, or was there any reason, was he obsessed with her?

No, it's one of many people that Mike has offered as possible suspects in her disappearance.

All those leads, but none were panning out. Anderson wanted to go through the whole case with Alyssa's dad. In a sit-down interview. To his surprise, Mike said No. He told the detective Sarah could speak for the family.

I said, In all due respect to Sarah, she's 19 now, but her memories are that of a 12-year-old.

Does he agree to come in?

No.

But Anderson wanted more than just a sit-down interview, he wanted something he believed might be in the Turney House.

In Michael Turney's own words, there's a video from the day she disappeared.

This could be a gift falling in your lap in this investigation, this video.

Absolutely.

The Phoenix Police Department was investigating one lead after another in the Alyssa Turney Cold case, and there, in the file, detectives found another lead. Maybe, just maybe. This was it. A few years earlier, a convicted killer named Thomas Hymer had confessed to several murders, and he said one of his victims was Alyssa.

This person in prison at that time for a homicide.

Hymer had written a letter to the FBI saying he'd met Alyssa in a drug dealer's van outside of a Phoenix bar. His letter described how he drove her to Georgia and killed her in a hotel room, dumping her body in a trash compactor. The FBI had looked into his story and dismissed it. Hymer never provided any details beyond what was available to the public. But years later, with still no sign of Alyssa, Anderson and his partner wanted to check him out.

I spoke to Hymer, I arranged a conversation with him.

Anderson's partner traveled to a Florida prison to interview Hymer in person. He brought along a technician to give the convicted killer a polygraph.

It's quickly becoming apparent to you that he's not Alyssa's killer.

So all the detective had was a pile of dead ends, most of them provided by Mike Turney. While Anderson had initially felt a connection with Alyssa's father, now all he felt was frustration. Mike was still refusing to come in for a formal interview.

What's happening in this story is a big shift. This dad has gone from doing everything he could to find his daughter to now being uncooperative.

The father has gone from following up on every lead, providing us information, directing who we should speak to. But when you get that cop who wants to meet with, you, wants your input and your information, I start getting objections.

In the years since Alyssa disappeared, Mike's public campaign to find her had waned. He didn't have a job, collected disability for an injury he suffered working as an electrician, and Sarah told investigators he'd been treated for depression. She continued to be as helpful as she could.

I stated I wanted more of Alyssa's artifacts. Did you keep anything of hers? Yes, we've kept everything wonderful.

Did she allow you to come into the home?

Absolutely, Sarah arranged the date. I showed up with two other detectives and a truck. Anticipating a large volume of material that I'd be able to take and review to try and figure out who Alyssa was.

What did you get?

I got her yearbook.

That's it.

That was it.

So you have a truck sitting outside for a yearbook.

For a yearbook.

Contrary to what Sarah told him, Mike said that's all they had left of Alyssa's things. Anderson was certain there had to be more in the house. That's because, in the case file, there was this letter written by Mike years earlier to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

What I really key in on is a statement by Mike saying that he has internal and external security cameras at his home and that he has an eight-hour video. From May 17th of 2001, the day Alyssa ran away.

The day she went missing.

Yes.

This is crucial, potentially.

Yes.

Did you ask him if you could see the video?

Yes, he states he will look for it, but he's not sure if he kept it.

The detective says Mike told him there hadn't been anything useful on the tape anyway, so Anderson asked him for something else. Remember that phone call Mike got from the payphone in California? Anderson knew he had a history of recording calls.

So the million-dollar question is, did he record the call that, he said Alyssa made to the House?

Does he have it?

No.

And there was more on the detective's radar.

We've talked to so many people at this point that there are allegations floating around that have me frankly concerned.

One allegation came from Alyssa's biological father, Steve Strom. Years earlier he and Alyssa's mother had divorced. He hadn't seen Alyssa since she was a toddler.

She was one of those kids that just go, go, go, and she was really outgoing, very sweet kid.

When he heard she was missing, he contacted police.

He expresses concerns, Are you sure that she's a runaway?

He wanted investigators to know he didn't believe Alyssa left on her own. What did you think had happened?

I think he did something to her. I just felt it as a father, I could feel there was something not right there.

He's talking about Mike Turney. The two men had a contentious history. They battled over custody and child support.

He was just narcissistic, that's what he was. It's all about Michael and no one else in the world.

Maybe Steve was biased, but he wasn't the only one pointing the finger at Mike. Alyssa's boyfriend, John, had a lot to say about Mike Turney. For one, he told investigators that the fight he had with Alyssa started because of something Mike said.

Mike Turney stopped him, leans over and says, She's cheating on you.

Odd thing to say from a dad.

John told police he was suspicious of Mike from the beginning.

What did you think happened to her?

I think her stupid stepdad did something ridiculously terrible.

Anderson continued to push Mike for evidence, having no idea that what he would uncover next could blow up the whole investigation.

He had enough explosives there to take out our whole neighborhood. Holy cow.

As Democrats unite around Vice President Harris, they'll gather in Chicago to endorse their presidential ticket.

A new era is here, it is go time.

Stay with MSNBC for insights and analysis.

The race is going to be close, everybody should prepare themselves for that.

Plus, reporting on the ground from the convention hall.

Extraordinary levels of enthusiasm from Democrats for the fight ahead.

The Democratic National Convention Special coverage this week on MSNBC. They are the families of the missing in America, and they're desperately searching for answers. Somebody knows something? I'm Josh Banquets.

We have seen miracles happen.

Dateline missing in America. All episodes available now, wherever you get your podcasts.

Detective Anderson was done playing games for months. He'd been asking Mike Turney for video of the day Alyssa vanished and audio of that call from California, Mike Turney responded. By handing over those two other tapes, Alyssa fighting with her boyfriend and Alyssa kissing that other guy in the living room.

Is the entire house being turned upside down? Yes, everything's being looked at.

Yes.

They didn't need to look hard to find out that Mike had guns. Lots of them, but investigators had come looking for tapes and there were plenty of those too.

We found hundreds of VHS tapes and hundreds of audio tape cassette recordings.

Would the tapes they wanted be among them? It was too soon to know, and their focus had shifted to something more imminent a large stash of explosives, including homemade pipe bombs.

These are somewhat competently created devices.

This is a dangerous situation, potentially.

This is a deadly situation.

The big question What was Mike Turney planning? They found the answer in a locked safe.

Michael Turney had created and stamped sealed envelopes for NBC, for ABC. For local media, it's being described as a manifesto.

It was titled Diary of a Madman Lost in An Obsession for Justice and Closure. Remember, Sarah had mentioned her dad's trouble with an electrical union, said he was a kind of whistleblower who worried about retaliation.

I know he was really politically outspoken, some people would do things bad, he would tell.

Well, he'd done more than worry, he'd been obsessed.

He believed that the union sabotaged his job in California and that they tried to kill him by knocking him off of a ladder. And it gets even worse than that.

Mike's manifesto made an outrageous claim that the union had murdered Alyssa.

She was abducted by union members that somehow recognized her, killed her and left her body in desert, Center, California.

He wrote in the manifesto's cover letter I got to this point in my life that my death, vengeance and mass murder was all I had left. He'd even marked his calendar with a big X.

That happened to be the next date for the local union's Christmas party, that's when they would have all their members, wives, children at the party.

That holiday party was just a few days away. The detective believed that's the day Mike had chosen to carry out an attack. This search warrant that was not looking for this.

Ended up potentially preventing a mass shooting.

Absolutely prevented it.

Mike Turney was arrested, a detective called James with the News.

Said that pipe bombs have been found in the house. We're evacuating that particular part until we get the bomb squad in and we're cordoning off the area. What's going through your mind? It was a surreal experience. All I kept thinking during that stuff was, Oh, my god, my sister was living there and my family was visiting there.

Crazy, surreal, but in a strange way, validating for James. You see, for years he'd been the odd man out in his family, ostracized, he says, for challenging his father.

I was asking too many questions.

About Alyssa.

About Alyssa Yeah, I'd started this. Even before Alyssa went missing. I kept asking questions about how well the girls were being taken care of. You know, why are the rooms dirty when I come over? Why is the house not clean? Just things along those nature.

And after Alyssa vanished, while his dad appeared to be searching everywhere, he told James something downright bizarre.

Well, he tells me that he has found the killers of my sister and that he had killed the killers of my sister. Now. You have to also remember, my father has told me crazy things my entire life. So there was also a part of me that was like, Is this guy just rambly like? Is he just telling me this to make me happy, telling me this to try to comfort me in some sort of bizarre way?

You really started asking questions that you hadn't necessarily asked before.

Yeah, and as I asked more questions, the answers became more, I would say, obscure, and it was more and more contradictions.

Now bomb squads were rolling into his old street. Neighbor Judy got a knock on her door.

It was the biggest shock I ever got in my life. The police officer was like, you're going to have to evacuate overnight, so you have 10 minutes. They stayed at the front of the door, waited for us to get all of our stuff.

And this is right across the street.

Right across the street, he had enough explosives there to take out our whole neighborhood.

The next day, the neighbors were allowed back, but the drama wasn't over. A new search was underway at Mike Turney's old house, the one he lived in at the time of Alyssa's disappearance.

A bunch of police cars were there and I noticed that they had the K-9 and I figured they were here to have cadaver dogs.

To search for Alyssa's body, potentially.

Yes, because they came out here to the backyard and I watched them. I kind of got up on this and I just kind of looked over and I saw them digging there. So I just kind of took my camera, my phone and just started taking some pictures.

So you're playing citizen journalist?

Citizen Journalist Yes, taking these photos.

Investigators were searching would they solve this mystery and finally find Alyssa?

My heart was going 50 miles an hour, you know, thinking, Oh my god, you know. And then when I heard they didn't find anything, I was like, Oh my God.

But there was little relief for James. His father pleaded guilty to illegally possessing those pipe bombs and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. And with his dad behind bars, James thought back on all the strange things his father had said and done. One thing that really bothered him. He says his dad never told the family that he'd picked Alyssa up early from school. That day, she disappeared.

To me, it kind of looks like if you take a person out of school early and you want to do something that may make them want to go away or go away. It's best to do it at a time when no one else is around to ask questions.

Detective Anderson was more than a little suspicious, too he hoped Mike Turney would finally talk to him from prison.

Is he cooperative or does he shut down?

He shuts down, we solicit him. Can we talk about Alyssa? No, he will not talk to us.

But Mike Turney wasn't going anywhere for now. There was plenty of time for police to sort through those piles of recordings. Remember, detectives were looking for two things the video from the day Alyssa went missing and that phone call Mike said she made from California.

Finding these two tapes that you need is like finding a needle, two needles.

Two needles in a stack of needles.

Many of the audio recordings seemed mundane.

So you were used to the recorded phone calls, though, right?

Yeah, from a very young age, yeah.

There were phone recordings of Sarah ordering pizza and calling to check movie showtimes. Here's Alyssa on the phone with her boyfriend, John.

These tapes are showing an unhealthy relationship with his daughter.

There were hours and hours of family videos.

He comes on a regular basis. Mr Turney has stated that he would routinely show up an hour or two early to ensure that she did not leave the premise with anybody else.

My gosh, it's like she's being stalked, almost.

It's, yeah, it's very much over the top.

I remember her saying kind of something about that and I was like, That's weird, and you know, it was like, why would you do that?

Detectives also combed through the video captured by Mike Turney's security cameras. Year's worth a camera outside and a hidden camera inside.

I saw it, it was up in the register. Vent.

In the vent, you could see it, yeah, like a red light, like it was on.

Yeah, like a little bleeping red light.

He's got the camera in the vent and then, of course, he's videotaping Alyssa on the job. He's, you know, all these things are happening.

Yeah.

That, to my knowledge, never, ever occurred until Alyssa, and it seemed to be pretty specifically focused on her specifically.

It would take thousands of hours to go through all the tapes, years. In fact, and after all that work. Detectives never found the video of Alyssa from the day she disappeared, and there was no recording of that phone call either.

I can tell you the family ordered a large cheese pizza, half pepperoni and half onion. I can tell you that Sarah was trying to find a good movie. Time for Princess diaries. All of those ridiculous calls are recorded.

But no call from California.

But no call from California.

Despite the hundreds of tapes collected from the house, remember, Turney had only volunteered two tapes to police? Alyssa with a guy in the living room and that fight with her boyfriend, John.

It was theater. I'm thinking Mr. Turney kept this video to give law enforcement something to look at.

Something to possibly distract from Mike Turney himself.

Yes.

Detective Anderson was now convinced that Mike Turney was responsible for his daughter's disappearance, and the stories people were telling him about Mike were beyond disturbing.

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Phoenix Police detectives learned a lot about Mike Turney and his relationship with Alyssa while he sat behind bars before his arrest. He told Detective Anderson Alyssa was impulsive, had bad judgment when it came to guys and that she wasn't very bright.

The stories that are told about Alyssa are not true. everything he says, everything he does is geared to make Alyssa look foolish, look sexual.

But now he was hearing That's not how others saw her.

When we finally get around to talking to all these people, they come forward with these horrible situations.

One of those people was Alyssa's older cousin. He lived with attorneys for a short while as a young adult. In a call with police, he described a VHS tape he found in the house one day it showed a girl lying on what he believed was his uncle Mike's couch.

You could see the color of her hair, I was sure up and down it would be her.

The her he was talking about was his cousin Alyssa. Police asked him to come in so they could talk in person.

So you knew the attorneys growing up?

Yes.

He brought his wife with him and described the video again.

Yeah, I mean, you could tell, because Alyssa had a real distinct nose, I could tell it was her, and you could see the color of her hair. So if you had to put a percentage of how sure you were, it was her, I would say a good 90 sure.

And this is being recorded by Mike.

This appears to be a home video. I can't tell you who took it. I've never seen the video.

Investigators never found a video with that topless girl during the search of the attorney's house. Mike says. That's because it doesn't exist. But Alyssa's cousin was convinced he saw something deeply disturbing.

It just creeped me out, that's all I remember. It creeped me out, and it's forever ingrained in my brain.

Alyssa's cousin was not the only person that described unsettling things. Others shared stories They said they'd heard from Alyssa directly. This story ranks up there with some of the worst stories you've heard.

Alyssa's third grade teacher.

Yes, the teacher met with detectives in a parking lot.

And this is a little girl, third grade Alyssa, walking around saying she'd had sex with her father. So she confronted Michael about that. Michael said, No, no, no, she's confused. She thinks sex is when people kiss each other. Goodnight.

I have a third grader myself and she knows what kissing is.

Yes, yeah.

Alyssa had also told friends and family about something she said happened when she was a teenager.

You said that he touched her.

This high school friend recounted a story Alyssa told her about a drive into the desert with her dad.

They were in his truck and he let her drive. He made her really uncomfortable and she got out and walked home. Did she specify what he did that made her feel uncomfortable? It's hard, I've tried so hard to forget.

Scared?

He touches her, he gropes her, he tries to do something to her. That particular story comes from three different sources.

The same story.

The same story.

And did they all talk or know each other, or was this all independent?

All independent.

Alyssa's boyfriend, John, was one of the three sources for that story.

Because she's just sick of him being so controlling.

Absolutely, absolutely for all three of them. And they said, No, this was genuine, this was emotional, this was her in the moment shaking and crying.

In a call with police, another friend said Alyssa confided in her, too.

When she came to and realized what was going on, he did stop.

What he tried to explain to her afterward is that, basically, if she ever told anybody, nobody would ever believe her. He was always threatening her in that way, threatening her not to tell people things because, you know, he would be believed over her.

The detectives couldn't verify the sexual abuse stories without Alyssa, but there was this. Alyssa talked to her aunt in California just weeks before she disappeared. And Mike knew it after all. He recorded their calls.

So you have a 17-year-old girl, whatever issues are going on in that home, she's not willing to tolerate them anymore. And she's finally able to stand up and recognize that she has some resources she could go to her maternal aunt.

You believe Mike Turney is losing control at this point?

Absolutely, and if he's not outright losing control, he's in fear that she is going to cause him harm.

Giving him a possible motive for wanting her gone.

Means, motive and opportunity are entirely Mike's.

That was the theory, but they needed more something, or maybe someone, to make the case.

My name is Sarah Turney and this is Voices for Justice.

Investigators heard a slew of distressing stories about Mike Turney's relationship with Alyssa. Her brother, James hadn't heard any sexual abuse allegations, but he did have a story of his own. Weeks before she disappeared, Alyssa told her brother she wanted to go live with him.

Did she say why?

She said that she couldn't take living with my father anymore, that she was afraid of him. She at that time was weeping, very, very emotional.

How worried were you about her when she's saying these things and crying?

I was concerned. But at the same time, I had been told that she was a problem child, that she was causing all sorts of issues. She was into all sorts of trouble.

James says their dad always made it seem like Alyssa was the problem. And for a long time, he'd believed him. He would badmouth her, saying she was dumb, naive, too sexual.

Yes.

Why do all that?

In order to control her.

James spent years thinking about his upbringing and learning about domestic and child abuse. He believes his father used something called coercive control to dominate Alyssa and all of his kids.

You make that person feel isolated and that basically you're the only one that can help them. Because they're too stupid to whatever to be part of any other group.

Would you say you were under his spell back then?

Oh, when we were younger, yeah, I call us a cult. And everything that my father said was, you know, the word, the true word. And everyone else was an outside influence. You know, you didn't trust anyone else, but what he said, you believed.

James says as soon as he started to doubt the true word, he was basically kicked out of the family. After his dad's arrest, he tried to get his siblings to start asking questions, too.

You had been trying to convince your siblings that, hey, something's not right here with dad, with Alyssa.

With her disappearance.

Yes, for years, the majority of my questioning had to be very, very cautious. I had been slowly just doing things like, doesn't this, you know, interaction here seem a little off? Why don't you question this too? Or do you not see this?

Raising doubts.

Yeah, definitely, you know. If I was to come out directly and say, I think dad did something, I would have been pushed back immediately.

James says eventually, one by one, his brothers came around and started cooperating with investigators. In fact, his brother, Rhett was one of the many people to tell investigators about Alyssa's allegation of sexual abuse. But one attorney still wasn't convinced her father had harmed Alyssa. Sarah had long supported your dad.

When did she start making that shift to questioning him as well?

I would say, after his incarceration, yeah. I think she was internal to her own thoughts, and she was reviewing what she had experienced, what she had seen, what she had read.

You had a delicate dance with Sarah because she'd supported her dad for so long, yes.

And now you're trying to show her look, I don't think he's the father you think he is.

Yes.

Anderson decided to let the evidence speak for itself. Over the course of several meetings and even more emails, he showed Sarah the case being built against her dad.

Sharing a video with her, releasing a video to her telling her, Hey, explain this to me, walk me through this.

It was 2016, 15 years after Alyssa disappeared. Mike Turney was about to be released from prison after serving time for those weapons charges. Detective Anderson sat with a prosecutor from the Maricopa County Attorney's office and walked him through the case. By then, Sarah had changed her mind.

It was incredibly frustrating. It made us so angry. And we had been told all along that he'll be charged when he comes out. We're going to charge him with this. Don't worry about it.