Alissa Turney: What happened to her, and has she been found?
'Dateline NBC,' the longest-running primetime series in NBC's history, is now in its 33rd season. Anchored by Lester Holt and featuring correspondents Blayne Alexander, Andrea Canning, Josh Mankiewicz, Keith Morrison, and Dennis Murphy, the show returned Friday night with another haunting case: the 2001 disappearance of 17-year-old Alissa Turney.
ALSO READ| Did US pizza joints really predict Israel's strike on Iran? X account dedicated to 'Pizza Index' theory claims
Alissa Turney was just 17 years old when she vanished from Phoenix, Arizona, in her junior year in high school. It was 17 May 2001, and no one knew it would be the last time they'd ever see her.
For years, Alissa was labelled a runaway. A note left behind in her room suggested she'd headed to California to live with her aunt. But that explanation didn't sit right with her loved ones for long. Alissa had left behind everything: her cellphone, makeup, car, and nearly $1,800 in her bank account. Her aunt also said she never arrived.
'I wasn't worried,' Alissa's younger sister Sarah told People Magazine in 2020. 'I was under the impression she was going to be back. I don't think her being gone forever was anything that ever crossed my mind.'
Born on 3 April 1984, Alissa grew up in Phoenix in a blended family. After her mother died of cancer, her stepfather, Michael Turney, became her sole guardian. While he officially adopted Alissa, she often confided in friends that he was controlling, so much so that he installed surveillance cameras around their home.
ALSO READ| 'Nobody's gonna be there': Trump fears empty birthday parade, insider says
The last person to see Alissa was Michael. He later told police that they had lunch that day and got into an argument before he dropped her off at home. A few hours later, he reported her missing, claiming she had run away.
Surprisingly, police did not immediately search the house or question Michael. Later, he told authorities he received a call from Alissa on a payphone in California, but nothing ever came of that lead. Years went by without any developments.
'Nobody looked for her,' Sarah later said in a TikTok video. 'Not anybody in my family. The police didn't do anything despite her being reported missing. Nothing really happened until 2006.'
That year, the case was reopened, and Michael Turney became the primary suspect. In 2020, after tireless advocacy from Sarah, who turned to social media to demand justice, Michael was arrested. But the case fell apart in court, and in 2023, a judge acquitted him of all charges due to a lack of evidence.
'I have no idea where Alissa is, alive or dead,' Michael told NBC's Dateline.
ALSO READ| Trump's military parade a big flop? Report reveals calls for seat fillers in exchange for $1,000 in crypto
Till today, Alissa's body has never been found. The case remains open, and Sarah continues her search for answers.
'In my heart, I feel certain that Alissa is gone,' Sarah told The New York Times in 2020. 'It took me a very, very long time to come to that conclusion, and there was so much guilt there when I did.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time of India
3 days ago
- Time of India
Australia's teen social media ban faces a new wildcard: teenagers
HighlightsThirteen-year-old Jasmine Elkin expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of age-checking software designed to restrict social media access for users under 16, stating that individuals will find ways to bypass such measures. From December, social media platforms like Meta's Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok could face substantial fines for failing to implement reasonable steps to block younger users, amidst growing global scrutiny of child protection efforts online. The trial of photo-based age estimation products revealed that while many young testers had their ages guessed correctly, the reliability of the software remains uncertain, with the need for the government to establish acceptable effectiveness standards. When 13-year-old Jasmine Elkin tried out the age-checking software Australia might use to ban children and teenagers from social media, she was surprised some products could identify a person's age to the month - but she still doubts it will work. "People are always going to find a way to get past it," said the Perth schoolgirl who trialled five photo-based age estimation products with about 30 other students in May. "They can get their brother or sister to take a photo. There's nothing really that you can do about it." Elkin's view echoes one of the main concerns of child protection advocates, tech firms and even the trial organisers about the technology Australia hopes will enable the world's first national social media ban for under-16s: the software works, they say, but young people will find a way around it. From December, social media companies like Meta's Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok will face a fine of as much as A$49.5 million ($32.17 million) if they fail to take what the law calls "reasonable steps" to block younger users in an effort to protect their mental and physical health. The platforms say users need to be at least 13 years old to sign up for an account. How well the ban works could reverberate across some of the world's largest companies and the governments seeking to contain them: already Britain, France and Singapore are making efforts to keep children and teens off social media, while U.S. states including Florida are challenging free speech laws by pushing for a ban. Even the law's opponents are likely to be watching closely: X owner Elon Musk, who has been advising U.S. President Donald Trump and is a vocal opponent of platform moderation and regulation, has criticised the measure and called the regulator overseeing it a "censorship commissar". "Everybody is looking at Australia," said Colm Gannon, CEO of the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children Australia, a member of the trial's stakeholder adviser group. "Australia should be really focusing on robust technology, robust testing and making sure the scope of the actual project is in line with the needs that they're trying to address." The organisers of the trial, which ended this month, say it was designed to determine whether the software worked as promised, and that nearly 60 products were pitched. But it also underlined the teenagers' tech skills - testers were so fast completing their assignments, organisers doubled the number of products they tested and halved session times as the project progressed. "It hasn't been our intention to pull apart the software, rip the guts out and work out every different way that you could circumvent it," said Andrew Hammond, general manager at tech contractor KJR, which ran the trial. They will present an overview of the findings on June 20 and deliver a detailed report to the government by the end of next month. That will inform the eSafety Commissioner's advice to the government, which cited risks from cyberbullying, harmful depictions of body image and misogynist content in pushing forward with the legislation. "We know that social media age restrictions will not be the end-all be-all solution for harms experienced by young people online, but it's a step in the right direction to keep our kids safer," said a spokesperson for Communications Minister Anika Wells. What about the teens? For some of the young Australians who participated, the trial was a glimpse into a world six months in the future where, according to the law, they will no longer be allowed to use a platform they have come to rely on for daily communication. "I use it a lot, but I can still live without it," said Canberra school student Charlie Price, 14, who trialled four software options in a room with about 60 peers and had his age guessed accurately (someone in his testing group was wrongly assessed at over 20). "I know people that will get really shocked and upset," added Price, who uses Snapchat, Instagram and messaging platform Discord and plans to collect phone numbers of his online associates before December. Like Elkin, he said he thought some teenagers might try to get around the block. Emanuel Casa, 15, who was in the same group, said the test subjects tried to check the products for ease and accuracy, but "no one tried to challenge it necessarily, like no one tried to trick it." Hammond said software that revolved around a user submitting a selfie - sometimes with different facial expressions - proved the fastest and most accurate way to identify teenagers. Products involving credit card details proved impractical since few young teens had their own cards, while those that required a person to hold up their hand in various positions gave too broad an age estimate for people near the 16 cutoff, he added. No further trials have been scheduled, but Hammond said the government would need to decide on the level of software reliability it was prepared to accept. Most of the young testers had their ages guessed correctly most of the time, but a peer of Elkin, the 13-year-old, was placed at 42 by one product, she said. "There is no measure at the moment as to what 'good' is. Do they need to be 70% effective or 80% effective or 100% effective?" said Hammond. "The government so far hasn't indicated that they're going to mandate a particular solution." Nathanael Edwards, principal of Radiant Life College, a Queensland high school where 35 students along with a few parents and teachers participated, said his group tested a basic age-gating product where a person typed in their birthday. Some did as asked, while others faked a birthday to age themselves up - although not always successfully. "I think the mathematics caught a couple of kids out," he said.
Time of India
4 days ago
- Time of India
Why the Karen Read trial became America's true-crime obsession
It began like any other suburban tragedy: a woman, a cop, a night of drinking, and a dead body in the snow. But what unfolded in the quiet corridors of Massachusetts courtrooms over the last two years became a national obsession — a true-crime psychodrama fuelled by pink-clad protestors, TikTok sleuths, duelling media narratives, and a murder suspect who became both martyr and influencer. Karen Read, a financial analyst from Boston, was accused of murdering her boyfriend, police officer John O'Keefe, in January 2022. The prosecution claimed she ran him over with her SUV and left him to die outside his colleague's house after a fight. She claimed she was framed by the very institution O'Keefe served: law enforcement. What should have been a tragic but straightforward case turned into a cultural and legal phenomenon. Two trials, a mistrial, viral hashtags, podcasts, documentaries, and a community of women in pink chanting 'Free Karen Read' later — she now walks free, acquitted of all major charges. But the frenzy she ignited says as much about the state of American justice and media as it does about her innocence or guilt. A media trial — literally Unlike most criminal trials, Karen Read's courtroom battles unfolded in full view of the public. Massachusetts allows cameras in court, and audiences tuned in by the tens of thousands. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Cặp EUR/USD: Đà Tăng? IC Markets Đăng ký Undo YouTube livestreams of the trial rivalled those of high-profile celebrity cases. At peak, more than 25,000 viewers were logged in across different platforms, analysing every witness and sigh. Mainstream networks from CNN to NBC ran extensive coverage, but social media drove the real narrative. TikTok creators posted daily updates, dissected forensic evidence, and mimicked court testimonies. Reddit forums broke down legal strategy, and YouTubers with no legal background became the de facto legal analysts for a new generation of true-crime addicts. Traditional reporting was often drowned out by short-form content that reduced complex evidence into viral 30-second clips. In this hyper-edited, attention-deficit theatre, Karen Read didn't just defend herself in court — she had to do it in the court of algorithmic opinion. The gendered spectacle It was hard to miss the crowd outside the courthouse: overwhelmingly women, dressed in pink, holding up signs that read 'It Could Be Me.' Many identified with Read as a woman accused, publicly dissected, and allegedly wronged by a system that favours male power — especially when clad in a badge. To some, Read became an avatar for feminine defiance: not just another true-crime character but a symbol of what happens when women challenge male-dominated institutions. Supporters said her story mirrored their own fears: that in a moment of misfortune, the system might not protect them, but instead turn on them. This identification was not incidental. Statistically, women make up a tiny fraction of murder defendants in the United States. And women of Read's background — white, middle-class, educated — are even rarer in handcuffs. That anomaly itself fed the spectacle. America isn't used to seeing someone like Karen Read accused of murder, and certainly not used to seeing her accused of killing a police officer. A trial of narratives The prosecution's version of events was grim and direct: intoxicated and enraged, Read backed her SUV into her boyfriend and left him to freeze. The shattered taillight, the blood on the bumper, and her alleged confession — 'I hit him' — were their cornerstones. But the defence told a different story. They claimed Read was a scapegoat in a cover-up orchestrated by police to protect one of their own. Their version had O'Keefe entering the house alive, only to be assaulted inside and dumped in the snowbank. The taillight? A red herring. The police investigation? Tainted by personal vendettas and withheld evidence. It wasn't just the facts that were on trial — it was the credibility of the American criminal justice system. Read's attorneys hammered at police conduct, especially texts from the lead investigator calling her names and suggesting she deserved harm. The strategy was clear: cast doubt on the process, and the jury may doubt the conclusion. It worked. The first jury couldn't agree — a mistrial. The second acquitted her. From suspect to star Karen Read didn't behave like a typical defendant. While most murder suspects sit in silence and speak only through their lawyers, Read gave interviews, starred in documentaries, and raised money through online campaigns. Her legal fund topped $1 million, supported by T-shirt sales, benefit concerts, and donation drives with all the trappings of a political campaign. She spoke directly to her supporters outside court, forming a feedback loop of emotion and loyalty. She signed off using the American Sign Language symbol for 'I love you.' They did the same. This was not accidental. In today's world, storytelling is strategy. And Read's team deployed every weapon in the influencer arsenal: sympathetic interviews, professionally edited social media videos, curated content drops. Her father even thanked 'content providers' after the verdict — a nod to the fact that, in this case, social media wasn't just commentary. It was the battlefield. What it all means The Karen Read trial laid bare how American justice, media, and culture have collided into a new spectacle: part courtroom, part soap opera, part social media movement. It's where facts compete with feelings, livestreams outpace legal filings, and trial strategy includes subreddit moderators and TikTok trends. Was Karen Read innocent, or did she simply win the media war? That debate is likely to rage long after the pink signs fade. One thing is certain: in the age of content-driven justice, trials are no longer just decided in court. They're shaped in timelines, hashtags, and viral edits — one clip at a time.
Hindustan Times
4 days ago
- Hindustan Times
Of online voyeurs and offline vigilantes
True crime squirmed under the spotlight of two documentaries at Sundance 2025, earlier this year. Charlie Shackleton's Zodiac Killer Project opened up the genre playbook to dismantle the codified conventions that go into choreographing an investigative spectacle for the screen. David Osit's Predators charged the stakeholders of a booming industry on multiple counts: for the genrefication of tragedy, for inviting voyeurs to play moral arbiters, for galvanising vigilantes into enacting DIY justice, for feeding a singular and collective appetite for the macabre, and for seeding an adverse parasocial mania. The schadenfreude-pilled addicts searching for their next fix are put under scrutiny, same as the opportunistic peddlers of grisly stories. In recent times, true crime has gotten more confrontational, more introspective, more aware of its shortcomings, more committed to addressing the system, not just the individual. The two Sundance docs examine our relationship with stories which in so many ways have become our modern myths in this internet age. Predators reviews the legacy of a popular NBC show that delivered a uniquely American brand of public spectacle. For three years, the Dateline spinoff To Catch a Predator (2004-2007) became a rating sensation with its ambush journalism. Dubbed 'Punk'd for paedophiles,' the programme was built on a winning formula: actors posing as minors online would lure potential predators to a house rigged with cameras; on arriving at the house, these older men would be cornered by host Chris Hansen with chat transcripts and difficult questions; outside, local police would be waiting to swarm the man and charge him with online solicitation of a minor. This humiliation routine was broadcast on national television. However, bypassing due process left a majority of the cases unprosecutable. Not to mention this extralegal enterprise undermined the legitimacy of the criminal justice system. Especially when it turned out it wasn't so much the show working with law enforcement as law enforcement working for the show. NBC cancelled To Catch a Predator when one of the targets, a Texas assistant DA, shot himself after his house was surrounded by police and Hansen's production crew. But by then it had left its mark. It spawned enough copycat sting operations targeting suspected predators online to become a YouTube phenomenon. Vigilante groups began to surface around the US with their own participatory true crime iterations. As Osit finds out following one crew, it is less justice that incentivises these operations, more the righteous satisfaction of catching someone with their pants down. It is social cleansing for clout, for subscribers, for our viewing pleasure. It is mass-mediated dehumanisation peacocking as public service. It is gotcha TV premised upon revelling in others' ignominy. To Catch a Predator capsuled the spectacle of public shaming via subterfuge into 20 episodes. But what happened beyond the runtime? The show had no interest in the family left behind: the betrayed wives, daughters and friends who had to endure through their shock, anger and grief. When Osit sits down with the distressed mother of an 18-year-old decried by Hansen for dating a 15-year-old in the ongoing web series Takedown, the ruinous cost of public shaming becomes glaring. Interviews with some of the young actors hired to play underage decoys on To Catch a Predator reveal the toll it took on them. Hansen would always confront his targets with the statement: 'Help me understand.' Osit confesses his own childhood trauma as a survivor of sexual abuse made him keen to understand why some adults would prey on children. But Hansen was never interested in the why. When he is interviewed in the film, it only confirms to Osit the aim was never to decode the minds of predators. Nor was it to alert parents to online dangers. It was to grant audiences the feeling of a moral order briefly restored coupled with the pleasure of self-exoneration from disorder. But by making a spectacle of shaming predators, the show became predatorial in its own way. Zodiac Killer Project is a quasi-documentary filmed in a conditional mood: a feature as it might have been but couldn't be. Director Charlie Shackleton had set out to adapt The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up, a 2012 book by ex-cop Lyndon Lafferty. Just as he was locked in research and scouting locations, the negotiation for securing the rights fell through. Thereupon he decided to make a film about an unmaking, his abortive bid to hop on the true crime bandwagon. Much of the film comprises long static shots of unpeopled streets, buildings and homes, accompanied by Shackleton's sometimes wistful, sometimes tongue-in-cheek descriptions of how he would have recreated milestone scenes from the book in these nondescript locations. As the camera slow zooms in on the locations, their emptiness invites us to envision the ghosts of a past when the Zodiac Killer haunted San Francisco and the ghosts of a documentary that almost got made. The opening scene takes us to a highway rest stop where Lafferty came face-to-face with the man he suspected to be the killer. So that it doesn't feel like we are watching a podcast remodelled for the screen Shackleton adds insert shots and 'evocative B-roll': bullet casings dropping, blood pooling on the floor, overhead lights swinging in the interrogation room. For an illustration of how he might have gone about assembling the title sequence and dramatizing events, he pulls in footage from series like The Jinx and Making a Murderer. Shackleton is quite forthcoming about the deceptions of true crime. He shows us a library that would have been recast as a police station. He admits to the liberties he would have taken and the facts he would have withheld to make Lafferty's conclusions more persuasive. Lafferty claimed to have unmasked the Zodiac Killer. But the evidence he laid out was circumstantial. And as his book title suggests, he accused local officials of stymying his investigation. Shackleton confesses he himself doesn't buy Lafferty's claims but it wouldn't have stopped him from selling the same as highly credible to the viewers for the purposes of making engaging true crime. There is a sense of playfulness and bitterness to Shackleton's narration. We hear a filmmaker reluctant to probe his own ready indulgence in the deceptions of a genre he is eager to anatomise. We hear a fan more amused than alarmed by the mechanics. We hear someone whose desire for closure becomes a comment on our own denied by cold cases. Last year, Canadian filmmaker Pascal Plante interrogated our cultural fixation on serial killers and true crime with an entirely different approach in Red Rooms. Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) is a model by day and hacker by night obsessed with the case of Ludovic Chevalier, a man accused of killing three young women on camera and livestreaming the crimes on the dark web. On the days of trial proceedings, she forgoes the luxuries of her Montreal high-rise to sleep in a back alley near the courthouse, just so she can secure herself a seat in the gallery. Gariépy is sphinx-like as Kelly-Anne. Her dispassionate poker face crystallises her ambivalence. It is impossible to gauge her motives beyond a restless need for certainty that pushes the curious to play detective. It is hard to read her moral compass, or if she even has one. If she is alone, it feels like a choice. It is disconcerting to watch her so airily dart back and forth between playing hold 'em online and bidding on a snuff film of a 13-year-old girl (definitive evidence linking Chevalier to the crimes). Parasocial mania reaches a fever pitch when Kelly-Anne turns up to court, dressed in a school uniform like the victim. She gazes fixedly at Chevalier seated in his glass booth as if willing him to return the gaze. Early into the trial, Kelly-Anne befriends Clémentine (Laurie Babin), a Chevalier groupie convinced of his innocence. When Clémentine learns Kelly-Anne has access to two of his alleged snuff films, she insists upon watching them. Plante holds the camera on the two women staring at the screen, faces aglow in the blood red of the kill room. The horror is relegated off screen. All we hear are piercing screams of agony. Clémentine, sickened, breaks down in tears, the reality of Chevalier being guilty catching up with her naive delusion. Kelly-Ann, unruffled, looks on with the numbed expression of someone who has presumably seen the video several times before. The two make for parallel but contrasting portraits of pathological fixation. Ostensibly a fan of Arthurian tales, Kelly-Anne calls her jailbroken AI assistant Guenièvre and goes by the online handle 'Lady of Shalott,' named for the noblewoman cursed to only see the outside world reflected in a mirror. The Tennyson poem she inspired speaks to Kelly-Anne's own condition: alone, confined to a tower and engaging with the world through (digital) mirrors. Red Rooms adds a wrinkle to the true crime genre by situating us both behind and front of the camera to confront how easily we are lured in by the promise of voyeuristic opportunity. We as consumers are bystanders shielding our eyes while still peering through the fingers at the scene of a fatal car crash, our reptilian fear instinct and our deep-rooted curiosity caught in a tense parley. We observe from a safe remove while staying unobserved. We wish to be anonymous yet belong. We suit true crime up in academic garb, style it with artistic flourishes, call it victim-centred, all so we feel less queasy about consuming trauma repackaged as entertainment. Prahlad Srihari is a film and pop culture writer. He lives in Bangalore.
