Man held in double stabbing was a prime suspect in 1995 Arizona slaying

A 53-year-old man arrested Wednesday morning in the stabbing of two people at a mobile home park south of Modesto the previous day was featured on a TNT true-crime show as a prime suspect in a grisly 1995 slaying in Arizona.

Phillip Turley will be booked at the Stanislaus County jail on attempted-murder charges, said Sheriff’s Department spokesman Sgt. Anthony Bejaran. The two victims, a 54-year-old woman and 56-year-old man, were stabbed multiple times Tuesday morning but are expected to survive, Bejaran said. They were taken to Doctors Medical Center.

Responding to a call about 9:15 a.m. that a woman had been stabbed and needed medical aid, officers found the woman in a mobile home and the male victim sitting in a Honda sedan stopped on a street within the park.

About 6 a.m. Wednesday, sheriff’s deputies and Modesto police officers responded to a 911 call at the mobile home park, 4449 S. Carpenter, reporting that one of the suspects had returned to a unit there. Turley was taken into custody without incident.

Detectives from the Turlock Police Department and the Sheriff’s Department were at the Country Western Mobile Home Park on South Carpenter Road midmorning Wednesday, conducting a follow-up investigation on a second suspect. The incident occurred in the county, but Turlock police detectives worked the investigation because of Tuesday’s funeral for Deputy Dennis Wallace. They developed information on the suspects as a result of their investigation, Bejaran said.

On Tuesday, several residents of the park said Turley was the assailant, though none said they had witnessed the stabbings. Turley used to live at Country Western when his mother managed the park, said neighbors, who would not give their names. She moved to Arizona in July, they said; he returned recently and was staying with friends in one of the units.

One neighbor said the male victim, a resident of the park, was stabbed in retaliation because he had told people about Turley being featured on “Cold Justice,” a series that re-examines cold cases.

The episode that involves Turley is called “Small Town Tragedy” and focuses on the 1995 slaying of Mary Anne Holmes, a mother of two small children, in the town of Thatcher, Ariz. The 2013 episode says Holmes was bound, handcuffed and beaten. The cause of death was blunt-force trauma.

The victim’s clothing had been cut off and she was sexually assaulted postmortem, according to authorities interviewed in the episode.

According to an article by the Eastern Arizona Courier, Holmes “was brutally murdered in her home July 9, 1995, after holding a yard sale. Her two daughters, then ages 4 and 18 months, were present during the crime. The next day, Holmes’ 4-year-old daughter ran across the street to her neighbor’s house naked and with her hands bound. She asked her neighbor why she couldn’t wake her mother.”

The show said Turley was one of three suspects in the slaying.

After Turley’s arrest in Stanislaus County on Wednesday, Thatcher Police Chief Shaffen Woods released a press release Wednesday night, according to the Gila Valley Central. Woods said that while Turley remains a “person of interest” in the Holmes murder, he has not been charged with any crimes connected to the case, the Central reported.

Attorney Murray Newman, a consultant for “Cold Justice,” wrote in a blog on Tumblr: “Women that Turley had dated told investigators disturbing details of his ‘fantasy life’ that seemed consistent with details of the crime scene. …

“Unlike many other suspects that the police interview, Turley was extremely intelligent and to make matters more difficult, he had advanced information that he was about to be interviewed by the investigators. … Despite initially seeming agitated about being interviewed, Turley was ultimately cooperative and answered every question that the two investigators had for him. He had rational and reasoned answers for almost everything, but at times seemed as if he were taunting the investigators. At the end of the interview, Phillip Turley had done nothing to further implicate himself in the murder of Mary Anne Holmes.”

A former girlfriend said on “Cold Justice” that Turley has bipolar disorder and when not on his medication can be psychotic.

This story was originally published November 23, 2016 at 11:35 AM with the headline "Man held in double stabbing was a prime suspect in 1995 Arizona slaying."