Mark Damien Lindsay, son of former Edmonton Police Chief John Lindsay, told a court in Kamloops, British Columbia on 15 August, 2012 that he killed his girlfriend, 31-year-old Dana Turner of Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta.
Dana Turner
Lindsay indicated he was having illusions when he took Turner’s life, which happened somewhere in Alberta in the summer of 2011.
He claimed his girlfriend was part of a group of ‘serial killers’ that wanted to do him in. It may not have been the first time he said that … he reportedly told Turner the same thing.
Mark Lindsay Mug Shot
Mark Lindsay Mug Shot
Skeletal remains of the mother of three were discovered in a thicket by a worker servicing an oil pump jack 10 kilometers west of Innisfail, Alberta — not long after Lindsay phoned from a jail in Kamloops. I’d written Lindsay, asking him to call. He phoned twice.
THE ATTACK IN JUNE 2011
Lindsay and Turner, both drug users, met while patients at a psychiatric hospital on the northern edge of Edmonton.
The admission from Lindsay that he killed his girlfriend wasn’t his first run-in with the law. He’s had a few of those. Court records show that Mark Lindsay pleaded guilty the year before to a reduced charge of assault after stabbing Turner in the head with a paring knife. The near-fatal attack happened on 22 June, 2011 at the killer’s apartment, #315, 8539-82 Avenue, Edmonton.
According to Turner, she drove into town that day to register for a drug addiction program, but picked up some crack cocaine instead. When she went around to Lindsay’s apartment she spotted a large kitchen knife lying on the coffee table. Strange, she thought. She picked it up and put it back in the kitchen. Little did she know.
The pair was high on dope and making out when Lindsay rammed a paring knife into his girlfriend’s skull, just above her left ear. “Nooooo” she screamed, trying to get him to stop. According to Turner, the blade went in to the base of the handle.
“He got off me and stood up with a very shocked look on his face …”
Turner said she yelled out, “Lord! Do not leave me … do not forsake me. I love you, my Lord.” She yanked the knife out and, with blood running down the side of her face, ran into the hallway where a stranger helped her.
She said her boyfriend had refused to call 911.
TEXT MESSAGES
One of the text messages killer Lindsay sent his girlfriend: “Dearest immaculate Jana, my Dane, this is the beauty of the perfection of the infinite nothing that we pull our trials and tribulations from. Maybe we shouldn’t wonder why we are the way we are. I love you without judgment or pretentious animosity. You are the epitome of the beauty I need to be content with where I am. Thank you for everything even though I have nothing.”
Another text, this one from Turner to her killer: “You have the whole of everything that matters not just on earth but in the entire universe of heaven and earth. My heart was in your hands before my command, my eyes knew you … there has never been one moment of my existence that I did not adore you and love you from the core of my soul.”
PHONE CALL FROM KILLER LINDSAY
In a phone call from the Kamloops Correctional Centre on 1 October 2011, Lindsay described the stabbing as an “accident.” He indicated he didn’t know where his missing girlfriend was. He also refused to comment on whether he was the man in the security video shot at an Edmonton motel; he expressed no concern that Dana was missing and that her family was terribly worried.
Note: an edited transcript of the interview with Mark Lindsay appears at the end of this post.
Police initially wanted to charge Lindsay with attempted murder, but settled on aggravated assault. From aggravated assault, the charge was further reduced to assault.
Lindsay was released after spending 50 days ["time served"]. He was handed a conditional sentence, which meant that if he kept his nose clean for 18-months, he’d have no record.
Dana Turner appeared in court with her victim-impact statement [a diary, if you will], but it was never read. Turner made eye-contact with the man who had nearly killed her, mouthing ‘I love you.’
The direct quotes from Turner used in this story are from her written account [9 pages total] of what happened. Click on the image to enlarge it.
FATAL REUNION
In spite of the knife attack, Dana Turner continued to see Mark Lindsay. The two got together very soon after Lindsay was released from jail, in August 2011. Dana told her mother, Wendy Yurko, she wanted to retrieve her guitar, purse and some personal items which had been left behind at Lindsay’s apartment.
Turner was spotted on a video surveillance tape taken around 7am on Sunday, 14 August 2011. The woman was with an unknown male checking into the West Harvest Inn, 184 Street and Stony Plain Road in Edmonton. That same day, at around five, Turner’s grainy image was captured by a video surveillance camera at a Domo gas station, about a block away. Those were the last known pictures of Dana Turner alive.
The next photos of Turner were taken a few months later by an RCMP forensics team in a thicket just meters off a service road leading to a pump jack, about 10 kilometres from Innisfail.
Turner’s remains were put in a van and taken to the Medical Examiner’s Office in Calgary where they stayed for nearly a year. On 24 September, 2012 Yurko got a phone call from the Medical Examiner that her daughter’s remains were being released.
Dana’s funeral, held on Saturday, 13 October, 2012, was limited to immediate family members. A public memorial service for Dana Turner had been held the previous fall. Yurko was not at either service.
Service Road to Pump Jack
Where Turner’s Body Was Discovered
THE ATTACK ON TURNER NOT AN ISOLATED INCIDENT
Lindsay’s admission that he killed Turner suddenly came when he appeared in court in Kamloops on charges stemming from the stabbing of an undercover RCMP officer in the summer of 2011.
At that appearance, Lindsay also pleaded guilty to jabbing a pen and pencil into the eye of a fellow inmate during a game of Scrabble at the Kamloops Correctional Centre. Lindsay said he acted in self-defence. The victim is now blind in one eye.
According to Tim Petruk of Kamloops This Week, a judge sent Lindsay away for a psychiatric evaluation. No reporter has done as much on this story as Petruk. He was the first to ignore an RCMP gag order on reporting key elements of the Lindsay case. A second reporter who didn’t ‘fall into line’ was JT Lemiski of CFCW Radio News in Edmonton. Kudos to both men for not being cop-suckers. Most media outlets respectfully obeyed an RCMP request not to report on certain aspects of the case.
WAS ‘MR. BIG’ A BIG MISTAKE?
There are unconfirmed reports Mark Lindsay was the target of an elaborate [and expensive] undercover RCMP sting known as a ‘Mr. Big’ operation — when Dana Turner lost her life. Wendy Yurko says if that’s true, her daughter died on their watch.
The RCMP has been telling reporters that Mark Lindsay was the target of an undercover investigation into Dana Turner’s disappearance. That’s hard to believe. If that’s true, investigators suddenly decided to conduct an elaborate undercover operation, quickly got all their paperwork in order … then got snap approval from top brass to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars — just to determine the whereabouts of a long-time drug user — someone willingly in the company of a man she said she loved. That simply does not add up.
If Mark Lindsay was the target of a “Mr. Big” Operation, the victim was someone other than Dana Turner. It begs the question: was Mark Lindsay released from jail early because he was the subject of on-going undercover operation … and police needed him out? We can only wonder.
From time to time, police issue news releases when violent criminals are released after serving their sentences. The idea is to warn the public. Did this happen when Mark Damien Lindsay was released?
Yurko reveals something else interesting about the RCMP investigation into her daughter’s disappearance: she says in the very early stages of their probe, she asked the Mounties if her daughter’s image had been captured by a security camera at the West Harvest Inn. According to Yurko, the Mounties told her ‘no’ … that unfortunately the tape had been erased by the time they found out about it. Not so, says Yurko. She says she contacted the hotel and discovered the tape hadn’t been erased after all. The vital piece of evidence would have been destroyed, however, if Yurko hadn’t called.
Yurko wonders if that was just sloppy police work, or a coverup of a bungled undercover police operation. We may never know.
TRANSCRIPT OF 1 OCTOBER 2011 PHONE INTERVIEW WITH MARK LINDSAY
BC: How are they treating you [at Kamloops Regional Correctional Centre]?
ML: Good; kinda wondering what’s being said [about him in Edmonton]; haven’t been able to catch anything on the news …
BC: Did you know what was going on with your arrest?
ML: I don’t know actually know was being said; I’m just looking for some news …
BC: Do you know why police would say you were a murder suspect?
ML: There’s an investigation going on. I might be able to talk to you about that later, as soon as I get more details. Do you have any details as to what happened out here in Kamloops?
BC: You were driving a half-ton truck, and you stabbed someone …
ML: We’re going through court dates and stuff over that. I have another court date coming up soon; I might be able to give you a call …
BC: Did you feel you were part of a ‘sting’ operation? Can you talk about that?
ML: That’s what this is about … yeah, he was an undercover, so …
BC: Another thing in the news is that your girlfriend [Dana Turner] is missing. Do you know anything about that?
ML: Yeah, that’s another big story as well. I won’t comment on that.
BC: Is she in Kamloops?
ML: I can’t say anything on that right now.
BC: They found her rental car. Do you know where that was located?
ML: No, no I don’t. Do they have any other details on that?
BC: No, they’re not saying anything. No one has heard from [Dana].
ML: Are they openly accusing me of that on the news?
BC: No. They said though that you stabbed her in the head at your apartment, back in June [2011] — but you got a conditional sentence and were released …
ML: Yeah, there was an issue about that. It was an accident and I was released after about two court dates.
BC: When are you due in court next?
ML: I’m not actually sure. We’re still building up to a bail hearing right now.
BC: Do you hope to get bail; how’s that looking?
ML: Yes I do.
BC: Your missing girlfriend [Dana Turner] has not been in touch with her children, nor her mother [Wendy Yurko] — so no one knows where she is, and she’s supposed to be taking medication for her thyroid. She had checked into the West Harvest Inn Motel in the west end. According to a video surveillance tape, there’s a guy with her. Was that you?
ML: I’m not releasing anything.
BC: Then there’s a video tape of Turner at a gasoline station nearby — I think it’s Domo — but she doesn’t seem to be under any duress. People don’t know what the hell to make of it … there doesn’t appear to be an abduction going on, but of course people would think you’re a suspect if you were convicted of an assault on her previous to that. That would be automatic.
ML: Yeah, I was worried about that at first.
BC: You didn’t feel they were trying to set you up in this sting; what was going on?
ML: Yes, it was a sting operation.
BC: How did you know that?
ML: I found out after I was arrested.
BC: So you didn’t know at the time …
ML: No, I didn’t find out until after I was arrested.
Throughout January 2013 Mark Lindsay appeared in court in Red Deer for a preliminary hearing into his 2nd degree murder charge. The idea of a prelim, as they’re known, is to determine if there’s enough evidence to send the accused to trial.
On Friday, 31 January 2013 the judge ruled that Lindsay should stand trial for the murder of Dana Turner. Lindsay’s lawyer tried to convince the judge that his client was a nut bar, but the judge didn’t buy it. And so, for the time being anyway, Mark Lindsay won’t be having his mail sent to a mental institute.
In December 2012 the RCMP told reporter Tim Petruk they wanted his notes from the two jailhouse interviews he did with Lindsay about a year earlier. Petruk was then served with a subpoena and told to show up at Lindsay’s preliminary hearing.
The reporter appeared in court in Red Deer on 16 January 2013. He was on the stand for a little over half an hour.
On 18 December 2012 I received this email from Joy Brown of the Crown Prosecutor’s office in Red Deer, Alberta …
The second paragraph reads: “We are prosecuting Mark LINDSAY for the homicide of Dana TURNER and have issued a subpoena for you to testify for us at the Preliminary Hearing that starts on January 8th, 2013. The RCMP will be serving you sometime soon.”
That never happened. Had I been served with a subpoena, I would have been a hostile witness. Folks, the media is neutral. It does not assist the Crown, nor the Defence. Police have the resources to conduct their own investigations. They shouldn’t compromise journalists.
