Lynn Turner was convicted of murdering two men who loved her, six years apart, with the same poison. In March 1995 her husband, Glenn Turner, a 31-year-old motorcycle officer with the Cobb County Police Department in suburban Atlanta, died at home after several days of what looked like a severe stomach flu. A medical examiner said his heart had failed. In January 2001 Randy Thompson, a 32-year-old Forsyth County firefighter who had lived with her after Glenn's death and was the father of her two children, died in his apartment in Cumming after a weekend of almost identical symptoms. A medical examiner again pointed to the heart.
The two men never met. What linked them, apart from Lynn Turner, was ethylene glycol, the sweet, odorless chemical in automotive antifreeze. After their families compared notes, after two of Glenn's friends from the police department and an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter kept asking questions, and after a laboratory error in Thompson's toxicology was found and corrected, both deaths were ruled homicides. Glenn Turner was exhumed six years after his funeral. Prosecutors argued that Lynn Turner killed both men for money, and two juries in two counties convicted her. She was spared a death sentence in 2007 and died in her prison cell in August 2010.
Julia Lynn Womack was born about 1968; news reports gave her age as 34 in 2003 and 42 when she died. Her mother, Helen Gregory, stood by her through both trials, pleaded with a jury for her life in 2007, and was still insisting on her innocence after her death. Little else about her childhood appears in the reliable record.
As a young woman she worked in and around the justice system in north Georgia. The Associated Press listed her past jobs as a 911 operator, a judge's aide, a sheriff's assistant and a secretary in a district attorney's office. The Marietta Daily Journal described her as a former Cobb County 911 operator, while the Forsyth County News later called her a former Forsyth County 911 dispatcher and courthouse secretary. Dateline NBC reported that at the time of Randy Thompson's death she was working for a judge, and that at her courthouse job she earned just under $33,000 a year.
People who knew her in her early twenties described a lively, sociable woman who liked to be noticed. Glenn Turner's sister, Linda Hardy, told Dateline that she was always on the phone or her pager, always going somewhere, and wanted to be the center of the crowd. She spent her off-duty hours with police officers, was a keen stock car racing fan, could ride a motorcycle as well as the men around her, and knew enough about engines that, according to Glenn's supervisor, Glenn said she could have been a mechanic.
Maurice Glenn Turner went by Glenn. He was a Cobb County police officer who rode a motorcycle on the 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift. His friends called him "Buddha," for his size and his calm. Mike Archer, a coworker who later became his supervisor, told Dateline that Glenn was very good at helping people and would do anyone a favor "in a heartbeat," and that he was perhaps too nice a man for his own good. His best friend, Don Cawthon, said Glenn treated women like a gentleman and was respected for it. He loved motorcycles more than hunting or fishing, went to Falcons and Braves games with his friends, and belonged to a group of young officers who lived near each other and called themselves the "Rat Pack."
He had a close family. His mother, Kathy Turner, his sister, Linda Hardy, and his brother, James Turner, all spoke publicly about him in the years after his death. His father was alive in 1995; Glenn had arranged to move in with him.
Glenn met Lynn Womack at a party held by a fellow officer, according to his friends, when she was about 22. She courted him with gifts: cameras, radios, wheels for his motorcycle, boots and belts. His friends doubted the match, and several told Dateline they had warned him against it. He proposed around Christmas, and they married on August 21, 1993, a month before his 30th birthday. His sister said he had long been determined to marry before he turned 30.
The marriage was unhappy almost from the start, his family and friends said. The couple soon slept in separate rooms. Glenn took on as many part-time jobs as he could find on top of his police shifts to pay down debts that kept growing, and he once told his supervisor he had worked 365 days without a day off. His friends said Lynn controlled the household money and gave him a small weekly allowance. Soon after the honeymoon, she became the beneficiary of his life insurance. Reports from the case add a detail: Glenn changed the beneficiary of his $100,000 policy from a sibling to his wife.
Unknown to Glenn, Lynn had begun a relationship with Randy Thompson several months before Glenn died. In February 1995, while Glenn covered her weekend shift at a gas station where she worked part time, she went to the Daytona 500; Dateline reported that she had invited Thompson and his friends as her guests.
By then Glenn had decided to leave. He told Don Cawthon that a man "can only take so much" and that the marriage would either be worked out or end in divorce. Mike Archer said Glenn broke down at a dinner break and told him he was moving in with his father that Friday. The Supreme Court of Georgia later recorded that Glenn told two colleagues that if he ended up dead, his wife "probably would have had something to do with it." That statement was admitted at trial.
Days before he planned to move out, Glenn Turner fell sick. He called in to work three days in a row, his supervisor testified, and told Archer he had never been so sick and felt as if he might die. He described vomiting, diarrhea, cramps and fever. On Thursday, March 2, he went to a hospital emergency room, where he was given fluids and medicine for the nausea and sent home. He called his sister that night and said he felt much better.
Lynn Turner later said Glenn had a bad night, that he had been hallucinating and had tried to drink something in the basement that looked like gasoline before she took it away from him. The next morning, she told officers, he ate some Jell-O and crackers. A childhood friend of hers testified at the 2004 trial that Lynn told her she had given Glenn green Jell-O that morning. She then left the house to run errands. When she came home in the afternoon (accounts of the time vary from about 2:30 to about 3:30), she found him dead in his bed.
The Cobb County medical examiner ruled that Glenn Turner had died of natural causes. Accounts of the exact finding vary: an irregular heartbeat in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's case timeline, an enlarged heart in the Dateline report, and a heart attack in the Supreme Court of Georgia's summary. The court noted that the autopsy had in fact shown signs of antifreeze poisoning. Dateline reported that the medical examiner had seen crystals in the tissue but dismissed them as irrelevant, and that he had never before examined anyone who died of antifreeze poisoning.
Glenn's mother was on her way to a family reunion in Jacksonville, Florida, when she got the news. Glenn's friends Archer and Cawthon, and his sister, said they suspected his wife from the first hour. The police found no evidence of foul play.
Glenn's family obtained the autopsy report and went to the Cobb County medical examiner's office with questions. Linda Hardy and Kathy Turner told Dateline they were brushed off by an assistant and told that a second autopsy would cost them about $10,000, money they did not have.
Lynn Turner, meanwhile, collected on Glenn's death. The Supreme Court of Georgia said that soon after the funeral she received nearly a quarter of a million dollars from his estate, insurance and death benefits. The amounts given in news reports vary: about $147,000 in life insurance, made up of a $100,000 policy and a $47,000 work policy, plus a monthly payment from his police pension of about $700 to $800. CNN put the insurance and pension benefits together, with interest, at more than $150,000.
Within days she moved in with Randy Thompson. The Supreme Court of Georgia said it was four days after the funeral; CNN and Dateline said about a week after Glenn's death.
Randy Thompson was a former sheriff's deputy who became a Forsyth County firefighter. His sister Angie Thompson told Dateline that a party did not really start until Randy walked into the room. He had married young, had a son and divorced, and he worked hard to keep up with his child support. He kept a pet bird named Simon. His parents were Perry and Nita Thompson, and he had three sisters, Angie, Kim and Brandy. His friends included Melanie Harper, who had known him since childhood.
He had met Lynn by chance in Cumming, the town where his family says they both grew up, and, by his family's and friends' accounts, did not know during the months they dated that she was married. His sister Angie said Lynn told her that her husband had died in the line of duty. As she had with Glenn, Lynn showered Randy and his family with gifts, including snakeskin boots that his father said cost $1,100 and, one Christmas, a stereo for his parents. That was the Christmas, Kathy Turner later realized, when her son had spent the holiday without his wife.
Randy and Lynn set up house together in 1995 and had two children, a daughter born in January 1996 and later a son. In the spring after Glenn's death she paid for a cruise for Randy and another couple that a friend estimated cost about $10,000; she told people she had come into money from her grandmother's will. Randy's family described the relationship as stormy, and said Lynn was jealous and controlling. He gave her an engagement ring, but they never married. Lynn became the beneficiary of a new life insurance policy on him, which Dateline reported she had encouraged him to take out for the children.
Randy was taken to an emergency room after taking too many pills in 1997, and again two years later. His family and friends always rejected the idea that these were real suicide attempts; they described them as efforts to get Lynn's attention, and his close friend testified in 2004 that the 1999 episode was a plea for attention. The defense would later make these episodes central to its case. After the second, Randy moved out of their shared home for good. He went on seeing the children, and his mother said Lynn would not leave him alone. In 2000 he had sinus surgery, and late that year he was treated for a staph infection with intravenous antibiotics. His mother said he had recovered well.
On Friday, January 19, 2001, Randy had dinner with Lynn and the children. By Saturday he was violently ill, vomiting all day and confused. Melanie Harper found him on his couch unable to focus his eyes. Afraid he might have taken too many pills again, his friends threw out his prescription painkillers before an ambulance took him to the hospital. There he hallucinated. The emergency room doctors thought he had a stomach virus, gave him fluids and a prescription and released him. On Sunday he seemed better.
On Sunday night, the Supreme Court of Georgia found, Lynn fed him Jell-O. A friend testified at the 2007 trial that Randy told him, the day before he died, that he had eaten a grilled cheese sandwich and some tea that Lynn had given him for lunch. Late on Sunday Lynn called Harper, worried that Randy was getting worse and breathing hard, and asked her to check on him; his phone was off the hook. On Monday morning, January 22, his fellow firefighters broke down his apartment door when he did not answer. They found him dead on his couch.
A GBI medical examiner initially attributed the death to an irregular heartbeat; his family was told he had an enlarged heart, and his sister said the family assumed the staph infection had overwhelmed him. He was buried with full firefighter honors. His father recalled three helicopters flying over and an honor guard from the Forsyth County Fire Department standing watch around the casket for 24 hours.
As people were leaving the cemetery, Harper told Dateline, Lynn called her and predicted that she would soon hear people say Lynn had killed Randy, and that his death resembled her former husband's.
There was less money this time. Randy had let his main life insurance policy lapse without her knowledge; reports put its value at $200,000 or $100,000. Reports put what she received at about $30,000 to $36,000. Witnesses at the 2007 trial testified that she had at least $35,000 in credit card debt and was constantly late with her mortgage.
Several separate efforts came together in the months after Randy Thompson's funeral.
Glenn's friends Mike Archer and Don Cawthon heard of Randy's death even before the funeral, when Lynn borrowed a car from the dealership where Archer was then working. They had never accepted the ruling on Glenn's death, and they pressed police contacts again. Their persistence had drawn in Mike Edwards, police chief in a town about 30 miles away and stepfather of one of Glenn's close friends, who had already been looking into Glenn's death on his own time. Edwards told Dateline that he urged officers who had jurisdiction to reopen Glenn Turner's death.
Glenn's mother read Randy Thompson's obituary. Kathy Turner called one of his sisters, explained who she was, and asked whether the family thought Lynn had anything to do with his death. Angie Thompson told her no; the family believed the staph infection was to blame. Kathy Turner then wrote the Thompsons a letter of condolence, suggesting they talk about their sons and leaving her phone number. The letter went astray for about four months before a relative who worked at the funeral home found it. Nita Thompson called Kathy Turner that night, and the two mothers went through the similarities between their sons' deaths. Nita Thompson and her husband then went to see the medical examiner who had performed Randy's autopsy. According to Perry Thompson, the doctor already had a copy of Glenn Turner's autopsy report in hand, said there was no reason that man should be dead, and told them he would reopen Randy's case.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution was asking questions at the same time. Its reporter Jane Hansen covered the deaths from 2001, when the inquiry into Glenn Turner's death was reopened, through 2007. The GBI's spokesman, John Bankhead, said later that without her calls the cases probably would not have been solved. The newspaper's own account of its role was that questions it raised, several months after Thompson died, led authorities to investigate the deaths as homicides.
On June 22, 2001, Cobb County police began investigating Glenn Turner's death as a possible homicide, and Cumming police opened an inquiry into Thompson's death with help from the GBI.
Randy Thompson's original laboratory work had picked up a trace of ethylene glycol, but at a level that seemed too small to matter. When the test was checked, a decimal point turned out to have been in the wrong place, and the true level was high enough to kill. On July 30, 2001, the GBI announced that Thompson had died of antifreeze poisoning; the death was later ruled a homicide.
The Supreme Court of Georgia described what happened next. A GBI medical examiner found ethylene glycol toxicity in Thompson, and kidney slides from Glenn Turner's 1995 autopsy showed the same signs. Glenn Turner's body was exhumed in 2001. His brother James watched from his car on a hill above the grave. On October 17, 2001, the Cobb County medical examiner announced that a second autopsy showed Glenn Turner had died of ethylene glycol poisoning, and on June 27, 2002, Dr. Brian Frist, the Cobb medical examiner, ruled his death a homicide and the death certificate was revised.
The key evidence in both men was calcium oxalate crystals in the kidneys, which form as the body breaks down ethylene glycol. Prosecutors argued that the body can produce them only while alive, which excluded later contamination. Antifreeze has a sweet taste, and investigators said it could have been mixed into Jell-O, sweet tea or soup. Experts testified that a relatively small amount, possibly given over several doses, could kill. At the 2004 trial the Cobb medical examiner showed jurors lime Jell-O made with 33 cubic centimeters of antifreeze, which set normally and looked like ordinary Jell-O.
Lynn Turner was arrested on November 1, 2002, and charged with the murder of Glenn Turner; the Supreme Court of Georgia gives the same date for her Cobb County indictment. She was not charged at first in Randy Thompson's death, although the GBI named her as a suspect in pretrial hearings. She pleaded not guilty and maintained her innocence in both cases until her death.
The first legal fight was over whether the jury in the Cobb County case could hear about Randy Thompson. In July 2003 Cobb Superior Court Judge James Bodiford ruled that the deaths were similar enough for the evidence to come in. The defense argued that it should be excluded because she had not been charged with Thompson's death. On September 9, 2003, AccessNorthGa reported, the Supreme Court of Georgia unanimously ruled against the defense on that request, leaving the judge's ruling in place before trial.
Jury selection began in Marietta on February 2, 2004. After three days the judge suspended it: of 125 prospective jurors questioned, only eight had never heard of the case. On February 4 Bodiford moved the trial about 110 miles south to Perry, in Houston County, while keeping it himself. It resumed on April 26, 2004.
The Cobb County district attorney, Patrick Head, told jurors in his opening that the case was about "lust, greed and murder," one woman and two men, and that the one common thread was the defendant. Prosecutor Russ Parker also tried the case. Because of the judge's ruling, the jury heard in detail about both deaths, though it was deciding only one.
Witnesses included Glenn's supervisor, who described him missing work sick for the three days before he died; colleagues and friends to whom Glenn had spoken about his fears and his plans to leave; the childhood friend who said Lynn told her about the green Jell-O; and Glenn's sister, who told jurors her brother loved life and would never have killed himself. A former animal shelter worker testified that Lynn Turner had once asked her how antifreeze affected cats and whether the chemical used to euthanize animals was available to the public; the judge allowed this over defense objection, and Parker argued that it showed she knew what antifreeze could do. A bank clerk testified about overdraft fees and insufficient-funds charges on her accounts.
The defense, led by Jimmy Berry and Vic Reynolds, argued that there was no direct evidence that she had given anyone anything, and no conclusive proof that either man had been murdered. Berry argued that Glenn had died of an enlarged heart, as first found; that any crystals were too few and might have another source, such as embalming fluid (the funeral home's records had been destroyed); and that Randy Thompson, with two past overdoses, had taken his own life. He also pointed out that a scheming killer would have checked that Thompson's policy was still in force and would have had Glenn cremated. Her mother testified that Lynn was private rather than cold, and that she never went into a room where a body lay. Lynn Turner did not testify.
On May 14, 2004, after almost five hours of deliberation, the jury found her guilty of malice murder in the death of Glenn Turner, and she was sentenced to life in prison. Jurors who spoke to Dateline said they had started out demanding that the prosecution prove its case, that the debts and the affair did not make her a killer in their eyes, and that the scientific evidence of the crystals in Glenn Turner's kidneys was what persuaded them. "Justice has been served," Kathy Turner said.
Represented on appeal by lawyer Don Samuel, Turner moved for a new trial, which the trial court denied on January 11, 2006. Her main argument to the Supreme Court of Georgia, heard in November 2006, was that the jury should never have heard about Randy Thompson's death, because nothing logically connected the two cases.
On February 26, 2007, in Turner v. State, 281 Ga. 647 (2007), docket S06A1971, the court unanimously affirmed the conviction in an opinion by Justice Melton. It held that the trial court did not clearly err in admitting Thompson's death as a similar transaction. The court listed the shared features: her intimate relationship with both men, the flu-like illnesses and hospital visits, the antifreeze, the fact that she was the last person to see each man, the Jell-O, and her financial gain. It held that the jury had been properly told to use that evidence only on motive, plan or scheme, state of mind and method. It upheld the admission of Glenn Turner's statements to six friends and colleagues about his fears, finding them reliable under Georgia's necessity exception and not "testimonial" under the federal Confrontation Clause, because they were made to friends before any crime and with no thought of trial. It found any error in admitting Randy Thompson's diary, offered to show he was not suicidal, harmless because it repeated other testimony, and found the same about medical testimony and death certificates calling the deaths homicides. Turner's conviction for Glenn Turner's murder became final.
A Forsyth County grand jury indicted Lynn Turner for malice murder in Randy Thompson's death in October 2004. In December 2004 prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty. Prosecutor Jack Mallard pointed to the painful way the victim died, her prior murder conviction and the financial motive, and said Thompson's family supported the decision.
Jury selection began in Forsyth County on January 8, 2007. On January 16, Superior Court Judge Jeffrey S. Bagley moved the trial out of the county because of the difficulty of seating an impartial jury. The new location, Dalton in Whitfield County in northwest Georgia, was kept secret until the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published it on February 14. Jury selection began again in Dalton in late February.
Forsyth County District Attorney Penny Penn led the prosecution. The jury heard evidence from the Cobb County case as similar transaction evidence, and Penn read the jurors the indictment and the May 2004 guilty verdict in that case. Georgia's chief medical examiner, Dr. Kris Sperry, testified about why he concluded that both men died of antifreeze poisoning and that only a small amount was needed to kill. The prosecution rested on March 21, 2007, after nine days of testimony.
The defense called a toxicologist who testified that while one of the men showed signs of antifreeze poisoning, the other did not, which cast doubt on the claim that the deaths were alike. Vic Reynolds told the jury the state's evidence added up to character assassination, not murder: "They can predict. They can assume, but that isn't the law." Penn argued in closing that although no one saw her do it, Lynn Turner was the last person with both men before they became ill and the last to give them anything to eat or drink, and that greed for life insurance was the motive in both cases. Turner again did not testify.
The jury of seven men and five women deliberated about five hours and, on Saturday, March 24, 2007, found her guilty of malice murder. Members of both families wept. "You know when you've got one conviction already it's really tough to convince a jury she had nothing to do with the second," Berry said.
At the sentencing hearing on Monday, March 26, the prosecution called no witnesses and Turner did not testify. Helen Gregory pleaded in tears for her daughter's life. After about five more hours over two days, the jury chose life in prison without parole on March 27, 2007. In a Georgia death penalty case the jury's sentence is final. "That proved that he hadn't taken his own life," Perry Thompson said of the verdict. "We knew that all along anyway, but we wanted everybody else to know." Reynolds said Turner was grateful the jury had chosen life.
Turner served her sentences at Metro State Prison, a women's prison in Atlanta (in DeKalb County, according to the Marietta Daily Journal). Her challenge to the Thompson verdict had not got far: Penny Penn said in 2010 that Turner had begun an appeal, but that her motion for a new trial had not yet been heard by a judge. Her trial lawyers said they had not spoken with her for about a year and a half.
On Sunday, August 29, 2010, her mother and her two children, then 12 and 14, visited her. Helen Gregory said she seemed well physically but feared other inmates, and quoted her as saying, "Momma, those girls are going to get me."
At 6:55 a.m. on Monday, August 30, 2010, Turner was found unresponsive in her bed in the cell she shared with several other women. Prison medical staff and paramedics could not revive her, the Georgia Department of Corrections said, and she was pronounced dead about 40 minutes later. She was 42. An autopsy the same day found no sign of foul play but could not establish a cause of death until toxicology tests were done.
On September 15, 2010, the GBI's state medical examiner's office announced its findings. Dr. Kris Sperry, the chief medical examiner, said Turner had died from the toxic effects of propranolol, a blood pressure medication she had been prescribed, and that toxicology showed a lethal level indicating she had taken far more than the prescribed dose. With no evidence of injury or foul play, the death was classified as a suicide. GBI spokesman John Bankhead said the theory was that she had saved up the pills and taken a large amount at once.
Her mother rejected the finding. "It's totally untrue. She had too much to live for," Gregory said, noting that her daughter had legal appeals under way and two children she loved.
Penny Penn called Turner's death "the final chapter in what has been a very long and very sad, albeit fascinating, story," and said her office would close the case. Kathy Turner said she was glad she would never have to see her son's killer in court again. Nita Thompson said her family had found closure when Turner went to prison, and that her death changed nothing: "She still did it, whether she's dead or alive." Glenn's brother James, who had opposed the death penalty because he wanted her to spend her life thinking about what she had done, said he felt cheated. Randy's sister, Brandie McNeal, said there was never really any closure: "My brother's gone." Vic Reynolds called the death a tragic ending to a tragedy and said the Turner, Thompson and Gregory families were all good people.
In 2010 the two children were in the custody of Helen Gregory. Randy Thompson's family said in 2010 that they had not had contact with the children since the 2007 trial, and that a letter offering to be part of their lives had gone unanswered.
The case drew national attention. Dateline NBC aired a long report by correspondent Dennis Murphy, built around interviews with both families and Glenn Turner's friends (published online in July 2006), and Court TV covered the 2007 trial. By 2010 Penny Penn had given interviews about the case to Forensic Files, Oxygen's Snapped and Discovery's Deadly Women. The method itself was unusual: Patrick Head told Dateline he had never seen a murder by antifreeze in Georgia before.
On the tenth anniversary of Glenn's death, in 2005, his sister, family and friends gathered at his grave to share stories about him, for the first time knowing that his widow had been sentenced for his murder.
Proven at trial and final: the malice murder of Glenn Turner, affirmed by the Supreme Court of Georgia in 2007.
Proven at trial, review incomplete: the malice murder of Randy Thompson. Her motion for a new trial was pending when she died, so no appellate court ever reviewed the 2007 conviction. No source opened says the conviction was vacated.
Her defense: Lynn Turner never admitted either killing. Her lawyers argued that Glenn Turner died of heart disease and that any ethylene glycol findings could have other explanations, and that Randy Thompson, who had twice taken overdoses, poisoned himself. A defense toxicologist testified in 2007 that only one man showed signs of antifreeze poisoning. Both juries rejected these arguments, and the state's top court upheld the first verdict.
The manner of her death: the state medical examiner ruled it a suicide by overdose of her own prescribed medication. Her mother said she would never have taken her own life. No investigation found foul play.
A possible third victim: in 2010 Penny Penn said it was not unreasonable to think there might have been a third victim had Turner remained free, because she was still in financial difficulty when arrested. This was a prosecutor's opinion about the future, not an allegation about any actual death, and no other death has been attributed to her.
Details that vary between sources: the sums she received after Glenn's death (from about $147,000 in insurance plus a pension, to "nearly a quarter of a million dollars" in the Supreme Court's summary, which includes his estate); what she received after Randy's death ($30,000 to $36,000) and the size of the lapsed policy ($100,000 in one report, $200,000 in others); whether she moved in with Randy four days after Glenn's death, four days after his funeral, or a week later; the exact heart condition first blamed for Glenn's death; whether she was a Cobb or a Forsyth County dispatcher; and the time she came home on March 3, 1995.
About 1968: Julia Lynn Womack is born.
About 1991: meets Cobb County police officer Glenn Turner.
August 21, 1993: marries Glenn Turner.
1994 to early 1995: begins a relationship with Randy Thompson while still married.
February 1995: attends the Daytona 500 while Glenn works her shift; Glenn tells friends he will leave.
March 2, 1995: Glenn, ill for days, is treated in an emergency room and sent home.
March 3, 1995: Glenn Turner, 31, is found dead in bed; the death is ruled natural.
March 1995: Lynn moves in with Randy Thompson; collects insurance and pension benefits.
January 1996: their daughter is born; a son follows.
1997 and 1999: Randy is treated after taking too many pills; he later moves out.
January 19 to 21, 2001: Randy falls ill after dinner with Lynn, is treated and released.
January 22, 2001: Randy Thompson, 32, is found dead in his Cumming apartment.
Spring 2001: Kathy Turner's delayed letter reaches the Thompsons; the two mothers compare their sons' deaths.
June 22, 2001: Cobb County police and Cumming police open homicide inquiries.
July 30, 2001: GBI rules Thompson died of antifreeze poisoning; Glenn Turner's body is later exhumed.
October 17, 2001: second autopsy finds Glenn Turner died of ethylene glycol poisoning.
June 27, 2002: Cobb medical examiner rules Glenn's death a homicide.
November 1, 2002: Lynn Turner is arrested and charged with Glenn's murder.
July 2003: trial judge allows evidence of Thompson's death.
September 9, 2003: Supreme Court of Georgia rules against the defense on that evidence before trial.
February 2 to 4, 2004: jury selection fails in Marietta; trial moved to Houston County.
April 26, 2004: trial resumes in Perry.
May 14, 2004: guilty of malice murder of Glenn Turner; life sentence.
October 2004: indicted for Randy Thompson's murder.
December 2004: prosecutors announce they will seek the death penalty.
January 11, 2006: motion for new trial in the Cobb case denied.
November 2006: appeal argued before the Supreme Court of Georgia.
January 8 to 16, 2007: jury selection in Forsyth County; trial moved to Whitfield County.
February 26, 2007: Supreme Court of Georgia affirms the 2004 conviction.
March 21, 2007: prosecution rests in Dalton.
March 24, 2007: guilty of malice murder of Randy Thompson.
March 27, 2007: jury sentences her to life without parole.
August 29, 2010: last family visit.
August 30, 2010: found unresponsive in her cell at Metro State Prison; pronounced dead.
September 15, 2010: state medical examiner rules the death a suicide by propranolol overdose.