Antifreeze Killer Spared Death Penalty

Jurors on Tuesday spared the life of a former emergency dispatcher convicted of using a sweet, odorless chemical in antifreeze to kill her boyfriend in 2001 — the same way she had poisoned her husband six years earlier.

Lynn Turner could have faced the death penalty. Instead, the jury sentenced her to life in prison without parole.

Turner was already serving life in prison following her 2004 conviction for the antifreeze death of her police-officer husband in 1995.

She had maintained her innocence in both cases and did not testify at trial or during her sentencing hearing Monday. Her mother, Helen Gregory, tearfully pleaded with the jury for Turner's life.

Prosecutors said Turner was motivated by greed for the victims' life insurance money. Tests on the victims' bodies showed they were poisoned with ethylene glycol, a chemical in antifreeze. During the 2004 trial, prosecutors suggested the substance could have been placed in foods such as gelatin.

The jury deliberated for about five hours before reaching a sentencing decision — about the same amount of time it took them to find Turner guilty on Saturday of malice murder in the 2001 death of Randy Thompson, a firefighter.

The murder charge in Thompson's death was filed after Lynn Turner's conviction in the death of her husband, Glenn Turner.