Jahi Turner’s Mother Still Wants Answers 18 Years After Her Son Went Missing
Speaker 1: 00:00 It was a case that commanded headlines for months back in 2002, JE Turner two years old, went missing. His stepfather said they were at a neighborhood park. He left the child for a minute to go get him something to drink. And he vanished the boy's mother learned the news while serving in a Navy ship. The case was never solved. Joining me is Dana Littlefield and editor with the San Diego union Tribune, whose interview with Jay, his mother, Tamika Jones was published over the weekend. Dana, welcome back to midday edition. Speaker 2: 00:30 Hi, thank you for having me. Speaker 1: 00:32 Well, this is a tragic and complicated case, but start with when the news broke, uh, what was the stepfather's story and the mother's reaction? How did the police and the public react to this missing child? Speaker 2: 00:44 Th this happened when there had been another high profile missing child case just a couple months earlier back in 2002, that was the case involving Danielle, Danielle Vandam, who was seven years old and was kidnapped from her bedroom in Sabre Springs, in another part of San Diego. And so the public, I believe was already, you know, edgy about these types of cases. Now you have a two year old who has gone missing, and people mobilize very quickly to get out and search for him. The search was massive through the neighborhoods. There's a park where the stepfather said, um, the boy had been playing before he turned his back and walked to go get something for the child to drink. Nobody came up with anything, John, he was just gone. Yeah. Speaker 1: 01:37 And what did the police conclude about what happened back at that time? Speaker 2: 01:42 Very soon, they began to suspect the stepfather tirade Jones Jackie's mother to Mika Jones had been deployed that week. So this was an April, 2002. The boy was with his stepfather. Um, it was Thursday of that week that Tamika got the call from her, then husband saying that her child was missing. And so they brought her back and of course she was unimaginably distraught, but she stuck by her husband at the time. And she believed his story, but the police did not. His, his story was that he had walked away, uh, to get the child to drink and then came back to the area and Johnny was gone. Um, they never arrested him. They never made an arrest. And actually it wasn't until 14 years later that they actually did arrest him. And he was later charged with murder. Speaker 1: 02:41 Right. It was a cold case all that time. And I wanted to do us a step back and ask you, uh, why did you do the story now? 18 years later with Tamika Jones, does it have special meaning for you? Speaker 2: 02:53 Well, I, I did the story because she was ready. She was ready to talk. She was ready to tell story back in 2002. She, and Tiree had given a couple of interviews, very brief interviews or media, appearance, appearances. Uh, however you want to describe them. Um, mostly at the urging of police. Um, and so all over that time, you know, during this time where she and her then husband, they had another child, she went back to the East coast. Um, she was haunted as you can. Well, imagine by these questions about what happened to her boy. And also during that time, she felt like she, she didn't get to get her story out there, her point of view and explain what she had gone through and what her true feelings were. And a year after the trial ended in a deadlock, she felt like that was the time to speak. Speaker 1: 03:54 That brings us up to, to this time. Now you also interviewed Maura McKenzie Parker, the detective assigned to the case. She gave you some insight and how these cases can evolve over time. It was a cold case for a long time. Tell us about what you learned from her. Speaker 2: 04:08 Yes, Mo Pargo was a San Diego police department, detective, uh, she's retired now and she was involved in the Daniel Vandam case that was in February of that year, 2002. And then she went right into the investigation, uh, in the Johnny Turner case was, which was just a few months later, her main tasks or one of her main tasks in the beginning was to, um, make contact with the mother, with Tamika Jones to question her, to find out, you know, what was going on, what led up to this disappearance. Um, but the way Mopar had described it to me in our interview is that, you know, understandably Tamika just really wasn't ready to open up. She was upset. She was angry. She was very angry. And from Tamika perspective, it looked like they, the investigators were spending all of this time with her and not looking for her boy later on Mo parka made contact with Tamika again, after, um, Tamika had separated and eventually divorced her husband and Mo Parker was instrumental in taking the case off the shelf, so to speak. And so she was the one who kind of gathered the troops again to start looking into this case and start talking about it and take it to trial. Speaker 1: 05:35 And tirade Jones was arrested in 2016 prosecuted in the next couple of years after that. Why do you think the verdict went down the way it did? It was a difficult case, as you say, there was no a victim's body here. Speaker 2: 05:49 So you had a case where there was no body. There wasn't a huge amount of, you know, evidence that was different in 2014 or 2016 than there was in 2002 jurors heard all of that evidence and Tyra Jones testified in his own trial. And he, he remained steadfast in that he did not harm this boy in the end, the jurors deadlocked were not able to make a unanimous decision on the charge he was facing, which was murder. Speaker 1: 06:24 Now, what about Tamika Jones? What's she doing now? How has she come to grips with what happened to her little boy? Speaker 2: 06:29 She's a different person now in that, you know, she has gone back to school. She has, you know, obtained her, her college degree. She works at the university of Maryland. What was interesting to me about that was the way she framed. It was that she was trying to make herself stronger, better, better positioned in life so that she could be ready when her son came home. And for my younger son that I, um, love and care for and who is my reason for standing up straight at this point, that's, that's somewhat how she put it. Um, so she clung to this belief for all of these years, that jockey was going to come home. She says now that, um, you know, she realizes that that's probably not the case that that's highly unlikely. Um, she understands, she heard all the evidence in trial. She understands that, you know, John, he has probably deceased, um, but she's still a mother. And there's just part of her that just won't let that idea that, that tiny idea that maybe just, maybe he somewhere out there Speaker 1: 07:45 And we should note ya. He turned, it would have been 20 years old. Now I've been speaking with Dana Littlefield of the San Diego union Tribune. Dana. Thanks very much. You're very welcome.
