Mary Ann Holmes

On the afternoon of 9 July 1995, the four-year-old daughter of Mary Anne Holmes ran to a neighbor's home in the small town of Thatcher, Arizona. Naked and bound with rope, the girl had been laying next to her mother's bloody body for several hours, questioning why she couldn't wake her up…

This episode features descriptions of extreme violence and sexual violence. It also describes crimes committed involving children. Listener discretion is heavily advised for everyone.

Thatcher, Arizona is a farming community in Graham County, approximately 130 miles northeast of Tucson and 160 miles east of Phoenix. Located in the southeast corner of the state, Thatcher is just a short drive away from the the New Mexico border and is known for its climate, which varies between hot in the summer - which you'd expect - and surprisingly, rather-temperate in the winter.

Originally settled by members of the LDS Church in 1881, Thatcher is a community that has always had a strong link to the Mormon faith. More than a century later, in the mid-1990s, the population of Thatcher had grown to approximately 4,000 people, many of whom were linked in some way to Eastern Arizona College, the thing for which Thatcher is most well-known, which offers associate's degrees in nine academic fields (including nursing).

Those that have lived in Thatcher, Arizona often describe it as a place where most of the residents know each other in one way or another. For years, they described it as a place where they felt comfortable enough to leave their doors unlocked... at least, until the events of July 1995, which changed the small-town feel of Thatcher forever.

This is the story of Mary Anne Holmes.

Mary Anne Holmes was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin as one of five children, growing up alongside one sister and three brothers. She had grown up in Chicago, but following a divorce from her children's father, decided to move out west.

Mary Anne and her two daughters, Ashleigh and Sara, ended up settling down in Thatcher, Arizona. Having joined the Mormon church in adulthood, Mary Anne felt drawn to the community, which had always been tightly linked to the LDS Church. Having recently gotten out of a tumultuous relationship with a boyfriend - with whom things ended rather miserably - Mary Anne was looking at Thatcher as a place to reset.

There, things seemed to be on the upswing... at least for a while. Mary Anne enrolled at Arizona State College, and spent most of the rest of her time taking care of her two daughters, whom she was a loving and devoted mother to. As reported by the Arizona Republic, the three lived together in a "pioneer adobe-style home in a quiet area of large pecan and cottonwood trees on Church Street," just blocks away from Eastern Arizona College, where Mary Anne was enrolled.

While there aren't many that can vouch for Mary Anne herself during this period, we do know that she was attempting to reset her life in Thatcher. She was looking for someone to share her life with... someone that would not only make a good husband for her, but a good father figure for her two daughters, Ashleigh and Sara, who were approximately four years and eighteen months old as of July of 1995.

Together, they lived in a small home in Thatcher, and things were happy for a bit. However, it was here - where so many happy memories were made - that Mary Anne's life would come to a tragic and graphic end.

In the early morning hours of Sunday, July 9th, 1995, an unknown subject lurked outside of the home where Mary Anne Holmes lived with her two young daughters. They circled around until they found a window in the kitchen, which provided them with a clear line of sight into the home. They then made their way to the back door, which had been broken for several days, unable to lock shut. Through this door, they entered, and made their way to where Mary Anne likely slept near her two daughters.

While the exact series-of-events remain unknown to this day, we do know that a brutal assault took place on Mary Anne herself. Her wrists were bound with handcuffs and a rope was tied around her neck, both of which had been brought to the scene by her attacker. She was also gagged. After being subdued, her clothing was then cut from her body.

For at least two hours, this unknown subject assaulted and tortured Mary Anne, strangling her from behind with the rope and subjecting her to a prolonged attack. When she was eventually killed, it was due to blunt/sharp force trauma to the head, including "several chopping-like blows by a large knife or hatchet," as described by investigators. Like the rope and handcuffs, it was believed that the killer had brought this weapon to the scene, but had taken it with them when they left.

Shockingly, Mary Anne was also sexually mutilated either during or after the attack. She had been raped both vaginally and anally by the attacker, who used the murder weapon to sexually assault her postmortem.

To make matters even worse - if such a thing is possible - Mary Anne's two children had been with her throughout the duration of the attack. Her four-year-old and eighteen-month-old daughters had been in the room while this heinous assault took place, having been bound and placed on the bed while this took place just feet away from them. It was possible that the killer wanted to inflict further pain on Mary Anne by making her think that her daughters were also at risk of being assaulted if she didn't comply with their demands.

[As the father of a young child myself, I cannot think of anything more depraved that makes me more heartsick than having to read this aloud.]

Hours later, Mary Anne's four-year-old daughter - who had also been bound and had her clothing cut off, including her underwear, but was otherwise physically unharmed - ran off to a neighbor's home. There, she asked for help, and also pondered why she couldn't wake up her mother.

Police were called to the scene, and inside, they discovered the incredibly bloody crime scene, with the body of 29-year-old Mary Anne Holmes handcuffed in the middle of it, laying in the fetal position. Sergeant Gary Cleland of the Thatcher Police Department would later tell reporters:

"Whoever did this couldn't be human."

This crime had a debilitating affect on the town of Thatcher, Arizona, which had always prided itself on its safe neighborhoods. As reported by the Arizona Republic just months later, porch lights that had once been left off for the familiarity of the town and its citizens with one another, were now left on throughout the night out of fear. The grisly murder of Mary Anne Holmes became the talk of the town, with each conversation for months lingering just a few degrees of separation away from the gory details.

When the school year picked up again approximately six weeks after Mary Anne's murder, citizens and police officials feared a possible follow-up attack. Residents feared having to go out to their car after the sun went down in the evening, and sales of firearms, Mace, and even outdoor lights skyrocketed.

Kathy Mullenaux, a neighbor of Mary Anne's, told reporters with the Arizona Republic:

"She was such a beautiful woman... I keep hoping that we get some closure for this nightmare."

The investigation into the murder of Mary Anne Holmes was headed by the small-town Thatcher Police Department, who quickly called in assistance from the state's Department of Public Safety, who dispatched a specialized unit to help investigate the crime that one investigator described as "ritualistic."

An examination of the crime scene revealed that the unknown subject had entered in through the back door of the home, which were tracked by investigators around the house. Following these tracks, investigators were able to surmise that the killer had been looking into the home through a back window near the kitchen, which provided a clear line of sight into the home. Afterward, they had walked to the unlocked back door, where the killer had gained entry. Afterward, they had walked away from the house westward and then veered northwest, toward Eastern Arizona College, where they had likely parked their vehicle.

A bloody bootprint found at the scene reportedly belonged to a large male shoe, approximately a men's size 11 or 12.

Money was missing from the home, cash that Mary Anne had raised the morning before her death at a garage sale. Investigators would attempt to find some link between the garage sale and Mary Anne's murder, but more on that in a bit.

Investigators were able to find small traces of evidence on the few bits of evidence brought to the scene by the killer, including the handcuffs used to bind Mary Anne's wrists and rope that had been used for additional bindings. At least one length of rope had been tied around Mary Anne's neck, but hadn't been used to kill her; leading us to believe that the killer had used it to control Mary Anne, perhaps dragging her around while she was powerless to resist. Apparently, a fingerprint was found on the pair of handcuffs, along with a small trace of DNA, but this would only be able to be used later on to help rule out suspects because of how trace a sample it was, but would not be exact in any way.

An autopsy revealed to investigators the extent of the assault that Mary Anne had been subjected to before her death, having been tortured and sexually assaulted for approximately two hours before her violent death. As mentioned earlier, her two daughters had been in the proximity of the attack throughout it, having been bound and/or laying nearby.

Afterward, Mary Anne's four-year-old daughter Ashleigh had laid next to her unmoving mother for hours, before eventually fleeing to get help at a neighbor's home. She would speak to investigators, and was asked to draw a picture of the crime scene for police as she remembered it. It's honestly hard to look at the drawing, just knowing that she had seen and had to endure at such a young age.

Ashleigh drew the scene with an object sticking out of her mother's head, which had undoubtedly been the weapon used to kill her. Other details - such as clothing scattered around, and the location of Ashleigh and her younger sister laying on the bed - is shockingly accurate to what investigators found when they arrived at the crime scene.

Because of her age at the time, Ashleigh was unable to recall any detail that would help find her mother's killer, but in interviews, would describe her mother's killer as a "lion" man that was big in size. Per a portion of the transcript, she told investigators:

"He could have been a lion."

"A lion?"

"Something like that."

During her interviews with police, Ashleigh also told investigators that she was scared throughout the attack and buried her head throughout most of it, but when she did see the killer, described him as "a great big man." She then pointed at one of the detectives and said, "kind of like you."

These details, paired with details of the crime scene and what police learned about Mary Anne's life in the weeks before her death, set police off on a decades-long quest that would end up circling around three primary suspects, each more suspicious than the last. Sergeant Gary Cleland would later tell reporters with the Arizona Republic in September of 1995:

"We've interviewed over 75 people and there's still no suspect that we can point to. There's a lot of stress on our officers, and we've really been putting in the overtime to try to get this cleared up."

Early on, police followed up on a couple of leads that pointed to their first real suspect: an ex-boyfriend of Mary Anne Holmes, who lived in Florida at the time, named John Bursee.

Described as a "con man" in the months before Mary Anne's death, John Bursee had been Mary Anne's last boyfriend before she moved to Arizona with her two daughters. She had done so with the express purpose of getting away from John Bursee, who reportedly had a violent streak to him, and was bitter and angry at Mary Anne for reportedly running off on him.

Weeks before her murder, Mary Anne had filed a report with police, claiming that she feared Bursee and believed he meant to do her harm. She told officers that she had received a phone call from him on June 24th, just fifteen days before the murder, and that he had been attempting to find her for several months. Now, it seemed, he knew where she was, and might have been planning on traveling to Thatcher to see her.

According to numerous reports, Bursee was tracked down by police in Florida two days after the murder, where he claimed to have been staying with a friend of his. This friend and his wife vouched for Bursee's whereabouts in the weeks before and during the murder of Mary Anne Holmes, and this was reportedly good enough for investigators. According to them, this alibi - which included the detail that John Bursee was broke at the time and likely unable to travel out to Arizona and back - was enough to write him off as a suspect.

In the months and years afterward, however, Bursee would prove hard to find, and seems to have gone on to live off of the grid. Without knowing more about him or his "violent streaks," it's hard to say whether or not he didn't have what it took to murder Mary Anne Holmes. He definitely seems to have had the motivation to do so, having felt spurned by her leaving him, and had gone through the effort of tracking her down just weeks before her grisly murder... so much so that she reached out to police in an effort to be protected from him.

DNA tests conducted later on during the airing of a TV program, "Cold Justice," would prove inconclusive when compared to John Bursee. But as I mentioned earlier, this was a trace sample that could only help rule out suspects, and is far from a definitive thing.

Another suspect that police circled early on was a man named David Black, who had a more immediate connection to Mary Anne in Thatcher, Arizona: his father, Roy Black, owned the property that Mary lived in.

In the weeks before Mary Anne's murder, she had told her landlord about the back door to the home, which was broken and unable to be locked. This was the same door that the killer had used to enter the home and kill her. Mary Anne had given David, her landlord's son, approximately $200 to fix the back door, which he hadn't done before her grisly murder. This knowledge seemed to add him to the top of the list of persons-of-interest that police wanted to interview.

To make matters even weirder, David Black had long blond hair and a blondish beard at the time, which seemed to match up with Mary Anne's daughter's description of the killer as a "lion" man.

Years later, David Black would move into the home where Mary Anne's life had ended, claiming that living there made him feel "closer" with the murdered woman. It's possible that this is innocent in nature, and he is simply a bit odd, but undoubtedly made investigators' ears perk up with discovered.

To play the devil's advocate for a minute, it's very possible that David Black is simply mentally unwell and maybe feels some responsibility for the crime, hence him moving into the house later on. But in the absence of any closure in this case, it's hard to write him off entirely as a suspicious individual with an odd connection to the case.

Like John Bursee, DNA tests would be performed during the filming of the television show "Cold Justice," and would prove inconclusive when matched up with David Black. But this is again an imperfect testing, as the DNA was such a trace amount that it could only help narrow down the list of suspects.

Another theory that investigators probed early on was a possible connection to a yard sale that Mary Anne Holmes had the day before her murder, in which she had earned a small chunk of change that was later stolen from the crime scene by the unknown subject that ended her life.

In September of 1995, Kaye Turner, one of Mary Anne's neighbors and friends, told reporters with the Arizona Republic:

"Mary Anne was talking rather loudly about what a good idea the sale was and how much money she was making. I think the wrong person heard her talking about that."

It's possible that the killer was someone else in the area at the time, who perhaps got a look at Mary Anne's home and noticed that she didn't have anyone else living with her but her two young daughters. If so, it was possible that the killer was someone else living in Thatcher who managed to avoid suspicion... or was perhaps someone simply traveling by at the time, who happened to overhear that Mary Anne had a decent amount of cash on her.

Sadly, despite several starts and stops in the investigation, Thatcher Police were unable to make any inroads in the case. The DNA sample they had obtained years earlier from the crime scene was mostly unusable, having been degraded over time due to improper storage.

In 2011, the case was turned over to the Arizona Department of Public Safety - in particular, their cold case unit - but this seems to have not changed much.

Yet, in the years since, one final suspect has come into the public spotlight, largely due to his own actions.

Phillip Duane Turley is considered the most likely suspect in this case, based not only on his behavior at around the time of Mary Anne Holmes' murder, but his actions in the years since.

At the time of Mary Anne's death, Phillip Turley had an obsession with her that seemed to only go in one direction. He had met her through a connection at Eastern Arizona College, and per his own admission, had become obsessed with her in the weeks before her death. Despite the two never dating - nor even going on a date - Turley had told others that the two were serious with one another, and even mentioned at one point that they were engaged to be married. By all indications, he had started obsessing over Mary Anne even though she hardly acknowledged him... something that I'm sure many women listening to this podcast have had to endure at one point.

At one point, Turley even claimed to have bought a property in nearby Pima to build a home for them as a family, despite him and Mary Anne not even being in a relationship by the time of her death.

In the episode of "Cold Justice" focusing on Mary Anne's case, an ex-girlfriend of Phillip Turley's told producers that he was bipolar and could become psychotic when not on medication. She also claimed that Turley was interested in the type of violent sex that Mary Anne had been subjected to during or after her death, which included anal sex and having a rope wrapped around her neck, telling producers:

"He liked the kind of fantasy sex from behind, including sodomy and neck restraints."

Attorney Murray Newman, a consultant for "Cold Justice," wrote in a blog post on Tumblr:

"His fascination with Mary Anne was well documented in his own words, as he kept a very detailed journal on his feelings for her. 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 suspeccts 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 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."

Additionally, Phillip Turley was a prison guard at the time of the killing, giving him access to handcuffs and a nightstick, with authorities theorizing that a nightstick might have been the weapon used to beat and rape Mary Anne. He also happened to wear a size-11 shoe, which matched the bootprints left behind at the crime scene.

For years afterward, Turley would continue to live in the region, but would move further and further out over time. Eventually, in 2016, he was arrested for stabbing two people just south of Modesto, California. Turley, 53 years old at the time, had lived near the couple in a trailer park before they learned about his potential involvement in Mary Anne's murder, following the airing of the "Cold Justice" episode I've referenced throughout. Afterward, they started telling others in the community about it.

This resulted in Phillip Turley and a woman he was in a relationship with at the time, Alisha Nadine Gomes, grabbing knives and heading to the trailer where the 54-year-old woman and 56-year-old man lived. Turley stabbed the man several times and taunted him, telling him that he was going to die, while Gomes stabbed the woman. Moments later, Turley moved toward the woman and stabbed her several times himself. Despite the couple being treated for life-threatening injuries, they survived and were able to provide witness against Turley and Gomes, who were both arrested and charged with attempted murder.

Eventually, Alisha Nadine Gomes was sentenced to thirteen years in prison, and in March of 2021, Phillip Turley pleaded guilty to premeditated attempted murder. He was later sentenced to 18 years to life in prison, and is currently serving out his sentence in Folsom State Prison. Sadly, he will be eligible for parole starting in December 2028, but hopefully his sentence can keep him locked up longer, seeing how he is one of the few suspects in the still-unsolved murder of Mary Anne Holmes and has shown himself to be a violent person that cannot be trusted to remain in society.

To this day, Phillip Turley remains a prominent person-of-interest in this case, and his actions in the decades since hasn't lessened that likelihood. And unlike the other two suspects, John Bursee and David Black, DNA testing performed during the filming of "Cold Justice" was unable to rule out Turley as a suspect in the case.

Throughout this time, Mary Anne's two daughters, Ashleigh and Sara, would have to grow up without their mother. As recounted on the "Small Town Tragedy" episode of "Cold Justice," they had gone to live with their grandmother out-of-state following their mother's murder, and didn't want to return to Thatcher to revisit the home they had briefly lived in with their mother.

I can only hope that they have been able to work with people to help them deal with the trauma that they may or may not even remember, but have undoubtedly had to endure in the decades since. As someone who had to grow up without my own mother - for different yet difficult reasons - I can only imagine the heartache they have had to endure over the years. My heart goes out to both of them, and I sincerely hope they have surrounded themselves with happiness in adulthood.

Sadly, to this day, this case remains unsolved... likely because of the area where it took place.

Thatcher, Arizona is a very small town, and at the time of Mary Anne's murder, had a police force of just eight officers. I don't doubt that they tried their best to advance the case, but came up short over the years. A larger city - or even a police department for more resources - could have dedicated investigators or entire units working on the case full-time, which might have helped... but that's just speculation on my part.

Sadly, as we've seen over the past seven years of this podcast, certain cases like this might possibly never be solved for one reason or another. All we can do is try and draw some attention to it and hope that the right info gets to where it needs to.

Until such a time, the tragic story of Mary Anne Holmes will remain unresolved.