‘I W SIST
SARAH HAS BEEN LOOKING FOR HER MISSING SISTER ALISSA FOR19 YEARS
before. I didn’t think she would leave me like that.”
Sarah and Alissa had different dads but never called themselves half-sisters, and Sarah’s dad, Michael Turney, raised Alissa as his own. Some of his behaviour was odd though. He seemed constantly worried about where Alissa was and they argued a lot about her freedom.
“Every day he was like ‘Where is Alissa? Is she with a boy? Is she being supervised?’” remembers Sarah, who says her dad was less protective of her. He would even follow Alissa and film her from outside her workplace at a restaurant. But after Alissa disappeared, he seemed less frantic about what she might be up to. Michael did seem to be desperately searching for her, though, handing out flyers in the neighbourhood.
“He appeared to be looking everywhere,” says Sarah.
Although Sarah was distraught to lose her sister, life carried on relatively normally. Then, seven years after Alissa went missing, a shocking discovery was made. Police stormed the Turney house and found 26 homemade pipe bombs. Michael was arrested and police said he’d planned to blow up a local union hall he had a dispute with. Sarah was distraught.
“I believed he was innocent,” she says. “He told me that the police planted the bombs. I didn’t know what to think, I didn’t in a million years think he was responsible for Alissa.”
While Michael was out on bail, an ABC TV show called 20/20 got in touch wanting to interview Sarah and Michael about Alissa’s case and they took part in the program.
But when Sarah watched the footage of her dad back, she was shocked.
Michael was questioned about a camera he had in a living-room vent that he used to film Alissa making out with her boyfriend.
He’d also made Alissa sign a contract that said he wasn’t abusing her. Michael claimed that the camera was for security surveillance and he made contracts with all of his kids as a parenting strategy.
“I remember [Michael] being very upset about that episode and that’s when I started asking questions,” explains Sarah.
In 2010, Michael Turney, then 62, was convicted of the unlawful possession of unregistered destructive devices and jailed for 10 years.
Although Sarah still supported her dad, she began to wonder. The main thing that bothered her was that the day Alissa disappeared, Michael had taken her out of school early but never told Sarah. Then police on the case told her that Michael was their only suspect in Alissa’s disappearance.
“They told me straight-out that they thought Alissa was forced to write the runaway note,” says Sarah.
That’s when Sarah stopped seeing her dad as her hero, and instead potentially the person who was responsible for her sister’s disappearance. When her dad was released from prison in 2017, Sarah hoped he’d be arrested, but police said there wasn’t enough evidence. No-one has ever been arrested or charged or convicted of anything in relation to Alissa’s case.
However, in February 2019, police submitted Alissa’s case to the prosecutor’s office for charges against Michael.
Sarah is determined to find out what really happened to her sister and has started the podcast Voices For Justice. She’s spent countless hours researching the case, looking through police notes and trying to find answers.
In the first episode, she confronts her dad about his involvement in Alissa’s case. He says: “There’s nothing to confess to because nothing happened.
Sarah’s sister has now been missing for 19 years and she thinks Alissa is dead. She says she won’t give up until someone has been convicted of her murder.
“She’s my sister and she’d do the same for me,” says Sarah.
As for her dad, she doesn’t view him in the same way she used to. “He was my hero,” she says, but not anymore.
It was soon clear that the authorities’ suspicions may have been just that, but Sarah’s tenacity will no doubt see whoever’s responsible for Alissa’s disappearance pay for their crime.
“THE POLICE TOLD ME THEY THOUGHT ALISSA WAS FORCED TO WRITE THE RUNAWAY NOTE”