Ten years on from Emily Longley’s murder
ELLIOT TURNER’S MILLIONAIRE FAMILY HELPED HIM CONCEAL HIS EVIL CRIME
‘HE WAS BRASH, FLASH, BOASTFUL, SPOILT AND VOLATILE’
On 21 May 2012, Mark and Caroline Longley sat in Winchester Crown Court, as Elliot Turner, 20, was handed a guilty verdict for strangling their 17-year-old daughter Emily to death. The son of a millionaire, privatelyeducated Turner was described by his own lawyer as “brash, flash, boastful, spoilt and volatile”. He referred to women as “birds” and surrounded himself with a group of friends who called themselves “The Firm”. And, in a shocking twist, Turner’s parents, Leigh and Anita, also received 27-month sentences for trying to cover up their son’s crime.
For Mark, coming face-to-face with them in court was almost unbearable. He said, “It was shocking to see the lack of remorse from his parents. It was as if it was our fault that they were going through this. As if raising Emily had forced their son to kill her.” Ten years on from the crime, we look back at what happened.
WARNING SIGNS
Emily was nine when her family emigrated to New Zealand. But in 2010, aged 16, she returned to the UK, where she lived with her grandparents near Bournemouth, while studying business at college. She would often tell Mark, Caroline, and her younger sister Hannah how much she loved life in the UK. It was on a night out that she met Turner, and the pair became a couple. Emily introduced her new boyfriend to her grandparents, who thought he was “charming and polite”. But they didn’t know the real Turner. Known to his friends as “All
Talk Turner”, he loved to gloat about his lavish lifestyle, which was funded by his parents. Friends said he liked to carry wads of cash, and boasted that his parents spent £30,000 treating his cocaine addiction at The Priory clinic. Elliot also had a history of tormenting women. In January 2008, when he was just 16, he was served a harassment warning from police for bombarding an ex-girlfriend with texts and emails after she dumped him. Soon, Emily was being subjected to controlling behaviour. Turner told her friends she was using drugs, because he knew they wouldn’t approve; he texted all the men in
‘HE ASKED IF HE WAS RIGHT TO DESTROY HIS SON’S CONFESSION’
her phone pretending to be her, and he accessed her Facebook account to spy on her. In March 2011, he called Emily a “whore” for taking part in a photo shoot with topless men, and on a romantic getaway to the Isle of Wight, they had a row that resulted in Turner smashing up their hotel room.
That April, Emily visited her family in New Zealand. Mark has since said Emily didn’t tell them anything about her boyfriend’s dark side, saying, “I think she thought she could handle it.” Mark said the family had a lovely time, but back in the UK, Turner was furious. Seeing pictures of Emily on nights out with friends, he convinced himself she was cheating on him. When she returned to the UK, a week before her death, Emily went to a nightclub, where she planned to meet Turner, but CCTV footage shows him dismissing her with a wave of his hand. It’s also claimed that he later slammed her head into a table. As a result, Emily’s friends removed her from the club, but believing she was going to another nearby venue, Turner went along – armed with a hammer.
Emily wasn’t there, but bizarrely, Turner told his friend Tom Crowe that he had killed her. During the trial, Tom said, “He said he had used the hammer to club her around the head six or seven times,” and described how he “heard her skull crunch”. Tom believed his friend, until Turner admitted it was a joke. But it appears that once he got the idea into his head, he didn’t let it go. Turner asked Tom how he should kill his girlfriend, bringing up ideas that included drowning her and setting her on fire. They even practised strangling each other.
AWFUL CRIME
On 7 May 2011, Emily was on a night out when Turner appeared. He started an argument with her, and she threw a drink on him and left. Friends told the jury that Turner went crazy, punching seats in the bar and shouting, “I will kill her. I will go to prison and I will still be a millionaire.” Then, he texted his mum and said, “I could f**king break Emily’s neck and beat the f**k out of her.” His mum was said to have replied, “Don’t do anything that is inappropriate, Elliot, you’re so young and have so much life ahead of you.”he didn’t listen. He followed Emily to her friend’s house, and persuaded her to accept a lift home, but took her to his house instead. They arrived at 12.45am, and by 1am, she was dead. The next morning, at 9.16am, it was alleged Anita texted Leigh saying, “Come home. Emily’s dead.” It was a further 40 minutes before anyone called 999. Turner claimed Emily had punched and kicked him, and claimed he had grabbed her neck “for five or six seconds” to “stop her going nuts”. He was arrested at the scene, where he was found to have his passport in his pocket and his bags packed. He refused to talk to police and was released on bail. Back at home, he was handed a credit card and went back to his partying ways. Meanwhile, Emily’s devastated parents flew to the UK. Speaking of the moment he saw his daughter in the morgue, Mark said, “She looked like she was asleep, like I’d seen her a thousand times before... Her skin was soft like it had always been, but it was cold, like no cold I’d ever felt.”
As part of the case against Turner, detectives took the unusual step of bugging his family’s home. It was then that police learnt that not only was Elliot guilty – but that his parents helped him cover his tracks. During more than 291 hours of recording, Turner was heard discussing the night of the murder, saying he had “just flipped out and grabbed her”. But Leigh was heard asking his wife if she thought it was right that he’d destroyed a letter in which their son had confessed to murder. It was later revealed in court that Turner had written a confession, but Leigh doused it in bleach. Anita also removed a jacket from the crime scene.
Leigh can be heard saying, “We’ve perverted the course of justice, we’ve destroyed the vital evidence in this case.” To which his wife replied, “Yes, because he is our son, we’ve done the right thing.” Leigh responds, “Stop denying it. He f**king strangled her.” In the recordings, Anita is heard telling her son Emily ruined his life.
All three were charged with perverting the course of justice, while Elliot Turner was also charged with murder. He was held on remand, while his parents were released on bail. During this time, Anita threw “Support Elliot” parties, and texted his friends asking them to attend. Turner also reportedly wrote letters from prison to his friends, saying that his father would throw a £9,000 party and buy him a Porsche if he was freed. He claimed to have a film deal, and signed his letters “Big T”.
In April 2012, the three of them faced trial. It was revealed that Turner had
grabbed Emily in a sleeper hold, like the one he’d practised. When asked why he appeared to show little remorse for the killing, he responded with, “Well, it happened a year ago.”
SENTENCED
The jury found the Turner family guilty on all charges. In May 2012, Elliot was given life in prison with a minimum tariff of 16 years, while his parents were each handed 27 months for perverting the course of justice.
During sentencing, the judge told Turner, “Your arrogance [has been] breathtaking... You can put away your thoughts of Champagne, Bentleys and girls, and concentrate instead on why you are serving a life sentence.” Outside court, Mark said, “I hope he suffers every day in prison for what he’s done.”
Once languishing in prison, Turner claimed to receive letters from women, and even had pictures of Emily up in his cell. Leigh and Anita were released after serving half their sentence.
Since her death, Emily’s family have bravely spoken out about their daughter’s murder. Mark, who is a journalist, has written extensively about her, and even released a podcast to help those coping with death and grief. He’s also an ambassador for The White
Ribbon, a charity that aims to end male violence against women. Mark has said, “Some of the signs with Elliot Turner were obvious. He said he was going to kill her... He was very open about that. He discussed killing her with a friend of his. I still can’t fathom to this day why those friends went along with that… The really powerful group,
I think, is your peers... I know it’s hard for people to step in, it’s hard to confront a mate... If you see those signs, step in.”
When Grace Millane was murdered while on a gap year in New Zealand in 2018, Mark reached out to Grace’s dad David, offering to meet him in New Zealand, and even spoke at vigils for Grace in Auckland. He said, “When you’ve raised your daughter in a loving and caring environment... to think that some other man has put their hand on her in violence and murdered her... My heart went out to David, I really felt for him... Statistically, 14 women are going to die [in New Zealand per year]. That’s not a statistic we should be happy with. We need to change this, we need to stop it. There’s too many women dying at the hands of men.”
This month marks a decade since Emily’s tragic death, but Mark has described closure as “a load of rubbish”. Every night, he says goodnight to a picture of Emily by his bed. He said, “You never move on. I miss Emily every day, I think about her every day.” Visit Whiteribbon.org.uk.
‘I MISS EMILY EVERY DAY, I THINK ABOUT HER EVERY DAY’