INDIANAPOLIS – The daughter of an Indianapolis man whose remains were recently identified says she owes an IMPD detective for helping to bring closure to her family.
Kim Turner has gone through a lot in the three decades since her father John Turner went missing. She says John was a great father and a great man. Even though her parents were divorced, Kim says her father would stay in contact and spend time with the family. She says he knew where they were every single day.
When she didn’t see him one day, she knew something was wrong. In April 1988, Kim urged her mother to report John missing. Kim says since the beginning, his disappearance was hard on their family.
“I don’t think anybody looked for him,” said Kim. “And we were just wondering, where’s my dad? Where’s my dad? Where’s my dad?”
As the years went by, one detective after another called Kim, telling her that they would find her dad. When they would, Kim says she used to get so excited she would run down the street clapping her hands. One by one, the detectives stopped calling.
“It sounded like the detectives were very excited at first. And then when the new detective would get the case, it’s like, yeah, we’re going to get you know, get to the bottom of it, but never call back anything,” said Kim.
That is why when a new detective on the case called her, Kim didn’t have a lot of confidence. Then the detective, Nicole Bockting, suggested taking a DNA sample from Kim and her nephew Zachary.
It was that DNA that matched a sample taken from John’s femur recovered from a Hendricks County field in 2013. Kim says both samples matched the DNA from the bone.
“Had it not been for her, none of this would be taken place,” said Kim. “He would laid there, but I never would have known he was my dad.”
On Sunday, it was a bittersweet moment for Kim. For more than three decades, Father’s Day went by without her knowing what happened to her father. Now, with the remains being turned over to a funeral home, Kim was able to spend the day knowing where her father was and preparing to lay him to rest.
“Just knowing and being able to bury him properly because he deserves that,” Kim said. “He’s going to be with my mom at last.”
Even knowing where he will be, Kim says the recovery raised a thousand more questions. Among the questions Kim has is who the clothing found with John belonged to.
“The clothes that I saw, I didn’t recognize. But this is that my dad wore everybody knew him and his hair and the sunglasses he wore leather shoes kind of dress pants. I mean, he was a sharp dresser,” said Kim.
When Kim visits her father’s grave after his burial, she will ask these questions and more. Kim hopes the investigation by the Hendricks County Sheriff’s Office and IMPD will eventually lead to more answers to bring closure and possible justice for her father’s death.
