Just six months after being acquitted for the murder of his stepdaughter Alissa Turney, Michael Roy Turney has filed a civil complaint seeking north of $300,000 in damages from police and prosecutors. Turney, 75, accuses law enforcement of collusion, wrongful imprisonment, excessive force, property damage, denial of medical care, and defamation. The lawsuit names several agencies and individuals, including Phoenix police Chief Michael Sullivan, former chief Jeri Williams, Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, former attorney Allister Adel, and two officers, as detailed by the Phoenix New Times.
Turney, acting as his own attorney after failing to procure legal representation, expressed little hope for financial gain from the lawsuit. "I don’t ever expect to get any money from it. I expect them to come down on me like banshees from hell," he told the Phoenix New Times.
The accusations come in the wake of a dramatic trial where Turney faced charges for the 2001 disappearance of his 17-year-old stepdaughter, Alissa Turney. Despite what was described by law enforcement as a "mountain of circumstantial evidence," the lack of a body and definitive proof of Ailssa being deceased threw the case into ambiguity. Turney's arrest itself, characterized in the lawsuit as a "military operation," was the culmination of years of suspicion and investigation, and served an emotional blow to a family already torn by the tragedy. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sam Myers acquitted Turney citing insufficient evidence that "Alissa’s death resulted from the defendant’s conduct," as reported by the Phoenix New Times.
In a separate thread of the storied case, Sarah Turney's tireless campaign for justice in her half-sister's disappearance played a critical role in the initial arrest of Michael Turney. After defending her father for years, her perspective shifted as she delved through evidence, eventually leading her to believe in his guilt, according to a PEOPLE Magazine interview. Sarah’s efforts, including a podcast and a viral TikTok campaign, helped reignite public and investigative interest in the cold case.
Neither the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office nor the County Attorney's Office has commented on the pending litigation. The Phoenix Police Chief, implicated in the legal action, did not respond to the New Times’s inquiries as of their latest updates. The case against Michael Turney remains a subject of public fascination and a source of pain for the ones Alissa left behind, whether she departed of her own volition or was stolen away by the man she should have been able to trust the most.
