Dana Turner began to disappear last year.
There were small signs at first, hints that something was wrong with the bright, hard-working mother of three. Soon, drug addiction and psychosis took over Turner’s life, ravaging the woman who had been an aspiring preacher and “the best mom in the world,” and leaving her almost unrecognizable to those who love her.
Then, in August, she vanished altogether.
“My daughter disappeared just like a puff of smoke,” says her mother, Wendy Yurko. “My daughter is gone. She’s nowhere and I don’t know what was done to her.”
The last traces of Dana are images captured on grainy surveillance videos taken in Edmonton on Aug. 14. One shows her at the Quality West Harvest Hotel with a tall, tattooed man, just after 7 a.m. In the other video, taken inside a gas station several hours later, she is alone. She is wearing jeans and a jacket, her wild mane of hair hanging loose on her shoulders.
It was last Oct. 28, Dana’s 31st birthday, that Wendy knew for sure her daughter was using drugs. After dealing with chronic pain and illness for more than a decade, Dana had tried using OxyContin, a powerful and highly addictive narcotic, after it was given to her by a friend.
“I just wanted to feel good,” she told her mother later. “Just for one day.”
The addiction quickly spiralled out of control. Dana lost weight, stopped caring for herself and her children, and became paranoid and, at times, deeply delusional.
Wendy says her family “begged, cried, screamed and pleaded” for help for Dana, but were only ever able to get her brief stints in Alberta Hospital.
It was at Alberta Hospital that Dana met Mark Lindsay, a 24-year-old who was also receiving treatment for drug addiction and mental-health issues. The couple were using crack cocaine and drinking at Lindsay’s Edmonton apartment in June, when he stabbed her in the head.
Lindsay, the son of former Edmonton police chief John Lindsay, pleaded guilty to the assault on Aug. 12. He was sentenced to time served and released from jail.
Crown prosecutor Rob Beck said Dana did not ask for a no-contact order.
“She was very clear with me that she did not have any safety concerns at that time, ” he said. “She said she wasn’t afraid of the accused. She understood he had issues to deal with as well.”
The last time Wendy saw Dana was the next morning, Aug. 13, when she peeked in on her sleeping daughter on the way to work.
Wendy got home from work later to find a note saying Dana was going to spend the night at the house of a childhood girlfriend. When Dana didn’t come home the next day, Wendy called the friend. She learned Dana had never been there.
“I was just panic-stricken because I knew she had told me something she didn’t do,” Wendy said. She immediately called the police.
RCMP are releasing few details about the case, including where and when Dana’s rental car was found. Spokeswoman Doris Stapleton said police are not commenting because the disappearance is the subject of an ongoing investigation.
Wendy acknowledges there is “a very small possibility” that her daughter may have overdosed or taken her own life, but believes if that was the case, her daughter’s body would already have been found when her rental vehicle was located by police last month. She also says Dana was excited about a plan to move across the country and live with family in an attempt to deal with her drug addiction, stabilize her mental health and rebuild her life.
“She was feeling really, really good,” Wendy says.
Mark Lindsay is currently in custody in British Columbia after being arrested near Kamloops on Sept. 21 for robbery.
Wendy is offering a $10,000 reward for information about her daughter’s whereabouts, and says she and her family are doing everything they can to find out what happened to Dana, and, hopefully, bring her home.
“It’s like a black hole,” she says. “I know she’s just one person out of seven billion, but she’s my daughter.”
Comments