Colorado mother who portrayed 7-year-old daughter as terminally ill pleads guilty to causing her death

Provided by the Douglas County Sheriff's Office

Kelly Turner

The Colorado parent accused of murdering her 7-year-old girl by pretending the miss was terminally sick pleaded blameworthy Monday to kid maltreatment that negligently caused her daughter’s death.

Kelly Turner, 43, paused for a agelong moment, enactment her caput successful her hands and wept erstwhile District Court Judge Patricia Herron asked however she wished to plead to the complaint of kid maltreatment that negligently caused 7-year-old Olivia Gant’s death. Turner’s nationalist defender enactment a manus connected Turner’s backmost and spoke with her quietly.

“Guilty,” Turner yet answered. She went connected to plead blameworthy to 2 theft charges arsenic well.

Turner was charged successful 2019 with first-degree murder successful Olivia’s death. The miss died successful hospice attraction successful 2017. Prosecutors accused Turner of portraying her girl arsenic sick for years, lying astir her symptoms and fooling doctors astatine Children’s Hospital Colorado into providing unnecessary and adjacent life-threatening procedures.

A first-degree execution condemnation carries a mandatory beingness condemnation successful Colorado. Turner pleaded blameworthy to lesser charges, and arsenic portion of the plea agreement, prosecutors and Turner agreed to a condemnation of 16 years successful situation connected the kid maltreatment charge. That situation word would beryllium served astatine the aforesaid clip arsenic a 10-year condemnation connected 1 of the theft charges, and a three-year condemnation connected the last theft charge.

Herron volition person the enactment to judge the plea statement and enforce that agreed-on condemnation astatine a Feb. 9 sentencing hearing.

“The plea statement that has been presented, I find hard to stomach,” Herron said. “That does not mean I volition not enforce it. For immoderate fig of reasons, I recognize however we extremity up here. But it’s hard erstwhile we person the decease of a young child. A decease aft what the tribunal considers, from my reappraisal of the documents, aft this kid had been submitted to a beingness of painful, frightening tests and surgical procedures yet resulting successful this child’s death. It is unthinkable, and from this court’s position mostly would beryllium met with the harshest of sentences.”

A Denver Post probe past year recovered that immoderate doctors and nurses astatine Children’s Hospital Colorado raised concerns that Olivia was being medically abused by her mother, but the infirmary did not study their suspicions to immoderate extracurricular agencies.

The infirmary alternatively relied connected an interior squad to look into the concerns, which past concluded determination was nary request to alert the state’s Department of Human Services. Olivia’s decease went un-investigated for much than a year, until Turner brought Olivia’s sibling into the infirmary for vague aesculapian complaints and a doc realized Turner was lying astir the girl’s aesculapian history.

Olivia’s surviving household members successful September resolved a $25 cardinal civilian claim against the hospital.