The ex-boyfriend of a prominent banking executive who was found dead inside her Reseda home was convicted Tuesday of first-degree murder and other charges.
Anthony Duwayne Turner, 56, was also convicted of burglary and forcible rape stemming from the killing of Michelle Annette Avan, a senior vice president for Bank of America, just over four years ago.
Jurors also found true special circumstance allegations of murder during the commission of a burglary and murder during the commission of a rape involving the woman, who had two children and one grandchild.
Turner, a former banking executive, faces a possible sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Sentencing was scheduled for Oct. 10.
Avan’s son found her dead inside her bed in the 19300 block of Covello Street, near Tampa Avenue and Saticoy Street, in August 2021.
Prosecutors alleged that Turner beat and strangled the bank executive, while defense attorney Jovan Blacknell countered that what happened to the 48-year-old woman could have been “self-inflicted” by ramming her head into a bathroom counter.
Turner — who testified in his own defense — said he had gone to the woman’s home without calling or texting her late Aug. 3, 2021, to “finalize things, get some closure” and to “finalize the breakup” after a number of previous break-ups with her.
Turner said the two initially met in 2015 at an internal networking event and subsequently engaged in an affair while they were each married to other people.
He said the two maintained a “discreet” relationship even after they each divorced their spouses, saying that he preferred not to be public about it and that she knew he spent time with other women during holidays.
The defendant, who was captured on her home’s surveillance video as he emerged from his vehicle, said he used the code she had given him for her security system and disarmed her alarm without turning it back on because he “didn’t expect to be there that long.”
Turner maintained that her bedroom door was “unlocked” and that she greeted him with a hug and kiss while wearing only a pair of panties.
“She was trying to kiss me more and I kind of held her off. I wanted to have a serious conversation … I wanted to permanently end the relationship,” he said, telling jurors that she became very upset and pleaded with him to give her another chance.
Turner testified that he eventually fell asleep while sitting in a chair as she sat on the edge of the bed, and that she was in the same position when he woke up about 4 a.m. the next morning.
Turner said the woman still seemed upset and tried to block him from leaving, but had no visible injuries to her face the last time he saw her standing on the stairs of her home when he came back inside the house to say goodbye after taking a bag containing his belongings out to his vehicle.
“Did you strike Michelle in any way?” the defense attorney asked Turner.
“I did not,” the defendant said.
“Did you have sex with Michelle while you were there?” his attorney asked.
“I did not,” Turner responded.
Turner said he didn’t have any injuries when he was subsequently questioned by police.
In her closing argument, Deputy District Attorney Cindy Wallace told the downtown Los Angeles jury that “the circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly points to guilt.”
“… We know that he did not come there to break up with Michelle … He came there to do what he’s always done — to beat her … to assert his control over her,” Wallace said, adding that he “ultimately raped and murdered Michelle.”
The prosecutor contended that the defendant’s “mask that he puts on was peeled off piece by piece.”
She alleged that Turner is a “violent, controlling, manipulative individual” who terrorized the woman.
The deputy district attorney noted that the woman, referred to in court only as “Michelle A.,” had written in one journal entry, “My body freezes and I cannot take one more step. I am terrified of what’s about to happen. I’ve experienced beatings at his hands before …”
Wallace told the panel that DNA evidence collected from the woman’s cervix and her right breast indicated that “his DNA was there,” despite Turner’s claim that their last sexual encounter had occurred in late July 2021.
With District Attorney Nathan Hochman looking on in the courtroom during her rebuttal argument, the prosecutor called the defense’s suggestion that the woman may have been so distraught and sad over the breakup that she hit her head over and over on a counter was a “fantastical lie” and didn’t explain how some of her other injuries had occurred.
“All the evidence points to the defendant,” Wallace told jurors, adding that the only just verdict was “guilty of all of the counts.”
Turner’s attorney countered in his argument that his client should be acquitted.
He accused police of immediately focusing on his client after the woman’s body was discovered.
“Everything that they found they interpreted in a negative way and it was a remarkably bad investigation,” Blacknell said.
The defense lawyer said Turner “makes no attempt to flee” after the woman’s son called him to tell him that he had found her body, saying that his client called 911 to try to confirm that something had happened to her.
Blacknell said there were still “no attempts to get away” after Turner was released on bail before he was eventually arrested again earlier this year.
He called his client a bridge to the woman’s new lifestyle as her personal life evolved from a marriage with a stay-at-home husband to a relationship with Turner, who was “into an alternate lifestyle.”
Turner’s attorney told jurors that “you don’t see many high-ranking executives who want to strip” and “want to be dominated at home” in dominant-submissive relationship in which bondage was practiced and paddling or spanking and threesomes occurred multiple times.
He noted that the woman ended up getting a tattoo reading “Property of King Anthony” at Turner’s request, and said there was “literally nothing” to suggest anything other than her ever being a willing sexual partner for Turner.
“Truly, this case is a referendum on the BDSM lifestyle,” the defense attorney said.
Turner was charged with murder four days after the woman’s body was discovered, with a grand jury indictment returned against him this January.