Westmoreland County has started the extradition process to return a physician from Canada to the United States to face first-degree murder charges in the death of a Latrobe doctor.
District Attorney John Peck said Tuesday that a formal application to extradite Dr. Shirley J. Turner, 40, of Council Bluffs, Iowa, from Newfoundland has been filed with the Office of International Affairs of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.
Peck said he is seeking a provisional warrant from Canadian authorities to immediately arrest Turner for allegedly murdering Dr. Andrew D. Bagby, 28, a first-year resident in family medicine at Latrobe Area Hospital.
Bagby was shot five times and clubbed in the head in early November in Keystone State Park in Derry Township.
State police investigators, using cellular telephone records, were able to trace Turner's travels from Iowa to Latrobe, where she allegedly killed Bagby, and then back to Council Bluffs.
Canadian authorities are not expected to make an immediate decision on Peck's request. Although an arrest warrant was filed in Pennsylvania, Turner remains free in Newfoundland because she has not broken any Canadian laws.
"When I talked to Canadian authorities, they said the process could be extensive. There are a number of opportunities to appeal," Peck said.
Authorities here were required to provide information on the slaying as well as reasons why Turner should be arrested immediately. Peck also had to set forth the evidence troopers have accumulated against Turner, a twice-divorced mother who was born in Wichita, Kan.
State police allege the murder weapon was a .22-caliber Phoenix Arms semiautomatic handgun, which has not been found.
A key piece of evidence, according to a state police affidavit, is a live round of .22-caliber ammunition found beside Bagby's body.
A firearms instructor in Omaha, Neb., told police he taught Turner how to fire the same model gun on at least three occasions. One of those sessions was on Oct. 25, shortly before Turner flew to Latrobe, where Bagby told her he wanted to end their relationship, authorities said.
The instructor said Turner's gun was in poor shape and would misfeed, ejecting live rounds of ammunition to the ground along with spent shells, police said. Turner switched to another brand of ammunition to correct the problem, but the gun continued to misfeed and eject live shells, the instructor said.
The bullet and spent shells found next to Bagby were the same as the brand she had switched to, according to the affidavit.
Shortly after Bagby's body was discovered, Turner told police she had given the gun to Bagby. Then she said she had the weapon and would turn it over to Iowa authorities. The next day she told investigators her gun was missing.
Before the warrant was issued, Turner returned to Newfoundland - where she had lived since 1968 and had attended medical school - to tend to a son who had been seriously injured in an auto accident, according to her attorney, Julianne Dunn-Herzog of Omaha, Neb.
Peck did remove one obstacle that would have made Turner's extradition nearly impossible.
He ruled out seeking the death penalty because Canada has been reluctant to extradite its citizens to jurisdictions that have the death penalty.
Bagby, a California native, was found Nov. 6 in the park near Keystone Lake. According to state police, Turner had visited Bagby the week prior to his death, then returned to Council Bluffs.
State police contend that an angry Turner drove from Iowa back to Latrobe to confront Bagby about the end of their relationship, drove to the park with him and then shot him.
Turner was born to a Canadian mother and an American father, giving her dual citizenship. The family lived in the remote area of Daniel's Harbour on Newfoundland's west coast along the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
After working 11 years as a school teacher in Labrador and Newfoundland, Turner went to medical school at Memorial University of Newfoundland where she was Bagby's classmate. After graduating, Turner wound up in Iowa and Bagby in Syracuse. He left there after a year and started a three-year residency in family medicine at Latrobe Area Hospital.
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