Dr. Shirley Turner, of Newfoundland, has agreed to DNA testing of her newborn baby who she claims was fathered by Andrew Bagby, the doctor she is accused of gunning down last November in a state park in Westmoreland County.
Attorney Anthony Mariani of Pittsburgh, who represents Turner in Pennsylvania, said Tuesday that his client reached an agreement with Bagby's parents to allow the child to be tested to determine his paternity.
Bagby's parents, David and Kathleen Bagby, filed a legal action in the Unified Family Court of Newfoundland seeking custody of the baby born last month.
"We believe we are the grandparents of the child," the Bagbys maintained in the court filing.
The Bagbys say they are afraid Turner may flee or hide the child so they cannot gain custody.
The boy, named Zachary Andrew Turner, was born five days past his due date and weighed more than eight pounds. He is Turner’s fourth child. She has another son, 20, and two daughters, 17 and 12, from two previous marriages.
Turner told a Newfoundland newspaper that she chose the baby’s middle name after his father.
Mariani said he did not know whether the DNA testing has been done.
He said the Canadian court issued an order preventing both Turner and the Bagbys from taking the child out of Canada until the court decides custody.
Turner, 41, is in the middle of what is expected to be a lengthy extradition process as Westmoreland County District Attorney John Peck seeks her return from Newfoundland to face a first-degree murder charge.
The extradition hearing continues Sept. 19. A Canadian judge has imposed a news blackout on the proceedings.
According to Pennsylvania State Police investigators, Turner and Bagby, 28, a first-year resident at Latrobe Area Hospital, were lovers. They had met in the late 1990s when they attended medical school at Memorial University in Newfoundland.
Turner visited Bagby last November and during a confrontation learned that he had another girlfriend.
Turner, according to court records, flew back to Iowa where she had been working as a physician, and then immediately drove back to Pennsylvania.
She allegedly lured Bagby to Keystone State Park in Derry Township where she shot him five times. Investigators were able to trace her movements to and from the state by using her cellular telephone records as a road map.
Turner was born in Wichita, Kan., but grew up in Daniel’s Harbour, Newfoundland. She has dual U.S.-Canadian citizenship and left the United States just before the state police issued a warrant for her arrest.
Turner has always maintained she didn’t “flee” anywhere but returned to Canada because of the death of a friend. At about the same time, she said, her son was almost killed in a car accident in Newfoundland and she wanted to be with him.
Documents filed by the district attorney, however, allege she left her residence in Council Bluffs, Iowa, when she learned she was the focus of the investigation into Bagby’s death.
She was arrested in St. John’s in December but later made bail on the condition she remain in Newfoundland pending the outcome of the extradition hearing.
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