Today’s story is from Bournemouth on the south coast of England, just over ninety miles south-west of England. It is a popular seaside resort and has been home to many of the great, good and average over the years. Legendary comedian Tony Hancock lived for most of his early life in hotels in Bournemouth run by his parents.
It was 9.50 am on 7th May 2011 that paramedics rushed to Queenswood Avenue in Bournemouth after a 999 call from fifty-year-old Anita Turner. In a calm tone, she had told the call handler: “My son’s friend is staying with us. This morning, I tried to wake both of them up, but the girl didn’t wake up. I can’t wake her up.” The ‘friend’ she was referring to her son’s girlfriend of the past few months, seventeen-year-old Emily Longley.
The operator presses Anita for more information- is this girl breathing? Is there anything obstructing her airwaves? A necklace perhaps? What colour are her lips? Anita fumbles over her words trying to give a response. The operator, familiar with dealing with people in different states of shock, instructs Anita to shake Emily, call her name, check her breathing. She is told that neither produced a response. In one bizarre moment, maybe caused by the shock of the moment, Anita asks if she should wipe the young girl’s makeup off while checking for signs of life. At times she defers questions to her husband, fifty- four-year-old Leigh, who can be heard in the background.
Paramedics arrived at the home within minutes of the 999 call being made and found Emily unresponsive in a bedroom belonging to Anita’s son, Elliot. The so-called bedroom is a separate enclosure from the rest of the house at the rear of the bungalow. When questioned by the first responders on the scene, Elliot told the paramedics that he and Emily had come back to the home after drinking at the club over in Canford Cliffs, west of Bournemouth towards Poole. They had argued when they arrived home, but he had turned over and gone to sleep. Around 4.30am Emily had gone to get a glass of water, complaining of a headache and then when he woke up a few hours later she was unresponsive.
Police arrived at the scene a short while later and spoke with Elliot who told them that Emily had attacked him, and he’d had to fend her off but claimed she was very much alive by the end of their fight. He once again reiterated she had got up that night for a glass of water. Anita backed up her son’s version of events and told officers that sometime around 5am she had seen Emily wandering through the house in search of water. Why had a fit and healthy Emily died?
An investigation by Dorset Police was launched and a post-mortem carried out that same day. The pathologist noted Petechial hemorrhages in Emily’s eyes and on her lips- tiny bleeds connected to rising blood pressure in the head. Frustratingly for Emily’s family and the police, the results of the examination were inconclusive and death by natural causes could not be ruled out.
Dorset Police arrested Elliot and brought him into the station for further questioning where he chose to answer “no comment” to every question. He was released on bail pending further enquiries. Elliot took to the media and denied killing Emily, telling the Sunday Star Times newspaper he had no idea how she died. “It is weird. God works in mysterious ways.” He told reporters he was “living in a nightmare”. Some of Elliot’s friends even took to social media to defend him – staunch in their friend’s innocence.
Police needed more information on the pair and started asking questions to friends on both sides of the investigation, to try and establish what happened prior to that terrible spring morning. Their enquiries tell us this much: The daughter of Mark and Caroline, Emily was born in London in 1994. She had been living in New Zealand with her parents and sister Hannah since she was ten-years old. Her mum and dad had divorced just a few years after the move but remained close friends and dedicated parents to their children. In the summer of 2009, Emily flew from Auckland to England to visit her paternal grandparents who lived in Southbourne, a seafront suburb on the south coastal town of Bournemouth. For a young woman starting out in the world, Bournemouth offered real opportunities, promises of sun-kissed summers and a continuously buzzing hive of clubs, bars and restaurants, a number of big department stores, trendy small businesses and boutiques and British fashion favourites. During Emily’s visit to her grandparents, she decided she wanted to make the stay a more permanent one and attend Brockenhurst College, nestled in the neighbouring county of Hampshire in the New Forest, to study a business national diploma. Her parents remained living in New Zealand with their youngest daughter whilst Emily began studying in England and working part-time at Top Shop in the town centre.
Friends described Emily as a kind, generous friend and a beautiful person inside and out. Her mum told the press that after her parent’s divorce Emily wasn’t an angry teenager, just a teenager looking to push boundaries. A student, much loved daughter, sister and grandchild, friend and fashion worker, Emily was also an aspiring model. She was certainly beautiful- platinum blonde hair and blue eyes, Emily smiles brightly and yet effortlessly in pictures.
Detectives also looked more closely at Elliot’s background. Born in 1991 he grew up in Solihull in the West Midland. His grandfather was a successful silversmith and so his family benefitted from generational wealth. The Turner family relocated to Bournemouth in 2000 where Elliot attended one of the best schools in the area. From there he went to Bournemouth College for A’ levels and then spent just a month at Southampton’s Solent University before dropping out.
It is easy to make judgements about Elliot’s lifestyle. He and his friends called themselves ‘The Firm’ and frequented nightclubs in Bournemouth several times a week dropping hundreds of pounds on drinks in a single night. Their ‘headquarters’ was the Bella Rosa nightclub in the affluent area of Canford Cliffs, on the outskirts of Sandbanks. When he crashed his first car at the age of seventeen, he was rewarded with a brand new black Mini Cooper.
On his social media Elliot described himself as a ‘director/jewelry buyer’, but he was in fact neither. His friends, familiar with his self-inflated ego dubbed him “All-talk Turner”- He claimed to his friends that he had slept with celebrities and at one stage was having to be sent to a thirty-thousand-pound rehabilitation facility ‘The Priory’ for cocaine addiction. There is no clear evidence that he did go to rehab, but Elliot was not one to let the truth get in the way of a good story. And it is easy to mock him for this, but who are we to judge how anyone else chooses to live their life?
The Turner family owned a fine jewelry shop in the centre of Bournemouth, named RE Porter. The shop had been bought by Elliot’s silversmith grandfather and passed down to his son Leigh. Its shopfront was a glittering display of fine diamonds and flashy jewels and also sold antiques and silverware- carriage clocks and tableware sat in the window. As a teenager, Elliot would work in the shop part time one day a week and the jewelry store was just a short walk down from the shop where Emily worked.
Emily had only been studying at her college for three months when she first encountered Elliot, they met via mutual friends who had begun dating. Elliot would claim they clicked almost instantly and “got on like a house on fire”. Emily’s friends however, said it was Elliot who pursued Emily relentlessly- the relationship was intense and quickly became full of drama. Elliot was possessive, jealous and quick to anger. Some of Emily’s friends would later tell the press that Elliot bullied free spirited Emily into being his ‘girlfriend’ and it certainly appears that Elliot was obsessed with having Emily at his side. While Emily was beautiful, slender and polished, Elliot’s was less classically attractive shall we say. He was clearly insecure, and the attention Emily received only seemed to anger him more.
Despite this, in March 2011, Emily had agreed to take part in a photo shoot her friend was staging as part of Sandbanks Ladies’ Day. Pictures from the shoot show Emily standing between two shirtless ‘buff butlers’ in a stunning red dress. Another shows the shirtless male model ironing in an apron and some shorts while Emily imitates swiping at his buttocks. She holds a cocktail glass with the other hand. A third photo shows Emily holding a full champagne flute, a flirtatious and cheeky smile spread across her lips as she interacts with the male model. She smiles brightly. These photos are cheeky and playful and were posted on the internet on the website of ‘Cheeky Buff Butlers’ a male model service based in Poole whose clients tended to be hen-dos and birthday parties. Emily was told the images could be used as part of her portfolio to help her modeling career.
Around this time, the relationship with Elliot was heading beyond breaking point, and it seems as though Emily was doing her utmost to distance herself from Elliot. Between 5th April and 29th April, Emily travelled home to New Zealand to visit family. While away she posted pictures to her social media accounts of her trip. Text messages between the pair show Elliot’s outrage at her spending time with other men. He accused her of being unfaithful.
It was also at this point that Elliot saw the images of Emily taken with the shirtless models. The images enraged Elliot. Venom dripped from his every word as he shot a text to the friend Emily had agreed to help with the photo shoot. It read: “Do you know who I am? A lad who’s been arrested for everything, six violent harassment charges, two restraining orders, deception, GBH, I’m involved with everything.” The rest of the text is full of expletives, but the message is clear- he was warning them of his temper and threatening violent repercussions for anyone who dared to mess with him or his relationship with Emily.
Emily’s dad told the media how she specifically told him while in New Zealand that she and Elliot were over and she wasn’t interested in settling down. But the full truth about Elliot’s temper wasn’t known by Emily’s family – how he would quickly become enraged by Emily’s defiance of his bully-boy tactics and demands. How he threatened to kill her every day. A deeply concerning letter written by Emily to Elliot prior to her trip to New Zealand speaks volumes as to her mindset where Elliot was concerned: Writing her points down in numerical order she wrote: “One, I love you. Two, don’t say you’ll kill me”. These two sentences alone show you the dynamic of this relationship. Emily cared for Elliot deeply, but his anger was out of control.
Back on English soil, Elliot’s temper continued to swell. Just one day after Emily returned from New Zealand, CCTV cameras from inside Bella Rosa nightclub caught Elliot and Emily arguing and, in a flash, Elliot grabbed Emily by the neck and held her up against a wall before he forced her head against a table and stormed out. Two days later Emily had told Elliot she no longer wanted to be with him. She had tried to soften the blow by telling him they could remain friends. But Elliot wouldn’t accept it, her friends recalled. He was enraged by her rebuttal and his mood became dark and obsessive.
When Elliot discovered that Emily had arranged to meet another boy on 5th May at Klute nightclub as well as chatting to other boys online he was so enraged that he went to the club armed with a lump hammer which he concealed in his waistband. Surveillance video inside the dark club shows Elliot approaching Emily and a man she is speaking to. Elliot gestures to his waistband where the hammer rests before storming out. What Elliot does after this encounter is nothing short of psychotic and a glaring red flag of his escalating anger and to some degree, confidence in his ability to manipulate others. With tears in his eyes, he returned to a group of their shared friends and recalled to his captive audience how he had fatally hit Emily and her date over the head and dumped her body in a bush in Bournemouth town centre. He was convincing. Emily’s friends, and Elliots’ were seriously concerned and disturbed by his revelation, but in a split second the tears were gone and a jovial smile spread across his lips. He claimed it was all a big joke. Emily was fine. No one was laughing except Elliot.
On what was to be Emily’s last night alive, CCTV showed her sipping wine in bars with Elliot and their friends. A photo posted to Facebook just hours before she took her last breath shows Emily with her arm around Elliot’s shoulder. He plants a kiss on her left temple, his right hand cradles her smiling face, his fingers pressed firmly into the side of her cheek as though he’s trying to force her closer to him. A picture is worth a thousand words, and when you know what kind of a bully Elliot was, the subtleties of the image are not lost – Turner desperately wanted this beautiful woman at his side. Emily was supposed to go and stay with a close friend after the clubs closed, but Elliot convinced her he needed one more night with her. A few hours later, the couple were seen arguing outside his home. They disappeared inside just after 1am. The next anyone heard, Emily had been found dead inside the Turner home.
Learning all this in the aftermath of Emily’s death, none of it explained to detectives how Emily had died and who, if anyone, had been responsible. Elliot was jealous, abusive, obsessive, but it didn’t prove murder, especially when the post-mortem had so little else to offer by the way of an explanation. But Elliot was a clear suspect. And he had a track record already – arrest records show that in January 2008, sixteen-year-old Elliot received a harassment warning letter telling him not to contact an ex-girlfriend after he bombarded her with texts and emails after she dumped him.
Ten days after Emily’s death, Dorset Police made the decision to bug the Turner home and conduct surveillance on the family. Such a move is reserved for only the most difficult and complex of cases. In total they managed to cipher approximately three hundred hours of audio from inside the home, taken over a period of a few weeks.
I say on this podcast all the time that we barely know what happens in our own lives most of the time, let along the dynamics of other families. When detectives listened to the recordings from inside the Turner home, the decision to bug the house seemed to be the correct one as Elliot admits to his mum and dad, “I just flipped, I went absolutely nuts”. Without even a whisper of remorse he tells his parents “that girl ruined my life”. What’s just as shocking is to hear his mother agree without hesitation. Elliot tells his mother “They can link like, let’s say my hands are on her neck… they can link that … forensics.” Anita tells him “Yes, that’s why use self-defence.” Elliot told his parents he didn’t mean to kill Emily.
Leigh Turner warned Anita and Elliot that “the truth will come out” he just didn’t realise that their collective words would be their downfall. Police had evidence that Elliot was to blame but Leigh gave away a vital clue to detectives: Elliot had penned a confession to his parents stating that he killed Emily but didn’t mean to do it. Leigh admitted he had destroyed the letter using bleach. Detectives listened as Leigh and his wife discussed their next course of action. Leigh asked his wife if she felt they were right to destroy the letter. To which Anita replied: “‘Yes because he is our son, we’ve done the right thing.’ Anita seemed to try to make excuses for her son. Leigh exploded at his wife: “Stop denying it. He fucking strangled her.”
Just weeks after Emily’s death, Elliot was back out on the town celebrating his 20th birthday. The same cameras that caught him assaulting Emily captured him chatting to a young blonde woman at the bar, before exposing his crotch to her to show off his latest tattoo. To look at him you’d never believe he was under investigation for murder or wrangling with guilt. That’s exactly what Elliot wanted everyone to believe- he was innocent of any wrongdoing. He had proudly boasted how the toxicology report showed specifically that he had not drugged his girlfriend. Yet one friend who police spoke to confessed that just days before Emily’s murder he and Elliot had been practicing chokeholds on one another and Elliot had used a move by which he put his friend’s head in the crook of his elbow and squeezed until he’d had to tap out.
Inside the Turner home the confessions just kept on rolling. Remember that 999 call that was made by Anita? What is chilling when you listen to it is a lack of urgency and concern on Anita’s part given that she claims she has just found a young woman unresponsive in her home. Audio from inside the family home made it clear that Anita had held off from phoning the ambulance service in order to allow the family to get their story straight.
While police were steadily gaining evidence against Elliot for Emily’s murder and his parents for perverting the course of justice, Elliot was looking for a way to slip through the clutches of justice. On May 29th he searched ‘self defence’ using his dad’s computer. Two days later he was looking up terms such as “how to get off innocent” and “how to get away with serious crimes”. These revelations where part of the reason why police were successful in recommending charges to the Crown Prosecution Service, Elliot for murder and Anita and Leigh for perverting the course of justice. All denied the charges against them.
Eleven men and one woman were sworn in as the jury and the trial began in April 2013 at Winchester Crown Court. Emily’s mum, dad and sister sat in court supporting each other through what was about to be an incredibly difficult ordeal.
The prosecution argued that Emily had been strangled by Turner after an argument about their breakup. While there were no external or internal injuries on her body a forensic expert confirmed that it was possible to exert severe pressure to the neck without leaving any visible marks. A bruise noted on Elliot’s left bicep during his initial interrogation was consistent with the application of a sleeper hold. Nasal discharge was found on the sleeve of Elliot’s jacket which he wore the night Emily died. Small scratches had been noted on Elliot’s arms and his DNA under Emily’s fingernails suggesting a struggle while her killer compressed her neck. Detectives had also collected a pillowcase from Elliot’s room and Emily’s makeup stained one side of the case in the faint shape of a face, like a kind of death mask imprinted on the pillow. DNA from the mouth area of the pillow belonged to Emily.
On 8th May, almost exactly a year to the day that Emily took her final breath, Elliot took the stand. He admitted that he had threatened to kill Emily but denied that he had meant it. Turner’s arrogance radiated as he stood inside the witness box. “You don’t seem very sad Emily’s dead,” the prosecutor remarked. “Well, it was a year ago,” Turner replied. An audible gasp at his callous remark filled into the courtroom. The prosecutor made a mentionable note of how Elliot hadn’t expressed any sadness over Emily’s death despite claims when she was alive that he loved her.
Elliot’s defence team tried to get the bugging evidence ruled inadmissible at the start of the trial but failed. Instead, all three had to sit there as their damning words were played to jurors and sealed their fates. Elliot was found guilty of Emily’s murder and sentenced to a minimum term of 16 years. He was also found guilty of perverting the course of justice and sentenced to nine months to serve concurrently.
Weeks later it was Turner’s parent’s turn to answer for their actions at the same court. Leigh denied actually reading the letter penned by Elliot, claiming they found it on 11th May, after police searched their home after Emily’s death. Leigh said before he could read past “Dear Mum,” he realised the letter could be a confession and tore the letter into pieces before putting some of them in the house bin and some into a bin at a petrol station. He and Anita were found guilty on a majority verdict of perverting the course of justice and given custodial sentences of twenty-seven months.
Elliot’s parents Leigh and Anita have since been released. But Elliot remains behind bars. In 2013 he attempted to appeal but the appeal was denied. Elliot simply smirked and shook his head at the decision. He is eligible for parole in 2028.
So, what do you make of what we have heard today.
It is another shocking story. Amateur psychologists would of course have a lot to say about why Elliot turned into the bullying murderer with no capacity for remorse. But I think we have heard more than enough about him, don’t you.
The store owned by the Turner family has long vanished – it is now a well-known hand-made cosmetic retailer. The Topshop where Emily worked is also no longer there, Arcadia Group, who owned the brand, went into administration in 2020. What remains is the memory of a beautiful and fun young woman and the message to other women experiencing abuse at the hands of their partners- you need not suffer in silence and help is available. Emily’s father Mark spoke at the Auckland vigil for the murdered British backpacker Grace Millane in 2018. Since Emily’s death he has become a passionate advocate for White Ribbon – a world-wide charity that promotes the domestic violence message to men and boys to challenge cultures that perpetuate inequality and violence. He also hosts the podcast ‘Death: A podcast about love, grief and hope’. He is making a real positive difference to stop other families going through the horror that his faced following the murder of Emily.
This story first appeared as an episode of the UK True Crime Podcast. The sources used in the story were:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/5366150/Friends-stay-silent-on-Longley-murder
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-17831776
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-18116001
https://www.thatslife.com.au/true-crime/evil-boyfriend-killed-my-girl-over-a-photo/
https://www.casemine.com/judgement/uk/5a8ff70160d03e7f57ea5854
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-17831776
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/longley-murder-accused-refused-answer-questions
https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/9931004.new-safety-scheme-set-up-in-memory-of-emily-longley/
https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/9688942.emily-longley-trial-i-just-went-absolutely-nuts/
https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/9680706.emily-longley-trial-medical-witnesses-give-evidence/