Authorities have arrested a 25-year-old woman in connection with the murder of a Salinas doctor whose body was found in the trunk of a car in Las Vegas earlier this month.

Kelsey Turner, a model who has posed for racy magazines including Playboy's Italian website, is accused of killing Dr. Thomas Burchard, a 71-year-old psychiatrist, according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

A Salinas landlord told The Californian Burchard paid him $3,200 a month in rent for a home where Turner, her mother and children lived.

Early last fall, Harshadray Patel said Burchard told him that he was done paying Turner's rent after leasing the home for her for one year. Patel said he evicted Turner, her two children and her mother three months later, in fall 2018, for nonpayment of rent.

On March 7, officers located Burchard's body in an abandoned vehicle on State Route 147 near the Lake Mead National Recreation Area entrance. They have not publicly speculated on a motive for his alleged killing.

A man driving through the remote area with his kids noticed a parked vehicle that had a rock thrown through one of its windows, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

Officers responded to his report of an abandoned vehicle but when they opened the trunk to conduct an inventory search, they found Burchard's body inside.

He had been bludgeoned to death, authorities said, and his death was ruled a homicide.

Burchard's girlfriend of 17 years, Judy Earp, told The Californian she and Burchard had been in Las Vegas just a month before he died for a psycho-pharmacology conference he attended annually. She would not say why he returned to Nevada in early March, citing the active police investigation.

Earp said she knew of Turner, and of the lease, but had not met the model personally. According to Earp, Burchard had known Turner for about two years.

"He was always helping people," Earp said. "Anybody with a sad story, you know. Some people took advantage of that."

LVMPD homicide detectives determined Turner was involved with the incident and began searching for her earlier this month. Police reached out to the F.B.I. Stockton Task Force on March 21, believing Turner to be living there, Stockton Police Public Information Officer Joe Silva said.

Officers found Turner in a home on the 2100 block of East Weber Avenue, near the railroad tracks east of downtown Stockton. They arrested her without incident.

Turner's 4-year-old son was with her at the time. He was taken to the Mary Graham Children's Home, a county-run home for children in police or social workers' custody, Silva said.

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police are seeking Turner's extradition to Clark County, where she would face murder charges.

Police declined to provide further details, including what evidence ties Turner to the alleged killing.

Turner's father, Christopher Ingram, has started a GoFundMe campaign on her behalf to raise $50,000 for legal bills.

"She's great," Ingram said Friday by phone. "She’s a wonderful, loving mom and a good kid."

"All her life (Kelsey) has gone out of her way to help others," Ingram wrote in the GoFundMe description. "Now she needs our help. She is being accused of a crime she could not possibly commit."

Ingram declined to comment further.

Burchard lived off Highway 68. He worked as many as 40 years with the Montage Health behavioral health program with the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula. Burchard had a small number of adolescent patients and a larger number of adult patients.

"He’s a longstanding physician in the community who was very helpful to many of his patients," hospital spokeswoman Mary Barker has said. "It was a sad situation and our hearts go out to his family."

Burchard was dedicated to his job, his girlfriend Judy Earp said, and picked up magic to entertain others, particularly children. His signature trick, she said, was changing a $1 bill into a $100 bill.

"But he would always tell them to stay in school and study hard," Earp added.

Burchard "retired" by dropping to working four days a week from five.

"He worried (patients) would be without care," Earp said. She said for many years Burchard was the only child psychiatrist in the area, adding that he retained many of his patients into adulthood.

"He would talk to anybody. That worried me. He was a psychiatrist so I think he lost that fear that most normal people would have.

"I feel he lost perspective," Earp said.

While it's not yet clear why Burchard was paying Turner's rent, court documents obtained by The Californian indicate he had done something similar before.

In divorce filings from 2001, Burchard said he had paid other people's rent. After finding that he had sent thousands of dollars to women he met online, his ex-wife accused him of developing relationships with the women.

Burchard, however, said in his filing that his wife Geri had “misinterpreted” the relationships.

He said he’d messaged a Santa Cruz woman online and met with her twice after learning her son had “significant psychiatric problems," according to court documents.

“So I met with her on two occasions to discuss his care,” Burchard said in his declaration. “I also helped her with rent money which prevented them from being evicted.”

He went on to say he frequently gave money to needy people for help with rent, bills and prescription medications.

Burchard acknowledged in court records that he spoke with people online, including in other countries, but maintained the chats were innocuous.

“Some of the women were flirtatious, which upset her greatly,” he said in his declaration, referring to his ex-wife.

His ex-wife maintained in her court statements that Burchard's relationships, including those in which he paid rent or sent money, were "very inappropriate."

In December 2000, his ex-wife was on the home computer when she discovered her husband had been e-mailing women with suggestive screen names, she said in her declaration.

Anyone with any information about Burchard's death is urged to contact the LVMPD Homicide Section by phone at 702-828-3521 or by email at homicide@lvmpd.com.

To remain anonymous, contact Crime Stoppers by phone at 702-385-5555 or on the internet at www.crimestoppersofnv.com.

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