One of America's Most Wanted Pleads Not Guilty in Murder of Santa Monica Teen

By Anne La Jeunesse

Jimmy Ronald Turner, a.k.a. "Linus" and Dennis Scott, the third of three suspects connected to the Feb. 24, 1998 killing of a Santa Monica teenager, pleaded not guilty to a murder charge Friday in Santa Monica Court.

A court hearing regarding the charges has been set for September 21. Turner is being held in Los Angeles County Jail without bail.

Turner, who evaded police and became a fugitive immediately after the strangling death of Shevawn Geoghegan, was captured last month in Birmingham, Ala., by police acting on tips received by viewers of the "America's Most Wanted" television program.

He is the 574th person captured after stories of their alleged crimes were broadcast on the show.

Two other people, 23-year-old Glen "Ballis" Mason, and 17-year-old Elizabeth Mangham, have been convicted in Shevawn's death, which occurred in the squalid bowels of a Los Angeles mental health clinic at 1525 Euclid Street which had been abandoned after being damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The facility had been taken over by a loose community of homeless people and runaways who squatted there although the building had no electricity and the toilets were overflowing with human waste.

Mason, whom witnesses described as an avowed Satanist, was found guilty in July of first degree murder and will likely be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Mangham, who was 16 at the time of the killing, pleaded no contest in a plea bargain to a charge of voluntary manslaughter and will serve 11 years in prison.

Mason's attorney, Mark Lewenstein, told jurors that it was actually Turner who strangled Shevawn, but acquaintances of both men say that Turner was a follower of Mason and would not have killed without Mason's direction.

Mason and Turner were drifters and Mangham a runaway who was drawn to the Third Street Promenade, which has become a Mecca for many disillusioned youths. That is where they met up with Shevawn, an artistic student who had run away in the past but who had been living at her Santa Monica home with her parents when she was killed.