David And Kate Bagby Obituary

In 2009, after watching the film Canadian MP Scott Andrews introduced Bill C-464 (also known as “Zachary’s Bill”) to the Parliament of Canada. The bill, which helps protect children in relation to bail hearings and custody disputes, was signed into law the following year.Peter Debruge of Variety called the film “a virtuoso feat in editing” and noted: “The way Kuenne presents the material, with an aggressive style that lingers less than a second on most shots, it’s impossible not to feel emotionally exhausted.” Kuenne interviewed numerous relatives, friends, and associates of Andrew Bagby and incorporated their loving remembrances into a film meant to serve as a cinematic scrapbook for the son who would never know his father. Although Dear Zachary began as a project that was only intended to be shown to friends and family of Andrew Bagby, owing to the way events unfolded, Kuenne decided to release the film to the general public. On April 4, 2013, Kuenne released a short documentary titled The Legacy of Dear Zachary: A Journey to Change the Law on YouTube. It chronicles the completion and release of Dear Zachary and the subsequent efforts to amend Canadian law.

On August 18, 2003, Turner jumped into the Atlantic Ocean with thirteen-month-old Zachary strapped to her stomach, drowning them both in a murder–suicide. Distraught over Zachary’s death, and outraged at the Canadian legal system’s failure to protect the child, David and Kathleen mounted a campaign to reform the country’s bail laws, which they believed had helped allow Turner to kill her child and herself. Kuenne’s attempts to arrange interviews with the prosecutors and judges who facilitated Turner’s freedom were denied, but, in 2006, a panel convened by Newfoundland’s Ministry of Justice released a report stating that Zachary’s death had been preventable and the government’s handling of Turner’s case had been inadequate. Turner’s psychiatrist was found guilty of misconduct for helping her post bail, and the director of Newfoundland’s child welfare agency resigned. David Bagby wrote Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss, a best-seller in Canada in 2007, about his family’s ordeal. Kuenne finished his documentary and dedicated it to the memories of both Bagby and Zachary. The film ends with the Bagbys and their relatives, friends, and colleagues reflecting on the father and son, as well as the impact that Kathleen and David, who Kurt realizes the film is really for, had on all of them.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Dear Zachary has an approval rating of 94% based on 51 reviews, with an average score of 8.10/10; the site’s critical consensus reads: “Dear Zachary is both a touching tribute to a fallen friend and a heart-wrenching account of justice gone astray, skillfully put to film with no emotion spared.” On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 82 out of 100 based on 11 critic reviews, indicating “universal acclaim”.The film was submitted to the Toronto International Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival, but was rejected by both. It premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in January 2008. It was screened at Cinequest Film Festival, South by Southwest, the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, the Sarasota Film Festival, the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival, the Calgary International Film Festival, and the Edmonton International Film Festival, among others, before receiving a limited theatrical release in the United States, opening in one city at a time in select metropolitan areas. It was broadcast by MSNBC on December 7, 2008, and has been reaired several times since.

The film premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in 2008 and received a limited theatrical release before being acquired for distribution by MSNBC. It received critical acclaim, particularly for its editing and emotional weight. Kuenne donated all profits from the film to scholarships established in the names of Andrew and Zachary Bagby.

As part of a campaign to change federal bail laws, Kuenne sent a copy of Dear Zachary to each of the over 400 members of Canada’s Parliament. On October 23, 2009, MP Scott Andrews of Avalon, moved after attending a screening of the film, introduced Bill C-464 (also known as “Zachary’s Bill”) to the House of Commons of Canada. The goal of the bill was to protect children and force “judicial decision makers” to keep the safety of children in mind during bail hearings and in custody disputes, particularly when a child is in the custody of someone who has been charged with a “serious crime”. It was introduced to the Senate of Canada on March 23, 2010, and signed into law on December 16—over seven years after Zachary’s death, and over two years after the film was released.In St. John’s, Turner discovered, and later revealed, that she was pregnant with Bagby’s child. She was arrested in December 2001, but released on bail while her extradition to the United States worked its way through the Canadian courts. The extradition process was repeatedly prolonged by Turner’s lawyers based on legal technicalities, and Turner gave birth to a boy she named Zachary on July 18, 2002. Bagby’s parents moved to Canada to attempt to gain custody of their grandson. When, in November 2002, a provincial court ruled that enough evidence pointed to Turner as Bagby’s killer, Turner was again arrested, and Bagby’s parents were awarded custody of Zachary.

The Chicago Film Critics Association nominated the film for its award for Best Documentary, and the Society of Professional Journalists presented the film with its Sigma Delta Chi Award for Best Television Documentary (Network). It also received the Special Jury and Audience Awards at the Cinequest Film Festival, was named an Audience Favorite at Hot Docs, received the Audience Awards at the St. Louis International Film Festival and the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival, was named Best Documentary at the Orlando Film Festival, and was awarded the Jury Award for Best International Documentary at Docville (Belgium).Martin Tsai of the New York Sun said the film “has so many unexpected developments that it plays like a first-rate thriller. … and the film is so unsettling that it will stay with viewers for a long time. Like The Thin Blue Line, Dear Zachary borrows some narrative dramatic tricks, and they pay off remarkably well. It’s hands down one of the most mind-blowing true-crime movies in recent memory, fiction or nonfiction.” Bagby and Turner’s relationship began to crumble, and Turner became increasingly possessive. On November 3, 2001, Bagby broke up with Turner at the end of a visit she made to Pennsylvania. She took her return flight to Iowa, but then, the next day, drove the almost 1,000 miles back to Latrobe, arriving early on the morning of November 5. She arranged to meet Bagby at Keystone State Park that evening, where Bagby was found dead the following morning, having been shot five times. When Turner learned she was a suspect in the murder investigation, she fled home to St. John’s, Newfoundland. Kuenne began collecting footage from his old home movies and interviewed Bagby’s parents, David and Kathleen, for a documentary about his friend’s life. The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures named the film one of the five top documentaries of the year. Among those who named it one of the best films of 2008 were Time Out Chicago, The Oregonian, the Times Herald-Record, Slant Magazine, and WGN Radio Chicago. The website Film School Rejects place the film third in their list of the “30 Best Films of the Decade”.Kurt Kuenne and Andrew Bagby grew up as close friends in the suburbs of San Jose, California. Bagby acted in many of Kuenne’s amateur movies and, as these films became more professional in quality, he invested in them with some of the money he was saving up for medical school.

Turner wrote to the judge who locked her up and, contrary to normal legal procedure, received advice on how to appeal her arrest and imprisonment. She was released on bail in January 2003 by Judge Gale Welsh, who felt Turner did not pose a threat to society in general. The Bagbys had to give Zachary back to Turner, but they were able to arrange a visitation schedule. While this fraught situation dragged on, Kuenne traveled to the United Kingdom and across the U.S. to interview Bagby’s friends and extended family. He went to Newfoundland and visited Zachary in July 2003.On several occasions, it was noted that Zachary had poor attachment to his mother and preferred the company of other adults, particularly his grandparents. This preference was made especially clear during Zachary’s first birthday party at a St. John’s McDonald’s, after which Turner said to Kathleen, “He obviously loves you more than me, so why don’t you take him?”

Zachary Andrew Turner (18 July 2002 – 18 August 2003) was a Canadian child from St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, who was killed by his mother, Shirley Jane Turner, in a murder–suicide. At the time, Shirley had been released on bail and awarded custody of the infant, even though she was in the process of being extradited to the United States to stand trial for the murder of Zachary’s father, Andrew David Bagby. The case led to a critical overview of Newfoundland’s legal and child welfare systems as well as Canada’s bail laws.Shirley Jane Turner (28 January 1961 – 18 August 2003) was a Canadian-American daughter of a U.S. serviceman and local woman from St. Anthony, Newfoundland and Labrador. She was raised with three siblings in Wichita, Kansas, but moved to Newfoundland with her mother after her parents separated; the parents later divorced. In 1980, Turner enrolled at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s, seeking to embark on a medical career.

The following morning, Bagby’s body was found in a day-use parking lot at Keystone State Park in Derry Township, Pennsylvania. He had been shot five times in the face, the chest, the buttocks, and the back of the head with CCI .22 bullets. Acting on statements by Simpson and others, the Pennsylvania State Police contacted Turner. Despite her claim to have been in bed sick on 5 November, cell phone and Internet records showed that she had made cross-country calls both to and from Latrobe, accessed eBay and Hotmail from Bagby’s home computer, and used his home phone to call in sick. When confronted with this evidence, Turner claimed that she met with Bagby at Keystone State Park but that he put the gun in his trunk. Turner alternately told her shooting instructor that her gun had been stolen.

Upon becoming pregnant, Turner married a long-time boyfriend during Memorial University’s 1981 winter recess. The child, a boy, was born on 9 July 1982. Turner’s husband raised the child as a stay-at-home dad while Turner continued her studies. In 1983, Turner moved to Labrador City and worked as a science teacher. Two years later, she gave birth to a daughter. During this period, she resumed a previous relationship with a fisherman from Corner Brook.

The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures named the film one of the five top documentaries of 2008. The organizations that named it one of the best films of 2008 included: Time Out Chicago, The Oregonian, the Times Herald-Record, Slant Magazine, and WGN Radio Chicago. The website Film School Rejects placed the film third in their “30 Best Films of the Decade” list. The Film Vault included the film on their list of the “Top 5 Good Movies You Never Want to See Again”.On 3 May 2006, a disciplinary board convened by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Newfoundland and Labrador found Doucet guilty of professional misconduct for his involvement in helping to post Turner’s $75,000 bail. He was ordered to pay a fine of $10,000—covering one-third of the $30,000 incurred by the college for the inquiry—and was ordered to undergo psychiatric counseling. Doucet said he was “disappointed” by the verdict, while David Bagby stated that he was happy with the precedent his case would be setting. According to filmmaker Kurt Kuenne, Doucet later left Newfoundland and relocated elsewhere in Canada.In a later interview with an assessment officer at the Office of the Child and Youth Advocate, the supervising physician, in hindsight, described Turner as “a manipulative, guiltless psychopath.” The experience with Turner led that St. John’s practice to make “constructive changes” in its residency evaluation process. By the summer of 2000, Turner had completed the requirements of her residency training and was qualified to practice medicine.

In October 1993, a man boarding with Turner confided to his therapist that he had witnessed Turner physically and emotionally abusing two of her children. Newfoundland social service workers interviewed the children, who stated that their “disciplinarian” mother punished them with spankings and beatings by belt. Turner’s second husband claimed that she only used the belt as a threat in his interview. The case was closed on 11 January 1994 without an interview with Turner. Three years later, Turner and her second husband divorced, and she was granted custody of their daughter. Within days of the ruling, however, Turner sent her daughter back to live with her father in Portland Creek while her other two children were sent to Parson’s Pond to live with their paternal grandmother.On 7 April 1999, Doucet found Turner lying semi-conscious outside of his apartment, having ingested a combined 65 milligrams of over-the-counter drugs in a suicide attempt. Turner was wearing a black dress, carried a bouquet of red roses and had two suicide notes on her. One note had been addressed to Doucet and the other to her psychiatrist; the latter read, “I am not evil, just sick.” Turner was rushed to a hospital, where she received a gastric lavage. The following day Doucet received a voicemail from a female caller who stated, “Dr. Turner died last night.”

The Chicago Film Critics Association nominated Dear Zachary for its Best Documentary award, and the Society of Professional Journalists presented the film with its Sigma Delta Chi Award for Best Documentary. The film also received the Special Jury and Audience Awards at the Cinequest Film Festival, was named an Audience Favorite at Hot Docs, received the Audience Awards at the St. Louis International Film Festival and the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival, and was named Best Documentary at the Orlando Film Festival.Investigators interviewed Turner’s shooting instructor, who explained that her handgun ejected live rounds during lessons; this was consistent with an unspent round recovered near Bagby’s body. Later, a Derry resident reported having seen Bagby’s Toyota Corolla parked next to Turner’s RAV4 ten minutes after Bagby made his last phone call to Simpson and the Corolla parked alone the following morning. The lot number on a box of condoms found in Turner’s Council Bluffs apartment matched a box purchased by Bagby in Latrobe on the night of the break-up. Also in Turner’s apartment were MapQuest printouts for road directions to Latrobe. Despite the evidence gathered, Turner had fled the country by the time authorities obtained a warrant for her arrest.

A 2006 inquiry found serious shortcomings in how the province’s social services system handled the case, suggesting that the judges, prosecutors, and child welfare agencies involved were more concerned with presuming Shirley’s innocence than with protecting Zachary. The inquiry concluded that Zachary’s death had been preventable. The case led to the passage of Bill C-464, or Zachary’s Bill, strengthening the conditions for bail in Canadian courts in cases involving the well-being of children.

On 23 October 2009, Scott Andrews, then a Liberal MP from Newfoundland and Labrador, introduced Bill C-464, or “Zachary’s Bill”, which would change the Criminal Code of Canada to allow the courts to justify refusing bail to those accused of serious crimes in the name of protecting their children. The bill received unanimous support in the Canadian House of Commons, and received support from Liberal Senator Tommy Banks. It was finally signed into law by Governor-General David Johnston on 16 December 2010. Andrews later said that the law “gives [the Bagbys] some sense that someone has heard their cries so this will not happen again, to change the law to make sure something this tragic will never happen again.”

On 18 August 2003, Zachary was scheduled to be in his mother’s custody. Turner first purchased her prescription of lorazepam from a St. John’s pharmacy. She then drove with Zachary to nearby Conception Bay South, where the man she had met at the bar lived. Turner left her car parked near his home in the Kelligrews area of the town, with photographs of herself and Zachary, as well as a used tampon, on the front seat. Police concluded that she was attempting to frame the boyfriend for the planned murder–suicide.

In October 2006, Winnipeg-based coroner Peter Markesteyn released the Turner Review and Investigation, which concluded that Zachary’s death was preventable and criticised Newfoundland and Labrador’s social services system for failing to protect the child from his mother, stating, “Nowhere did I find any ongoing assessment of the safety needs of the children.” Markesteyn specifically cited poor communication between social services officials, who worked on the presumption of Turner’s innocence throughout the case and became more concerned for her welfare than for Zachary’s. Markesteyn ultimately concluded that internal disagreements between caseworkers and managers weren’t openly discussed and that an intervention by an outside office should have been made. The provincial Government of Newfoundland and Labrador accepted the report’s conclusions and its 29 recommendations.I felt I was being manipulated whenever I spoke with Shirley Turner. When negative items would come up[,] she would change the topic to one of my failings. She could be charming[,] friendly and lively, but when caught in an untruth, she would become angry, accusatory, and loud. I always felt Shirley Turner was putting on a show as if she were playing the role but had no feeling for her work. I cannot recall a trainee like Shirley Turner in that her approach lacked personal commitment, and her relationships with people seemed, at least to me, to be superficial when compared to the over 400 residents I have supervised during the past 21 years. On 4 July 2003, Turner met a young man at a bar in St. John’s. The pair dated and were sexually intimate on two occasions afterward. The man then broke off the relationship after learning from a friend about Turner’s connection to Bagby’s murder. Turner subsequently made a total of 200 threatening phone calls to the man over the following month. Turner claimed that she was pregnant by the man, but no evidence was found showing this to be the case. The man contacted the RNC on three occasions to complain about Turner’s harassment, which both violated the terms of her bail and was considered grounds to lose custody of Zachary. However, because the man did not identify himself and declined to file any criminal complaint against Turner, no investigation was launched by the RNC. When a constable contacted Turner’s lawyer about the harassment, she denied the allegations. On 12 November 2001, Turner abandoned her residence in Council Bluffs and flew to Toronto, eventually resettling in St. John’s with her oldest son. Acting in collaboration with the Pennsylvania State Police, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary’s (RNC) Intelligence Unit conducted surveillance on her movements. On 2 December, the Unit seized her trash and discovered printouts for an ultrasound taken on 29 November, showing a fetus that was conceived with Bagby the previous month. In August 2000, Turner moved to Sac City, Iowa, to begin work for Trimark Physicians Corporation. Meanwhile, after graduating from Memorial University in May 2000, Bagby landed a surgical residency at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University at Syracuse, New York. Despite the distance between states, Turner and Bagby initially tried to maintain a long-distance relationship. By Turner’s account, she visited Bagby’s residence in Syracuse seven times while he visited her once in Sac City. During one of these visits, Turner is believed to have burglarized Bagby’s apartment. In the fall of 2001, Bagby moved to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and began his residency at a family practice under the supervision of T. Clark Simpson. On 4 November 2001, Turner made a total of three phone calls to Bagby’s residence in Latrobe. At approximately 1:00 p.m. local time, Turner embarked on a 16-hour, 1,523-kilometre (946 mi) drive to Latrobe with her gun and ammunition inside a gun box in her Toyota RAV4. In the early morning of 5 November 2001, she confronted Bagby at his residence, located across the street from his practice. Bagby arrived at work in an “agitated” state and told Simpson about her appearance but dismissed Simpson’s advice to not meet with her in private; Bagby subsequently promised to visit Simpson’s house after talking to Turner that evening, but he never showed up. Turner later drove home and left a message on Bagby’s answering machine.

Meanwhile, Turner exhibited possessive behavior towards Bagby and harassed him over the phone. On 13 October, Turner told Bagby that she was three months pregnant. Bagby agreed to talk with her about the pregnancy during a wedding that Bagby was scheduled to attend. When Turner visited him in Latrobe in late October 2001—immediately after the last of her firearms lessons in Omaha—the two frequently argued over his relationship with a new girlfriend. On 3 November 2001, Turner confessed that she had been lying about her pregnancy in an effort to remain with Bagby permanently. Furious about this, Bagby drove Turner to the Arnold Palmer Regional Airport and broke up with her over lunch, sending her on a plane back to Iowa.

After mixing her lorazepam into Zachary’s baby formula and ingesting a toxic dosage herself, Turner strapped the infant to her chest with her sweater and jumped off a fishing wharf at Foxtrap Marina into the Atlantic Ocean. Turner drowned. It was determined that Zachary Turner was rendered unconscious by the lorazepam and did not suffer.Written and directed by Kurt Kuenne, MSNBC Films and Oscilloscope Laboratories released Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father on 31 October 2008. The film is partly composed of home movies Kuenne and Bagby shot together as teenagers in California, and features interviews with Bagby’s parents, extended family, friends, classmates, and colleagues, both before and after Zachary’s murder. A portion of the film also shows Kuenne meeting Zachary in Newfoundland in July 2003 to celebrate his first birthday, one month before his death; Shirley Turner is present during the visit, but Kuenne avoids her. The film premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival, and was broadcast by MSNBC on 7 December 2008.

On 10 July 2001, less than a year into her ten-year contract with Trimark, Turner left their Sac City clinic and moved to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where she was hired by Alegent Health System of Omaha, Nebraska. In October 2001, Turner obtained a permit to buy a firearm and purchased a Phoenix Arms HP22 handgun and .22 ammunition, which she used during firearms lessons.

Turner received her undergraduate degree from Memorial University in May 1994; four years later, she earned her medical degree. Between 1998 and 2000, she served as a resident physician at teaching hospitals across Newfoundland.

Since 1982, Turner had taken out baby bonuses for her children from a scholarship fund, expecting to send them to college. However, in the summer of 2000, Turner confessed to a relative that she had spent the baby bonuses on her own living expenses and doctoral education. Turner insisted that she would earn “big money” after completing her post-residency training and would repay the savings for her children’s post-secondary education.

During a 1999 residency at a family practice in St. John’s, Turner’s professionalism drew harsh criticism by her supervising physician, who stated she would become “quite hostile, yelling, crying, and accusing me of treating her unfairly.” During her remedial second residency period in early 2000, Turner missed nine days of her three-month rotation and falsified clinical reports. A patient of the clinic refused to return after an encounter with Turner. The staff became “so concerned about Shirley Turner’s approach to confrontation and the truth that we would never give her feedback or hold any major discussion [with her] alone.” These incidents left the supervising physician with the impression that:

The news that Turner was pregnant with Bagby’s child turned the extradition case into one involving child custody, and subsequently led to a complicated legal saga. David and Kathleen Bagby moved to St. John’s, Newfoundland, in order to fight for custody of their son’s child, while Turner eventually moved into her own apartment on Pleasant Street in St. John’s.Zachary Andrew Turner (18 July 2002 – 18 August 2003) was a one-year-old Canadian boy who was murdered by his mother in a murder-suicide. His mother drugged him and jumped in the Atlantic Ocean where they both drowned. An investigation after the murder showed that the social services could have prevented the deaths.

Shirley Jane Turner (28 January 1961 – 18 August 2003) was a Canadian-American daughter of a U.S. serviceman and local woman from St. Anthony, Newfoundland and Labrador. Turner was raised with three siblings in Wichita, Kansas, but moved to Newfoundland with her mother after her parents separated. Her parents later divorced.However, the extradition process was repeatedly prolonged by Turner’s lawyers based on legal technicalities. When a provincial court ruled that enough evidence pointed to Turner as Bagby’s killer, she was put in jail and Bagby’s parents, David and Kathleen, were awarded custody of Zachary.

Turner drowned her 13-month-old son and herself last month in what police in St. John’s have called a murder-suicide. At the time, she was free on bail while fighting extradition to Pennsylvania on charges of murdering her former lover.Bill C-46 proposes to supplement the existing drug-impaired driving offence by creating three new offences for having specified levels of a drug in the blood within two hours of driving. The penalties would depend on the drug type and the levels of drug or the combination of alcohol and drugs.

In one of the film’s many shocking turns, it’s revealed Turner was pregnant with Andrew’s child when she took his life, and much of the film follows the efforts of Andrew’s parents, Kate and David Bagby, to gain custody of the young child, Zachary.Zachary Andrew Turner (18 July 2002 – 18 August 2003) was a boy from St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada who was murdered by his mother, Shirley Jane Turner, in a murder–suicide. The inquiry concluded that Zachary’s death had been preventable.March 22nd, 2010 / 11 a.m. moved that the bill be read a third time and passed. Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-464 in the House at third reading.It was in memory of Zachary Turner that I introduced this private member’s bill, to try to change our bail laws, to toughen them up a little, so that we could deny bail to protect minor children in the custody of the accused. That was the story of Zachary and his tragic death.

Andrew’s parents, David and Kathleen Bagby, had moved from the United States to Canada in an attempt to gain custody of their grandson in the wake of their son’s murder.As most true crime memoirs do, Dance with the Devil explains what the victims were like in life, and the profound effects that their deaths had on those left behind. This raw, gut-wrenching book also walks the reader back to the start of the action, when the ill-fated chain of events first began to unfold. Just five months after Zachary’s birth, Turner returned to jail, only to be released once again by the same judge, who argued that she didn’t need to be held behind bars because the murder she was accused of “was not directed at the public at large.” However, his coworkers’ worst fears were confirmed the next morning, when Andrew Bagby’s body was found by a park ranger in Keystone State Park. He had been shot five times in the face, chest, buttocks, and the back of the head. By the time investigators issued a warrant for Turner’s arrest, she had fled the country and returned to her home province of Newfoundland.In the wake of the shocking turn of events, Andrew’s father, David Bagby, wrote a true crime memoir that is described as “a eulogy for a dead son, an elegy for lives cut tragically short, and a castigation of a broken system.”

By October of 2001, Turner told Bagby that she was three months pregnant, which she later confessed was a lie intended to keep him from leaving her. Infuriated, Bagby broke up with her, and she boarded a plane back to Iowa. However, it was around this same time that their son, Zachary, was actually conceived.

However, in 2003—a month to the day after Zachary’s first birthday—Turner drugged both herself and her son and jumped from a wharf into the Atlantic Ocean in a tragic murder-suicide. With its intended recipient now gone, Dear Zachary simultaneously became a memorial and a cry for justice, with the critics’ consensus at Rotten Tomatoes calling it “both a touching tribute to a fallen friend and a heart-wrenching account of justice gone astray, skillfully put to film with no emotion spared.”She had also been accused of stalking an ex-boyfriend, a medical resident who, like Bagby, was over 10 years her junior. When he broke up with her, he said that she called him incessantly, left threatening voicemails, struck him in the face, and followed him from Newfoundland to Pennsylvania, where she took a cocktail of over-the-counter drugs outside his apartment in an apparent suicide attempt.As devastated as he was by the deaths of Andrew and Zachary, Kurt Kuenne was far from the only one touched by both tragedies. Andrew’s parents, David and Kathleen Bagby, had moved from the United States to Canada in an attempt to gain custody of their grandson in the wake of their son’s murder. They persevered through long, drawn-out, and complicated custody and extradition hearings—even as they struggled with their own grief—only to be met with further heartbreak.On October 31, 2008, filmmaker Kurt Kuenne premiered the documentary Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father at Slamdance Film Festival. The film went on to win jury and audience awards at numerous film festivals and was named one of the best films of the year by Slant Magazine, The Oregonian, Time Out Chicago, and the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.

As it happened, Turner had a history of unusual behavior. While she was serving her medical residency, her supervising physician, who would later describe her as a “manipulative, guiltless psychopath,” said that she frequently became hostile, “yelling, crying, and accusing me of treating her unfairly.”

That same year, Turner started dating Andrew Bagby. It didn’t take long before the relationship began to sour, and the couple appeared to be drifting apart. Turner’s work took her to Iowa, while Bagby served out medical residencies in New York and Pennsylvania. The day after her flight arrived back in Iowa, Turner began a 16-hour return trip to Pennsylvania to confront Bagby, bringing a handgun with her. She showed up at his house, across the street from the practice where he was serving his residency. Bagby’s co-workers described him as “agitated” that day, and his supervising physician advised him not to meet with Turner alone. Eight months later, Turner purchased a lethal amount of Lorazepam, drugged both herself and her infant son, strapped him to her chest, and jumped into the ocean at Conception Bay South in Newfoundland. They both drowned.

In 1999, while he was studying at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Bagby began dating Shirley Turner. Bagby’s family and friends later said that they were uncomfortable with the relationship, not merely due to the age difference and to Turner’s two prior divorces, from which she had three children, but because of Turner’s off-putting behavior. Immortalized in the spellbinding documentary Dear Zachary, this angry, raw, and brutally honest memoir of murder and loss chronicles a system’s failure to prevent the death of a child. While it can be difficult to wrap one’s head around the senseless, preventable deaths of Andrew Bagby and his son, Zachary’s Bill is intended to bring positive change out of the tragic situation. Scott Andrews, the MP who introduced the bill, said that he hoped it would give the Bagbys “some sense that someone has heard their cries,” and show that Canada would “change the law to make sure something this tragic will never happen again.”

Meanwhile, Andrew Bagby’s friends and family have shared their stories with the same intention in mind. For readers interested in the emotional impact of violent crime, Dance with the Devil is a vulnerable, devastating book that cannot be missed. You can download Dance with the Devil today, and stream Dear Zachary on Amazon Prime.The documentary began as a project intended to honor the memory of Kuenne’s childhood friend Andrew Bagby, who had been murdered in 2001. At the time, Bagby had just ended a relationship with Dr. Shirley Jane Turner—a woman more than a dozen years his senior, and the prime suspect in his violent death.

When Dear Zachary was released on DVD, Kuenne sent 400 copies to every single member of Canadian Parliament. In 2009, MP Scott Andrews introduced Bill C-464, commonly known as “Zachary’s Bill,” which obligates members of the judiciary to take the safety of children into account in bail hearings. The bill passed with unanimous support and was signed into law in December of 2010.

In the interim, one of Andrew Bagby’s closest childhood friends, filmmaker Kurt Kuenne had begun making a documentary about the young doctor, titled “Dear Zachary,” an effort to tell the toddler about the father he never met. On Aug. 13, 2003, Shirley Turner, still fighting extradition, took Zachary to Conception Bay. Authorities believe she threw the child into the icy North Atlantic and then walked into the ocean herself.It all began with a horrific series of events that spanned two nations. Tragedy, doubled. Andrew Bagby, a gregarious family practice resident at Latrobe, was found shot to death Nov. 5, 2001, in Keystone State Park. Authorities later determined his former lover, Dr. Shirley Turner, then pregnant with Bagby’s child, killed him and fled to Canada, where she held dual citizenship.

Setting up the scholarship in Andrew’s name was their way of keeping his memory alive and repaying the many kindnesses people in Western Pennsylvania extended to them. Then they learned Turner, who had been apprehended in Newfoundland, was carrying their grandchild. She was fighting extradition to the United States when she gave birth.

Dr. Carol Fox, medical director at Latrobe and a graduate of its family practice residency program, said scholarship recipients have gone on to participate in the family practice residency and two graduates now practice medicine there.

“He and his wife invited us to their place for dinner, and they had this sweet little girl, she was 9 or 10 at the time. She was a sweetheart. And to find out that she had grown up to be a scholarship recipient was just too cool,” David Bagby said.The Bagbys quickly traveled to Newfoundland to care for the sunny toddler who had Andrew’s smile. Their joy was short-lived. Had Turner been arrested in Pennsylvania, where Andrew’s murder occurred, she could have been held without bail, pending trial. But Canadian law at the time held that no one could be detained without bail. Eventually Turner was released pending extradition. “I had to put this film out publicly and as a call for change and a companion to the book,” Kuenne explained in a trailer that was released with the film. “I had such a lovely time in Latrobe! The staff at the hospital was welcoming and eager to teach,” she wrote in an email. “It was an unforgettable experience, and I’m so grateful to the Bagbys that they have set up this program in honor of their son.”On Dec. 15, 2010, parliament amended the Canadian criminal code to allow individuals charged with a serious crime to be held without bail in the event they might pose a threat to someone 18 or younger. David and Kate Bagby know all about the unlikely power of love funneled through rage. The Bagbys, who recently marked their 50th wedding anniversary, say it sustained them for nearly a decade as they struggled to come to terms first with the 2001 slaying of their 28-year-old son, Dr. Andrew Bagby, and later with the murder of Andrew’s son, 13-month-old Zachary. “You’re not in any position to do anything at first. I just used to go out my front door and say I am Kate Bagby. I live in Sunnyvale, California. This did not happen to me,” Kate Bagby said.

She regained custody of Zachary, despite attempting suicide years earlier and a murder charge in Westmoreland County. The Bagbys stayed and bowed to Turner’s wishes to maintain contact with Zachary.Seventeen years after Andrew’s death and a little more than 15 years after Zachary died as a victim of a murder-suicide, a legacy of love survives. Nearly four dozen medical students have benefited from a scholarship at Excela Health Latrobe Hospital that the Bagbys and their friends endowed in Andrew’s name. And, after a relentless eight-year campaign that included the publication of a book and the release of a documentary film about Andrew and Zachary, Canadian law was amended to ensure no other child would suffer Zachary’s fate.

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“I think it was supposed to be just a brief college romance,” says Kurt Kuenne, Andrew’s close friend since first grade at St. Andrew’s School in Saratoga. “Then when he sort of tried to get her to go away, she wouldn’t.”Turner had mentioned the possibility to David months earlier in a rambling telephone conversation. He didn’t know what to make of it then. Was it true? Was she lying?

“The emotion that was shown was beyond description, really,” Snow says. “I’ve never seen people react more passionately, intensely. David reacted with anger. Kate reacted with tremendous grief.”Turner grew up in Canada, where she married and divorced two men and had three children who often lived with their fathers and other relatives. She fled to Newfoundland a week after Andrew’s murder and vowed to fight extradition. The Bagbys couldn’t imagine a darker moment than their son’s November 2001 murder. But in their time of supreme grief, they had no way of knowing just how much darker their world could get. At some point, police say, Turner tied the arms of her jacket together to lash Zachary to her as she walked. Around 3 a.m. on Aug. 18, she found the fishing wharf in the tiny town of Foxtrap. Andrew Bagby was studying at Memorial University medical school in Newfoundland when he met Turner, a fellow medical student 12 years his senior. They dated for about a year before leaving Canada. He eventually moved on to a residency in Latrobe, Pa., and she went to work as a family practice doctor in Council Bluffs, Iowa. “They’re as much in love as any couple I’ve ever seen in my life, anywhere,” says Andrew’s lifelong friend Kuenne. “And that always radiated through the house.”The murder-suicide was a huge news story in Canada. Some changes, including increased spending and a review of social worker training, have been made to the child protection system since the tragedy. The provincial court has tightened bail regulations, but has not eliminated bail for murder suspects.

“I have some hope that telling this story in detail has a chance to cause change in the law,” David says of his book. “I may be in Fantasyland. I don’t know.”On Nov. 14, a Canadian judge ruled that Turner should indeed be jailed while arguments continued on whether she should be sent back to the United States. She was placed on suicide watch after intake screening. The watch was continued after a more comprehensive psychological exam.

“It’s something that can’t be forgiven,” says Shears. “All the years that she was good to me as a mother was pretty much thrown out the window at the end.”“They were living like students,” says the Rev. Christopher Snow, of St. Michael and All Angels Church, which the Bagbys attended in Newfoundland. “They were in kind of a basement apartment with second-hand furniture. It was like they had gone back to what it might have been like when they first got married.”

They have the memory of their son, Andrew, and the memory of his son, Zachary. They have a mission to bring change from tragedy. They have a network of supporters.Turner, then 40, drove the 950 miles straight through and arrived at Andrew’s door at 5 a.m. He went to work at Latrobe Area Hospital. She spent the day in his house across from the hospital, reading e-mail and checking eBay bids for a Barbie doll she wanted. By 6 p.m. she left for Keystone State Park, where she and Andrew had agreed to meet after his hospital shift.

The good life started in earnest when Kate first laid eyes on Petty Officer David Bagby, who was serving on the USS Hornet, docked in Long Beach in 1967. The Hornet was just back from patrolling the coast of Vietnam. Kate was a nurse, recently arrived from England. She was living with another nurse and her parents, who had also emigrated from England. One of David’s shipmates knew the parents of Kate’s friend well and he knew Kate and her friend were anxious to see the sights. One day he walked into the electronics shop where David worked. Canadian authorities arrested Turner in early December 2001, but fatefully, released her on bail as she waited for a series of decisions regarding Pennsylvania’s request for extradition.