Is Alissa Turney’s Adoptive Dad Responsible for the Teen’s Disappearance, or Did She Run Away?

Michael Turney says that the last time he saw his adopted daughter, Alissa Turney, on May 17, 2001, the 17-year-old was slamming her bedroom door, upset with him for grounding her. According to Michael, Alissa had been flirting with a boy at the local Jack in the Box where she worked. That didn’t sit well with him.

“I was strict with Alissa because she needed it,” Michael tells A&E Crime + Investigation.

Hours later, Alissa went missing from her Phoenix home. Later that afternoon, her sister, Sarah Turney, then 12 years old, found Alissa’s runaway note in her bedroom. Her whereabouts would never be publicly known again.

In the years that followed, Michael would become the primary suspect in Alissa’s likely murder, resulting in his estrangement from Sarah; more than seven years behind bars for a (potentially) unrelated felony offense discovered when the Phoenix Police Department investigated Alissa’s disappearance; and an additional three years of pre-trial detention for the murder itself.

In 2023, Michael was acquitted on Alissa’s murder charge. There was no murder weapon or even any concrete evidence that Alissa had been killed. “This was all a witch hunt,” Michael claims.

According to Michael, Alissa most likely was abducted soon after she was convinced to run away, and he became the scapegoat. “I firmly believe someone talked her into it and that it went bad,” he says, noting that she “was a great person, really. Trusted everybody.”

But despite her father’s acquittal, Sarah sees things differently.

“I think deep down, he knows exactly what he did to Alissa,” Sarah tells A&E Crime + Investigation. For years, Sarah publicly called for her father’s prosecution, certain that he’s responsible for her sister’s disappearance. “In my mind, he’s extremely dangerous,” she asserts.

Alissa grew up in a blended family in Phoenix with her mother, Barbara; her older brother, John; her adoptive father, Michael, who met Barbara after their respective divorces; her sister, Sarah, who was born not long after Michael and Barbara married; and three adoptive half-brothers from Michael’s previous marriage. In 1992, Barbara died of cancer, leaving Michael alone in raising Alissa, then 8, and Sarah, the only remaining children still living at home of the six. 

Barbara’s death took a psychological and emotional toll on Michael, who says, “I’ve had major depression since 1993. I suffered a major mental breakdown.”

On that point, Sarah agrees, saying that throughout her childhood, she remembers that her father would “threaten to die by suicide [and at other times] threaten to run away and leave all his children and live in a cave.”

Alissa became “a very large mother figure to me,” Sarah says of her older sister. Like many adolescent sibling relationships, the relationship was “hot and cold.”

Michael’s relationship with Alissa was also turbulent, with Alissa often bristling at Michael’s strictness.

In the hours following their final argument, Michael says he left to run a few errands. During that time, Michael remembers calling Alissa on the phone. “Alissa was crying,” he claims. “That was unusual for Alissa. I didn’t know if I should go back home and pick her up or let her calm down. I also apologized to her, because I had also gotten upset [during the quarrel].”

Upon returning, a note in Alissa’s handwriting stated that she had run off to California, adding, “Sarah, you said you didn’t want me around, look, you got it, I’m gone. Dad, that’s why I saved my money, I took $300 from you.”

For years after Alissa’s disappearance, the Phoenix Police Department (PHXPD) didn’t suspect foul play. But in 2006, Thomas Hymer, a convicted murderer in Florida, told investigators he was a serial killer and had murdered Alissa. Although his confession ultimately proved to be false, it renewed interest in the case from the PHXPD. The PHXPD declined A&E Crime + Investigation’s request for comment.

Sarah says she began to post on social media about the case at the behest of the police department, who told her that increased public interest in the case would increase the likelihood of it being solved. Sarah subsequently shared Alissa’s story on TikTok and a podcast, bringing viral attention to the story. An online petition she created calling for her father’s arrest was signed by almost 300,000 people.

But Sarah adds that the work to bring Alissa’s story into the public eye “destroyed so many aspects of my life,” adding that she has become estranged from several members of her immediate family, including her oldest brother.

In 2008, the PHXPD raided Michael’s house. They found 26 pipe bombs, fitted with steel shot to increase shrapnel, as well as several assault rifles and a manifesto which claimed that an Electrical Workers union was responsible for Alissa’s kidnapping and murder, and that he planned to blow up the union hall and kill himself as a means of extracting revenge.

“It devastates me to this day that I failed to find my daughter,” Michael, a former deputy sheriff turned electrician, says. “That’s a failure that’s very difficult for me to live with. I wanted people to do an investigation into why this guy blew his brains out.”

Authorities also discovered a contract Michael had written and co-signed with Alissa, saying that he had never sexually molested her. According to Michael, this was a precautionary measure taken to prevent legal liability. As a single male living alone in a house with his adopted daughter, Alissa, Michael claims he wrote out this contract at the behest of Arizona’s Child Protective Services.

“He’s told many different stories why he wrote contracts,” Sarah says. “In another statement, Michael said he took a parenting class that suggested the contract. Part of what makes it hard is that his story changes all the time.”

For his crimes, Turney was sentenced to 10 years in prison, ultimately serving seven.

However, Michael’s case was thrown out before it even went to jury deliberations, with the defense successfully filing a motion with the judge to acquit for lack of substantial physical evidence.

Sarah says, “I think every system designed to protect Alissa failed her. So when the state failed her too, it was not that surprising, unfortunately.”

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted the case, did not respond to A&E Crime and Investigation’s request for comment.

Michael says his acquittal proves what he knows to be true: his innocence. “There wasn’t any physical evidence because it just didn’t happen,” he alleges.

Still, Sarah continues to seek answers in her sister’s case. She is organizing a large-scale search for Alissa’s remains to be conducted in the winter of 2026.

“We’re getting volunteers, ground-penetrating radar, teams of dogs, drones,” she explains. Given the decades that have passed since Alissa disappeared, Sarah says, “I know the odds aren’t in our favor, but that’s one stone that hasn’t been overturned.”

Ultimately, “my mission has never been to punish my father,” Sarah says. “I’ve just wanted to bring Alissa home.”