A Home Movie for Zachary: The Andrew Bagby Case

A man out picking up aluminum cans in a state park in southwest Pennsylvania found a young doctor lying face down on the gravel near his car. There was a thin layer of frost on him. He was 28. His name was Andrew Bagby, and he'd spent years starring in his best friend's homemade movies. Andrew's story starts with a book report.

Who Was Andrew Bagby?

Andrew Bagby grew up in the suburbs of San Jose, California, and in the first grade he met a kid named Kurt Kuenne, who talked the teacher into letting him hand in a screenplay for his book report, which is a bold move for a first grader, and then cast Andrew as one of the stars. Kurt kept making movies all through school. Once they looked professional, Andrew put some of his med school savings into them. That's a good friend.

Andrew was David and Kate Bagby's only kid, and his friends said he was warm and had more friends than most people. He went to medical school at Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. You have to go way out into the North Atlantic to find it, and that's where Andrew met a doctor named Shirley Turner.

Who Was Shirley Turner?

Shirley was 12 years older than Andrew. She grew up poor and moved around a lot. She got pregnant in college and married the baby's dad. After that she spent years teaching science and chipping away at school until she got herself into medical school too, which took her well into her thirties.

If you pull her social services records, there's a file from 1993. Somebody reported she'd been hitting kids and being verbally abusive, and that she'd left a child without enough supervision. The caseworkers left her some messages and closed the file without ever talking to her. That was the whole investigation.

An ex-boyfriend back in Pennsylvania told the inquiry that she kept calling him and showing up at his house uninvited, and he said she hit him with a platform shoe and threatened to slit his throat.

Andrew and Shirley's Long-Distance Relationship

Andrew and Shirley got together in 1999. Andrew went back to the States for residency and ended up in family medicine at Latrobe Area Hospital in Pennsylvania, while Shirley landed a doctor job out in the Midwest, and the whole thing turned into a long-distance mess full of fights about other people and where it was all headed.

Out in Iowa, Shirley walked out on a 10-year contract. If you break a deal like that early, you owe them, and she owed more than $156,000. In October of 2001 she got a gun permit. She bought a Phoenix Arms .22 pistol and took shooting lessons, and the last one was right before she left to see Andrew in Pennsylvania.

That visit ended at the Latrobe airport, where Andrew broke up with her after a fight about him seeing other women. Shirley went back home to Council Bluffs, Iowa. The next day she got in her car and drove back toward Andrew, and if you map that drive, it's about 946 miles.

November 5, 2001: Keystone State Park

Shirley turned up at Andrew's place early that morning, and Andrew told a supervisor she seemed angry. She picked up Andrew's home phone and called in sick to her own job. That was a bad idea. She also got on his computer and used his internet, and at some point that day somebody saw her car and Andrew's car sitting together at Keystone State Park, which is a state park outside Latrobe.

The next morning, that man picking up cans found Andrew near his car. The autopsy showed he'd been shot 5 times and hit in the back of the head. The bullets were .22s, and nobody ever found the gun.

Shirley Turner Flees to Newfoundland

Shirley's explanations kept moving around. In one version she never left Iowa. In another she met Andrew at the park. She said the gun got stolen, and she also said she'd given it to Andrew. If you line them up, that's 4 different stories.

A week later Shirley left Iowa, and on November 16 she was back home in Newfoundland. She was pregnant, and the ultrasound listed Andrew as the dad. Pennsylvania charged her with murder, and now you've got a murder suspect sitting in another country, which means extradition, with formal requests and paperwork going back and forth between governments for as long as it takes.

The police in Newfoundland arrested her on December 12, and she was back out the same day. Her psychiatrist, Dr. John Doucet, walked into the courthouse and put up $65,000 as a surety, which means if she skipped town, he'd lose it. He'd been treating her for about 3 weeks. Big favor.

Zachary Is Born and the Bagbys Move to Newfoundland

Back in California, Kate said she used to go out her front door and say, "I am Kate Bagby. I live in Sunnyvale, Calif. This did not happen to me." Then they found out Shirley was carrying Andrew's baby, and they packed up and moved across the continent to St. John's.

Zachary Andrew Turner was born there on July 18, 2002. A DNA test put the odds that Andrew was his dad at 99.9941 percent. That's pretty sure.

If David and Kate wanted to see their grandson, they had to stay on Shirley's good side, which means you're sitting across from the woman you believe killed your son and being polite to her, because she's the only way you get to see his baby. They started with supervised visits.

Kurt had been making a tribute movie about Andrew, and once he heard about the baby, it turned into a letter to Zachary.

Shirley Goes to Jail and Gets Zachary Back

Shirley went to jail that November, and David and Kate took Zachary full time. They'd drive him about 112 miles each way so he could see his mom. The review called their care exemplary, which is review language for they did everything right.

An appeals court let Shirley out in January while she appealed, since she'd followed all her conditions, and under a consent order Zachary went back to living with her while David and Kate still got lots of time with him.

Kurt came out for Zachary's first birthday that July, and if Shirley was anywhere around, you wouldn't see Kurt, because he'd hide so she'd never find out he was there. People at the party remembered Zachary sticking close to David and Kate, and Shirley saying something like he loved them more and they should take him. Nobody knows what she meant by that.

Foxtrap Marina, August 2003

Shirley and Zachary went swimming with David and Kate on August 16, and nothing seemed off to them. The next day Shirley talked with friends, ran errands, made phone calls and wrote letters. She also filled a prescription for lorazepam. Several people who saw her said she seemed ordinary, and at some point after that she took Zachary out to Foxtrap Marina on Conception Bay, where people saw her asking for directions and walking near the water.

The inquiry found she probably gave Zachary lorazepam and went into the water holding him. They both died on August 18, 2003. Zachary was 13 months old. Shirley was 42.

Zachary's blood had about 100 times the normal medical level of lorazepam. The medical examiner ruled Zachary's death a homicide and Shirley's a suicide. There was also a baby bottle with liquid left in it. Somebody poured it out before anybody tested it, so you'll never know what was in it.

The Turner Review and Zachary's Bill

The review went through around 100,000 pages of documents. The report came out in 2006 and said Zachary's death could have been prevented. You had police holding a piece of Shirley's history, the courts had a piece, her doctors had a piece, child welfare had a piece, and everybody was so focused on Shirley's rights that nobody ever sat down and looked at Zachary's safety all by itself.

The review found that 1993 file, too. When Shirley came back into the system she had a different last name, and nobody was required to write down old names, so the file never came up. It was right there.

The medical board found John guilty of misconduct over that money. They ordered him to pay $10,000, and they also ordered the psychiatrist to go see a psychiatrist.

Kurt finished his movie in 2008 and called it Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father. It got screened for members of Parliament in Ottawa, which means the kid who handed in a screenplay for his first grade book report now had a movie in front of the people who make Canada's laws. A member of Parliament brought in Bill C-464, and everybody started calling it Zachary's Bill. It became law on December 15, 2010. If you're a judge in Canada now, you can keep somebody locked up before trial when that's needed to protect any kid under 18.

David and Kate put up Christmas decorations that year for the first time in years.

Where the Andrew Bagby Case Stands Today

Shirley never went to trial. The review decided she was probably the one who killed Andrew. When the province checked in 2014, most of the review's recommendations had been put in place in one form or another, although a couple were still only partway done and some of them didn't apply anymore. Nearly 4 dozen medical students going into family medicine have gotten the scholarship in Andrew's name at the hospital in Latrobe.