Missing High School Football Coach May Have ‘Left the Country’: Criminologist

As the search for missing Union High School football coach Travis Turner enters its second week, an expert criminologist offered a dramatic theory about his whereabouts.

“There’s always the school of thought that we assume there could be people helping him be in a different place,” Dr. Alex del Carmen told WCYB-News 5 on Wednesday, December 3. “He would have had a different haircut, maybe even a different identity somewhere. Left the country, that’s the other possibility.”

Dr. del Carmen also said there’s “always the reality” that Turner, 46, has died by suicide since going missing on November 20. 

“Based on all of those possibilities, we cannot discard one or the other,” he argued. 

Dr. del Carmen, a professor and associate dean at Tarleton State University, is not directly connected to the Turner case. 

The United States Marshals Service got involved for the search on Monday, December 1, which Dr. del Carmen said indicates the search for Turner might extend far beyond rural Virginia, where Turner was last seen entering the woods behind his home with a firearm. 

“You’ve got now two entities at the federal level and that should tell us that they are probably expecting that this individual fled the state, that it has become a multistate kind of fugitive task force and secondly, the resources of the federal government are being used, which law enforcement locally obviously lacks oftentimes,” the criminologist said. “Now you’ve taken it to a whole different level of sophistication, a whole different level of technology and resources as well.”

The Marshals issued a $5,000 reward for information about Turner’s whereabouts on Monday.

Authorities have kept most of the search and any intel about Turner’s location close to the vest, but Dr. del Carmen said that doesn’t mean progress isn’t being made. 

“Don’t assume that because there’s radio silence that that simply means nothing is going on behind the scenes,” he explained. 

With the search now into its second week, Dr. del Carmen said all hope is not yet lost. 

“We’ve had fugitives for months, sometimes years, and they’re eventually found somewhere,” he offered. 

Travis has been married to his wife, Leslie Caudill Turner, since 2001 and the couple share three children: sons Bailey, 25, and Grayden, 21, and daughter Brynlee, 11. 

The Turner family issued a statement through their attorney to Us Weekly on Wednesday, pleading for his safe return home. 

“If Travis has the ability and is able to respond to his family’s wishes; your wife and children are in distress,” the statement read. “Leslie pleads for you to come home and face the allegations by defending yourself in a court of law. Don’t leave your family to fight this battle without you. They love and miss you.  They want you to know they are your support.”

Leslie expressed “heightened” concern for her husband’s well-being, noting that he left behind his wallet, contact lenses, glasses and daily medications at home when he disappeared into the woods. 

“The family of Travis Turner continues to cooperate with law enforcement efforts to locate Travis,” the statement said. “Their homes and properties have been searched multiple times, with their consent. While the family’s last contact with Travis causes them to have great concern for his well being, they cling to the hope he will be found and afforded the opportunity to defend himself in a court of law.”