The Las Vegas district attorney’s office will ask a committee to decide whether or not to seek the death penalty against a 26-year-old former Playboy Italia model and her 27-year-old boyfriend accused of murdering the 71-year-old psychologist, Thomas Burchard, who had been paying the couple’s rent, until he stopped just before the killing.

Model Kelsey Turner and her live-in boyfriend Jon Kennison pleaded not guilty to killing Thomas Burchard Thursday in Las Vegas, according to Las Vegas Now.
Diana Pena, who also lived with the suspects, last week pleaded guilty to helping kill the therapist found dead in the trunk of Turner’s car in March. She is expected to testify against Turner and Kennison.

According to CBS News, authorities claimed Turner and Burchard were involved in an intimate relationship. The murdered therapist lived in Salinas, Calif., but paid rent on the Sin City home occupied by his accused killers.

Kelsey Nichole Turner, [right], who has appeared in Playboy Italia and Maxim, is accused of murdering her alleged benefactor Dr Thomas Kirk Burchard [left], after his body was found in her abandoned car in Las Vegas on Mar 7 

Authorities claimed Turner, 26, and 71-year-old Thomas Burchard were involved in an intimate relationship and he was paying her bills

Kelsey Turner, [left], and her boyfriend Jon Kennison [right] have pled not guilty to the murder of  71-year-old Thomas Burchard. Their friend and roommate Diana Pena [center],  has pled guilty to a charge of accessory murder 

Evidence against Turner and Kennison reportedly includes blood, footprints and towels in their home matching a towel found with Burchard’s body.

Burchard’s longtime girlfriend, Judy Earp, said the psychologist paid Turner’s rent because the former Playboy beauty, who also modeled for Maxim magazine, feared she and her 4-year-old daughter would become homeless and he wanted to help.

Earp claimed the plan was for Burchard to simply sign for the apartment, where Turner would pay rent. When she defaulted, according to Earp, Burchard was forced to assume payments. Earp felt Burchard’s instincts as a psychologist compelled him to help Turner when he should have distanced himself.

“I told Tom at the time this is a really bad idea,” Earp told CBS in Sacramento.