High school football coach Travis Turner has been a fugitive for more than six months — but Nancy Grace made a bold claim about the mystery surrounding his disappearance.
“I think he’s alive,” the veteran crime reporter said Thursday, June 11, on Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
Grace, 66, suggested that Turner, 46, is “not stupid” and may have had a plan in place when he allegedly disappeared into the woods behind his Virginia home in November 2025. (Shortly after he went missing, Turner was charged with five counts of child pornography and five counts of using a computer to solicit a minor.)
“All he has to do is lay low for a period of weeks, get out, change his appearance and leave the country,” she claimed.
The coach’s family told police that he was last seen carrying a rifle, but Grace pushed back against the idea that Turner had taken his own life — or disappeared into the nearby Appalachian Mountains in the first place.
“If that was his plan, then how come cadaver dogs haven’t found him?” she questioned. “K-9 scent dogs haven’t found a trail? Drones have been used, you name it. Search teams. There’s no evidence that he continued on into those mountains.”
Stephen Murray — whose stepdaughter attends Union High School, where Turner coached and taught physical education — supported some of Grace’s theory, while proposing he didn’t make it very far.
“I think he’s alive. I think he’s hiding out somewhere,” Murray said on Crime Stories. “I don’t think he’s far, honestly. I think he’s somewhere in these mountains. He’s got a long list of people that would protect his name.”
When Grace asked Murray how he thought Turner would be able to “pull it off,” he explained that Turner has “great ties” to the local community.
“He’s gotta know some people that are willing to stick their neck out for him,” Murray said. “I highly doubt that he is dead. I really do. And a lot of people share that opinion.”
He added, “I think he’s tucked away somewhere. I don’t think he was able to leave the country. I think it would be too many red flags. He would be caught.”
Criminal defense attorney Mike Jaafar said he was in “shock” by the idea that Turner was successfully able to flee.
“At the end of the day, it would take a lot of cash for him to be [in hiding] this long,” he said on Crime Stories. “Or know a lot of people or have a lot of friends who are going to cover up for him, which baffles me even more so.”
Still, Jaafar added, “Hey, stranger things have happened.”
