Missing New York Woman Found After Allegedly Being Abducted, Taken to Nevada

By Jack Phillips
November 28, 2017 Last Updated: November 28, 2017
Mary Bartholomew. (Cortland Police Department)

A mom from Cortland, New York, says she’s happy to have her daughter back after she was allegedly kidnapped for months.

Mary Bartholomew, 25, went missing in late August after telling her mother she was going to meet a man who she met on Facebook. The two had already met in person before, according to Syracuse.com.

The next morning, Bartholomew—the mother of four young kids—disappeared.

“I knew she would never leave them,” Angela Helms, Bartholomew’s mom, said. She filed a missing persons report on Aug. 25.

It turns out that the man she met, Jon Wesley Turner, took her to Nevada. According to the Nye County Sheriff’s Office, he was arrested for battery, false imprisonment, sexual assault, assault with a deadly weapon, and kidnapping on Nov. 2.

“I really believed that she was dead; she would never leave her kids,” Helms told News3.

Helms said that she got a call from her daughter, saying that deputies in Nye County, Nevada, found her after she was beaten and handcuffed to a chair in a motel room. Inside, deputies found a rope, handcuffs, and a hatchet, News3 reported.

Right before she ran for help from motel staff, who called 911 for her,”[Turner] picked up a hatchet and attempted to hit her in the face with it screaming ‘I’m going to kill you,'” wrote Deputy Eric Anderson in a police report, according to Fox5. “[She] stated… he then threatened to kill her, her 4 kids and he would bury them together if she did not comply with his commands.”

Turner left the motel but was arrested nearby, News3 reported.

Bartholomew told officers after her rescue that Turner held her at gunpoint and forced her to leave New York.

She had thought about leaving Turner several times before they went to Nevada, said Helms, but worried about what he would do to her if he caught her.

According to Helms, “Her face is all black and blue, she’s covered in bruises and then you can see the strangulation marks around her neck.”

 

Jon Wesley Turner (Nye County Sheriff’s Office)

Turner, who is from Elmira, New York, was booked in Nye County, Nevada, on $250,000 bond.

In a more bizarre twist, Turner allegedly forced Bartholomew to walk through the woods near Big Bear Lake in California, where their car was later found by California Highway Patrol officers in September, according to the San Bernardino Sun. Helms said that Bartholomew walked at least 200 miles to Nevada after they ditched her car. She was forced to sleep outside with Turner—tied up or handcuffed, Helms claimed.

“Luckily, she made it out alive,” Helms said. “I’ve talked to other mothers whose daughters did not, and my heart goes out to them.”

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