Bree Kuhn was a U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer, and her husband, Collin Turner, was a Marine who suffered a traumatic brain injury. As a result, he decided to be a stay-at-home dad while Bree served in the Navy. Collin began studying online for a degree in electrical engineering and was accepted to Johns Hopkins University for a master’s degree.
Both Collin and Bree had children from previous relationships, and together they had two children born in 2017 and 2018.
However, their relationship began to take an ugly turn, and Bree was considering divorce, even asking on Facebook for a divorce attorney.
The Santa Rosa County Police Department received three 911 calls from the Turner home on September 8, 2021.
The first 911 call was made at 12:53 PM by Bree, who reported that she and Collin had gotten into a heated argument. Bree accused Collin of becoming violent with her and wanted the police to remove him from the house, claiming he had attacked her, although she had no physical evidence. The officer informed her that her word alone was not sufficient. He agreed to take a full statement from Bree, which would be the first step in the process of obtaining a court order against Collin if her claims were true. However, she refused, stating that she might do it at a later date.
The police then spoke to Collin outside in the driveway. While they were talking, Bree arrived looking for a bag to pack Collin’s things, hoping he would leave. Collin provided a very different account, claiming that Bree was mentally unstable and that he was planning to take the kids to his parents’ place in Georgia to get a break from her for a while.
Bree did have a history of mental health issues. At the time of the murder on September 8, she was on active duty in the Navy but had previously been on limited duty due to a suicide attempt, which resulted in a Baker Act proceeding for her to receive treatment. She was on medication and attended therapy sessions, but around the time of the shooting, according to her superior, she had missed some of these sessions and had been skipping work.
Collin made and signed a statement indicating that Bree was acting erratically and that he was trying to de-escalate the situation. The police then left.
At 5:00 PM, the police received another call from the Turner home, this time from Collin, who reported that they were again having an argument that was escalating. Bree had locked Collin outside the house right after the police left the first time. The police then spoke to Bree, who reiterated that Collin had been abusive toward her. She claimed that he had gone over her head to speak to her superior in the Navy.
Around 2:00 PM that day, Collin had called Bree’s superiors. Bree’s commander characterized Bree Kuhn’s actions, including running Collin Turner’s laptop through the dishwasher, were part of a pattern of emotional abuse and instability. Collin expressed concerns about her behavior and financial access, as he had been removed from her financial access since she was the one with a job. When asked if he felt safe at home with Bree, he replied that he did. When Navy personnel called Bree to inquire about the situation, she claimed that Collin was lying. The commander asked her if she and the kids felt safe at home, and she responded that they did. However, Bree told a different story to the police, accusing Collin of using their daughter to manipulate her and repeating that Collin had attacked her. The police left again, believing that Collin and Bree would reconcile their differences for the sake of their children.
At 6:22 PM, Collin made another 911 call, telling the dispatcher that Bree had locked him in the garage. Just then, a gunshot was heard; Bree had shot Collin in the back and continued shooting multiple times. The police already knew who had killed Collin, but they still took Bree in for questioning to get to the bottom of the situation. Bree painted a confused picture, stating that somewhere in the middle of the altercation, she had shot her husband. She took her kids out of the house, knowing they shouldn’t be around, but by then it was too late. Bree implied that it was self-defense, but she could not explain what Collin had been doing in the garage when she entered with a gun in her hand. She did not claim that he was holding any weapon that could threaten her; the investigators knew that he was on the phone with 911 when he was shot, and all he had was a cell phone in his hand.
The investigators left her alone in the room, and she called her father. Unlike what she had told the police—that she felt Collin was going to kill her—she admitted to her father that she did not know if Collin had threatened or hurt her and that she felt horribly guilty about it.
Bree Kuhn was brought to trial in September 2024. Alongside all the body cam footage and police interviews, evidence from Bree and Collin’s phones was also presented. A video recorded by Bree on her phone right before she made the first 911 call was included.
Bree’s former partner, the father of her 12-year-old, also testified in court. He had received text messages from Collin at 12:55 PM on the day of the murder. Collin wrote, “Hey man, Bree’s losing it. She ran my laptop through the dishwasher last night because I turned the WiFi off. I’m planning on getting out of here with the little kids, but she’s already told me she’ll press charges if I take Kylie with me. I don’t know what you can do legally, but I wanted to give you a heads up.” When Bree’s ex responded with sympathy, Collin told him that Bree was on a downward trajectory, making bad choices. The ex replied at 6:09 PM, just 13 minutes before the shooting, saying, “Nah. Gonna be worse before it gets better, too. She always told her stories about you, and I thought you sucked, but now that I think about it, she’s crazy as hell and probably did the same stuff to you.” Bree’s ex talked to her current husband in real time as Collin was locked in the garage and then never responded again. After that, Bree called her ex and said that he needed to come and get their daughter, stating that she had shot her husband.
Bree originally planned to testify at her trial alongside an expert witness who would tell the jury that Bree suffered from PTSD and spousal abuse. However, in the end, she decided not to after consulting with her attorney for almost an hour. The defense’s only witness was Bree’s brother, Eric. Eric testified on her behalf, saying he heard his sister talk about Turner’s abuse and heard the shooting over the phone.
“I heard a lot of discourse—Collin screaming, things being hit. At one point, he was on the phone with police,” Eric Kuhn said on the stand. “I did hear his voice raised a few times, yes, and I heard children crying.”
Eric Kuhn testified in open court that he knew his sister had a gun during the argument on the day of the shooting, but prosecutor Mark Alderman brought up a contradiction during cross-examination.
While Eric Kuhn testified that he knew his sister had a gun to defend herself and her kids from Turner, Alderman argued that the witness had never made those statements during his police interview in 2021, nor in his Zoom deposition in June 2024.
When asked about the difference in his testimonies, Eric Kuhn said he told investigators about the gun before they began recording his interview, but then he made no mention of it again so as not to be “redundant.”
Eric Kuhn also testified that technology issues with Zoom arose during his 2024 deposition, which caused only his testimony about the gun to be unheard; nothing else was affected.
After four hours of deliberation, Bree Kuhn was found guilty of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in a Florida state prison without the possibility of parole, the legal mandatory minimum for her charge.
