System blamed in death of boy

MINDEN, Neb. — A failure of the system.

That's what former neighbors say contributed to the death of 4-year-old Landon Payne of rural Kearney County.

Landon's aunt, Sharon Payne Turnell, 37; her husband, Charles Turnell, 38; and her daughter, Katie Payne, 19, each have been charged with aiding and abetting child abuse that led to Landon's death Dec. 22.

The family lived in Pleasanton, Neb., from September 2006 to October 2009. During that time, neighbors say they called law enforcement and the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services numerous times to report suspected abuse and neglect.

“No one ever really watched after them,” former neighbor Bernadine Dauel said of the children in the home. “They just took care of themselves. You never saw affection like you see with parents and children. They were just all there. They didn't have a ball or anything. The kids' biggest pastime in the summertime was just the hose and running water. That was their one thing to do for fun.”

She and her husband, Ed Dauel, lived across the street from the Turnells in Pleasanton.

“I would have just loved to go over there and grab those little kids and steal them,” Ed Dauel said. “You could have done some good by them. There should be no human being this day and age — a female animal treats her young better than what they did.”

According to Buffalo County Sheriff's Office incident reports, deputies went to the Turnells' home in Pleasanton 59 times in three years because of reports of child abuse and neglect involving improper child supervision, poor living conditions or a dirty house. Deputies also responded to calls about credit card fraud, arrest warrants, disturbances, suspicious activity, a liquor violation and assault.

In some instances, Sheriff Capt. Bob Anderson said, deputies couldn't substantiate the allegations.

“I think the welfare system and HHS has let the people down, our system in general, and not only that, our law,” Ed Dauel said. “I'd say we called the law, in the three years they lived here, at least six or eight times and Social Services twice or three times.”

The Turnell family moved from Pleasanton to a farmhouse about seven miles southeast of Minden in October 2009, three months before Landon's death. Living in the house were Sharon and Charles Turnell, Katie Payne and her then-husband, Dustin Scoville, 23, and eight children, including Landon and his older sister.

Earl Anderson, another former neighbor, said he never called HHS, but he did call the Sheriff's Office once when Charles Turnell and Dustin Scoville were fighting in the street.

“(Sheriff's deputies) would come, and sometimes they would go in the house and be in there a while before they would leave. ... It wasn't one or two times. It was lots of times. They couldn't go in that house without knowing what kind of a pigsty and what kind of dysfunctional mess it was,” Anderson said.

Anderson said he never saw bruises or signs of physical abuse but did notice the children didn't have proper clothing in the winter, and he said he saw and heard many fights.

“They had some terrible verbal fights. You could hear them when they were in their house fighting and going on. The ‘F' word was very fluent with them. I think if you would have took that away from them, they would have been deaf and dumb. You could hear just hollering.”

Landon and his sister began living with the Turnells in August 2009 when their father, Clinton Payne, went to prison in South Dakota for forgery. He was paroled in June and is now serving a sentence at the Nebraska Diagnostic and Evaluation Center for unauthorized use of a financial transaction device.

Landon's mother, Samantha Head of Cuba, Mo., said Clinton Payne had partial custody of their children and took them from their grandmother's home in Ponca City, Okla., in 2007 to live with him in South Dakota. According to court records, when he went to prison, Clinton's sister, Sharon Turnell, went to South Dakota and brought Landon and his sister to live with her family in Pleasanton.

“We all thought they were still with their father. If I would have known, I would have been up there, and I would have gotten them,” Head said. “I would have not let it get this far. We were trying to find them and couldn't find them at all.”

Head said she is angry that HHS never notified her of her children's whereabouts.

“They didn't bother calling us or anything. We were trying to get ahold of everybody before all this happened, and nobody would tell us anything. ... If they would have notified me and my family, my son still would have been alive,” she said.

The Turnells and Katie Payne were arrested July 15 in Minden. In addition to the charge of aiding and abetting child abuse that led to death, each is charged with being an accessory to a felony.

Preliminary hearings have been scheduled for Thursday for the Turnells and Katie Payne.

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