Fugitive high school football coach Travis Turner could still be alive amid his mysterious disappearance, claims crime expert Nancy Grace.
Turner, 46, has been on the run for more than six months after he fled his home in Big Stone Gap, Virginia days before it emerged police wanted him for 10 alleged child sex offenses.
The married father-of-three was last seen heading into the Appalachian woods, carrying a firearm, on November 20, 2025. And, months later, there have been no sightings of him.
However, that does not mean that the football coach is dead, according to veteran crime reporter Grace, who weighed in on his disappearance.
The 66-year-old claimed that Turner is ‘not stupid,’ suggesting that he may have had an escape plan long in place.
‘All he has to do is lay low for a period of weeks, get out, change his appearance and leave the country,’ she claimed during Crime Stories with Nancy Grace earlier this month.
Fugitive high school football coach Travis Turner has been on the run for more than six months
Veteran crime reporter Nancy Grace believed the high school coach is still alive
Turner is still wanted for five counts of possession of child pornography and five counts of using a computer to solicit a minor.
Following his disappearance, his family said he left armed with a gun and walked into a ‘heavily wooded and mountainous area.’
But Grace dismissed the idea that Turner had entered the woods to take his own life. She even suggested that he may have never disappeared into the Appalachian Mountains at all.
‘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 – backed Grace’s suggestion that the football coach was still alive.
‘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.’
He previously pointed to Turner’s alleged ties to the community, suggesting that some locals may have helped the coach flee.
‘Everyone knows that he’s alive,’ Murray told the Daily Mail earlier this year. ‘No one believes that he took his own life, and the reason is because he’s too much of a coward and he thinks too highly of himself to take his own life.
Turner vanished from his family home in Appalachia, Virginia, (pictured) on November 20, 2025. He allegedly left the property armed with a gun and walked into a ‘heavily wooded and mountainous area’
The high school football coach, 46, and his wife of 25 years, Leslie Caudill Turner
Stephen Murray, whose stepdaughter attends Union High School, backed Grace’s claims
‘People [think] he liked himself too much. There’s no way that this brought him to suicide. They think he ran for it.’
Murray claimed ‘the majority of people’ in the local community believe Turner was tipped off and therefore ‘had time to prepare to leave.’
‘There is now building anger around the fact that nothing has happened to the [Union High] principal [Jerred Chandler],’ Murray continued. ‘The general feeling in the community is: “This is bulls*** that the police haven’t found him yet…”
‘People think that he’s in Texas with his sister. I’ve heard people say that he’s out of the country – I find that hard to believe because getting flagged with your passport would be pretty basic police work.’
However, criminal defense attorney Mike Jaafar balked at the notion that Turner had been able to successfully 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.’
A reward of up to $5,000 was offered in exchange for information, while the efforts of nearly 100 personnel, including those specially trained ‘to locate and assist lost or missing individuals in wilderness and rural environments,’ have been exhausted.
Police revealed back in March that they have exhausted 178 national and international leads. Yet, Turner has still failed to be located.
