Where Is Travis Turner? | The Virginia Football Coach Who Walked Into the Woods and Never Came Back
True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews
Tony Brueski
4.2 • 612 Ratings
🗓️ 17 December 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Four days later, authorities issued ten felony warrants — five counts of possession of child sexual abuse material, five counts of using a computer to solicit a minor. Additional charges are pending. Travis Turner, the beloved head coach of the undefeated Union High School Bears, is now a fugitive. The U.S. Marshals and FBI have joined the manhunt. There's a $5,000 reward. And every court document in the case has been sealed.
But here's where it gets darker. Turner isn't the first coach at Union High to face charges like this. In 2023, another teacher and coach at the same school pleaded guilty to two felony counts of indecent liberties with a child. Same school. Same time period. Same defense attorney now representing Turner's family.
Meanwhile, Turner's team kept playing — and kept winning. They made it all the way to the state semifinals before losing by a single point. The community rallied around those kids while grappling with allegations against the man who coached them.
Turner's family says he left behind his wallet, keys, car, medications, and glasses. They've cooperated fully with law enforcement. His wife has publicly pleaded for him to come home and face the charges. But nearly four weeks later, there's no trace of him.
Where is Travis Turner? Is he still alive? And what did people in this small Virginia town know — and when did they know it?
#TravisTurner #UnionHighSchool #BigStoneGap #MissingPerson #TrueCrime #VirginiaCrime #USMarshals #FugitiveCoach #WiseCounty #CriminalInvestigation
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers with Tony Bruske. |
| 0:03.1 | Here now, Tony Bruske. |
| 0:07.4 | A man walks into the woods behind his house in rural Virginia, |
| 0:10.9 | allegedly carrying a firearm and doesn't come back. |
| 0:14.6 | That was November 20th. |
| 0:16.2 | It's now been nearly four weeks. |
| 0:17.7 | No confirmed sightings, no body, no surrender. |
| 0:19.8 | And the questions piling up |
| 0:21.4 | around Travis Turner's disappearance are the kind that make a small town go quiet in all of the wrong |
| 0:28.2 | ways. Turner wasn't some random guy. He was the head football coach at Union High School in Big Stone |
| 0:34.5 | Gap, Virginia, a community so small you could miss it if you blinked on the highway. |
| 0:39.0 | Population under 2000. |
| 0:41.1 | The kind of place where Friday night football isn't just entertainment, it is identity, it is life, it's the heartbeat. |
| 0:46.9 | And Travis Turner had been that heartbeat for over a decade. |
| 0:52.8 | At the time he vanished his team, the Union Bears, was undefeated. |
| 0:56.4 | 13 wins, zero losses. |
| 1:00.0 | They were two games away from a shot at the state championship and their coach. |
| 1:04.2 | The guy who built that program, the guy whose father was a Virginia high school league |
| 1:08.8 | Hall of Famer, the guy who played quarterback under his old man |
| 1:12.0 | before going under Virginia Tech |
| 1:14.1 | and earning All-American honors, say UVA-wise. |
| 1:19.6 | That guy just walked into the Appalachian Wilderness |
... |
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