Țurcanu studied at the Dragoș Vodă High School in Câmpulung Moldovenesc, In December 1940, he joined the Frăția de Cruce (Brotherhood of the Cross), a fascist youth organization in the Iron Guard.

There, a group of prisoners detained for their past Iron Guard sympathies, led by Alexandru Bogdanovici, started various initiatives meant to win the favour of the Communist authorities.

Among these was the preparation of a memorial addressed to the party leadership promising a full cessation of political activity in exchange for their release, and the founding (with Țurcanu's involvement) at the beginning of 1949 of Organizația Deținuților cu Convingeri Comuniste (ODCC, "Organization of Convinced Communist Detainees").

[9] During the summer of 1949 Țurcanu identified, with the help of his collaborators, those detainees who served as leaders or role models for the others; the prison administration isolated these men in a separate section.

One of his victims later remembered Țurcanu as: "...a handsome man, out of the ordinary...with brown hair tending toward blond...when he frowned, you were terrified...his well-proportioned body seemed that of a performance athlete.

The lead judge was Alexandru Petrescu, who also presided at the trials of Iuliu Maniu and the Danube-Black Sea Canal saboteurs.

His alleged intention was to demonstrate to the West that detainees were mistreated and killed in Communist prisons in order to compromise the regime and the Romanian government.

[12] In 1957, the regime partially admitted its own involvement in the Pitești Experiment; their role was imprisoning lower-level officials and employees of the prison, including its director, Dumitrescu.

Securitate Colonel Sepeanu was arrested in March 1953 and sentenced to 8 years in April 1957, but was pardoned and set free several months later.