[2] Turner lured her into his home before sexually assaulting and killing her, then concealing her corpse in a garbage bag and later discarding her body in a farm field in the town of Taycheedah, Wisconsin.

[11][13] French left her home at around 5:45 p.m. dressed as a hobo, wearing a black felt hat, a green parka, jeans with blue masking tape, and dotted freckles on her cheeks.

[9] French originally intended to be accompanied by a friend, Ann Parker, on her way to an outdoor Halloween party at Pumpkin Place on East Bank Street.

[17] Turner said that after the sexual assault French wasn't breathing; he attempted to revive her but was interrupted when Arlene Penn arrived home.

[2] Penn, who had been at the party French was supposed to attend, said that she arrived home around 7 p.m. Turner was wearing a bathrobe and claimed multiple times that he was "sick.

A farmer named Gerald Braun was returning home in his tractor in Taycheedah on November 3, 1973, at 11:30 a.m., when he discovered two brown plastic bags behind a barbed wire fence near a forest on McCabe road, one containing French's naked corpse, the other containing the clothing from her halloween costume.

[8] On November 8, 1973, The chamber of commerce of Fond du Lac had posted a ten thousand dollar reward for the capture of Lisa Ann French's killer.

[17] Gerald Turner was subsequently taken into police custody on August 9, 1974, and was convicted on February 4, 1975, by a jury on the charges of second degree murder, enticing a child for immoral purposes and acts of sexual perversion and was sentenced to 38 years and 6 months in prison.

[2][27][28] Turner was first paroled on October 13, 1992, for "good behavior" after only serving 17 years and 8 months of his sentence in Waupun Correctional Institution.

[34] This law allows criminals who have been paroled or released from their prison sentences to be detained in mental institutions if they are deemed to have a "substantial probability" of committing another crime.

[29] Turner was sent back to prison on November 23, 1993, after a Department of Corrections' appeal ruled that they had miscalculated his mandatory parole release from his good behavior.

[40][41] Following Turner's complaint against the waste company, the Wisconsin State Assembly passed a bill on October 28, 1999, in a vote of 63–33, which repealed the original law that prohibited job discrimination based on a felon's criminal record, meaning that employers could then rightfully refuse to hire convicted felons on the basis of their criminal record without further complaints.

[42] Turner was returned to prison for 15 additional years after violating his parole in 2003, when an abundance of pornographic content was discovered in his possession.

[22][43] Turner, in an undated letter he wrote to French after her death, depicted the events that took place during their encounter: "I doubt that I could ever fully realize the terror you experienced at my hands, I can still see you standing the doorway with that felt hat beaming at having recognized me.