The man accused of killing his ex-girlfriend and leading police on the longest manhunt in state history testified Tuesday that he camped near a childhood friend’s house and ate food from a garden while on the run.
Robert Burton spoke little Tuesday when he took the stand in his own defense about how he survived in the woods, wounded, for 68 days. But at one point, he visited his childhood friend George Miles at his Abbot home, he said.
Miles gave him “beat up old tent and sleeping bag” and told Burton he could pick vegetables from his garden at night, Burton said. He camped out in the woods near Miles’ home and visited the family’s garden at night, he testified.
Miles last week denied having any contact with Burton, who is accused of killing his ex-girlfriend Stephanie Ginn Gebo, 37, in her Parkman home.
When asked by his own lawyer why he did not turn himself into one of the many law enforcement officers who spent hundreds of hours searching for him, Burton said he was afraid he’d be shot.
He said he overheard two Maine State Police troopers talking one day and they said they had orders “to shoot him on sight.”
Burton, 40, of Abbot has pleaded not guilty to murder in the June 2015, shooting death of Ginn Gebo, the single mother of two.
In a dramatic re-enactment Tuesday morning, Burton demonstrated for the jury how he claims his ex-girlfriend was shot using a plastic gun and a mattress and box springs in the well of the courtroom on the seventh day of his murder trial.
He claims to have shot her in self-defense after she shot him in the shoulder. The prosecution has said that Burton intentionally shot and killed Ginn Gebo because she ended the relationship.
Burton and Ginn Gebo ended their relationship May 30, 2015, but reconciled on June 3, 2015, had sex that night and planned for a future together, Burton testified Monday. A Maine State Police Crime Laboratory technician last week said that the last time the couple had sex was more than 48 hours before her death, according to evidence.
Burton told the jury Tuesday that he came back the next night, around midnight, after spending the day mulling over accusations he’d heard about Ginn Gebo’s relationships with other men.
“I got more and more agitated during the day,” he testified. “I decided I’d bind her wrists and ankles with duct tape and make her tell the truth about other men.”
Burton said he tore strips of duct tape off a roll he had in his backpack and stuck them to his shirt. When he awoke, Burton told the jury that he felt calmer and headed to Ginn Gebo’s house.
“I forgot the duct tape was there,” he said.
When Burton arrived at her home, he saw through a pair of locked, sliding glass doors that Ginn Gebo was asleep on the sofa in the living room with the television on. When he could not rouse her by knocking on the front door, he climbed in the bedroom window, as Burton said Ginn Gebo gave him permission to do the day before.
He left his backpack and camouflage-colored coat, both of which were found by police, outside near the window, he said.
Once he woke her up, the two talked briefly before going into the bedroom, he testified.
“She asked about the strips of duct tape on my shirt,” Burton said. “I told her what I had planned to do. She said: ‘I should shoot you for thinking like that.’”
When Assistant Attorney General John Alsop asked him why a piece of duct tape was found on the victim’s forearm, Burton said, “It must have come off my shirt.”
Burton testified that after Ginn Gebo questioned him about the duct tape, he offered to leave, but said she told him to meet her in the bedroom. He said he sat on the end of the queen-sized bed and she got in it. At one point, she put both hands under her pillow.
“I knew something was not right,” Burton said. “Stephanie was not acting like herself.”
Burton, who did not realize until he’d left the house that he’d been shot, said he heard a click, then, a loud “plonk” and saw pieces of a pillow floating in the air.
Ginn Gebo changed positions until she was kneeling on the bed, resting on her feet, he said.
“She put the gun underneath my chin so hard that I saw stars,” Burton said standing next to a mattress covered in a red, fitted sheet while he held the toy gun. “She told me she was going to kill me and get away with it.”
He moved away from her, but put his hand on the gun and tried to put his finger in the trigger to keep her from shooting him, Burton said. Ginn Gebo rose and stepped off the bed but slipped on something that was on the floor. That caused the gun to go behind her back, he said.
As Burton described how Ginn Gebo fell toward him and the gun went off twice, he broke down and cried. Several times, he was asked to repeat himself so jurors and the court reporter could hear him.
Once she was on the floor, Burton said he turned the gun on himself but it misfired. As he pulled the slide back to get a bullet into the chamber, the gun went off and hit Ginn Gebo a third time, he testified.
“After this horrible accident, you didn’t call 911,” Alsop said on cross-examination. “You knew you’d done something very wrong.”
“I didn’t do nothing wrong,” Burton replied.
Burton said that sometime after his arrest, he went with the Maine State Police to the area where he hid the gun, but it was not found.
Burton said he has little memory of his first few days on the run in the woods and could not explain why he abandoned his truck. He told the jury that he left the gun in a plastic trash bag, under a rock near a culvert and under some power line in the woods.
Sixty-eight days after Ginn Gebo died, Burton turned himself in at the Piscataquis County Jail in Dover-Foxcroft on Aug. 11, 2015. He was clean shaven and appeared to be in good health, a jail employee testified last week.
Burton said Tuesday that he told jail personnel: “I’m Robert Burton. I’m here to turn myself in.”
The defense rested after Burton told his version of events in the late night and early morning hours of June 4 to 5, 2015. Closing arguments were set for Wednesday morning.
If convicted of murder, he faces between 25 years and life in prison. The maximum sentence on the gun charge is five years in prison.