[B]ARRE — A judge who asked the attorney for a Barre man if he intended to call a DNA expert to the stand in his client’s upcoming first-degree murder trial got a quick reply.
“Their DNA is so bad, I don’t need an expert,” David Sleigh, a lawyer representing Randal Gebo, said of the prosecution’s case against his client.
Gebo is facing the murder charge in the slaying of his girlfriend Cindy Cook in July 2017.
Instead, Sleigh told Judge Mary Morrissey during a hearing in the case Thursday in Washington County Superior criminal court in Barre, the only expert he planned to call during the trial would be a pathologist, though he didn’t say why.
Asked after the hearing what defense he planned to mount in the upcoming trial, Sleigh told a reporter, “You’ll have to listen along with the 12 people that matter.”
The selection process to pick those 12 jurors is slated to start in July, with the trial to follow once a panel is chosen.
During the hearing Thursday, attorneys for both sides said they were still on track for that trial date, though they were still working out the details of a questionnaire that potential jurors would be asked to fill out ahead of the selection.
Cook’s slaying and the later nationwide manhunt for Gebo received widespread media attention across Vermont when it occurred in the summer of 2017. However, the case has received little press coverage since.
Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Anderson, one of the prosecutors in the case, did discuss in court Thursday at least one piece of evidence that will come into play during the trial.
Anderson talked of a cord found around Cook’s body and a cord found more than two weeks later in the vehicle Gebo was located in.
“Those cords appear to be a match,” Anderson said.
Police found Cook’s body over an embankment off Brook Road in Middlesex on July 12, 2017. An autopsy revealed bruising on Cook’s neck and evidence of blunt force to her head, neck and torso.
Also, according to court filings, her hands and feet were bound with dog leashes.
Authorities believe that she had been dead several days before her remains were located, with police saying they believed she was killed late July 4 or the following day.
Gebo had lived with Cook, 59, for a little more than a year at her apartment in Barre.
According to a police affidavit filed in support of the murder charge against, Cook’s twin sister told police that her sister told her that Gebo was sometimes verbally abusive.
Gebo was arrested about a week after Cook’s remains were discovered. Gebo was taken into custody in Downers Grove, Illinois, driving Cook’s missing mini Cooper.
He was then taken back to Vermont and arraigned on the murder charge. He pleaded not guilty and has been held without bail since.
Police believe Cook and Gebo had been camping near the Middlesex road where her nearly naked body was found. Police allege that after the killing, Gebo took Cook’s car and credit cards and headed west.
Gebo had drained money from Cook’s checking account and maxed out her credit cards during his two weeks on the run, according to police.
Judge Morrissey during the hearing Thursday asked the prosecutors about the number of out-of-state witnesses they may call to testify in the case.
“The affidavit details sort of tracking Mr. Gebo’s movements across the country with credit card receipts,” the judge said. “You’re not calling any of those witnesses who are at those other locations.”
“Potentially,” Anderson replied, adding that it would depend whether Sleigh would agree to any stipulations regarding that evidence.
“If we have to,” Anderson said, “we would have to call somebody from Bank of America in order to authenticate those locations and uses of the credit cards.”
If convicted of first-degree murder, Gebo faces up to life in prison.
