BURLINGTON – A federal prosecutor called Serhat Gumrukcu a manipulative charmer who led a band of men in a plot to kill a business partner in a remote part of Vermont more than seven years ago.
Gumrukcu’s defense attorney described him as a caring and loving genius who was being set up by others out to save themselves from longer prison sentences by agreeing to testify against him after having been “groomed” by law enforcement to pin the blame for the fatal shooting on him.
Those were two differing pictures lawyers painted Monday for a jury hearing the case in federal court in Burlington on charges that could send Gumrukcu behind bars for the rest of his life in the 2018 death of 49-year-old Gregory Davis.
“This is a case about money, a case about manipulation, and a case about murder,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Zachary Stendig, the prosecutor, told jurors as he began his hourlong opening statement of a trial expected to run five weeks.
Gumrukcu feared Davis was going to go to authorities and accuse him of fraud in a past business deal they had, potentially jeopardizing a much more lucrative business deal Gumrukcu had in the works with someone else, the prosecutor added.
“Gregg Davis needed to be silenced,” Stendig said to the jury, leading Gumrukcu to orchestrate and fund an elaborate $300,000 murder-for-hire scheme involving three other men that resulted in Davis’ death.
Susan Marcus, Gumrukcu’s attorney, countered in her 15-minute opening statement to the jury that the prosecution has “zero” evidence to convict her client because he didn’t do it.
“Serhat Gumrukcu did not agree with anyone to kill Gregg Davis,” Marcus said, adding that he did not pay anyone to do it, either.
She said Gumrukcu was a “healer” and a “scientist” who was working on developing treatments for incurable diseases.
Gumrukcu, 42, has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges against him in the case, including murder-for-hire, and has been in custody awaiting trial since his arrest in May 2022.
Davis suspected he was being defrauded by Gumrukcu in an oil deal gone bad, according to charging documents, and eventually threatened legal action in December 2017. The following month, Davis was murdered.
Prosecutors alleged in a court filing that Gumrukcu believed the fraud allegations, if Davis alerted authorities, would jeopardize his stake worth more than $100 million in a California biotechnology startup called Enochian BioSciences.
Stendig, the prosecutor, told the jurors Monday that to head off Davis going to authorities, Gumrukcu enlisted his trusted friend Berk Eratay in the plan to kill Davis.
Both Gumrukcu and Eratay were born in Turkey, and at the time lived in the western part of the United States — Gumrukcu in Los Angeles and Eratay just outside of Las Vegas. Gumrukcu considered Eratay “like a brother,” Stendig said, and they shared an interest in magic.
Eratay then got his onetime Nevada neighbor Aron Lee Ethridge to help out, Stendig said.
Ethridge, according to the prosecutor, helped instruct an acquaintance of his, Jerry Banks of Fort Garland, Colorado, to travel to Vermont and kill Davis.
Ethridge had bonded with Banks in the past, Stendig said, over their love of fast cars as well as their use of alcohol and cocaine.
The prosecutor told the jurors that in 2017 Gumrukcu wired about $300,000 to two bank accounts controlled by Eratay with instruction to Eratay to pay Ethridge over $100,000 for his role and to cover expenses for the murder.
On Jan. 6, 2018, according to the prosecutor, Banks impersonated a deputy U.S. marshal and abducted Davis from his Vermont home in Danville under the ruse that he was arresting him. Banks then murdered Davis, Stendig said, shooting him multiple times in the head and torso.
The next day, authorities found Davis’ body, his wrists in cuffs, in a snowbank about 15 miles away in Barnet.
Who led the plot?
Authorities over the next four years pored over business records, electronic information and banking materials to piece together the links among the four men allegedly involved in the plot leading to the arrests in 2022 of the four men charged in the plot.
Banks, Ethridge and Eratay have all reached separate plea deals, agreeing to cooperate with the prosecution in the case against Gumrukcu in hopes of receiving lighter sentences.
Marcus, Gumrukcu’s attorney, told jurors Monday it was Eratay’s “dark, twisted mind” that led to Davis’ killing. She described Eratay as the ringleader, who didn’t even inform her client of what he was up to.
“This was Berk Eratay’s plot,” she told the jurors, adding, “Maybe he thought he was doing Serhat a favor.”
She said the jury should expect to hear Eratay, Banks and Ethridge testify against her client. Doing so, Marcus told the jurors, would allow them “further benefits” toward reducing their prison terms when they are sentenced.
Testimony began Monday with Gregory Davis’ widow, Melissa Davis, taking the stand.
She said that on the night of Jan. 6, 2018, a man posing as a U.S. marshal arrived at the Davis home, telling them he was there to arrest Gregory Davis and showing paperwork that appeared to be official.
“I said, ‘Where are you taking my husband?’” Melissa Davis testified Monday.
“He just said, ‘Virginia,’’” she recalled.
Melissa said she and Gregory Davis had six children at that time, and she was pregnant expecting their seventh child.
As her husband left their home that night, she testified, “He kissed me and told me that he loved me.”
“Did you see your husband again after that?” assistant U.S. attorney Paul J. Van de Graaf, another prosecutor on the case, asked Melissa Davis on the witness stand Monday.
“No, I didn’t,” she replied.
Asked by Van de Graaf what she did after her husband was driven away with the man she believed was a U.S. marshal, Melissa Davis said she gathered with the children.
Then, she added, “We prayed for their dad.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the prosecutor who questioned Melissa Davis.
