Serhat Gumrukcu
A California-based biosciences company took immediate steps to distance itself from a co-founder after federal prosecutors announced on Wednesday the inventor had been indicted in a sprawling coast-to-coast murder-for-hire scheme that has so far ensnared at least four defendants.
Serhat Gumrukcu, 39, of Los Angeles, California, and Berk Eratay, 35, of Las Vegas, Nevada, were arrested after a Vermont grand jury indicted the duo for allegedly conspiring to use interstate commerce facilities — namely, cell phones — in the murder of 49-year-old Gregory Davis. Both Gumrukcu and Eratay made initial court appearances in their respective states this week, the DOJ said.
Davis was a resident of Danville, Vermont, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Vermont said in a press release. Danville is a town outside St. Johnsbury, a quaint locale in the state’s northeast kingdom; it sits a little less than an hour from the Canadian border.
Prosecutors previously charged Jerry Banks, 34, of Fort Garland, Colorado, with kidnapping Davis from his Vermont home on Jan. 6, 2018. The next day, “Davis was found dead in a snowbank several miles from his residence,” prosecutors said.
“Although Banks is not charged with Davis’s murder, the government has alleged that Banks murdered Davis,” they explained.
Banks was indicted April 14, but he was earlier charged by complaint on March 30. Attached to the complaint is a lengthy affidavit which outlines how Davis was allegedly killed.
That document reads, in part, as follows:
On January 7, 2018, [Vermont State Police] responded to a homicide in Barnet, VT. The victim . . . was found partially covered by snow near the base of a snowbank on a pull off area near the west side of Peacham Road. The victim was…
