BURLINGTON — Two onetime friends from Turkey came face-to-face in a Burlington courtroom this week as one of the men — who has already admitted his guilt in a murder-for-hire plot — testified against the other, who is on trial for his alleged role as the mastermind behind the fatal hit.
Berk Eratay took the stand Tuesday in federal court and has spent the past three days answering questions about the scheme that led to the January 2018 fatal shooting of 49-year-old Gregory Davis of Danville, in what prosecutors allege was an oil deal gone bad.
Serhat Gumrukcu watched from his seat at the defense table about 30 feet away, often looking intently at Eratay, the man he referred to in the past as “brother” and bonded with over a shared interest in magic.
If convicted of the charges against him, Gumrukcu, a biomedical researcher and business magnate most recently from Los Angeles, faces up to life in prison.
“Whose idea was it to kill Gregg Davis?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul van de Graaf, the prosecutor, asked Eratay moments after he sat down in the witness chair.
“Serhat Gumrukcu,” Eratay replied.
“Who was in charge of the plot?” Van de Graaf followed up soon after.
“It was Serhat,” Eratay responded.
Attorney Susan Marcus, representing Gumrukcu, later peppered Eratay with questions during her cross-examination about a plea deal he reached with prosecutors and the “benefits” he was receiving from it, including no longer facing the possibility of life behind bars.
Eratay, 38, pleaded guilty in March 2024 to charges of murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and conspiracy to launder money.
Eratay was the third of four defendants in the murder-for-hire case to reach a plea agreement. Gumrukcu, 42, was the only person charged who took his case to trial. His trial started Monday and is expected to run through mid-April.
Prosecutors have alleged that Gumrukcu wanted Davis dead over a failed business transaction.
Gumrukcu, according to prosecutors, feared Davis was going to go to the FBI with evidence that Gumrukcu was defrauding him in a multimillion-dollar oil deal that he had entered into with Davis.
Gumrukcu was concerned, charging documents in his case stated, that any fraud allegations against him could hurt a bigger business deal he was working on where he had roughly $100 million stake in a biotech startup.
As part of Eratay’s plea deal, prosecutors agreed to not request a prison sentence of more than 292 months, or a little more than 24 years. His attorneys can argue for any lesser sentence. The terms of the plea deal also called for Eratay to cooperate with the prosecution.
In addition, Eratay testified, federal prosecutors in Vermont agreed as part of the plea deal to not stand in the way of his possible return to Turkey, where he was born and raised, to serve out his sentence closer to his family.
Marcus, during her questioning of Eratay, suggested that if the prosecution felt he did a good job testifying against Gumrukcu, he stood a better chance at getting a lesser prison sentence.
Eratay disputed that pleasing the prosecutors or any length of his prison term was a motivating factor in his willingness to enter into the plea deal.
Instead, Eratay claimed it was the death of his own father that he learned about in jail as he was awaiting his own trial that prompted him to “tell the truth” about the plot.
“At some point,” Eratay testified. “I realized what is happening to me is also happening to the victim’s family — they lost a father.”
Marcus, in an apparent attempt to discredit Eratay’s testimony about his motivation for entering into the plea deal, pointed to transcripts of phone calls he made from jail after agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors in which he disparaged Davis.
Marcus, reading from a transcript, asked Eratay if he remembered saying, “Fuck the crime, fuck the dead person.”
Eratay responded that wasn’t a proper translation of the call, which was made in Turkish. Instead, he said, a more accurate account of it in English would be, “Screw the crime, screw the dead person.”
Eratay testified that the comment reflected mood swings he had been dealing with since the death of his father and his own situation of having been locked up since his arrest in 2022.
Eratay testified this week that the actions he took in the plot were directed by Gumrukcu.
Eratay told jurors about his work in developing phony financial documents at Gumrukcu’s urging to help cover up some of the roughly $300,000 prosecutors alleged Gumrukcu paid to other parties to help carry out the murder scheme as well as additional fraudulent activities.
Eratay also told jurors about electronic communications that those involved in the plot, including Gumrukcu, shared through a secure encrypted messaging and phone service app.
Both Eratay and Gumrukcu were arrested in May 2022 in the case and have been held in custody since.
Their arrests represented a dramatic fall for both men, who had met years earlier when they lived in Turkey and who, Eratay testified, had both achieved a bit of fame there.
Eratay told jurors he won a $100,000 prize on a popular magic competition television show in that country, beating out a dozen other contestants. Gumrukcu was also a magician in Turkey, Eratay testified, and was well-known as a “new age” healer.
Eratay said he later moved to Las Vegas, where he knew other magicians, and eventually got a job working for his friend, Gumrukcu, who had moved to Los Angeles, helping him with “IT support” and “personal assistant-type” tasks for $7,000 a month.
At one point, Eratay testified, Gumrukcu brought up with him that he needed to have Davis killed and asked if he knew anybody who could do the job.
Eratay testified he enlisted the help of a past neighbor of his in Nevada, Aron Lee Ethridge, and Ethridge then found a friend of his, Jerry Banks, of Fort Garland, Colorado, to carry out the hit on Davis.
Banks traveled to Vermont on Jan. 6, 2018, according to charging documents, and posing as a U.S. marshal, complete with a badge, went to Davis’ residence in Danville and told Davis he was under arrest.
Davis was placed in handcuffs and driven away. The next day Davis’ body was found in a snowbank in Barnet, about 15 miles away. Davis had been shot several times and killed, court documents stated, his hands still shackled behind his back when police found his body.
Banks and Ethridge each reached plea deals for their roles in Davis’ slaying and are awaiting sentencing. They have also agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and testify against Gumrukcu. Both are expected to take the stand in the coming days.
Van de Graaf, the prosecutor, asked Eratay during the trial this week why he went along with actions he alleged Gumrukcu told him to perform in helping to carry out the deadly scheme.
Eratay replied that the plot just “snowballed” and that he saw it as part of his “job” in working for Gumrukcu.
He added that Gumrukcu had also been his friend.
Eratay was still on the stand when court ended Thursday. He was expected to continue testifying Friday.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Key witness testifies in murder-for-hire trial as prosecutors press case of accused plot leader.