DEBARY -- The search for an accused murderer in the gunshot-slaying of a DeBary woman on Christmas Eve ended tonight with the discovery of the suspect's body in a wooded area of St. Johns County, Volusia County Sheriff's spokesman Gary Davidson said.
Robert Deo was found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. Investigators believe the .38-caliber revolver found beside Deo's body
was the same weapon he used to shoot his live-in girlfriend, Christina Barber.
"Barber was found dead from a single gunshot wound Wednesday inside her home on Parkview Heights Boulevard by Volusia County Sheriff's deputies
who were sent to check on her wellbeing because she failed to show up at work," Davidson said.
The Sheriff's spokesman said deputies entered the house and located Barber's body in her bed, with Deo nowhere to be found. Barber's relatives and a co-workers told investigators that Barber was trying to end the relationship with Deo and get him out of the house, but that he wouldn't leave and was pressuring Barber to change her mind about breaking up.
Just before Christmas, Barber presented Deo with an eviction notice and had secretly made arrangements to visit a friend in North Carolina to give Deo time to move out. But two days before Christmas, Deo bought a revolver and two boxes of .38-caliber ammunition. Investigators believe Barber was murdered either late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning.
Deputies found her body at about 1:15 p.m. on Wednesday. The projectile recovered from her body appeared to be similar in diameter to a .38-caliber round.
While searching the victim's house for clues, investigators recovered detailed, hand-written notes kept by Deo with apparent instructions to himself, such as "keep fingers outside trigger" and "don't have to cock 1st but can give a better aim."
Deo apparently was looking at several guns before settling on the .38-caliber. On one note, the numbers 38were circled, with the notations: "any will kill" and "bleed to death".
Another note was an apparent reminder to himself to ask how close he could get to his victim without getting blood and body parts on him. Based on the evidence, the Sheriff's Office's Major Case unit obtained a warrant Friday night charging Deo with first-degree murder.
The search for Deo ended tonight after a citizen called the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office at about 9:15 p.m. to report an abandoned car along a dead-end street on Old Tyme Avenue west of St. Augustine.
After St. Johns County Sheriff's deputies discovered that the vehicle was connected to a murder suspect, they dispatched deputies and a K-9 unit into some adjacent woods. St. Johns deputies located the body at about 9:55 p.m., approximately 100 yards away from Deo's vehicle.