DEBARY -- The search for an accused murderer in the gunshot-slaying of a DeBary woman on Christmas Eve ended less than two days later with the discovery of the suspect's body in a wooded area of St. Johns County.
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. 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. 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 38 were 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 endedafter a citizen called the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office to report an abandoned car along a dead-end street west of St. Augustine.
After St. Johns County Sheriff's deputies discovered that the vehicle was connected to a murder suspect, they dispatched a K-9 unit into some adjacent woods. Deputies found Deo's body 100 yards away from his car.