SEVIER COUNTY, Tenn. — A man convicted of murdering his 19-year-old co-worker at a Pigeon Forge diner in 2020 will serve a life sentence in prison without the possibility of parole.
The jury was in tears after it announced its sentence Thursday evening following more than an hour of deliberation in the two-day trial.
"This is truly one of the most atrocious homicides I've seen. There's not a person in this courtroom that hasn't felt for the family and friends of this young woman," Judge Rex Ogle said.
The jury had quickly returned a guilty verdict for first-degree murder Thursday afternoon less than an hour after entering deliberations following two days of testimony in the trial of Gabriel Enrique Turcios.
Turcios stabbed 19-year-old Savannah Burford numerous times in the back parking lot of the Sunliner Diner in Pigeon Forge on the night of January 8, 2020. She died a short time later in the hospital due to blood loss from her stab wounds.
After the jury announced its verdict, the court immediately moved forward with sentencing.
Turcios automatically would have served a minimum life sentence with the possibility of parole for the murder conviction under Tennessee law. However, state prosecutors said they wanted him to face an enhanced sentence without the chance of parole due to the heinous nature of the murder because it involved excessive stabbing. The defense argued he should be allowed the possibility of parole due to several mitigating factors, such as his mental state, his young age, and the absence of any prior criminal history.
Before the sentencing, the state called on a medical examiner to present specific findings in Burford’s autopsy, going into detail about her numerous stab wounds.
“The question was raised to me what order did these wounds arrive?” he told the jury as they reviewed autopsy photos and slowed-down video footage of the stabbing. “This was a very fast assault, so you won’t be able to pick out the individual blows.”
He said the first wound alone was possibly enough to be fatal. However, he said the autopsy determined the stab wounds to the neck were the primary ones that killed Burford due to blood loss.
During the video review, he said Turcios continued stabbing several times after he hit her neck when she collapsed and rolled over.
The jury was sent away to deliberate again, and after some discussion returned to announce they agreed with the state’s argument that Turcios should serve his life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Turcios was remanded into the custody of the Tennessee Department of Correction.
The Trial
Turcios' murder trial began Wednesday morning in Sevier County Court. After selecting jurors, the trial got underway with state prosecutors calling witnesses to the stand who presented evidence from the night of the stabbing.
At the heart of the deliberation process that determined Turcios' verdict: Was Turcios mentally aware of his actions and in control the night of the stabbing?
State prosecutors argued Turcios was "fully functional" the night he stabbed 19-year-old, Savannah Burford, arguing he did it in a "jealous rage" after she turned down romantic advances he made in the days before the killing. His defense team argued he was insane at the time and not able to understand what he was doing, pointing to his medical history and the absence of violent actions up until that night.
The stabbing occurred around 8:40 p.m. on January 8, 2020. Following his arrest, Turcios was charged with first-degree murder and aggravated assault.
The Pigeon Forge Police Department said it received a call about a stabbing in the parking lot of Sunliner Diner that night. Burford, an employee at the diner, was speaking with Turcios, also a diner employee, in the back parking lot of the diner when police said he attacked her with a knife.
Burford later died from her wounds.
Dr. William Oliver, who performed Burford's autopsy, testified in court Wednesday that Burford had approximately 17 stab wounds to her neck and chest as well as a wound to her brain that "would have been fatal."
Video of the attack was captured on security cameras at the diner and shown to the jury Wednesday. The video began with a camera angle showing Burford leaving the diner and Turcios following behind. A police investigator assigned to the case testified and said Turcios could be seen in the video pulling a knife out of his pocket to open it as he exited the diner before concealing it again.
The next angle showed the attack in the back parking lot. The investigator said Burford's mother -- Julia Cutter -- was parked waiting for her nearby when Turcios pulled out the knife and began stabbing Burford several times. The investigator said Cutter could be seen trying to give aid to Burford after Turcios ran away, and another bystander arrived after seeing "what she thought was punching." Several other bystanders, including a child, arrived shortly before the video ended.
Cutter told 10News in an interview after her daughter's death she remembered seeing Burford falling to the ground after the attack, her blue and white polka dot dress stained with blood.
"I could just lift her. She felt like a piece of paper," Cutter said. "The blood kept dripping all the way down... It wouldn't stop."
Burford was taken to LeConte Medical Center and was later flown to the University of Tennessee Medical Center, where she died from her wounds.
Police said they captured Turcios a short distance away from the diner that night, who claimed he had considered stabbing himself.
"My intention was, you know, to stab her and then kill myself," he told investigators in the police interrogation video presented to the court. "I eventually just stood there and was just like, 'I'll just wait for them to come.'"
In the interrogation video, Turcios admitted to stabbing Burford, telling police he had been thinking about stabbing her for days and that the devil made him do it. Turcios said the two were "just friends."
"I stabbed her," he said while smiling when asked what happened that night.
"Why did you stab her?" the interrogating officer asked.
Turcios sat silent for a moment before saying, "After I did it I regretted it."
“After I did it and I was running away, I realized that I... for some reason I stopped. I just stopped stabbing her because if I continued, right, she would have died," he said in the video, believing she had survived. "That's why she's still alive."
Prosecutors then reviewed messages sent between Turcios and Burford in the days before the stabbing on January 3 and 4. In one message after Burford had thanked him for giving her money, Turcios tells her he cares about her "like a lot," saying, "I've never had a big of a like crush on a girl this much before."
As the text continues, Burford eventually tells him she wants to "continue as friends first and get to know each other before anything else."
In a later text, Turcios begins to question if she was "serious with everything we just talked about," claiming a coworker had told him "those milkshake girls are just using you" and that one coworker said he was wasting his time "if there [sic] not giving me anything in return like sex."
The conversation continues with Turcios continuing to question her and telling her the conversations "got in my head and started convincing me." Burford later expressed anger for the coworkers' "gross and inappropriate" conversations, saying, "I can't believe you would even think that." Buford then reassured him they were still friends, and as the conversation ended she said, "I think we should just be friends. I'm sorry to maybe have lead [sic] you on and that wasn't my intention."
After calling its witnesses, state prosecutors rested their case. Following a short recess, the defense then called Turcio's mother to testify about her son's background through an interpreter.
The mother said her son suffered from anemia and a life-long sickle cell condition that required medication and regular blood transfusions. This information would later be brought up in testimony by a psychiatrist who said the condition is known to cause brain dysfunctions.
She also said he had been exposed to violence at a young age, saying he saw she was tortured by his father until they separated when he was 4 years old.
The mother said there were times a counselor would come to the house for about two years, saying the counselor told her the son had problems determining between "right and wrong." The mother also said he made concerning statements to her and would accuse her of things that weren't true, but said he was "never violent" until the night of the stabbing.
The mother said she was concerned about something her son told her before his trial.
"He told me that Gabriel wasn't the one that was going to come to court, but it was going to be the skeleton that was in control of him," the interpreter said.
After the mother's testimony, the court went into recess for the day.
Court returned to session Thursday morning with the defense calling for testimony from Dr. James Alexander, a psychiatrist and long-time consultant at Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center and other regional hospitals.
Alexander said he was tasked with reviewing the case materials and interviewing the defendant to determine his mental state at the time of the stabbing, eventually concluding Turcios has brain dysfunctions.
Alexander said the majority of patients he sees have brain dysfunctions that change the way they perceive the world and affect their actions.
In his review of the case, he said he interviewed Turcios for three hours, interviewed his mother and co-workers, and went through the videos and messages that were shown in court Wednesday. He said he believed Turcios suffered from paranoid schizophrenia based on the evidence and showed signs of previous strokes.
“He was just not able to think in a straight, reasonable manner,” he said.
In his opinion, Turcios' sickle cell disease was significant to his mental state. Alexander said people with the condition often suffer from painful blood clots that happen across their bodies, including in the brain. He said people with the disease often unknowingly suffer "silent strokes," with the risk increasing with age.
Alexander said he also ordered a brain MRI and EEG on Turcios, saying the radiologist reported signs of these small strokes in the form of white matter lesions seen on the scans.
After lengthy testimony from Alexander, the court went into recess for lunch before returning for the prosecution's cross-examination.
The state argued Turcios' medical history had not established a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia or mental illness at the time of the stabbing. Alexander told the prosecutor he believes the text messages exchanged between Turcios and Burford in the days before the stabbing showed a "dramatic change" in Turcios' mental state, saying he appeared to be in a paranoid state.
Turcios declined to testify before attorneys delivered their closing arguments. The jury entered deliberations just before 3 p.m. Thursday.