A Maryland man was angry with his pharmacist brother for administering coronavirus vaccines before he killed the brother, sister-in-law and a family friend in a triple homicide that led to a police manhunt, investigators allege in court documents.
Jeffrey Burnham, 46, of Cumberland, had previously told his mother that he wanted to confront his older brother, Brian Robinette, about what he claimed was the government poisoning people with the shots, according to court documents filed in Howard County District Court.
“Brian knows something!” he repeatedly said to her, according to the documents first reported by Baltimore-area news outlets.
On Sept. 30, Burnham fatally shot his 58-year-old brother in the front foyer of his Ellicott City home and killed his brother’s wife, 57-year-old Kelly Robinette, in an upstairs bedroom, police said.
Burnham was charged with two counts of first- and second-degree murder in those killings.
He was also charged in the fatal stabbing of a family friend, 83-year-old Rebecca Reynolds, inside her Cumberland home a day earlier. Police said he stole Reynolds’s car and drove to the Robinettes. Information on the specific charges in that case was not immediately available.
Burnham is being held without bond in Allegany County. An attorney for him was not listed in court recordsand his family could not be immediately reached.
Burnham’s mother had earlier raised concerns to authorities about her son’s mental health, the court documents in Howard County state. On Sept. 29, Evelyn Burnham told the Cumberland Police Department that her son had made comments about the FBI coming after the two of them that made her question his stability, according to the court documents.
Evelyn Burnham again called the police when they were investigating the killing of the Robinettes to report a phone call from her son stating that he “needed to return Becky’s car.”
Evelyn Burnham told police that Reynolds was her classmate and she called her “Becky.” She also told police about her son’s feelings toward the coronavirus vaccine and his brother for administering it.
Hours after Burnham killed the Robinettes, law enforcement alleges, an unnamed tipster contacted Maryland State Police reporting that Burnham had asked him for gas and said his brother was “killing people with the covid shot.” The tipster, according to court records, also said Burnham told him that he would see him on TV. Burnham was driving his deceased brother’s red Corvette,police said.
Local news outlets reported that police tried to track down Burnham for 18 hours before he flagged down a firefighter and told him he “had been forced to kill three people.”
He was arrested at The Billy Motel & Bar in Davis, W. Va. with a gun inside the car, according to news reports.
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