Georgia Man's Brutal Stabbing Death Baffles Investigators: "Something Happened in Those Woods"

Jeffrey Gebhardt died of 17 stab wounds to the chest and one to the upper stomach, ruling out an accidental hunting death by a stray bullet. Three of the stab wounds were directly to his heart. His backpack, wallet, and rifle were found near his body, with nothing missing. A folding knife was found partially under his body, with blood on it. Police believed his friend, David Smith, was the last known person to have contact with him.

“If it wasn’t random, Mr. Smith was the only person in the vicinity that really would have known Mr. Gebhardt,” Goodman said.

Smith and Gebhardt had known each other for years, and had been coworkers at Chambers Slaughterhouse. Smith told officers he’d last seen Gebhardt when he dropped him off at his hunting stand around 4 p.m. When it was dark, Smith claimed he went to pick Gebhardt up, and found he’d disappeared.

“I got a voicemail from him that said, ‘Blow the horn.’ And I blowed the horn…it was like fifteen after eight. It was dark,” Smith said in a police recording.

Smith said he called Gebhardt back and told him he was going to get help to look for him. Other hunters joined the search, but when they were unable to locate him, they decided to call 911. Of the 286 people signed in to hunt in the area that weekend, police never found anyone else to be a credible suspect, except David Smith.

“This interview with David got pretty intense,” Boynton said. “But he denies that he is the one responsible for taking the life of Jeff Gebhardt. He is adamant about it. And he never cracks.”

Other hunters corroborated Smith’s story of helping him search for Gebhardt.

“It appeared that there was no way David Smith could have committed the crime,” Charla Perdue, CSI Program Coordinator for Florida State University, said on Accident, Suicide or Murder. “Because he was basically with different sets of hunters from 8:30 on. And the last time Jeff talked to David on the phone was 8:30.”

On Nov. 14, 2012, police got DNA results back, and the blood on the knife found by Gebhardt’s body belonged to Gebhardt. All of the knives taken from David Smith tested negative for human blood, clearing him as a suspect. On Nov. 20, 2012, the final report from the medical examiner ruled Jeffrey Gebhardt’s manner of death as a suicide.

Jeffrey Gebhardt’s family and friends were adamant that he did not die by suicide.

“Someone doing that to themself, to kill themselves?” Russell Cornell, Gebhardt family friend, said on Accident, Suicide or Murder. “He worked in a slaughterhouse, and he knew how to bleed out an animal efficiently and quickly. Why would he stab himself 17 times when he could have just cut here, here, and here and had a quiet death and drain his blood?”

Gebhardt had recently enrolled at North Georgia College to go back to school and major in computer science, and his parents, with whom he lived, said he displayed no indications of depression or suicidal thoughts.

“Jeff’s mom is a nurse. She says she knows the signs to look for. And that her son, Jeff Gebhardt, displayed none of them,” Boynton said.

The family also raised other questions with police.

“Why would Jeff Gebhardt tell David Smith to call 911 — to come find him — if he was indeed planning to kill himself?” Boynton said.

But the medical examiner carefully laid out why his death was a suicide.

“The wound paths were fairly straight on and they weren’t jagged or widened in any way,” Goodman said. “If there was more of a struggle, the wounds would have probably opened up more than they did.”

The medical examiner also said many of the stab wounds were hesitation wounds that barely broke the skin.

“Hesitation marks are not unusual when the person is trying to determine their tolerance or to work up the courage to complete a deeper stab wound,” Perdue said. “According to the medical examiner’s report, all of the wounds were in an area that Jeff could reach.”

The family asked for a grand jury to hear the facts and weigh in. The jury agreed Jeffrey Gebhardt died by suicide, and on Aug. 6, 2013, the case was closed.

Years later, the Florida State CSI decided to take a look at the case.

“It appears, from a photo, that it would be unusual for it to be a suicide,” Perdue said. “Based on a first look, one hundred percent of us thought it was a homicide.”

But there were no signs of struggle at the scene, or signs of another person’s presence.

“Short of someone carrying a 230-pound man and laying him there, keeping him completely still during the act, there was just no physical way that a homicide could have been completed,” Perdue said.

Gebhardt’s family had concerns that the knife was found folded, partially under his body.

“This type of death could take anywhere from 30 seconds to five minutes and it’s our belief that Jeff tried to shut the knife. Maybe laid it on his torso. And it slid down next to his body,” Perdue explained.

FSU CSI also theorized why Gebhardt may have called for help.

“It’s not uncommon in suicides for people to want to be found,” Perdue said. “They do not want to cause their families or loved ones any more pain then they’re already going to suffer. They like to be found early on.”

In May 2022, the FSU CSI also concluded Jeffrey Gebhardt’s death was a suicide.