CRIME
Philip Gilberti found dead
Updated: March 14, 2012 - 05:49 pm
A day after police say Philip Gilberti shot and killed a woman in downtown Kensington and then was found dead inside a Rockville home, more people are coming forward to describe what they say is his troubled past.
Gilberti, 51, was wanted in connection with the Tuesday morning shooting death of Heather Lynn McGuire when he was found dead of what police say was a self-inflicted gunshot wound several hours later.
A Montgomery County Police source tells ABC7 that McGuire, who authorities say was Gilberti's estranged wife, tried to get out of the car during an argument, at which point police believe Gilberti shot her in the back of the head.
McGuire, 36, was a mother of six children.
Arrested for violating protective order
On Wednesday, several people who knew Gilberti said that his reputation for violence goes way back. Gilberti, a former professional boxer, was arrested in 1992 for robbery; in 1993 for theft and reckless endangerment; in 1994 for battery, in 1995 for stalking.
In 1996, he was charged with attempted murder in Nevada, pleaded to a lesser charge and served 10 years in prison.
More recently, though, court documents show that Gilberti was arrested last weekend for stalking and violating a protective order. McGuire had previously left handwritten notes detailing her terror, including a series of death threats, but Gilberti was released from jail without bond pending a hearing that was supposed to occur Tuesday.
That hearing never happened.
Gilberti's intimidation was widespread
"We were all pretty much in fear of him," Tony Rosakis, one of Gilberti's high school boxing friends, said. It was at Rosakis' Rockville home where police eventually found Gilberti dead after the day-long manhunt.
Another high school acquaintance, Tony Kurtz, said he once experienced Gilberti's intimidation first-hand after he said he dated one of his girlfriends.
"(He was) tremendously jealous and came after me with a gun," Kurtz said.
George Horman says Gilberti was once married to his daughter, who left Gilberti because of alleged abuse.
"She was scared to death of him," Horman says. "One day she just come here crying saying I got to get away from him. he's going to kill me. she was just that scared of him. he's just mean."
Friends say that when they returned to the Aspen Hill home, they found the back door kicked in and the woman who lived there gone.
"There was blood all over the sheets pillows in the bedroom and everything was torn up like a brawl and her car was gone," one friend says.
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