Erick Buhr insists he didn't kill his grandmother while testifying at second-degree murder trial

Warning: This story contains details that some readers may find disturbing.

Erick Buhr, the man on trial for second-degree murder in the death of his grandmother Viola Erb, took the stand Thursday to testify in his own defense.

In his opening statement to the jury, defense lawyer Bruce Ritter said: “Mr. Buhr, I will be submitting to you, was wrongly accused of the crime of murder.”

Ritter also told the jury that, at the end of the trial, he would be asking them to return a verdict of not guilty.

On Sept. 24, 2022, Viola Erb was found badly injured in the kitchen of her home near Baden, Ont. She died shortly after the arrival of first responders.

Buhr, who is now 41-years-old, testified Thursday that a couple of weeks before her death he was “mutually released” from his job as the corporate parts and warranty manager at Erb Transport, the company his grandparents founded.

Ritter asked why his employment had ended.

“My drug use,” Buhr explained, adding he had been smoking crack cocaine and it had gotten to the point where he couldn’t work without using.

Buhr said he’d been living with his grandmother for two years.

“We got along really well,” he told the court.

Buhr started wearing an ankle monitor about three months prior to Erb’s death. He testified that he’d received one call from the company that monitored his location, after they received a notification that was out of bounds. Buhr said he’d been asleep in his bed when he got the call.

Erick Buhr in a photograph taken by Waterloo Regional Police on Sept. 24, 2022. (Court exhibit)

When asked about the day of his grandmother’s death, Buhr admitted he left the house around 12:30 p.m. He said he used crack cocaine, listened to music and smoked cigarettes in a wooded area on the property, located near public trails.

Buhr told the court he smoked crack cocaine. He said it didn’t affect him too much but did give him a bit of a high and “the ability to carry on with the rest of my day.”

Ritter asked if crack cocaine had ever made him violent or forget what he’d done.

“No,” Buhr replied.

Ritter then asked if crack cocaine ever made Buhr act differently than normal.

“Definitely not,” Buhr insisted.

After about 45 minutes, Buhr said he went back into the house through a back door he’d left unlocked.

That’s when he found his grandmother lying on the kitchen floor.

Emergency services respond to a home on Sandhills Road on Saturday Sept. 24, 2022. (Dan Lauckner/CTV Kitchener)

“She was completely unresponsive,” Buhr testified. “Immediately I was traumatized and overwhelmed and panicked.”

Buhr said Erb’s face was unrecognizable, adding that her hair and face were covered in blood.

“I tried tapping her face to make her alert,” he claimed. “She was completely unresponsive to that.”

Buhr said he then tried to put Erb into a recovery position, something he’d learned previously in a first aid course, but could not get a good grip on his grandmother due to all the blood.

Buhr testified he then became even more panicked.

“I had this idea I should splash water on her face,” he explained.

Buhr said he grabbed Erb by her ankles and moved her a few feet towards the sink, where he planned to use the hose to spray water on her. Then, he changed his mind.

“I just thought, like, that she’s gone,” Buhr testified. “I decided this was a silly idea and I moved her back to where she was located, where I found her.”

He said he did that because he thought the body needed to be where it had originally been found for a subsequent forensic investigation.

Buhr then called 911. Court previously heard an audio recording of that interaction.

While he was on the call, Buhr said he looked through the house to see if anyone else was there.

That’s when he noticed he was trailing blood throughout the house, he testified.

“So I went upstairs and I took off my clothes,” Buhr said.

“Why did you feel it was necessary or appropriate to change your clothes?” Ritter asked.

“A) I was completely covered in blood and I was traipsing blood through the house, and B), the blood was really grossing me out,” Buhr replied, adding he had fainted at the sight of blood in the past.

He said he then went to get more clothes from the closet, and noticed when he turned on the closet light, his hand had left a smear of blood on the wall.

“So I decided to wash my hands,” he said.

Bloodstain at the home of Viola Erb and Erick Buhr. (Court exhibit)

Buhr testified that he went to the upstairs bathroom to wash and dry his hands.

All this happened, he said, while he was on the 911 call, though he noted his hand washing was not audible on the recording.

Bloodstain on a bathroom sink at the home of Viola Erb and Erick Buhr. (Court exhibit)

Buhr said when he first found his grandmother, he had been wearing black jeans, a Blue Jays t-shirt and socks that police later found in his bedroom.

He added when he saw the blood on his hands, before getting changed, he made flicking motions with his hand, which made the blood fly off from his fingers. He also described wiping his hands on his jeans to try and remove the blood.

Jeans found at Erick Buhr's home after his grandmother's fatal attack. (Court exhibit)

Buhr stated he left his bloodstained clothes on the floor of his bedroom, where his laundry hamper was.

“Did you try and hide any of them?” Ritter questioned.

“No,” Buhr responded.

Ritter then asked Buhr why he didn’t do CPR on his grandmother when the 911 dispatcher asked.

“Because, in my opinion, she was gone already and the blood was already grossing me out. I couldn’t stand to think about doing it,” he told court.

Buhr then described a police officer and ambulance arriving at the home. He said one of the EMS workers asked “in a concerned tone” if he had changed his clothing.

“My knee-jerk reaction was to say, ‘no, I didn’t,’” Buhr testified.

“Was that the truth?” Ritter asked.

“No, it wasn’t,” Buhr replied.

Buhr said he went to his bedroom with an officer where he was soon told that his grandmother had died. Then they moved to the garage.

“At this point, I was starting to worry,” Buhr said.

His concern was about the cocaine in the house, which he worried would get him in trouble for breaching the terms of his conditional sentence, and that police would think he was the one who hurt his grandmother.

Buhr said he felt overwhelmed as police kept asking him how he knew she was murdered.

“In my head… it’s obvious,” he testified, citing the blood and the way her face looked.

Ritter then asked about the multiple times police asked Buhr if he had changed his clothes, and whether he had ever corrected the lie he had told earlier.

“No, I didn’t. I felt I needed to run with it,” Buhr testified. “Once I lied, I felt I needed to continue lying or else I’d seem suspicious.”

Buhr was also shown photos of his hands, taken in his garage on the day of Erb’s death.

Erick Buhr's hands are shown in this court exhibit.

He noted both hands had dried blood on them, and some small nicks, that he attributed to tree cleaning work in the forest during the previous days. He testified that neither of his hands were swollen.

Ritter finished by asking: “Mr. Buhr, did you kill your grandmother?”

Buhr replied: “No, I did not.”

Cross-examination of Buhr

During cross-examination, the prosecutor brought up inconsistencies in Buhr’s testimony.

Simon McNaughton said Buhr’s timeline of events didn’t match up.

“It was 25 months ago,” Buhr replied. “I’m trying my best, sir.”

He eventually acknowledged that he may have mixed up the order of his actions that day.

McNaughton asked about an exchange between Buhr and the 911 dispatcher.

“Do you see a weapon?” they asked on the call.

“There were no weapons used,” Buhr responded.

McNaughton asked Buhr how he could make that determination, given the extent of Erb’s injuries. He noted that Buhr later told police officers it appeared as if his grandmother’s face had been hit by a baseball bat.

Buhr said he believed no weapons were used because he didn’t see any immediately afterward.

“I’m suggesting that you did do it, and that’s how you knew no weapons were used – because you didn’t use any weapons,” McNaughton pressed.

Buhr, once again, stated that he didn’t do it.

Viola Erb. (Mark Jutzi Funeral Home)

He also testified that when he searched the house, while on the 911 call, he found the closet door in Erb’s bedroom open. He claimed the safe located inside was also open, and he then closed it.

McNaughton asked why he would do that.

“I can’t say I was in the best frame of mind, sir,” Buhr responded.

The prosecutor then questioned why he didn’t tell the 911 dispatcher, given that he mentioned other things that might have evidentiary value in the call.

“I was scattered, I was traumatized, I was panicked,” Buhr said. “Does everything make sense? No, it doesn’t make sense. Could I have done things better? Of course I could have done things better.”

Buhr added that Erb didn’t keep anything in safe, other than an old land survey document.

“I knew there was nothing in it anyways, so it didn’t matter,” he told McNaughton.

The prosecutor also questioned how Buhr washed his hands while on the call with 911.

Buhr then imitated holding an imaginary phone against his shoulder to free up his two hands.

McNaughton also brought up the diluted blood stain on the sink in Buhr’s bathroom, which was later tested and determined to belong to Buhr.

Buhr claimed the blood was from an accident with a nose hair trimmer, about a week before Erb’s death.

McNaughton questioned how he remembered it so clearly and Buhr responded: “It hurt a lot.”

Buhr was also asked about a question from the 911 dispatcher within the first few seconds of the call – about anyone else currently in the house.

The recording and transcript show Buhr replied: “No.”

McNaughton asked how he knew that at the time, given that he didn’t search the home until later in the call.

Buhr said had he quickly looked around the main floor and, because of the home’s layout, most of it was visible.

McNaughton pressed on, asking why he then did another search of the home.

Buhr agreed some of what he had previously said was difficult to explain.

“That whole day was illogical to me,” he said. “My mind was jumbled up. It was scrambled. I was traumatized and panicked. I can’t make sense of it. I’m sorry that I didn’t do things better.”

Buhr added that he wished he had attempted CPR on his grandmother as she lay bleeding on the floor.

“But I never hurt her,” he reiterated.

Buhr is expected to return to the stand Friday to continue his cross-examination.