Paid lover charged with murder of beloved Detroit brain surgeon
A suspect has finally been charged for the brutal murder of Dr. Devon Hoover, the beloved Detroit neurosurgeon who was found slain in his own home last year.
Desmond Burks, 34, is accused of killing Hoover and stealing money and two designer watches worth several thousand dollars each, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said Wednesday.
Burks and Hoover, 53, were in an intimate relationship, and Burks occasionally charged the doctor for sex, Worthy explained, citing over 4,000 text messages that were examined by investigators.
The long investigation started on April 22, 2023, when a civilian complaint reported white Range Rover blocking a driveway. When police towed the car, they noticed what looked like blood on its interior, Worthy said.
The car was registered to Hoover. When police stopped by his Boston Edison mansion, they noticed that the back driveway gate was wide open, but could not make contact with anyone in the house.
The next day, the Detroit authorities received a call for a welfare check from Hoover’s family, who were worried that he had not shown up to see his mother on her deathbed, Worthy told reporters Wednesday.
The police returned to the meticulously restored historic home, where they saw the back gate was still open and noted what looked like blood on an exterior door.
Hoover was subsequently found naked, face down and wrapped in a bloody rug that was shoved into the third-floor attic crawl space. An autopsy determined that he had been shot twice in the head.
The physician’s wallet, credit cards, over $30,000 in cash and designer watches were missing from the scene, Worthy explained.
Fraudulent transactions on Hoover’s bank account popped up within days of his body being found, she added.
In addition to the trove of text messages, authorities linked Burks to the case via street camera footage that showed a man abandoning Hoover’s car the day before his body was found, Worthy revealed on Wednesday.
The person in the video was carrying a backpack and walked with a limp. Burks was also known to have a limp at that time before he was recovering from being shot in the hip, she explained.
When police executed a search warrant at Burks’ residence, they found one of Hoover’s Cartier watches, which he purchased in 2020 for $6,000, Worthy noted.
In April, another search at a previously unknown address of Burks’ turned up the second Cartier watch, which Hoover bought just one day before he was killed for around $7,500.
Despite mounting evidence, many witnesses were initially reluctant to speak to authorities due to the “sensitive and personal” nature of Burks and Devon’s relationship, Worthy said.
In addition to the Detroit area, the investigation spanned four more states – Ohio, Indiana, Texas, and California – as well as England, and France, Worthy said, though she declined to elaborate on the nature of those inquiries.
Worthy also confirmed that Burks was the person of interest police arrested a few days after the murder, but later released.
Burks is charged of premeditated murder, felony murder, larceny of over $20,000, using a computer to commit a crime, and six firearms charges, Worthy announced.
He is being held on $1 million cash bail, and will be arraigned on Thursday morning.
The prosecutor declined to discuss any more specifics about the case, which she promised would all be aired out in court.
Burks is also being held on a second-degree charge related to a road rage incident in April during which he allegedly fatally punched an elderly man who rear-ended him.
That incident and Hoover’s case are completely unrelated, she clarified.
