FARMINGTON – About 20 members of Grace Burton’s family gathered before the cameras outside the dead woman’s home to again appeal to the public for help in finding the person who killed their mother, grandmother and friend.

Burton was killed in an apparent home invasion during the early morning hours of Tuesday June 21.

Julie Shaw, Burton’s only daughter living in the Farmington area, said her mother had lived at the Margaret Chase Smith Apartments complex on Fairbanks Road for 10 years.

Shaw also said that her mother was suffering from bone cancer and believed she would die from that.

Shaw said Burton had already prepared her own obituary and listed cancer as the cause of her death.

“Unfortunately some person changed our mother’s obituary and took her life into his own hands and brutally killed her and snatched her away from all of us who loved her,” Shaw said.

“Ma was a kind loving woman, so full of life,” Shaw said. “She loved her family and friends.”

Police have said Burton died from stab wounds she sustained during the invasion of her home.

Tuesday Maine State Police Lt. Brian McDonough, the lead investigator on the homicide investigation, said police had interviewed 200 people and collected DNA samples from 70.

DNA evidence left at the scene by the killer was being compared to samples in Maine and national databases and the state’s crime lab was also comparing the samples collected recently. So far the results were inconclusive, McDonough said.

But he also said the state police crime lab had made the Burton case a priority and continued to analyze not only DNA but other evidence taken from the scene in hopes of a break in the case.

McDonough said an early-morning roadblock Tuesday in front of Burton’s former home did yield several more leads in the case.

When asked if police were concerned a recent home invasion in Livermore Falls may be connected McDonough said police were always concerned. He said an increasing prescription drug addiction problem in Maine had lead to increasingly violent crimes.

But McDonough said police would not speak to the motives of Burton’s attacker saying it was essential to keeping the integrity of the investigation intact.

Burton’s daughter asked people for empathy. “My family needs to know who did this to my mother – to our mother,” Julie Shaw said. “If it were your mother your family would want an answer too.”

People who may have information are urged to call the State Police at 1-800-228-0857 or the Farmington Police at 778-6311.

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