A 43-year-old Fallbrook man was brought before a judge on November 30 and charged with strangling to death his ex-girlfriend on the eve of her birthday, November 23.

Michael David Robles pleaded not guilty and denied the special allegation of lying-in-wait, which would make him eligible for the death penalty or life in prison without parole.

Prosecutor Kelly Mok told the judge that Robles was seen by a neighbor lurking around his ex-girlfriend’s Carlsbad home that evening, and hiding in the bushes there. Although he was confronted by the neighbor and he ran away once, Robles came back and hid again, according to the prosecutor.

Robles slipped inside the home of Kathleen Cary Scharbarth, 34, when she walked her boyfriend out to his car that night, and when the woman came back into her home, that’s when he confronted and killed her, the prosecutor said.

Scharbarth’s 13-year-old daughter was reportedly asleep upstairs at the time. Michael David Robles buried Scharbarth’s body in a shallow grave in Fallbrook, the prosecutor alleges, and then he went to Thanksgiving dinner at a friend’s home on November 24.

Robles had allegedly purchased tickets to fly to Mexico on November 25, the day he was arrested.

Pictured: Michael David Robles

Photograph by Nick Morris