PATHOLOGICAL-Henry J. Cordes

with such precision? Detective Derek Moys wasn't sure what he was dealing with when in March two thousand and eight, he walked into a home in an affluent Omaha neighborhood and was confronted with the bodies of an eleven year old boy and the housekeeper. Both had been murdered with kitchen knives plunged into their throats. Who would do something so vile and why? Lacking answers, Moys and other detectives

working the case were stumped. Five years later, a strikingly similar crime occurred in which two more victims were brutally murdered with knives expertly thrust into their jugular veins. The modus operandi of the murders pointed MOIS and a special task force in the direction of looking for a serial killer, but no one could have anticipated that path would lead

to the Department of Pathology at Creighton University. In Pathological the Murderous Rage of Doctor Anthony Garcia, authors Henry J. Cordyce and Todd Cooper, who covered the story for the Omaha World Herald, recount the dramatic tale of deep seated revenge, determined detectives, and the sensational trial of the doctor turned serial killer. The bo featuring this evening is Pathological the Murderous Rage of Doctor Anthony Garcia, with my special guest, journalist and author Henry J.

I followed the chief back to his office. I was just a reporter covering the case of the world here and I followed him back to his office just to kind of get some you know, try to pump him for some extra information that would be exclusive just for our our readers. But I asked him that very day, I said, when all this is over, would you be willing to make your detectives available for interview about how

this case was cracked. I didn't even know at the time who those detectives were, but I just had a sense that there would be an amazing story there. And my plan was to wasn't to write a book, but to to write a multi part narrative for the newspaper. In fact, I had already I soon after sketched out what I thought would be like an eight part narrative.

It would run from a Sunday to a Sunday and our daily newspaper, but once I got once the trial was over, and once I got to sit down with those detectives, the case, the tale is so truly amazing and detailed that once I started to earth sit down and writing and I told my editor, this isn't just the series for the paper, this is a book. And then it turned out to be like fifty two thousand words worth of the Tale of Anthony Garcia.

Hunter family. So tell us about Detective Derres Morris and what he finds, and tell us a little bit more about the home in which this murder occurs and who are the owners?

things occur. In this case, so he's the first detective walk in the door. He walks in, there's some cleaning supplies set out in front of him, just kind of casually sit down there and then off off right to his to the left is the body of eleven year old boy with a knife. And not not only had he been stabbed in the neck and the knife had been left in his neck and so extreme and he continues the case. He walks into the kitchen just beyond where the boy is, sees a knife block on the counter.

It's he recognizes right away that from the stainless steel handles, this is the knife. This is the block from which that knife came from. And uh, and he he knows that there are two bodies in the home. And after he goes through the kitchen, uh, he he comes upon the second body, the housekeeper, also with a knife with

a stainless steel handle still stuck in her neck. And uh, you know, this is a detective who you know, Omaha has a share of homicides, but there's a detective that's used to dealing with you know, gang related shootings and and drug related crime. And and so he just sees right away this is wow. This is a huge departure from anything I've ever encountered. And the the knife wounds

in the neck particularly baffled them. And in fact, they they would baffle him and and all of the detectives or for the next five years.

two hours later, the video game was still on. In fact, Bill Hunter referred to it as that awful music, you know, the background music of the video game that was playing.

So Doctor Hunter came home around five o'clock, which, as we now know, was about two hours after the murders, because it was not long after Tom came home that their neighbors reported seeing a man, an olive skinned man, drive up the street kind of like he was scoping out addresses, pause in front of the Hunter home, continue around the corner park, make his way to the home very casually. About a half hour later, around three point thirty,

equally very casually walking away. And the man had been driving a Silver CRV, And so that's pretty much all they had at that point. We know it's olive given man, the silver CRV. Nobody had a license plate. The thought that it was an out of state plate, and but that's all they had to go on. And and just the extremity of these types of murders. And part of the problem that the detectives faced right away was they didn't even know who the vic you know, intended victim was,

you know, was it Tommy himself, the boy? Was it the housekeeper, was it the Hunter parents? And and because there was no clear motive, police ended up looking in a lot of different areas. And uh, the housekeeper had some uh in her family, there was some history of drug use, and she had been having a big conflict with her daughter's boyfriend and uh and and there had

been some physical violence associated with him. And so the place kind of that was kind of a natural first place they looked because because there was a there there there was did appear to be a violent individual there. There had been a murder the previous year that happened in Omaha where a woman was stabbed to death, and in that case, the knife had been left in her neck, and which was just a very unusual thing. No one in Omaha could ever recall any case or that had happened,

let alone two in a year. And so that case was and they had a suspect in that case who had not yet been arrested, and so they probe ties he may have had to anyone there in the house. And then the Hunters, of course were asked about patients and folks they worked with, and in fact they were questioned many times early on about that, and and Bill Hunter in particular, he just could not imagine anybody he had ever worked with or had ever known who could

have done something like this. He just thought he had had no conflicts with anybody recently. Now, there were some other folks in the in the Creighton Pathology department, which is the where he worked, and there were some other folks who were suspected. The suspected a doctor who had been in the program a couple of years earlier, who was a Russian background, and who had been seen as

kind of creepy variously. There were some people who who who thought he was a little bit shifty, and and so he was a suspect who many Bell Hunter didn't even think he was a suspect either, but several others that Creighton did, and he ended up getting a good look. But you know, of those three primary suspects early on, the violent boyfriend, the guy who had who they believed had committed a similar murder, and this Russian doctor. They

were all pretty heavily vetted and they went nowhere. They didn't get they in all cases, they found that these people had an alibi for the time of the murders. Uh, and they were pretty stomped. And after a while they started focusing on Tommy's interaction and video gaming and online to think whether he had you know, this could have

been some type of internet crime and UH. They looked a lot into his interactions and they found some interactions that concerned them and with with some with some folks, including in an online chat room where he was interacting with a guy who was much older. You know, this is a website that was for pre teens, and he was interacting with a guy who turned out was in college, you know, much older than than the the and so it's like, what is this college guy doing in this

chat room? He was being vetted. So there were a lot of different ways that they looked early on, but all of them led led nowhere, and within a year the case was cold, was transferred to the cold case unit. UH. They followed up on st reluctant stuff, but to the great frustration of everyone in Omaham. The original case just didn't get anywhere.

up to a dozen stab wounds. They were all confined to the right side of the neck kind of just below the jawline, and which is where where the crowded our artery and is located, and and and and In fact, then in the autopsy they did find that in both victims, they ate croted our artery and the jugglar vein had both been completely severed. And and which would be a very quick way to kill somebody and capacitate somebody. And and so the thought was this, whoever did this knew

what he was doing. Now if we can look back now and say, well, obviously it was a doctor and and and certainly that was thought that that was that was a possibility, which was one of the reasons that they they looked hard and to or at least look to some degree at the at the folks that the hunters could identify who they'd been associated with. But uh, but the the hunters, the folks that they steered them

onto again, it just didn't take them anywhere. Now with this they say that for me, now, was there another part of that question? I think there was another part of the question earlier on, and I'm forgetting what that was. Now. We just loved it.

was Roger Brumback. Well, she was often a Mother's day outing with her husband and they as they're approaching home, they find there's a burglar alarm has been tripped at their home and so her husband they get home minutes later, husband checks it out finds that somebody had tried to force their way into the back of their home, had been rebuffed and able to get in, and then an alarm and sounded and they had left. It took a while for police to put this together because the Butchers

did not originally report that attempted break in. They didn't think it was a big deal. But two days later, please show up at the home of doctor Roger Brumback, who again, like I said, was he was the head of the Creton Mythology apartment and colleague of both Bill Hunter and Chander. Buttra he and his wife were found murder in their home, and they had both be well. Roger had been shot, but they had both also been

stabbed to death. In fact, they'd been stabbed to death with knives that were taken from the home, stabbed in the right sides of their necks. And so this this murder, these bodies are discovered two days after Mother's Day. And who was the first detective who walks in the door but Derek Moys and uh, the same one who had been on the case five years earlier. And he he's with a colleague named Scott Warner, and he right away starts noticing things that are very familiar to him and uh.

The two victims another immaculate home, no sign of burglary, and both killed with with with knife wounds to their necks. Although in this case the the Roger Prumbback, it appeared had been initially accosted at the front door with a gun. The way that Derek Moys pieced it together was Roger someone showed up the front door, accosted Roger, shot him.

There was a struggle with Roger Moore of the shots we were let off, but the cartridge eventually fell out of the gun, but not before Roger had been shot. The assailant then took the gun and used it to batter Mary in the head, his wife. He proceeds to go and get knives from the kitchen, gets ends up in a horrible fight with Mary where she's trying to fight off this man with the knife before she's subdued and just suffers very grievous wounds as she's trying to

fight off this guy with the knife. And then after he killed Mary, he went over to Roger, who was also probably already dead. He'd been shot three times. But the assailant goes over to Roger, and just to make sure he's dead, he leaves that signature knife move wound in the side of of his and so Moist recognizes this right away, and he doesn't think, oh my god, these cases are related because you see some goofy things,

but he was but his antenna was up. And then with the shortly after he makes his first casing of the home they place identify the victim to be Roger Brumback of the creat University Pathology department, and all of a sudden things are starting to fall into place.

right in the doorway where was first assaulted. And then it was pretty clear when the person assaulted Mary with the gun, this now inoperable gun which has no clip in it, when when he struck her in the head, the gun broke, and because Derek moys who was kind of a gun nut, very quickly noticed the recoil spring and the rod and a and a piece of the frame that had broken off the front of the gun, which is what caused the other pieces to fall out.

And so there were some gun pieces left behind, which which which the resident gun expert at the at the Omaha Police Department Uh very quickly determines to be a Smith and West with and Smith and Wesson St. Nine and and that does become important later on as as Derek moys Uh and the task force attempt to piece together what's happened here.

kind of give them a little extra manpower. But yes, so Derek was on the task force along with Scott Warner, and the two other detectives that become pretty important are

Ryan Davis and Nick Herford. And what happened was so when the task force gets formed, Uh, Scott Warner had done a lot of work on the Russian, and so since the Russian had been in the pathology department, he's initially he all of a sudden becomes suspect number one again and so they they Scott Warner gets back on the trail of the Russian, you know, does he have an alibi for these killings as he seemed to they

the first time around? And Davis and Herfurt there they have their roles and and Derek Morris has his initial role too, which was just to look into Mary Brumback, the wife, to see if there was anything in her background that that, you know, would anybody want to kill her. And that was his initial assignment and he spent a week on it. You know, vetting Mary, talking to people know her, you know, does she have any skeletons in

their closet? It wasn't really a likely path to find this killer, but but it was work that needed to be done, and it very quickly, you know, with after doing about seven or eight of these interviews, Derek could see, you know, this isn't going anywhere. He goes to his sergeant, said,

you know, this is a dead end. And the sergeant agrees, and he says, well, you know, there's a bunch of other guys that are going through the personnel records from Creighton because of the pathology department link between the two

sets of murders. This time, they rather than just talking to the hunters and some others about who they thought was suspicious, they pulled all the personnel records from the pathology department from everyone who was working there or had worked there, and these folks were all the records were put into individual binders, and so the sergeant says, you know, these guys are going through those records. When I go in, I'll get you one of those binders and and you

can work on that. And so the sergeant leaves and returns short thereafter with a binder, lays it on the desk of Derek Moys and the name on the binder is doctor Anthony Garcia. Again another one of those cases where Derek Moys is just the right night, in the right place all the time. In this case, he gets one binder out of the dozens that they had done, and it turned out to be the binder of the of the man who would become the prime suspect in these murders.

even seven years, even before the Hunter killings. But he couldn't even remember the Garcia's name that he had been one of those two who had been fired, So he was not his profile. He had not been elevated at

all to any degree. Derek Morris was really looking through a random minder at this point and he starts reading it and it's just a bunch of dry personnel records, but he very quickly realizes that, hey, this guy was fired, and there's some interesting things related to that, and he can see that he would the part of the firing related to Butra because he was having a big conflict with Buttra who was giving him bad reviews as because what Anthony Garcia was was he was a medical resident.

He had come to Creighton in two thousand as a just a he as a fresh medical school graduate and who was looking to get certified in his specialty, which with his chosen specialty here is pathology. So he was one of several new residents who was coming to go through what should have been four years of training at Creighton. And so Derek Moyes quickly sees that, hey, he was fired. He didn't even make it a year. Within this thing,

he had a conflict for future. And then he sees the letter of for the actual firing letter and the two names two signatures at the bottom are Bill Hunter and Roger Brumback. And so he's like, wow, this guy has motive to kill everyone, and so he again it's just motive, though they don't. He doesn't. Again, he doesn't have any more reason to think that this is their guy.

But he starts to look into the background of the Anthony Garcia, who he sees now lives in Terre Haute, Indiana, And in the process of that and getting some record from the folks in Tera Hate, he ends up getting a driving history, vehicle registration history for Anthony Garcia, and it just pops off the page. To him, this is like the two days after he first picked up Garcia's book, that Garcia in March of two thousand and eight was driving a silver Honda CRV, the same type of vehicle

that had been seen outside the Hunter Home. To him, this is like totally elevates this ole man to a new level. And he goes to his sergeant and he goes, I want Nick, Nick Herford, I want Ryan Davis. These are two guys on his regular homicide unit in OPD. And he goes, I want Nick and I want Ryan, and I want you guys to leave us the heck alone, because he kind of had a sense that they were on to their guy at that point.

records and phone records. And in the meantime, while they're waiting for those records to come in, after they've they've made the those requests, they look more into the background of doctor Garcia, and it becomes very apparent to them that yes, not only did this guy have motive, this guy had been very largely unsuccessful in his medical career, and it seemed like at critical moments that firing that he had undergone from Creighton years earlier would come back

to haunt him. And I guess how we haven't mentioned what he was fired about. But he had been about eleven months into his pathology residency when he pulled a prank essentially on another resident who was taking a very high stakes exam that was going to determine whether he was going to be certified as a pathologist, and basically called up the man's wife while he was taking this exam and said he needs to come to Crayton right away,

and if he doesn't, he's going to be fired. And they eventually figured out who made this synonymous call and that it was doctor Russia and that's why he was fired. But he was but he had he had been a complete misfit up to that point anyway, and was pretty it was he was on his way to getting drummed out UH at the end of his first year. But because of this, he didn't even make it through the

first year. They just said he's you're gone now. And so this had this had had come back to haunt him, and so they did a lot to fill in the back.

In fact, they found records that showed that he had been fired from another residency in early two thousand and eight at LSU UH and the reason the LSU people had fired him was because they had become aware that he had falsified his records when he applied for this LSU residency and had indicated that he had completed a full year at Creighton and that he had never been disciplined, which they found to be false, and so they fired him. Well, Nick Herford is the one who's going through those records

and he realizes, holy count. When you looked at the day that this guy was fired at LSU, it was almost two weeks to the day before the murders in the Hunter Home. So that's all of a sudden, you know, It's not like this guy was waiting seven years to commit this. There was a much more immediate trigger that caused this to happen, and so they did more established motive and so then it came time again to try to show, Okay, he has the motive now, but did

can we show he was an omaha? And the phone records they have requested from att for Garcia's cell phone, it took several weeks of the come in, but when they came in, they were very excited to get them. They look at them and they find on Mother's Day there was a single call in his call records, and it was a call that had gone unanswered, so he hadn't even answered the phone, but the records still showed that he had received a call that had gone to voicemail.

And Nick Herford was the one who's going through these records, but the other guys were right over his shoulder because they knew this was a huge, you know, moment. And so the in the cell phone records, there were also a longitude and latitude number next to that call. Those were basically the location of the cell tower when that

call was placed. And they saw the call had come in at five PM on that day, which was this would be on their timeline that they were working with about an hour and a half after the Brumbacks were killed. And so they put in the latitude and longitude number.

And there was a funny thing that happened before that, but I won't spoil, but they put it in an in Bingo, a map comes up and they see some stuff that's very familiar to them that the essentially Garcia when that call had come to his phone, was basically just a little more than an hour east of Omaha. And they are very excited because they knew we got him now we got him, I mean they he's now a not a person of interest. Is this is what

makes him a full fledged suspect. They now think they have the guy, but they still got a now set about to prove.

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percent off your first purchase. We talked about the team with Derek Moist and Scott Warner Herford and Nick Herdford

and Ron Davis, Ryan Davis. Pardon me right now, they have to put this completely together, make a PowerPoint presentation to the prosecution to be able to state their case, hoping that they have enough of evidence, that they've done enough work and they can convince that prosecution to be able to be able to take the next steps to be able to capture him, arrest him, and successfully prosecute him. What does this team do next?

phone call to a place called Gander Mountain, which Gander Mountain didn't mean anything to Nick, but for Derek Moyes it did. He knew Gander Mountain was an outdoor outfitting store, and he also knew that they sold guns, and so seeing this calls to Gander Mountain again, it's just a hunch, I wonder if he could have bought a gun from

Gander Mountain. So Ryan Davis goes out for with a search warrant through the Indiana State Police to get the gun records from Gander Mountain and they come back some days later, and sure enough they show that not only had Roger excuse me, Anthony Garcia bought a gun from Gander Mountain in the spring of twenty thirteen, not long before Roger Brumback was killed. He purchased an ST nine so boom that now they've they've kind of established the

possible means, his possible means for committing these murders. And and then they also got much better information by this time on where Garcia was because, as I mentioned, they the detectives today used phone records and credit card records to try to place people are as certain place at a certain time. Well, the Garcia was having huge financial problems.

The part of the problem, probably the reason he went on this rampage was he was just kind of hitting the end of his line here, and so he had tons of credit cards that he'd had at various times and canceled and had had and so the moist was the one who was going through the credit cards and they were just very extensive, and that he'd been going through these for weeks and wasn't get anywhere. Well, finally

he got some credit card records from Region's Bank. And they had been slow coming in and he had he had been begging them to uh try you know, well, he modified his request. He just he really wanted to get he didn't know if if if this card was the card, but all the other cards had shown nothing, and they they got these records from Region's Bank, Uh, and they did show that around the time of the murders, there were a couple of credit card transactions that had

taken place. One was in Omaha, Nebraska. It was that at what Moys found to be a chicken Wing restaurant, and and then the other one was at a convenience store right across the river from Omahon, Council of Loss, Iowa. It was a beer purchase that happened just a couple

hours before the Brumbacks were murdered. So again now they they and in fact that not only did the convenience store have the sales record of that beer purchase, they had video, So they could now see video of Anthony Garcia driving up uh to this place right across the river from Omaha, going in and making his purchase. You know, he couldn't say, hey, somebody still my credit card, they he would, So they felt that they they can now conclusively prove that he was in Omaha at the time

of the murders. And that's what made the task force finally and the prosecutors say, yeah, go get him now.

four people, so they have to consider that he's dangerous. Well, they get to Indianapolis and they immediately see that, oh my gosh, he's on the move. They'd been pinging his cell phone. They've been getting a half hour every half hour getting an email from the cell phone company telling them the location of the cell phone. They could see that Garcia was on the move. In fact, he'd left Indiana and was on his in Illinois and was headed south.

So they had to reassess their plan so that once they arrived in Terra hate They decided that two FBI agents who were part of the task force would would head south into Illinois. I try to locate him and tail him and get on his tail, see what he's gonna do. The hope was that he was just taking a little business trip or something and would be coming back to Terra Haute. But they had to prepare for the possibility that that he was he was he was

on his way. They didn't know where they could he be working, could he be fleeing, had he learned about them? Had They didn't really know what what would had happened, And as it turned out, as will later find, looks like he was on his way to go kill more people. So the FBI agents they they they they locate the the They do locate his car at a hotel uh and outside of town, a small town in off the interstate in uh in Illinois, and they set up outside. There comes a little bit of a snapoo again you

know the all de deals of that. But the essentially the next morning he he ends up leaving. Garcia leaves without them noticing. They go into uh uh panic mode and chase him down. They eventually do locate him and then they and then they're just tailing him. It's it's early in the morning, he's driving south. They don't know

where where he's going. And at this point there it's he's getting close to leaving Illinois and uh heading into Kentucky, I believe is the state that borders there, and they in downstate Illinois at this point they're like, we can't allow him. It's very obviously he's not going back to terror hope, and we don't want him to leave Illinois because we're already engaged with the Illinois State Police here. Uh,

let's stop him before he hits the border. And so just about thirty miles before the border h some and again there's kind of interest noting nothing just happens normally in this case, but there is kind of thing how how the arrest ended up going down to But the state troopers do are able to make the arrest that morning, and that they find that Garcia is drunk, completely drunk,

and they take him in for a d UI. But but he shortly after finds out that he's got way more problems than just a DUI on his hands.

It has a Ferrari park in the driveway, you know, and it's all very pretentious. And they get in and then get inside and it's it's a completely different picture. You know, outside do you think this is the homeless successful doctor. They get inside, they find that there's almost no furniture in their place. There's not even a bed. There's an air mattress set out on the floor that

Garcia was sleeping in, and there's places a mess. Other than there are some records set out on the table and nice piles with you know, we're all at right angles kind of the important documents of his life. And then the sink they find a kind of amateur effort to destroy a bunch of documents, and they had been put in the sink with some kind of chemical with

the hope that that would destroy them. But Davis and her pretty quickly see that some of them include some writings that appear to be pretty incriminating, talking about breaking into homes and covering up his fingertips, and and they're like, I think we need to keep this stuff, and so so they kind of the scene they found in the home was just, frankly, just bilar and and it's the first, as as Herfert later says, this is the first indications we we got that not only we were dealing with

on homicidal doctor, dealing with one that was kind of a little bit office rocker.

they also knew the Silvery CRV was. His family still had it all these years later, five years after the Hunter murders, and so they are heading out there to impound the vehicle, but they also start interviewing his family, and they start interviewing people who know Garcia, and and kind of a narrative starts to emerge that now that Garcia was he hadn't even really even wanted to be a doctor. It had never been his thing. He'd been

kind of pushed into it by his family. He was academically probably not set up to do it as i Q as average as could be. He had a re disability. So he'd entered medical school reading at about a fifth grade level. If you can imagine what that would be like to try to get through medical school when you're when you're reading at a grade school level. Now I don't know what this says about our medical system. That he did get through medical school and even passed his exams.

In some cases, it took a lot of extra efforty it took him an extra year to get through medical school, and he had to get special education accommodations, and it took him several tries to pass his his board exams, but he did. He he passed them. He became doctor Garcia. But then to to really be a successful doctor, though, you have to become then certified in a in a specialty. And what they found was that he failed miserably whenever

he tried to do that. They learned that he had first the Creighton Pathology program that he was drummed out. That wasn't even his first residency that they found there was another one even before that in New York, and that he had he had failed at based based on his personality and just his ineptitude, And then the Creighton one had happened, and and then he even after Creighton, he had still landed in another residency in Illinois and

he had failed at that one. And then the last straw was the fourth and final residency, which was the one that had happened in uh in LSU. Now, despite the fact he didn't have a specialty, he was able to get work, you know, doing kind of health checks, you know, stuff that you know, taking blood pressure, you know, going to a poise of business and and and you know, it wasn't lucrative work, but he was able to get

some work. And and the reason he was in terre haute was he was working in a prison and was was doing health care for prisoners. And as you can imagine, our prisoners must not get the finest of healthcare because after Anthony Garcia was one of the people who was caring for them at the federal prison in in Illin or in Indiana rather. And but even that that eventually he just it's very clear by the time he shortly after he leaves Creton that he has some mental health issues.

He was battling depression. And he landed after he bounced out of the LSU residency, or rather the Illinois residency in Chicago, he in about two thousand and three, ends up back home in California. He even thinks about becoming a car mechanic, and his parents said, you know, you don't have to do this doctor thing. But he somehow between two thousand and three and two thousand and seven, after he thought about going to law school, I thought

about doing a lot of different things. He ends up back in psychiatry, and that's what the LSU residency was for, and it could be his own mental his own struggles with mental health was what had generated this interest in psychiatry and the so he failed in that one. He ends up back in, like I said, doing this work at this prison in Indiana. But then he loses that job too, and and at this point he's just in

a real spiral. His mental health is. He has a lot of bizarre interactions with law enforcement, nothing criminal, but just making calls to law enforcement saying that he was he was suicidal. He seems like he's constantly drunk. He shows up at workplaces drunk, and and his and he's about to lose his home to this foreclosure. He's just on this horrible downward spiral. And it's in the midst

of that that the Brumback killing that occurred. And and he had continued to spiral downward right up until the

point he was arrested. And like I said, they would get evidence because not only would they find the evidence in Terre Haute in California that showed just what a downwards by all this guy was in there, Derek Moyes s and Scott Warner would find some pretty significant evidence in his car that he had been driving when he was arrested in Illinois, which included a sledgehammer, a crowbar, a new gun, and his old LSU lab coat taken

out of mothballs. You know, seven or you know. By this point, it's more than five years after he's left LSU, and the road, the interstate he was on was a road that would take you to Shreveport, Louisiana, which is where this health science center is located. It becomes pretty obvious to them he was on his way to kill again.

And as we learned once Nick Herford post arrest begins his work in digital forensics, which is a really fascinating part of this case, we learned that these doctors at LSU weren't even probably his only intended victims still, that there were still others who were on Anthony Garcia his radar.

have the tablet. He also looked at the tablet that most people wouldn't maybe do what he did with it, but on the tablet they found a lot of information and like you say, plans for other doctors that he was going to nact revenge on.

opening up Google and googling Roger Brumback's address. And because we know that his initial target when he came to Omahamoud had actually been buttra that we as we know that one had been foiled and it wasn't that Nick was able to show that after that within minutes after that failed attempt at Bututro's he sits down at a chicken restaurant apparently when the he opened up Google Map and it said Google would like to use your location services, and he said yes, and he placed himself right there

out at the restaurant when he when he googled Roger Brumback's address, and so he's able to literally show him at the chicken restaurant, plotting the the killing of Roger Brumback. Right there, finds lots of other incriminating stuff on the phone, stuff that he had other searches for other victims, mapping locations to other victims' homes and uh, trying to come up with other criminal ways to make money. Like you said, he in this in this spiral at the time. And uh,

and just and the way that Nick finds it. You know, sometimes this is stuff that he's deleted from the phone, but that isn't enough to stop Nick. He has he has other ways of of of workarounds to find to find what he was looking for. And and and one of the last things Nick does is just makes a general search through the phone data for the word revenge because because the thought is that you know, this was

his his motive. And sure enough he finds that Brumback or Garcia, had made a search on his phone for the words shall I not revenge? You know, which is a line from shakespeare Act actually The Merchant of Venice.

tattees are often shown below his works. His shirt pleaves and he's a Buddhist and he's a very interesting guy. He but he's also very obsessive about his cases and the fact that they had not found the gun, continued to bother him. You know, they had the records that showed that he owned it estein Naim. They had some pieces of what appeared to be an st time, but

they didn't have the actual gun. And Moyst was bothered by this, and he was ready to contact every law enforcement agency between Omaha and Terra Ho to try to see if any of them had found the gun, because the idea was that he had likely ditched it somewhere between Omaha and when it his return home to Tara Hope. But Warner kind of talked to him and they were like, there has to be a better way to do this. And you know, we don't have any good database on guns.

The only database is one that you can search for if you have a missing or lost gun, you can search to see if anyone has turned it in. Well, and that wasn't like the gun Moist knew wasn't likely to be in there because because Garcia would never report

that gun missing or lost. But Warner had this idea that's like, well, what if we searched the searches, what if there were what would we do if we were law enforcement agency and we found this gun, Well, we would run it through this database to see if it was lost or stolen. So Warner had this idea, well, can we search the searches to see if anybody has ever searched for this gun, because if they have, that's

it's an indication they might have it. And and the technician and the department said, well, it's not really what we do, but you know, she said, I'll see if

it's possible. And sure enough, Moyce gets an email in his from her the next day saying, hey, there was one other search that wasn't Omaha and Clark County in Illinois, and gives them the phone number and he calls them, and sure enough, a matter of months after the Brumback killings, there was a guy, and it's kind of a funny story, that had found the gun right along the side out of the road in Illinois, not far from Terre Haute.

And so, you know, Garcia is no criminal mastermind. You know, there's probably a million different ways he could have ditched that gun, but in this case, he had just dropped it by the side of the road. And because of that, and because of this just doggedness of Derek Moyes, you know they were able to find the gun.

Tell us a little bit about the emergence of Cecila Hoffman and in significance to this case.

nailed on the Brumback killings. They had the weapon, they had him placed in Omaha with the credit card on the phone records, they had obviously our kinds of motive, and so they that was a pretty slammed dunk case on those killings. But the Hunter killings that was more problematic. They had the similarity between those killings in the Brumback killing, so you know, that's the reason they tried them together.

They hoped that they could use the strong much stronger evidence in the Brumback case to help convict him of the Hunter killings. But they and they had the fact that he drove a silver CRV and that he was they was olive skin, like millions of other people out there, So they that was all they had and they didn't have anything else. They weren't able to ever get anything

that placed him in Omaha. You know, this was five years after the fact by the time they identify him, So they don't have much of a It's a very very thin and circumstantial case they have in the Hunter

killings except for one thing. Davis and Herfert when after they do the search of the home in Taratt HOAt, they they they're interviewing people in the orbit of Anthony Garcia and they learn about his affinity for strip clubs, and through that they learned about Cecilia Hoffmann, who was a stripper who had a bit of a relationship with Panthony Garcia. It wasn't the kind of a relationship he wanted. She was just using him to get this big spender

to spend money on him. He had taken a true interest in her, and they they and there was talk that that Cecilia had something to say about what what Garcia and something he had said to her, and so Nick and and Ryan track her down and uh, and you know, they weren't sure whether she'd be credible. You know, she is a stripper after all, And but she sits down with them and they find her to be very honest, very straightforward, gets very emotional as she talks about what

had happened. And she mentioned that, yeah, there was a time when when Garcia had told her that he had he had once killed quote a young boy in an old woman. And I mean it was tantamount to a confession, you know, of the of the killings in Omaha in two thousand and eight and h and so there was all kinds of court fights as to whether this was

going to be admissible or not. But but it prevailed, and she became by far the star witness at trial because because she is represents the most telling evidence linking Anthony Garcia to the killings of Tom Hunter and Shirley Sherman in two thousand and eight.

too personal. And so she outside the club during a smoke break one night, She's said it's time and she said, you know, doctor Tony, you know it's really not going to work with us, because you know, you're a good guy. You're a doctor and I'm a bad girl. And he goes, well, I'm not such a good guy. In fact, I've killed people. And so the reason he admitted to it was he thought he was going to impress her that I don't know, I'm a bad guy too, so we can be together.

And that's when he made this admission to her, and she kind of dismiss did at the time, didn't think much of it. And it wasn't until Nick Davis or Nick Davis, Nick Herford, and Ryan Davis sat down with her for the first time that she realized, Wow, holy cow,

this really did happen. And her trial and so and so, like I said, she becomes the most sensational witness at trial, and and and the when people read that part of the book, I mean her her testimony is sensational, and it is and and it produces some So she let's just say, she turns out despite the defense's efforts to impune her integrity, she turns out to be a great witness. And there's some very very dramatic moments that occur at trial because of that.

don't practice here normally. And and so they just everything was combative and they were fighting a prosecutor on everything. And and and Mada, the younger Mada male in particular, was just had a fiery temper and when he would just lose it in hearings and he'd start yelling and uh, and that's what also was also going on at trial, and in fact, the most climactic moment in the trial uh, and features a moment when when he's yelling at the top of his voice at so so Ya Hoffmann as

as she's sitting there on the stand. Uh. They're just uh unbelievable. I mean, like I said, this case had everything, I mean nothing ever, nothing about this case was ever normal, and that includes her right right up to the point he's at trial.

three boys in this home. And you know, they to them, this wasn't the home where their youngest son was killed. This is the home where this family had just created, you know, decades of memory as the boys were growing up. And and and so Claire Hunter is is very strong, and she is a trial every day. She's uh, she wants to she wants to see, she wants to see

and hear it all with Bill. You know, he had you know, he had suffered for PTSD for a year after you know, you imagine what it's like to walk into your home and find your son with a knife in his neck. And so it had been very difficult him. But but I will say this, even though he stayed away from the trial, he had to testify a trial.

He had to testify about finding his son and he had to and then he had he came back again to tell the very long history that he had with Anthony Garcia and what had happened back in Crayton in two thousand and two thousand and one that led to the firing. And Bill was very very very strong witness at trial. But because of the concerns about PTSD. He wasn't going to sit there through the corners reports or

any thing like that. But his wife did, you know, she was a very strong person also at the trial every day where Shirley Sherman's family, you know, she we haven't talked much about Shirley or really any of the victims. And that's one of the things I love about Pathological. We're able to go deep into the backgrounds of the victims here so people can see what was lost and who was lost. And it wasn't just the promised seven eleven year old boy who was gifted and very smart

and was bound for great things. It was you know, Shirley Sherman was you know, she was kind of the glue of her family. And she had sacrificed a lot in her life too for her family and to keep her family together and as a single parent and caring for an elderly mother. And and and two of her brothers were and her son were both also regular as at trial every day, kind of in honor of you know,

just this family matriarch that had been lost. And of course the brobacks were you know, they were wonderful people too, and and uh Roger very successful doctor, and and and Mary uh just a very compassionate, giving person and uh and uh so that those victims family, the Brumbacks did generally stayed away from the courtroom, but the Waite family and Claire Hunter they were they were there every day and and and it led to a kind of a neat scene once the verdict finally came down, where you

had a room where the prosecutors, the victims families all gathered right after the verdict. Generally it's it's a meeting that is typically held where the prosecutors tell them, Okay, here's what happens next. You know, there'll be a sentencing hearing. You know, it's really more just an informational thing. But but in the end, uh, the task force detectives including Derek moyce and Nick Herfurt and Warner, they all end

up coming into this room too. And so here gathering one place, you have all of the significant players, from the detectives who cracked the case, to the prosecutors to the families of the victims. They're all gathering one place. And it's kind of a neat scene that takes place kind of right after the conviction comes down from the jury.

I don't know if we noted that not only take up five years to find him, it took another three plus years for him to go to trial, and it took another almost two years for him to be sentenced. Everything about this case just dragged on and on and on. But finally, earlier, just this very year, he was finally sentenced and he was sentenced to death. Of course, we know that that doesn't mean anything in our system today. He has years and years of appeals ahead of him.

And the last execution that was done here in Nebraska, we just did have one this year, but it was a guy who had killed Kudrich two cab drivers in the nineteen seventies, and so it shows you how long this appeal. I would be shocked if he actually ends up seeing a death sentence. But there's no questions he's never going to see the light of the light of day again.

was very personal to him. He had had visions of Tom in his sleep at times because this case just had not at him so much. And and so it was meaningful for him to be in the courtroom that day. And he's not a lot of guy guy who who uh is comfortable with a lot of attention. But he was in the room with the families after the after the verdict, they were obviously very grateful, and it did turn him into kind of a little bit of a celebrity.

You know that both a couple of the networks did in magazine style documentaries on on the case, and he was prominently featured in those and uh uh and but he he remains a homicide detective in Omaha today, still still very dedicated to his work. And uh but he would tell you this is a case that will live with him forever.