Dateline NBC - Haunting

Episode Date: March 26, 2020

In this Dateline classic, a pair of double homicides in Nebraska, five years apart, lead police to fear a serial killer may be on the loose. Josh Mankiewicz reports. Originally aired on NBC on March 17, 2017.

Talk about shutters going down your spine. Crime like this doesn't happen. This was just a lightning bolt. She was found laying face down with a large amount of blood. What does the scene tell you? What do your victims tell you? You've got a killer loose here who's specifically targeting people. Yeah.

This is at a doctor's house. Somebody's after those doctors. Four people are dead because of somebody's vengeance. Revenge. That's your motive. That's our motive. It sent shockwaves right away. Where's he going? What's he going to do? Hey, you want real life? You're getting real life. Oh God, what the hell do we have here. Winter on the Great Plains can be long, bleak and brutal. So in March, when winter briefly releases its grip for a day or two,

even the trees seem to raise their limbs in celebration. March 13, 2008, was one of those days of cautious jubilation in Omaha, Nebraska. 61 degrees and a light light velvety breeze. 11-year-old Tom Hunter wore shorts and a t-shirt to school that Thursday. It was a little after three when Tom, seen here on a security camera, got off the bus in the leafy Dundee neighborhood and headed home to play video games, as he did nearly every day. It would be hours before Tom's father returned home, but the house was not empty. 57-year-old Shirley Sherman, who scrubbed and polished the Hunter home on Thursdays, was still there. By sunset, both Tom Hunter and Shirley Sherman would be dead, murdered by a killer who was just getting started. Who did it and why were questions that would eventually take Omaha detectives all over North America

and would take more than five years to answer. This one stood out, obviously, because of the brutality, for one. Detective Derek Moyse was working 3 to 11 that day. The 911 call came in from Tom Hunter's dad, Dr. William Hunter. Dr. Hunter had come home, found Shirley Sherman and his son

deceased and would call 911. Anything unusual about that call? There wasn't a lot of emotion shown, but he is a doctor, he is a pathologist. And he's seen a lot of dead people. And he's seen a lot of death. And it was, I think to use a word, clinical. The detective and his partner were immediately dispatched

to the Hunter's stately home in Dundee. Nice part of town? It is. It's an older neighborhood, middle to upper class homes, very quiet. It's not a place where we have a lot of violent crime occur in our city. Even now, Detective Moy still remembers the coppery scent of blood that hit him when he stepped across the threshold of the Hunter home. There's a heavy metallic kind of humidity in the air almost. You almost feel it, its presence. There's a lot of it, and there was a lot of it at the Hunter household.

To the left of the front door, in the dining room off the main hallway, lay the body of the boy, Tom Hunter. He's lying on his face. His hands are down at his side. There was a fair amount of blood around his head. And down the hall, the body of the housekeeper, Shirley Sherman. She was found laying face down, a large amount of blood underneath her. A stainless steel handle and a kitchen knife protruding from the right side of her neck. Both victims had been killed in the same way. And oddly enough, there were no signs of struggle. No fingerprints.

No bloody footprints. Was this person careful or just very lucky? Could be both. You know, it's not like TV. Not every crime scene is going to yield fingerprints. Not every crime scene is going to yield DNA or trace hairs or those types of things. Anything stolen? Didn't appear to be, no.

In fact, the only things out of place were the knives. The knives came from inside the house? They did. Unusual for a killer to show up planning to do murder and also planning to find the murder weapon at the crime scene? Not necessarily. By all accounts, Dr. Hunter was still in a state of shock when police took him downtown for questioning.

When I came in, I'm sure it was right there in the hallway between the back door and the front foyer. So the first thing I, you know, I just said, where's Tom? And I think I yelled out, Tom. Do you have any idea who or why somebody would do something like this? Honestly, I've been just racking my brain. I mean, I live a peaceful existence, almost ridiculously simple.

Dr. William Hunter, known as Bill to friends and colleagues, ran the pathology residency program at nearby Creighton University. His wife, Claire, also a doctor at Creighton, was in Hawaii that day attending a conference. Her husband had to break the awful news to her from the police station. How's your wife? Crushed. Is she going to be okay?

She has a workmate that's with her. So she's not alone. That's good. The Hunters had four boys, two grown, one in college, and Tom. Jeff, a student at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln at the time, lived closest. He says it was about 8 o'clock that night when he happened to check his phone. I had all these missed calls from friends, family, so obviously I knew something was up and I couldn't get a hold of my dad, couldn't get a hold of my mom. One of my friends called me and he told me to call my brother. That was your older

brother? Yeah. What did he say had happened? Just somebody killed Tom and I need to go find my dad, talk to my dad, get to Omaha. How long a drive was that? It was like 45 minutes. Those miles between Lincoln and Omaha seemed longer than usual that night. It's hard for Jeff to remember exactly what happened when he got home. Who told him what or when? That whole thing is a blur.

I didn't sleep at all that night. You're constantly trying to figure out what's going on. You lived in that same house in which this all happened, right? Yes, whole life. Now Jeff's mind was filled with thoughts of what had happened there and of his brother Tom, who was eight years younger. He was kind of a smart aleck. He was growing up with three older brothers. He's a smart kid. He knew a lot and he just, I mean, he always

had something to say for everything. What was he up to in his life then? He went to a science magnet middle school, elementary, combined with the middle school and he really liked science. He was always outside playing, so that was his big thing. He was a good gamer, wasn't he? He was, but more times than not, he'd be outside with neighborhood kids. But it wasn't the neighborhood kids that fascinated the cops. Tom had a lot of friends he'd never actually met in real life. They were people he knew from the anonymous world of online gaming.

It was those relationships that detectives wanted to know more about. The investigation begins. Does he play around on chat rooms or anything like that that you might be nervous about? Curious conversations online. He interacted with people all over the U.S. A mysterious stranger and another murder. Where would this winding trail of clues lead? Crime like this doesn't happen in Dundee. It sent shockwaves right away. The Hunter House was eerily still when detectives arrived. The only sound, music, from a video game in the basement. Which seemed to add a haunting soundtrack to the violent and disturbing scene. It had appeared that Thomas was in the process of playing an online game on his Xbox.

You could see he had his pop and his chips in front of a chair right in front of the TV, probably like a lot of kids after school every day. And the game itself had timed out, but the music was playing kind of ominously in the background. During Bill Hunter's interview with police investigators, they got straight to the point. Does he play around on chat rooms or anything like that that you might be nervous about? I mean, I don't know. He's on. The only chat room I know he's on is Yville. Yville, it turns out, is a popular online game and chat room that attracts preteens. That wasn't all. Tom's Xbox, which allowed him to play and speak to other gamers online, was a concern.

Detectives wondered if Tom might have inadvertently come into contact with an Internet predator. We knew that he had a number of contacts and friends online through not only his Xbox, but his personal computers as well. And those people are essentially, in many cases, anonymous. To some extent, yeah, they are. So they might be kids, or they might just be saying they're kids. Correct. And that's what we would come to find out, that he interacted with people all over the U.S., in some cases outside of the U.S., through these interactive sites. Did you or anybody in your family ever worry

that Tommy was meeting people online or just talking to people online through the gaming community? People maybe you didn't know about? That didn't really come up until after the fact. We started thinking maybe that was something that could have happened, but prior to, no. And you didn't know who those people were, and he didn't either. No. Detectives determined Tom Hunter had interacted with close to 50 people online on a regular basis. Thomas Hunter was 11 years old. Did he disclose that in his gaming

activities? No. In fact, in some instances, we would come to find out that he portrayed himself as somebody who was older. Which in turn could end up playing into this. Yeah, absolutely. It would take months to track down Tom's online contacts. More pressing was what detectives were hearing from the neighbors. Several said they'd seen a stranger walking near the Hunter home late that afternoon. Tell me what the person neighbors described. An olive-complected male who was heavy-set, dressed in a collared shirt,

some described a jacket, possibly like an ill-fitting suit, with a shoulder bag. And several people would correlate that individual to a silver Honda CR-V. They identified the actual make of car. Yes. That all seems pretty helpful. Very. These same individuals would describe that that vehicle was missing a front plate, but they would describe the rear plate as kind of a white background with dark lettering and kind of describe multiple colored sunset or kind of a pastel sunset.

So it's not a Nebraska place? Out of state is what our feeling was, yes. Based on neighbors' descriptions, police produced this sketch, and four days after the murders, asked the public for help. We received hundreds of phone calls about people knowing

somebody that resembled that sketch, and each one of those leads had to be given some degree of consideration. Reporter Todd Cooper covered the story for the Omaha World-Herald. Dundee is a nice neighborhood in Omaha that's an affluent area. Doctors and others, not mansions, but stately homes. Crime like this doesn't happen in Dundee. And so it sent shockwaves right away. More depth about the computer use. While the murders in Dundee dominated the news, investigators were taking a second look at a less publicized crime. Months earlier, there had been another murder not far from Dundee. In this one, an elderly female had been bludgeoned and stabbed in the neck. We had knives that were used from her residence in her murder.

So we had similarities in that weapons were taken from her home and used against her and left the scene. But you had somebody you liked for that. The detectives that investigated that case had identified a suspect very early on, somebody who was a family member of hers, whom she had had a falling out with. And who didn't seem to have any connection with the hunters. None whatsoever. There comes a time in every homicide investigation where detectives have to focus on the victim's family and friends. As far as detectives knew, the hunters were a well-respected family. Anything come out about the hunters that you didn't know? Gambling problems? Family problems? No. There wasn't

some gigantic ghost in the closet that made us think, oh, well, there is our motive right there. Nothing like that. Since Bill and Claire Hunter were both doctors at Creighton, he a pathologist, she a cardiologist, detectives wondered if someone at the hospital might have had a motive to harm them. Do you have any patients that are upset with you? Okay. As far as I know. All right. Honestly. How about your wife?

I don't know. I mean, usually not. Everyone handles grief differently. After their youngest son was murdered in their home, the hunters seem to want nothing more than to be left alone. We're kind of a private family, so we're not too keen on talking with media. On the other hand, the family of Shirley Sherman, the other Dundee victim, desperately wanted to keep the case in the public eye. We wanted publicity. You really wanted this to be solved? Yeah. Oh yeah.

Hell yeah. They had their own ideas about who the killer might be. And the more they talked, the more detectives wondered if perhaps Shirley Sherman had actually been the intended target. A secret in the Sherman family. She hated him because of what he had been doing to me. And a new person of interest. Immediately, there was a buzz. Could it be him? Like, could it have been him?

As a building contractor, Brad Waite spends a lot of time in his truck. He's haunted by the possibility that at the very moment his sister, Shirley Sherman, was being murdered in March 2008, he was driving by, close enough perhaps to have heard her scream. I basically almost drove by Hunter's house as soon as it would have been at 4 o'clock that afternoon. I had no idea Shirley was working there that day. Later that night, Brad says he heard about the two murders in Dundee

on the 10 o'clock news. Even then, he says he didn't know his sister was a victim. That news came later in a phone call from his brother Dan. Danny called him at 1130 that night and told me what happened. Dan Waite says that from that night on, the word housekeeper has been used as shorthand for Shirley, as if her job defined her. They're always calling her the housekeeper and it. And she was only there for a couple hours every couple weeks or a week, you know. To her brothers, Dan and Brad, Shirley was big sis. The family grew after their parents divorced when they were young.

She was the one that organized everything. She would call you before somebody's birthday and say, you know, it's someone's birthday at Thursday. Or she would get everybody to go in on gifts, or she would help with the shopping. And that aspect of it is, you just don't realize it until it's gone. For Shirley's children, Kelly and Jeff, she was the single mom who often worked two jobs and stretched every dollar to make ends meet. We were one of the poorest families in the neighborhood. My mom worked bartending in the evening, cleaned houses during the day. Gardening was her specialty.

What'd she grow? Everything. Eggplant, tomatoes of five different varieties. Feeding me was probably expensive. So she'd make her own spaghetti sauce. She canned her own cucumbers and made pickles out of them. After a lifetime of hard work on her hands and knees, Jeff and Kelly say their mom had cut back. The hunters were among the few clients she had left. So she wanted to clean just a couple houses that would allow her to pick up the

grandkids from school in the afternoons and spend time with them. Spending time with the grandkids, it turns out, was relatively easy to do. She lived right next door to me. So you saw her all the time? Every day. She talked me into buying this house so she could see her grandchildren. The situation was convenient, but Kelly says it was hard to have any privacy. Her mother knew everything. Who came, who went, and who stayed the night. And now the plot thickens. I was dating a married guy. Let me guess, your mom didn't approve. No, not at all. We had an explosive relationship. Meaning?

Meaning things got broke. Kelly says that relationship became so tempestuous, so difficult, that Shirley got involved and actively tried to keep the boyfriend away. At one point in time, she was thinking about getting a restraining order, mainly for my daughter's sake. She would tell me he can't come over, and I would sneak him in. One time she'd come walking around my house with a hammer in her hand saying,

I want his blood on this hammer. She hated him that bad because of what he had been doing to me. In spite of that, Kelly stuck with the man, got pregnant, and had a baby with him. It got uglier from there. She actually started the process of getting my house Kelly stuck with the man, got pregnant, and had a baby with him. It got uglier from there. She actually started the process of getting my house out of my name. So that she could keep him out of the house.

Right. After Shirley died, what had been a very private and embarrassing family feud became fodder for public speculation. Todd Cooper, the reporter, says that starting on day one, Kelly's boyfriend was a person of interest. Immediately, the name of the boyfriend of Shirley Sherman's daughter came up. There was a buzz. Could it be him? Like, could it have been him? His name came up again and again. A doctor under the microscope.

He had had some trouble during his time at Creighton University. He was just a little bit more boisterous. By late spring 2008, two months after the murders in Dundee, detectives had powered through and eliminated nearly all of their early leads in that case. The boyfriend of Shirley's daughter, the man who looked like such a good suspect on paper, seemed to have a solid alibi. According to timesheets, he was working at the time of the murders. He was fairly cooperative, and I think we were comfortable putting him aside. We didn't have anything that would lead us to believe that he would know where she was that day and that he was in that area on the date that those crimes occurred.

The composite sketch generated leads and exactly zero suspects. There wasn't anything that you could correlate to the actual perpetrator or the crime scene that day. As for Tom Hunter's online gaming contacts, detectives deciphered the IP addresses and anonymous screen names and tracked down those people. And as far as you knew, he'd never met any of those people in real life. Correct. Turns out, none of those online contacts was anywhere near Omaha on the day of the murders.

Detectives were making progress, but reporter Todd Cooper says the nervous citizens of Omaha had no way of knowing that. All good police departments are pretty good at keeping that information close to the vest. We just kept waiting and waiting, but that question was foremost on everybody's mind. Who could have done this? Detectives returned to the theory that either Dr. Bill Hunter or his wife, Dr. Claire Hunter,

might have been the intended victim. Between the two of them, they figured, Bill Hunter's position at Creighton made him a more likely target. He basically oversaw all the students that were going through this pathology training program at Creighton University. And if there was disciplinary action to take, he would be the individual, among others, to have a direct impact on those students' lives. So potentially a lot of suspects there. Potentially, yes.

So the detective went to the pathology department at Creighton and started asking questions. Were there any individuals interacting with these folks at the time this occurred that you believe could be responsible for whatever reason? If there's a potential motive, what do you think it might be? The detective says one name kept coming up, Dr. Michael Belenke. How many times did you hear the name Michael Belenke? I can't give you an accurate answer as to how many, but his name came up again and again. Dr. Belenke was a former

resident who left the pathology program and threatened to sue Creighton a year before the murders at Dr. Hunter's home. He had had some trouble during his time at Creighton University, but they weren't unlike other people's troubles. But he was just a little bit more boisterous about his, I guess, his perceived treatment by Creighton University and some of the staff there. Dr. Belanke told detectives he'd been working in Pittsburgh on the day of the Dundee murders. Pittsburgh's like 900 miles from Omaha, so you're not driving that in a day. Correct. Presumably you're not driving that in a day. Correct. Presumably you're not doing that without air travel. Right.

And air travel is something you can check. Right. But we knew he was on the schedule. I believe we knew he had logged into his email account at that facility that day. But nobody actually saw him at work. Right. But there was nothing to show that he was anywhere other than there. Which is not an ironclad alibi, but it's nothing to show that he was anywhere other than there. Which is not an ironclad alibi, but it's not bad. It's not bad, and sometimes that's just the reality of our work.

That seemed to be the end of the line. Dr. Belenke had been the investigator's last, best lead. Unwilling to see the case go cold, Shirley Sherman's family pooled their money and offered a reward. There were a number of contributions, I think, with some other people contributing as well. Which made it how big? It was $50,000. So it was $50,000 in all, counting everybody's contributions? Yeah.

We actually wanted it at $100,000, but they wouldn't allow that because they thought it would be a bounty, which it was, in my opinion. When the reward failed to produce a break in the case, they hired a private investigator. Part of the motivation to doing that was, we're going to send a signal. We're not going to let a cold case. You saw it becoming a cold case. Well, we felt it was becoming that way. In the end, the private eye found nothing that detectives hadn't already studied and discounted. A year after the murders in Dundee, the case went cold,

and most of the detectives moved on to other things. But for the families of Shirley Sherman and Tom Hunter, there could be no moving on. How did you see your dad change? It wasn't like he was depressed all the time. He was himself. It just, there was obviously something kind of like you can always see behind someone's eyes that there's something there troubling them. And I think we all had that. Five dreadful anniversaries came and went. The dead were still inexplicably dead, and the case was still unsolved. But through it all, the detective says he stayed in touch with the Hunter and Sherman families. You kind of hear

their frustrations when they call, and they want updates, and they want to be kind of kept in the loop, but as investigators, you kind of have, you can't give them what they're looking for answers from you that you can't give them. Tough for you guys, too, because I'm sure you want to keep working on this. Meanwhile, your boss is saying, here's another case and another one and another one. Yeah, and that's why it went to the cold case unit. And that's how it stayed until May of 2013. The breakthrough moment came in brutal form. Yet another double homicide in Omaha.

For detectives who'd been at the Hunter home five years earlier, this one felt uncomfortably familiar. It was like, oh my gosh, this could very easily be related to the Dundee homicides. This was just a lightning bolt. Had the elusive Dundee killer struck again? This is the same guy. This is the same perpetrator, yes. The piano movers were suspicious. Their work order said they were supposed to make a pickup at this house in West Omaha on Tuesday morning, May 14, 2013.

But no one was home. But when they went to the front door, they observed that the front security door was open slightly. And one of the movers noted stainless steel handgun magazine lying in the doorway. And they felt that that was of some concern since they weren't getting any answer from the residents to contact 911. When Detective Moyse and his partner stepped inside, they found the body of an older man on the floor. The victim had multiple gunshot wounds and a deep stab wound to the right side of his neck.

Off to the left, you could see the female victim lying in the living room, a large area of blood. It was very clear that there had been a struggle there from all of the blood that was apparent and where it was located on the walls and so forth. Her arms and hands were covered with defensive wounds, and there was a deep gash on the right side of her neck. Beside her lay two kitchen knives. For Derek Moyse and his partner, it was a jolt of electricity and a big hit of deja vu. We were like, this is something here. We have, you know, it would seem a connection. This is the same guy. This is the same perpetrator, yes.

That's a pretty big moment. It was, yes. That's a pretty big moment. It was, very. Just as before, nothing was stolen, and the killer left no fingerprints or bloody footprints behind. But these victims had obviously put up a fight. The additional gun parts found near the front door and the nine millimeter gun clip with nine bullets remaining seemed to be proof of that. What do you make of the gun parts in the doorway? What it told me was that there had been a struggle for that gun. Why would that magazine be ejected from the gun? That shouldn't happen in the course of normal firing of a handgun, but it made sense if you're struggling over that gun. This is not a

faulty gun. This is a fight over control of the gun. It was a violent struggle, a violent encounter. The victims looked as if they'd been dead for a day or two. Detectives still didn't know who they were. But as they stepped outside, headquarters called. One of our sergeants is doing research on who the homeowners to that location were. And she had identified Roger Brumback, a doctor at Creighton University and was employed within the pathology department.

So now we have a second victim from the same office in the same specific pathology training program that we had in the 2008 case. Dr. Brumback would have been a colleague of Dr. Hunter. Yes. No question they would have known each other. No question. It had been more than five years since the killings in Dundee, but the Creighton connection was lost on no one, least of all the families of the 2008 victims, Shirley Sherman and Tom Hunter. We saw it on the news. News people say, you know, that it was Dr. Roger Brumback was head of the pathology department at Creighton University. I said, whoa.

I recognized that name right away. And the fact that it was another pathologist from Creighton killed with a knife, I automatically assumed it was related. Roger Brumback wasn't any pathologist. He was head of the department. He and Mary Brumback were both 65. In researching their final hours, reporter Todd Cooper learned the couple had last been heard from at about 2 p.m. on Mother's Day. One of the first

things we found out about was the FaceTime conversation between both Brumbacks and their daughter, and they were roaring with laughter at one point, so much that the daughter took a screenshot of the conversation. That's the kind of stuff that humanizes this, that makes it, you realize that this was just a lightning bolt in the middle of an otherwise normal Mother's Day. Carol Brumback, Roger's sister, also spoke with her brother that afternoon. Then two days later, a family member broke the awful news. Well, he said Roger and Mary were murdered. And I said, I said And I said, what are you talking about? And he said, they were murdered.

What goes through your mind? You know, I had no idea. I had no idea, you know, what had happened. Carol couldn't imagine who might want to kill her brother. Although well off, she says he and Mary had lived modestly. So tell me about his marriage to Mary. I just kind of knew that that was a match made in heaven. And they seemed really happy. They were absolutely happy. I mean, Mary just, she did everything. I think she did a lot of editing

for a lot of Roger's publications. Shortly before the murders, Roger had announced that he'd be retiring in June. He and Mary planned to move back east. In fact, that's why the piano movers had come to the house that morning. Now a town known for its stakes and insurance companies, it was once again buzzing with talk of murder. And there was absolutely no doubt at that point who was being targeted. It was chilling, just this sinking feeling of, oh man, he's struck again. A new look at an old suspect. He called our office and said, are you guys going to need to talk to me again?

And a new target? We have two crimes and potentially there would have been another. Was another doctor in the crosshairs? Sometimes detective work is a lot like shooting pool. You play all the angles, make the easy ones first, and save the money ball for last. In the case of the Omaha Killings, the basic facts stood out like bright balls on a billiard table. Two double homicides, five years apart, both in the homes of high-ranking doctors in Creighton University's pathology department.

Each victim stabbed through the carotid artery with medical precision. The next question? Well, that seemed about as obvious as the 10 ball in the side pocket. The last, best potential suspect in the 2008 murders was now top of mind for the 2013 case, Dr. Michael Balenki. But get this, before detectives could get around to looking him up, something truly astonishing happened. After the Brumback murders, he called our office because he had heard about the murders and said, are you guys going to need to talk to me again? He calls you? Mm-hmm.

I don't remember exactly what he said, but he made comments that he was glad Dr. Brownback was dead. I'm glad he's dead? Yeah, he made a comment to that effect, yes. That almost sounds like somebody's boasting about this. It could be, yeah. And again, the same detectives turned right back around and started going through the same process. Let's find out where Dr. Balenki was on Mother's Day, 2013. Turns out Dr. Balenki was living in the Northwest,

dividing his time between Vancouver and Washington State at the time of the Brumback murders. When detectives re-interviewed him, they wondered if they were missing something. Could their primary person of interest have somehow slipped in and out of Omaha undetected? Any indication that he was in Omaha? None. None. For his part, Belenke told the cops he had nothing to do with the Omaha killings. In fact, he denies ever saying he was glad Dr. Brumback was dead. In the end, detectives had to scratch Dr. Belenke off their list. Back to the drawing board. If the suspect wasn't Michael Belenke, detectives figured it had to be someone else with Creighton connections. We knew that we had to look at everybody in the pathology department, all of the staff, everybody there.

That means there are, what, maybe 1,000, couple thousand persons of interest all going in different directions? Yeah. Four days after the Brumback murders, this investigation got one more jolt. Another pathology professor from Creighton reported that at around 2.19 p.m. on Mother's Day, someone had tried to force their way into her house, setting off the burglar alarm. Fortunately, Dr. Chanda Butra and her husband were out for a Mother's Day lunch at the time. It made that theory of ours even stronger,

that now we have two crimes, and potentially there would have been another, had they been home. This is what Dr. Butra told NBC affiliate WOWT-TV. We reached there, there was no damage, nothing was missing, everything was as it was. A week after the Brumback murders, Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmatter named a special task force dedicated to solving all four murders. I understand the fear and uneasiness in our community right now.

I could feel it this morning when I spoke to employees of Creighton University and Allegiant Health, Creighton Hospital. Please know this. Law enforcement is doing everything in our power to solve these crimes. That task force consisted of homicide detectives, agents with the FBI from our local Omaha office assigned, and investigators with the Nebraska State Patrol. So this is a full court press? Yes. So investigators once again dove into the Creighton personnel files, looking for someone else who might have harbored a grudge against Drs. Hunter, Brumback, and Buttre.

You'd already been down this road before, and you'd look back, what, a couple of years? Yeah. Now what was different is we were going to go back and pull the records from, I believe we started in 2000 to 2013. How many of you were sitting there reading files? There were 21 of us assigned to the task force, and I think at some juncture, almost all of the detectives would get assigned files from Creighton. In those personnel files were several names that looked promising. Those who were nowhere near Omaha on Mother's Day were eliminated. But a couple of weeks after the Brumback killings, Detective Moyse says his boss handed him a three-ring binder from 2001. This one was thicker than the rest.

What I took away after reading that file from front to back was that, in my mind, there was enough information contained in that file that it made a very real possibility that there was a motive to want to harm Dr. Hunter, Dr. Brumback, or Dr. Butra by that individual. A new name and new fears. Were more Creighton colleagues in jeopardy? You felt some urgency. We knew that he was a very real danger. He had purchased another handgun. There is something about the openness of the Nebraska landscape that fosters a feeling of innocence, of simpler, safer times. In May 2013, a double homicide in the home of an Omaha doctor changed all of that.

It was the second time in five years that a doctor from Creighton University's pathology department had apparently been targeted for murder. In 2008, the victims were Dr. William Hunter's 11-year-old son, Tom, and his house cleaner, Shirley Sherman. The latest victims were Dr. Roger Brumback and his wife, Mary. And at 2.19 p.m., on the day the Brumbacks were last known to be alive, someone had tried to break into the home of a third Creighton pathologist, Dr. Chanda Butra. And of course, because of her position, again, we're right back to Creighton

University and specifically right back to the pathology training program. We believe that that incident as well could be related. Somebody's gone to war against the Creighton Pathology Department. It would appear that way. Detective Derek Moyse and his team had searched Creighton's personnel files before, after the murders in the Hunter home. They'd found a fascinating person of interest, Dr. Michael Balenki. But he had an alibi, and it seemed the Creighton connection was a dead end. Now they looked again, and this time, they went further back in time. And the second time around, from deep in the files of Creighton's pathology department, a new name emerged from back in 2001, Dr. Anthony Garcia. He'd been a resident in the Creighton

pathology program. Correct. And was dismissed? Terminated. Because? Of unprofessional conduct toward another resident. Dr. Brumback, Hunter, Butra, any of them involved in that? All of them. But his termination letter was signed specifically by Dr. Hunter and Dr. Brumback. Before arriving at Creighton, it seemed Anthony Garcia had been well on his way to achieving the American dream. From a working class background in Southern California, he'd finished medical school and embarked on what should have been a long and lucrative career. But then for some reason, his life began to be lit in large measure by the bridges he burned

along the way. He'd been dismissed from other residency programs, fired from some jobs, and several states had denied him a medical license. It would appear that every time that Dr. Garcia would apply for a place of employment or licensure as a physician in another state, Creighton University would get notification of that because they would get a request to verify Dr. Garcia's time that he had spent there.

And Creighton would respond, usually Dr. Brumback or Dr. Hunter, yeah, he was here, he was dismissed, he didn't do a good job. Right. And so that kept coming back to haunt Dr. Garcia, that experience at Creighton. How many times did that happen? I want to say at least seven or eight different times. To Moyse, professional failure and the need for revenge could be a powerful motive. Now the detective needed to know if Garcia had the means to commit murder. He knew Garcia now lived in Indiana, so the detective called the Indiana State Police. So when the Indiana State Police came back that day and said,

we have records of Dr. Garcia purchasing specifically a Smith & Wesson SD9 9mm shortly before the Brumback murders, well, obviously that's very significant to us. The magazine you found in the Brumback home would fit a Smith & Wesson SD9. Yeah. Now he needed to know whether Anthony Garcia was in Omaha on Mother's Day 2013. With little to go on, the detective decided to follow the money. I wanted to find out where he had active credit cards and or banking checking accounts.

And once again, the detective found an answer. A credit card issued to Anthony Garcia had been used twice in the Omaha area on Mother's Day 2013. The first charge was at around 12.30 p.m. at Casey's General Store just outside Omaha. This is store video of Garcia buying beer. The second was two hours later at a chicken joint in West Omaha called The Wing Stop. The Wing Stop is about a mile from Dr. Butra's home. I was able to get a receipt for that that showed it at 226. Well, I knew that Dr. Butra's alarm on her house had gone off at 219, and that was about a mile away from the restaurant.

So your thinking is he tries to get into the Butra house. He can't do it. Correct. He leaves, maybe knowing he set off the burglar alarm, drives about a mile to this wing restaurant, and... He makes a purchase, and we would come to find out that while he was sitting at that location, he was searching for where Dr. Brumback resided.

Based on those factors, investigators became convinced Anthony Garcia was their man. You felt some urgency to arrest Dr. Garcia quickly. Yes. Because? We knew that he was a very real danger to anybody that he could have perceived that had wronged him on some level. And we also had learned through those search warrants by the Indiana State Police that shortly after he returned to Terre Haute after the Brumback homicides that he had purchased another firearm, another handgun. In July 2013, investigators were ready to make their move. One team of detectives was sent to Indiana to arrest Anthony Garcia. Another flew to California to simultaneously search his parents' home. It was all supposed to be a coordinated operation.

But on the morning of the planned arrest, the Indiana team suddenly discovered their suspect had put them behind the eight ball. Manhunt. They're going 100 miles an hour. A doctor on the run. Would the man who eluded investigators for five years slip away again?

Two months after Dr. Roger Brumback and his wife Mary were murdered in their home, Omaha detectives flew to Indiana, ready to make an arrest. Their target was a former Creighton Med School resident, Dr. Anthony Garcia. The detectives had arranged to have a SWAT team and forensic technicians on hand in Terre Haute when they made the arrest at Garcia's home. But once their plane landed, that plan changed. After we landed in Indianapolis on Sunday afternoon and turned our phones back on, we would observe that all of a sudden Dr. Garcia's cell phone is no longer in Terre Haute

and he was mobile and he was traveling south through Illinois, which gave us obviously some concern. Because you thought he was headed where? Well, we didn't know exactly. It was possible that he would return the next day, so we kind of put our plans on hold, hoping that he would return to his residence and we would effect his arrest at his residence. Fortunately, two FBI agents who'd been working with the task force were closer to Illinois. They eventually found Garcia at a hotel off the interstate.

Our hope was that in the morning he would get up and go home and we could grab him there. But that morning, of course, when the FBI agents got up, he again was on the move and headed south. They missed him. They missed him. And now he's truly in the wind. Yes. Reporter Todd Cooper would later learn that for three hours, all agents had to go on were pings every 30 minutes from Garcia's cell phone.

They're going 100 miles an hour. The next ping comes in a half hour later, and he's behind them. So now we U-turn, and we speed back, and they're scanning the southbound lanes, and they finally find him tucked in behind a semi, and, you know, the wave of relief that must have come over them. With the help of Illinois State Troopers, Garcia was finally pulled over. Although it was only 8.30 a.m., he had a blood alcohol level twice the legal limit. The trooper said that his breath smelled of booze,

and then when he went to relieve himself, that that smelled of booze as well. Garcia was arrested on the spot for driving under the influence. From his car, police recovered a cell phone, a.45 caliber pistol, 50 bullets, a crowbar, and a sledgehammer. He told cops later that he was on a road trip to New Orleans but had no luggage. And then the most chilling thing to me was in that back seat was an LSU lab coat and a stethoscope. Investigators knew Garcia had been fired from LSU Shreveport in 2008. Was he on his way to confront doctors there? Only Anthony Garcia knows.

He clammed up when Omaha detectives tried to talk with him. We introduced ourselves as detectives from the Omaha Police Department and that we were investigating homicides in our jurisdiction, and Mr. Garcia immediately asked for an attorney. That's it? And that's it. I mean, at that point, as an investigator, I can't continue questioning. Later that afternoon, Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmatter stepped before the cameras to make the announcement that his city had been desperately waiting to hear.

Arrested this morning was Dr. Anthony Joseph Garcia for four counts of first-degree murder and use of a weapon to commit the murders. For the families of Roger and Mary Brumback, of Tom Hunter, and of Shirley Sherman, the arrest was very welcome news. I'm at Walmart with my kids, and Danny calls me and says they made an arrest in the case, and I think I forgot about 20, 30 items on my grocery shopping list because I was like real happy yeah i just had with the carton rushed out of the grocery store and wanted to go home and watch the news with anthony garcia's arrest jeff hunter says he and his parents felt as if they could finally stop looking over their shoulders i mean for five

years they're super paranoid because i mean for all that we knew, for all I always thought about was someone still trying to find my dad. Because that was always my hunch that someone was after either my mom or dad. Investigators dispatched to Anthony Garcia's home in Terre Haute, Indiana, saw the outward signposts of success. The house sat on a quiet street with a Ferrari in the drive.

But inside, the house was practically empty. Bare rooms, bare closets, and barely any food. In the living room, detectives found a table stacked with financial documents, mortgage information, and insurance policies. Anthony Garcia was broke, his home facing foreclosure. Well, it appeared to us that he had made some deliberate attempt to kind of lay things out so people could get his affairs in order. And we see those things as homicide investigators when you investigate suicides. So wherever he was headed when you arrested him, maybe that was

going to be his last journey anywhere. That was our thought, that that was going to be his end game. In addition to the documents taken from Garcia's home, investigators had to go through all the data collected from his electronic devices, cell phones, tablets, computers, and his iCloud account. You could see from his financial records that he was regularly going to alcohol stores, that he was spending a lot of time at gentlemen's clubs in and around Terre Haute. He was not working regularly. So it looked to us collectively like his life was falling apart. Hardly what Garcia's parents had envisioned for their son

when he was growing up in Southern California. Anthony Garcia's father, Fred, worked for the Postal Service. His mother, Estella, a nurse, had been born in Mexico. It was a proud moment, they told reporters, when in 1999, the eldest of their three children graduated from medical school. There's a great poignant moment where Frederick Garcia and Anthony pile his belongings, what little he has, in a rattly old van and drive across the country from California to upper state New York to start his medical career. How proud he must have been at that moment.

What started as the American dream was turning into something unthinkable. If convicted of murdering four people, Dr. Anthony Garcia, now 40 years old, faced the death penalty. His alleged motive? Revenge for getting bad job recommendations. I wake my wife up and I'm like, we've got a murder case. We've got to get up and go find a sitter for the kids. A husband and wife defense team. Big city lawyers with a few big surprises. There were so many other people with means, motive, and opportunity that could have committed this crime. As the father of four, Bob Mata appreciates a placid night of slumber.

But on Tuesday, July 16, 2013, he woke up at 4 a.m. Unable to sleep, the Chicago-area criminal attorney checked his office voicemail. That's when he saw that someone from California had left him a message. Guy starts out, well, my brother got arrested down in Southern Illinois for a DUI. And I'm like, DUI? I'm like, driving down there for a DUI? Within the next minute, he says, but it sounds like what they're actually arresting for is murder. So then obviously my interest was piqued. It was a stroke of luck. Anthony Garcia's family had been cold calling lawyers,

looking for someone to defend Anthony. Bob Mata was the first to call back. It was 2 a.m. California time when he got Anthony Garcia's brother on the phone. 30 minutes later, Bob Mata was retained to handle his first murder case. I go upstairs, I wake my wife up, who's my law partner, Allison Mata, and I'm like, we've got a murder case. We've got to get up and go to Jackson County. You've got to find a sitter for the kids. When Anthony Garcia's extradition hearing came up the next day, the Matas, Mr. and Mrs., were seated at the defense table. You are basically consenting to the authorities from Nebraska to take you back to that state to deal with these charges.

Do you understand that? Absolutely. I'm not going to answer any questions in regards to his state of mind at this point. The Matas brought in Bob's father, Robert Mata Sr., as co-counsel. Back in the 70s, the senior Mata represented a clown-turned-serial killer named John Wayne Gacy. I'd never tried a case with my dad, and he's towards the end of his career. He'd always said to me, if you get a juicy murder, that give me a call, I'll try it with you. And I called him half expecting him to be like, nah,

you know, I'm too old. I don't want to do it. And he was on board immediately. So this ended up being that case. That was that case, right? Dr. Anthony Garcia insisted he was innocent, but the Matas were concerned that extensive press coverage of the murders was giving potential jurors only one side of the story. They needed to hear that there were so many other people with means, motive, and opportunity that could have committed this crime that makes much more sense than somebody waiting 13 years to murder somebody that they knew for a very short period of time. In pretrial hearings, the Matas battled with prosecutors as if they were rival MMA fighters. Todd Cooper remembers being in the judges' chambers one day when Bob Mata started shouting at prosecutors.

There was a hearing where the Matas appeared by telephone. He was shouting, screaming. The judge started pounding on the handset, yelling, shut up, shut up, into the microphone. I mean, that's a pretrial hearing. We were seen as the Chicago lawyers who came in, stormed in, and outlaws. They didn't like us at all. Might it be easier to just list the people in Omaha that you did not offend? You know, feelings when it comes to a death penalty case

just don't come into play at all. You know, I mean, any lawyer that says they're worried about hurting people's feelings when another human being's life is at stake, again, they should probably get out of the business. In the beginning, the Matas say, Anthony Garcia was actively involved in his own defense. They say that changed over time

as court delays stretched his time in pretrial isolation from months to years. Garcia lost a lot of weight, and Bob Mata says his client's mental health deteriorated. The fact that he was in solitary confinement for three years, 23 hours a day, you know, mentally, no one can withstand that. Prosecutors who were also concerned about Garcia's mental state asked the judge to order a lengthy psychiatric evaluation. In the end, Garcia was found competent to stand trial, and a date was set for April 2016. Then this story took a most

unexpected turn. Thursday or Friday before that Monday start of jury selection, Allison Mata says to us and to two local TV stations, we have DNA tests that prove that our guy was not at the Hunter Sherman scene. Allison Mata spoke with WOWT-TV via Skype. Their physical evidence and their DNA evidence establishes undeniably, unmistakably, and without doubt, those murders were committed by two people, The claim was based on what the Matas believed to be a potential match between some unidentified DNA found on Shirley Sherman's bandana and some DNA taken from a suspect in another case. They're taking alleles from DNA, bits and pieces, and coming up with a theory that never made it to trial. But she throws it out there on the eve of trial. And prosecutors are incensed,

and it really chapped the judge. The judge took it as a clear attempt to send information to potential jurors that the state's case was suspect. As a result, the trial was postponed again. And the judge effectively kicked Allison Mata off the case. The judge denies her application to practice in the state of Nebraska. Very controversial move. It was just, I spoke to the public and that put, you know, information that could have, you know, been information to potential jurors and that violated the pretrial publicity rule. The Matas wanted to fight Allison's removal. But what their client, Anthony Garcia, apparently wanted was a trial. When the Matas appealed over his objection, Anthony Garcia completely stopped talking with his own lawyers. He deteriorated mentally coming into the trial

to the extent where he really hadn't, I mean, he didn't say one word to us. This guy's mental state at that point was just gone. It was September 2016, eight years after the first of four Omaha killings, when Dr. Anthony Garcia finally got his day in court. On hand to see it were the victim's families who'd waited the longest. My main thing was I needed to see the man who did it and determine for myself if he did it. The trial begins with a lucky break.

All of a sudden you get handed the murder weapon? Yeah, that was a gift. And a bombshell witness, a former stripper, with a revealing story. She said, I only date bad boys. And he said, well, I'm a bad boy. Years after the murders of Thomas Hunter, Shirley Sherman, and Roger and Mary Brumback, Anthony Garcia finally faced a jury. There to witness it all, friends and family of the victims. Thomas Hunter's mom, Claire Hunter, who'd been staying out of the public eye,

and Shirley Sherman's brother, Dan, were two of the first people outside the courtroom. It's been a year, you know, this has been going on for a long time. A lot of this stuff's a blur. Douglas County attorneys Don Klein and Brenda Beadle had been prepping this case for more than three years. You prosecuted for all four murders. Yes. Did you ever think about, maybe we should just take the last two? That's easier? Sure.

That was a discussion that we had many times. But the evidence, I think, would still come in, especially with a 2008 case. So it seemed like the most logical thing was, if we're going to do these, let's do them together. Their theory was whoever killed the Brumbacks also killed Thomas Hunter and Shirley Sherman. Prosecutors summed up their case in a word, revenge. And they pointed to something they found on Garcia's tablet one of the searches was just an interesting quote that had the word revenge in it so we were interested to know where that came from and it's easy to find when you'd google it it was a quote similar to one in Shakespeare's play the Merchant of

Venice if you harm me shall I not revenge not often that the Merchant of Venice. If you harm me, shall I not revenge? Not often that the Merchant of Venice comes up in a murder trial. Never before in my career. But that's your motive. Thumbs up the case. That's our motive, yeah. They argued Garcia killed because he was angry about his termination from Creighton and that it prevented him from being accepted into other programs, to which he later applied. As he continues to try and have some sort of a career, it follows him.

Every time he tried to get into a different program or get licensed somewhere, this Creighton thing pops up. And prosecutors said items found in Garcia's home indicated he was trying to destroy traces of his troubled past. Here's this trash bag sitting in the sink, the chemical odor emanating from that, and it's all these papers in there. In these papers, after they're dried out, is the termination letter from Dr. Brumback and Dr. Hunter, handwritten notes.

And there's something about putting tape on your fingers? Tape on your fingers, park your car somewhere else, walk to the location. Buy common shoes. Buy common shoes. Buy common shoes. Sort of a list that a killer would make. Yes, it is. Prosecutors said the two sets of murders, five years apart, correlated with Garcia's career struggles.

The first, in 2008, came two weeks after he was fired by LSU Shreveport. The second, in 2013, followed another round of unemployment and financial troubles. He's trying to get jobs at temporary agencies. He's having financial issues. His home is going to foreclosure. But they argued that Garcia's original target on Mother's Day 2013 was Dr. Chanda Butra, a professor at Creighton who'd written him bad evaluations. She was somebody that he really thought was too hard on him,

was the cause of his termination to begin with, and he really had some animosity towards her. Two days before the attempted break-in, prosecutors said, Anthony Garcia used his phone to look up Dr. Butra's address. Analysis of a scant bit of DNA evidence taken from a doorknob at the Butra home showed there was a significant chance that either Garcia or a male relative of his had tried to break in. When that doesn't work because they're not home, he then goes to Wingstop right up the road and goes to Plan B where he searches for the Brumback's address. This receipt shows his location at Wingstop at around 2.26 p.m. At 2.57, they said,

Garcia used his cell phone to look up Dr. Brumback's home address. As for the gun used in the Brumback killings, prosecutors argued the gun parts found at the Brumback house fit a gun later found alongside a highway about 20 miles from Garcia's home. That gun was missing a crucial component, the barrel, meaning a test bullet couldn't be fired. However, what was left was licensed to Anthony Garcia. All of a sudden you get handed the murder weapon? Right. Yeah, that was a gift. I think it was divine intervention. Yeah. The 2008 Dundee case, however, had no physical evidence.

What it did have was eyewitnesses. Several described seeing a silver Honda CRV with an out-of-state plate. This is a picture of the car Anthony Garcia owned in 2008 when he was living in Louisiana. It's a Honda CR-V. The thing that was noticeable was it was silver. The people noticed it as a type of SUV or CR-V. And they mentioned out-of-state plates. Out-of-state plates, right.

There was also that description of the man people saw near the Hunter home that day. An olive-skinned man wearing a baggy suit. And they were all seeing the same person, the same vehicle, and the location. You're convinced that's not somebody who's lost and eventually finds their way out of there? Oh, no, it fits. And that's the person that did this crime.

And it fits with Anthony Garcia also. Tying it all together, prosecutors called a bombshell witness, a former stripper named Cecilia Hoffman. Hoffman told the jury that four years after the Dundee murders, Garcia made a shocking confession to her. She told the cops about it in this audio recording. I remember he said, he said, it was a long time ago.

He said, I killed a young boy and an old woman. And I said, why? I said, why would you kill a young boy and an old woman? And he said, they had it coming. Of all the pieces that we didn't have in the 2008 case, that was a big piece. Prosecutors said Hoffman had nothing to gain by publicly talking about her past life. She had two children. She had moved on in her life and didn't want to go back in time, but she did. But why would Garcia make that confession to her? Hoffman said Garcia, who was a regular at the strip club where she worked, wanted more than a lap dance. He was trying to impress her because she was trying to keep him at arm's length,

saying, you know what, he was getting too serious. And she said, I only date bad boys or something like that. You're too good for me. You're a doctor. I only date bad boys. And he said, his response to her was, well, I'm a bad boy. I once killed a young boy and an older lady. Prosecutors thought it was just what they needed to show Garcia's guilt and weave all their evidence together. You know, one piece by itself probably isn't enough.

But you put all those pieces together, and it's a very good case. After 12 days, it was now the defense's turn. They would tell a different story, one that attacked the very foundation of the defense's turn. They would tell a different story, one that attacked the very foundation of the prosecution's case. A candid look inside the defense team. Shut the f*** up! Raw and real.

Hey, you want real life? You're getting real life. You're flies on the wall, man. I am who I am. You've never seen a strategy session like this. For the lawyers defending Anthony Garcia, it seemed the best defense was an all-out offense. I'm not trying to ask somebody out to the prom. You know, I'm trying to defend somebody, and I'm going to use everything in my arsenal.

For lead attorney Bob Mata Jr., that meant challenging or debunking everything jurors had heard from prosecutors for the past two weeks. There were so many inconsistencies with the way that they said that it went down that it just never came together for me that he was guilty. In a rare move, the defense team allowed Dateline inside their private strategy sessions. We need to talk about our strategy. I'm directed fine. That's all I wanted to know. It was a raucous group with Allison Mata. Shut the f*** up!

Serving as passionate advisor, Robert Mata Sr., the voice of experience. Are we missing something? No. And local attorney Jeremy Jorgensen and an assortment of researchers sweating the details. The team rented a home out in West Omaha, not far from the Dundee neighborhood. It was there that they plotted strategy. The first order of business? Knock down the theory that Anthony Garcia killed two people in 2008,

and two more in 2013, out of revenge. You gotta get rid of her, like, stupid quote. What quote? His Shakespeare quote. You heard me rid of her, like, stupid quote. What quote? His Shakespeare quote. You hurt me, shall I not revenge you? According to the defense team, Anthony Garcia had no motive to kill anyone. What's wrong with the prosecution theory

that Anthony Garcia blamed the people at Creighton for everything bad that had happened to him since he left Creighton, and the idea that when people would check out his resume, they would inevitably get back to Creighton for everything bad that had happened to him since he left Creighton, and the idea that when people would check out his resume, they would inevitably get back to Creighton and they'd get a bad report about him. The problem with the state's theory is that Anthony Garcia would have been unaware of those communications. They don't let people in on those communications. On the other hand, they pointed out Dr. Hunter had actually handed Garcia this short letter of recommendation after Garcia was dismissed from Creighton.

It got him his next job, which he got a month after, two months after he left Creighton. For his part, Anthony Garcia seemed bored by it all. Cameras were not allowed inside the courtroom, but if they had been, they would have shown what jurors saw. Anthony Garcia, napping. He slept quite a bit during the trial. I'd say half the trial. And how do you think that that plays off to a jury?

The 2008 case of Tom Hunter and Shirley Sherman was the most straightforward for the defense. There's no direct evidence against my client. There is no smoking gun. There is no DNA. It's all pieces. And they're trying to put together this puzzle. On the stand, none of the prosecution's eyewitnesses could ID Anthony Garcia as the man they'd seen eight years earlier. As for the silver Honda CR-V, the defense pointed out that not one of the eyewitnesses ever mentioned the big spare tire that was on the back of Garcia's car. As big as I'll get out, I mean, it's enormous. And nobody said anything about that?

Never one mention of it, which to me indicated that it wasn't my client's vehicle. That's the more likely answer. The 2013 Brumback case was more complicated for the defense team, beginning with the fact that Anthony Garcia had been in Omaha on the day of the murders. How do you explain your client being back in Omaha and searching for the addresses of one person who was killed and one person whose house was nearly broken into. I don't know, do we? That's a tough question. I mean, you're dealing with digital forensics. Ultimately, the defense argued that because an investigator downloaded Garcia's iPhone data onto his personal phone, the evidence was open to tampering.

You've got a cop who's downloading what seems to be the most critical piece of evidence onto his own iPhone. So it might have been a cop who did that search and not your client? I'm not going to suggest that anybody, you know, specifically typed the name in. I'm just going to say that the way that the state

presented the case, and in particular, that piece of evidence was not exactly truthful. The defense attorney spent a lot of time talking about the gun found on the side of the road and the have the very damaging magazine evidence, do we want to cloud it up by talking about a bunch of s***? It doesn't matter, right? Bob, there's sound on this, so we're just probably going to... You want real life? Then you're getting real life. Your fly's on the wall, man. Edit it out. I am, I am.

In court, the defense argued prosecutors could not prove a link between the gun parts found at the Brumback house and the gun that was licensed to Anthony Garcia. The parts found in the house are parts of a weapon that went through a catastrophic failure. The parts of our client's gun that were found on the side of the road showed no evidence of a catastrophic failure. And although it's the right kind of gun to have committed the murders, it's not necessarily the gun.

One of the right kinds of guns. You can't fire a test bullet from that gun, right? No. The Chicago-based defense team worked late into the night while keeping a close eye on their beloved Cubs, who were in hot pursuit of a World Series title. It's top and second. Cubs have men on first and second. It's a one-out. It was during these sessions, over lunch.

There's no point in showing cards that don't have to be shown. During breaks, and at their rental home, that the defense team planned and prepped their expert witnesses. This really boils down to interpretation and every single lab can interpret something differently. The DNA evidence linking Garcia to the Butra break-in, they said, was flawed. And the prosecution's timeline for the Brumback murders was suspect. The state's window for when this had to occur because of where they had our guy at certain times through cell phone records it had to occur sometime between 315 and 4 o'clock maybe 415. According to the defense the Brumbacks were killed later maybe around midnight long after Anthony Garcia had left Omaha and headed for home.

Our pathologists made it very clear that because of the rigor mortis, the conditions of the bodies, the homicides didn't happen when he was in Omaha. In the Dundee murders, perhaps the biggest hurdle for the defense was the testimony of former exotic dancer Cecilia Hoffman. Cecilia Hoffman's statement was huge. Remember, she's the woman who quoted Garcia as saying... He said, I killed a young boy and an old woman. But here's the thing.

Hoffman later said to a private eye hired by the defense that she remembered very little from that time. Bob Mata hammered at Hoffman's credibility on cross-examination. The concept of that is just so insane to me. This guy who's gotten away for essentially murder is now going to confess to a stripper that he knows that there's no way he's ever going to hook up with them. And that's your come online? Oh, yeah, I killed people. I killed an old lady and a young boy. I don't know.

After three weeks, both sides summed up their cases for the jury and hit all the familiar themes. Then they placed Anthony Garcia's fate in the jury's hands. A toast from the defense, but that was before the verdict. What would the jury do? Seeing my brother cry, seeing my mom cry, seeing the district attorney cry was a tough moment. Sometimes justice is not what happens in a courtroom, but rather what comes out of it. On the day lawyers finished their closing arguments in the Anthony Garcia murder case, a lot of people showed up to see what kind of justice would come out of courtroom 316. Among those waiting were the families of Tom Hunter, of Shirley Sherman, and yes, of Anthony Garcia.

It was late afternoon when the jury got the case. Then the waiting began. Huddled on benches outside the courtroom were reporters and spectators, the family and friends of the victims. Prosecutors retreated to their offices for what they hoped would be a short wait, but the defense was ready to blow off steam. The Matas and their entourage settled in at a local bar several miles from the courthouse. The jury would be out for a while, they thought. So they feasted and toasted one another. Then, as the sound system began to play the opening chords of the Rolling Stones song, Sympathy for the Devil, Bob Mata said something he wanted everyone in the bar to hear.

Here's my song, and this is apropos. Please allow me to introduce Sympathy for the Devil. After closings, you guys went out for some drinks, and we were there for that. Sympathy for the Devil comes on the sound system, and you say, hey, that's our theme song here. That's what we're going for. That's what you wanted, Sympathy for the Devil? When I looked at the case that the state presented, it was pretty obvious to me they saw our sleeping client as the devil. So yeah, I thought it was apropos. I thought it was appropriate,

not because I think he's the devil, because they sure did. The state absolutely thought he was. The jury deliberated till 9 p.m. that first night and all of the next morning, tension ratcheting up with every tick of the clock. We thought we gave the jury a very solid case. We felt confident about it, but again, you don't know. Then at about one in the afternoon, word began to spread. The jury had a verdict. I thought that the verdict would be good,

but you don't know until you hear it. Lining up alongside the families of Shirley Sherman and Thomas Hunter was the Garcia family. They were very respectful during the trial, I will say that. I mean, they didn't, they didn't ever say anything. Right, like some, some families. Like some families were at a war. Right, yeah, yeah, there was none of that. Once everyone had crowded inside, the verdict was announced. Guilty on all counts. I just breathed a sigh of relief. You just feel that rush of emotion.

It was a moment a long time coming for Shirley Sherman's brothers Brad and Dan and her son Jeff. Reaction to the verdict? Relief. Lots of relief. You guys feel better? I think my sister deserved that her killer be brought to justice. Jeff Hunter was sitting with his mother and brothers while that verdict was read. In that moment of joy and gratitude, he says, he thought of his little brother Tom, a kid who never had the chance to grow up. Gets me thinking what, where he'd be now and what he'd look like now,

what he'd talk like, what he'd be doing. The most emotional moment came later that afternoon, behind closed doors, when the victim's families met privately with the people responsible for bringing this case to an end. We basically gave them a round of applause when they came in because they did a hell of a job. Tough to be there or you're glad you were there? My family were not really emotional so seeing my brother cry, seeing my mom cry, it's hard. Then seeing the district attorney cry was a tough moment. While Garcia's defense team faced a gaggle of cameras outside the courtroom... In terms of what we did, we did the best we could. Anthony Garcia's parents, who'd spent much of their life savings on their son's defense, spoke briefly with reporters.

Very rough for everybody. I know it's difficult for the other family too, but it's very difficult for us too at this time. One last set of victims. He never once turned around and looked at them. Not once. I felt sorry for his parents. I did. I saw his dad's head down a number of times. And you kind of, in your mind, you don't and Mary Brumback. As he had through much of his trial, Garcia slept through his sentencing. As for the families he destroyed, some healing may finally begin. Like a weight lifted off his shoulders. There's not that constant cloud hanging over. Everybody wants to talk about things like that.

Just more open, better spirits. When they read the verdict, the deputies were taking him away, and Alice Amato was trying to convince the deputy or talk him into letting him speak to his parents because he will never get to speak to them again. What about all the other victims here? They can't speak to Shirley or Thomas or Roger or Mary.

They can visit him in jail.