True Crime Campfire - Do No Harm: The Story of the Creighton Killer, Pt 2

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

When we left you at the end of part 1, Omaha homicide detectives had just put a new suspect on their radar for the brutal murders of Tom Hunter, Shirlee Sherman, and Roger and Mary Brumback: Dr. Anthony Garcia, a former resident in the pathology department at Creighton University Hospital. Garcia had been terminated from his residency after a series of bad evaluations. Now, years later, the doctors who fired him were in the crosshairs, and investigators were desperate to find him before he struck again. Join us now for part 2 of this bizarre true story.Sources:Pathological by Cordes and CooperVarious articles: https://murderpedia.org/male.G/g/garcia-anthony.htmCBS' "48 Hours," https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anthony-garcia-case-was-revenge-motive-behind-omaha-double-murders/NBC's "Dateline," episode "Haunted"Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. When we left you at the end of part one, Omaha homicide detectives had just put a new suspect on their radar for the brutal murders of Tom Huffalo. Hunter, Shirley Sherman, and Roger and Mary Brumbach. Dr. Anthony Garcia, a former resident in the pathology department at Creighton University Hospital. Garcia had been terminated from his residency after a series of bad evaluations. Now, years later, the doctors who fired him were in the crosshairs

and investigators were desperate to find him before he struck again. Join us now for part two of Do No Harm, the story of the Creighton Killer. Looking into Garcia's background back in 2001, head of pathology Dr. William Hunter had learned that Creighton wasn't the first place he'd been in trouble. Garcia had been dismissed from several residency programs, and he'd been denied a medical license in several states. He'd done a family practice residency at Bassett St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Albany, New York, in 99. and it was a straight disaster. Multiple different times,

he'd prescribed the wrong medication or dosage for patients, including one instance where he'd ordered a patient sedated despite a gigantic, bright red do-sadate notification in their chart. Yikes. Yeah. He'd been written up for napping while some of his pregnant patients were in active labor. He'd claimed to have examined patients he hadn't examined. And his evaluators at Bassett noted that the dude would never take responsibility for his own mistake.

He would always find some way to blame it on somebody else. Now, how you can blame somebody else for you taking a nap while your patient's trying to squeeze out a baby, I can't imagine, but apparently Garcia managed to do it. It's not his fault that these common, filthy non-doctors decided to give birth during his sanctioned nap time, Whitney God. So there you go, see. His evaluations there were very similar to the ones he'd get later at Creighton,

quoting from Cordes and Cooper's book here, lack of basic knowledge, lax and uninterested, surly and unreceptive to correction, arrogant and inappropriate behavior around staff and patients. One of his supervisors told him he was, quote, headed for disaster if he didn't shape up. It's pretty obvious that the faculty at Bassett thought Garcia was unstable. Once the resident director suspended him,

ordering him to get counseling to identify any, quote, underlying medical disorders. like massive flaming asshole itis? I don't know. Seems like he's got something like that. You know? And then about eight months into his residency there, Garcia freaked out on a radiology tech

right in front of a 12-year-old patient. The tech had just asked him a couple questions and Garcia had just ignored her because, spoiler alert, he didn't know the answers. And when she asked why he wasn't responding, he screamed, Don't give me your shit! Now, the 12-year-old probably told that story,

during recess every day for the rest of the school year. But, you know, still, although I'm sure the patient was delighted, not a very doctorly thing to do, especially in front of a patient. And this was pretty much the last straw. In lieu of being disciplined or fired, Garcia opted to resign from Bass at St. Elizabeth. And when he applied at Creighton later that year, he didn't tell him about this residency. Didn't mention it to anybody during the interview process and didn't put it on his application. Just swept it right under the rug, like it never happened. And now he was hitting the skids at Creighton just as hard. It was clear to head of pathology Dr. William Hunter that Garcia didn't belong there.

Might not belong anywhere, in fact. But Dr. Hunter was the kind of teacher who always went above and beyond to try and help his students succeed. He wasn't sure how Garcia got into their program in the first place. Dr. Hunter was new as the head of pathology, so he wasn't there when Garcia was admitted. When he looked into it, he realized that Garcia hadn't gone through the normal interview process, which was weird. Dr. Hunter thought maybe it had to do with the fact that for years, Creighton had been hiring residents from other countries to fill all their residency slots.

And they were usually great doctors, but the language barrier was a pretty significant problem. So Dr. Hunter figured maybe his predecessor had kind of just taken whatever he could get from the available U.S. applicants so he could avoid bringing in another international student. Yeah, great plan. How'd that work out, bro? Not so great. not so great. Maybe you should have gone with the brilliant doctor with the quote language barrier instead. But however Garcia had ended up there, Dr. Hunter figured he was here now and they ought to give him a shot. You know, try and help him. Dr. Brumbach didn't see it that

way. He thought Dr. Hunter needed to bring down the hammer on the guy, but Dr. Hunter insisted that they have patience. Keep working with Garcia, try to teach him what he needed to know. In January of 01, Hunter met with Garcia and laid it all out. All the bad evaluations from his colleagues, his lack of knowledge, his apathy. And Garcia promptly freaked the fuck out. This wasn't fair. The faculty was just, quote, out to get him. In February, Dr. Butra gave him another bad evaluation.

And this time, Garcia took it with total grace and aplomb. I'm kidding. He blew a gasket and started calling her names like a nine-year-old. Of course he did. Dr. Butra, who'd probably never seen anything like this before from a full-grown resident, wrote to Dr. Hunter like, dude, come on. She said, how much more documentation do you need? Yeah, seriously, can we yeat this asshole already? Please?

I think yeat is the scientific term, actually. Right, right, of course. Garcia, of course, insisted Dr. Butcher was picking on him. He threatened to sue saying she'd, quote, humiliated, degraded, and insulted him, and that she used her position to, quote, verbally abuse the residence under her. Dr. Butcher was the first to attract Garcia's toddler tantrum like wrath, but she wasn't the last. Another pathologist overseeing an autopsy Garcia performed found his technique to be sloppy and pointed out that he identified the wrong cause of death. Garcia, of course, in true Garcia fashion, got defensive and pissy.

And a few days later, during another autopsy, he left a woman's body face down on the metal slab overnight. When he came back the next morning and turned her over, her face was all warped from being pressed into the hard metal for hours on end. The woman's family was rightfully outraged. Of course, and the funeral director filed a complaint about Garcia. Oh, my God. This time, Dr. Brombach was the one who had to handle Garcia. He brought him into his office and took him to the woodshed, a veritable come-to-Jesus moment. For his part, Garcia just seemed confused about why everybody was upset.

It was just a dead lady. Who cared? Oh, my God. Like, she wasn't using her body. Why would her family like to honor her and remember her as they knew her? God, a bunch of drama queens. I'm kidding. This was pretty much the last draw for Dr. Hunter. For months, his colleagues have been trying to convince him to Sack Garcia,

and he'd been urging patients. Now Dr. Hunter jumped right on board with everyone else. It was time for this guy to go. He was going to hurt somebody. Now, according to my pre-med friend, Angie, it's really difficult to fire a resident. One, it looks bad for the school if they'd dismiss someone like that. and two, it's illegal if you do it wrong.

Three, it's career homicide to fire a resident before they're done. Right, and like we said in part one, doctors are notorious for not wanting to torpedo another doctor's career, even when they really deserve it torpedoed. So that's why Dr. Hunter waited so long. He was hoping maybe he could get Garcia to complete his first year. Then he could have his contract non-renewed, with proof that he completed that first year. He called it, quote, the humane thing to do. Right, they could send him on his way without actually having to fire him.

So Hunter told Garcia, look, the school is probably not going to renew your contract for next year, so just keep your nose clean until the end of the year. If not, you're digging your own grave. Garcia seemed offended at first, shocker, but later he seemed to come around. He wrote Dr. Hunter a letter promising to change for the better. In March, at Dr. Hunter's urging, he even apologized to Dr. Butre for insulting her. It seemed like maybe Anthony had turned over a new leaf. except he hadn't at all.

The end of the spring semester was coming around, and one of the chief residents was due to take his licensing exam. The morning of the test, he was on his way to the exam when the phone rang at home. His wife picked it up, and it was somebody claiming to be from Creighton. The caller said the chief resident was needed at the hospital right away, and if he didn't show up, he'd be fired. The wife was, of course, really torn. She didn't want her husband to get fired, obviously,

but she also knew he really couldn't miss this exam. Fortunately, this lady was a born camper, and she decided to call somebody she knew at Creighton, another faculty member, and explain the situation to her. Something must have seemed like not quite right about it. Right. And this faculty member thought something sounded off about the whole thing, too, and she got in touch with Dr. Hunter,

who, of course, informed her that there was no emergency, and the chief resident had already been approved to take the day off for the exam. This was either a really fucked up prank or a malicious attempted sabotage of this chief residence career. Either way, Creighton had to take it seriously. They launched an investigation, which was basically over before it even had time to gather steam. Because somebody had overheard Garcia and another doctor conspiring to screw over this poor chief resident,

which is just, for God's sake, Anthony, if you're going to get a good plot going, okay, you really got to do it in a whisper. Man, you can't yap about it at full volume in the break room through a mouth. full of Cheetos or your dumb ass is going to get caught. Yeah, I feel like any plan you come up with while your hands are covered in Cheeto dust is probably going to fail. Excuse me? I'm sorry.

Okay, yeah, I'm going to go ahead and just violently disagree with you there. All my best plans are Cheeto-based or Cheeto-fueled, let's say. So just don't come at me with that commie crap ever again. Cheetos are brain food. Okay, I'm sorry, God. But you could at least eat them with chopsticks, like keep your hands clean. Oh, my God. Who am I, fucking Kate Middleton or something?

It's like you don't even know me sometimes. Chopsticks. For Cheetos. Yeah, like, who, what are you talking about, Katie? So this whole ordeal reminds me of a story or like an experience, I guess. When I was in college, my coach always knew what shenanigans went on. Like, if some shit happened on Saturday night and somebody got caught with alcohol, he knew on Monday morning. And we were all convinced he was psychic or something.

But when I started coaching for the same program, I learned how he knew. The little gremlins told us themselves. Snitches, all of them. So here's a tip. If you're plotting, Cheeto dust or no, keep your mouth shut. Loose lips, sink ships, weirdos. Wow. Snitches. Damn.

Snitches get stitches, people. It's true. So, at this point, when Dr. Hunter got wind of this latest caper, he wrote out a letter outlining all Garcia's disciplinary issues and called him into Dr. Brumbach's office for a meeting. They told our boy, look, we told you to mind your peas and cues for the rest of the year, and you didn't do that. So you're at the end of the road here. You can either resign or we're going to fire.

you. Garcia decided to let them fire him since resigning would prevent him from appealing the termination. So they had security come and escorted him out. He stayed calm, and that was pretty much that. Garcia had lasted 11 months into his first year of residency there. Oh my God. Dude couldn't keep it together for one more month. God damn. Yeah. Unbelievable. And Dr. Hunter had given him every chance to get his head on straight, and he'd just blown it again and again. But of course, he still appealed their decision. And in July of 2001, his appeal was denied. Despite the massive amount of bullshit Garcia pulled during his time at Creighton, Dr. Hunter still felt for the guy. Dr. Hunter's a kind soul, and he didn't want to ruin another

doctor's career. So he wrote him a fairly neutral letter of recommendation and put in a word form at the University of Illinois in Chicago. I'd love to see this letter, by the way. It was probably like, to whom it may concern, this letter is to confirm that Anthony Garcia is indeed a human being with a medical degree who once worked at our hospital. Thank you for your consideration. And this is a thing, I mean, in academia, that you can, you can write somebody a letter like that where it's just real noncommittal and it's sort of a code like the person who reads it is going to know, like, okay, this means that this person is, eh, you know, go ahead and give him a chance and see how he does at your hospital because he didn't do great at

stars. But it's not like a, it's not like a, you know, it's, it's neutral. Right. Right. I mean, he might as well have said, he does have skin and a personality that someone in the world may enjoy. Yeah. So Garcia moved on to Chicago and his problems moved with him. Plus, a few new ones. He started having migraines and a few other health issues and suffering from depression. He was seeing psychiatrists and neurologists, racking up over $80,000 in medical bills and taking a lot of time off of work. Later, he claimed that he spent a lot of time crying and drinking. He prescribed himself anxiety meds, an antidepressant, and something to dull his craving for alcohol, none of which worked especially well. Dude was in bad shape.

And by the way, you are absolutely not allowed to prescribe yourself meds. Like, that's a big no-no for doctors for obvious reasons. Yeah. He kept spiraling down, ending up in the hospital twice for suicidal ideation. His depression got so bad that his doctors prescribed electroconvulsive therapy. Unsurprisingly, his new residency was a bust. He failed out of the University of Illinois and went back to his parents in L.A. with his tail between his legs.

In 2005, he filed for bankruptcy. While at his parents, he got a job fixing cars. He considered law school for a while. he applied to be a cop and good lord it was bad enough when he had a scalp a hole but a badge yeah but it wasn't long before he decided to try and reenter the medical field and somehow some way can't keep a bad doctor down he got himself accepted into a psychiatry residency at lSU shreveport louisiana he got a temporary license to practice in louisiana while the board reviewed his records in the meantime LSU reached out to Dr. Hunter at Creighton. God, talk about the freaking bad penny turning up again, right? I'm sure Dr. Hunter was like, oh, God. Yeah, yep.

Actually, Dr. Hunter's first move was to reach out to Creighton's legal team for advice. Basically, like, do I got to tell Louisiana what a shit show this guy was? See, some states just request that you verify that a resident was there during the time they say they were, and that's it. But Louisiana wanted to know specifics about Garcia. The Creighton lawyers told Dr. Hunter to be up front about the fact that Garcia was terminated before he'd finished the first year of his residency. So Hunter went ahead and spilled the beans. And I know, this is going to shock you. But apparently, Garcia had neglected to mention that little factoid in his application.

Hmm. I guess he just forgot. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He also claimed he'd never been subjected to any disciplinary action. Another big hunker of a lie. So in February of 2008, the licensing board in Louisiana denied Garcia's license, citing dishonesty in his application. LSU could let him keep practicing under the temporary license if they wanted, but, like, they didn't, obviously. They terminated him from the program at the end of the month.

Security escorted him off the LSU campus. and 15 days later, Dr. William Hunter arrived home to a nightmare. After the murders of Tom Hunter and Shirley Sherman, Garcia went back to Chicago, probably because Illinois was one of the only bridges he hadn't burned yet. He still had a medical license there. In Illinois, he worked a few low-paying jobs at clinics for a while, and for a while he made house calls to elderly patients. He got himself a therapist in Chicago, which was a good call, obviously,

and in May of 2008, he told her he was having to be. having thoughts about hurting people. He insisted they were just thoughts, though, didn't mention that he'd already killed two people. Before long, he got tired of Chicago and moved to Indiana. He got a temporary license to practice and found a job working for a company that provided medical services to maximum security federal prison inmates. Foreshadowing anyone? It should tell us something about our boy that he ended up getting fired because of his shitty behavior. The man got fired from a job as a prison doctor. So in a place full of violent offenders and scam artists,

Anthony Garcia's behavior stood out as unacceptable. He was always clashing with his supervisor for the charming reason that he resented that she was a nurse. Gross. He smelled like booze all the time, and he left yet another supervisor a bunch of harassing phone messages. And there we go. Yet another bridge burned.

He quickly lost the next job, too, for repeatedly showing up drunk as a skunk. Just what you want from your health care. provider, right? God, this guy's the worst. And just as Louisiana had in 2008, the Indiana State Medical Board contacted Creighton University in September of 2012 to ask about Garcia's bona fides. This time, they got in touch with Dr. Roger Brumbach, who told them that Garcia had been terminated from his residency due to unprofessional behavior toward a fellow resident. In second verse, same as the first, Indiana decided to deny his application. On January 5th, 2013,

Garcia showed up to an emergency department with a blood alcohol at three times the legal limit. He told the triage nurse he was feeling suicidal. They treated him, got him sobered up, and ended up discharging him. Five hours later, he was back, even more intoxicated than before. This time, he pulled out his IV and walked out of the hospital only to show up at another hospital an hour later. He told one of the nurses that there was a part of him that wanted to end his own life. and he said he hadn't been consistently sober since 2004. This all happened in a single day.

Garcia was clearly unraveling and it only got worse. A week later, he called 911. We couldn't find out exactly what he told the dispatcher, but when the fire department showed up, they had to break down the door to get to him. They found Garcia sprawled on the floor, empty beer cans scattered all around him, and a gun lying next to him.

They confiscated the gun for Garcia's sake, and took him to the hospital. Three days later, he showed up to a follow-up appointment visibly drunk and smelling of booze. They confiscated the gun for Garcia's safety and took him to the hospital. Three days later, he showed up to a follow-up appointment visibly drunk and smelling like booze.

On January 30th, he got into a fender-bender. He got out of the car, handed the other driver his entire wallet, got back in the car, and drove away. Yikes. There were more incidents like this over the next couple of months, too many to get into here. Suffice it to say that Garcia was always showing up to the hospital or calling 911 seemingly just because he was incredibly, incredibly drunk. Once he called because he couldn't find his house keys, and when they showed up to help him,

he just plopped down on the front steps and sat there with his coat over his head, refusing to talk to anybody. It seems like he was barely functional a lot of the time. He started and lost a series of contract jobs. was arrested once for drunk driving, but on March 8th, he walked into a store in Indianapolis and bought a handgun. And according to a forensic search of his computer months later, at some point in here, he spent some time searching up Dr. Boutra's home address. In June, he got hired to provide physicals for the employees of an energy company. And instead of giving the physicals, Garcia just sat out in the parking lot in his car, eating snacks, and just kind of jamming out

on the radio. And when a nurse came out to, you know, find out what the hell he was doing. And if he was planning at some point to come in and do his job, he screamed at her. Finally, he did go in to do the physicals, invited one man to suck his dick, told another to fight him, and then stormed out. You know, just a standard medical exam, like you do. Yeah. Did he think it was like a W.W.E. Audition or something? Like, he's, like, looking for Vince McMahon somewhere. He's, like, auditioning as a villain character, The Doctor. Honestly, literally, I could name 10 careers. That would be better for Anthony Garcia than doctor. And that's, like, number one. Yeah, that's, like, number one.

Right. And all throughout this time, whenever Garcia was, apply for a job, they'd do a background check and see Creighton on his CV. When they contacted Creighton, of course, Dr. Hunter or Dr. Brumbeck would have to tell the prospective employer about his history. It meant he was turned down for several well-paid positions, the kind of jobs he really wanted, university hospitals, jobs with prestige. Revenge, campers, is a hell of a motive for murder. By the way, it's kind of weird that universities do a better job of background checking than law enforcement does, yeah?

Well, unless the professor is tenured, of course, then they can sacrifice virgins in front of their hundred-level classes and get paid vacation for it. Yeah, once you get tenure, you can pretty much get away with murder. It's like, you can just run around the halls, with your pants around your ankles, firing off pistols like Yosemite Sam, and if anybody calls you on it, you can just, call it performance art. It's brilliant. I don't have tenure, by the way. I'm not bitter about it. No, not at all. You really do want to run around the hallways with your pants around your legs. I know. With a bushy mustache. It's the first thing on my bucket list. So as you've probably figured out by now, the Brumback murders happened right after this latest bout of failed job applications in 2013.

Through the haze of alcohol and seething rage, Garcia had spent the first few months of that year making detailed plans. Plans, the Omaha detectives would soon discover as they began to zero in on Garcia as their prime suspect. In early May, he bought a 9mm Smith & Wesson SD9 handgun, the magazine of which would later end up on the floor of the Brumbach's house. On the 14th, the day of the Brumback murders and the break-in at Dr. Boutras, his credit card registered purchases at two places in the Omaha area, though Garcia was still living in Indiana at the time. He bought gas and beer, can't forget the beer, at a filling station, and an order of wings from a wingstop restaurant. That wing stop is a little over a mile away from Dr. Butrus House, and the Garcia's purchase logged in at 2.26 p.m.

7 minutes after the burglar alarm went off at Dr. Butrus' house. So if your murder attempt fails, I guess just go get some chicken wings and regroup. I hate that I'm going to ask this. Do you think they were good? Like, or was he just too hammered and angry to taste anything? It was probably just stress eating. Yeah. I don't know.

You can't let a good wing go to waste. I hate to see it. The more the Omaha investigators looked into Garcia, the more certain they were that they were onto the right guy. And they knew they needed to bring him in ASAP. Dude posed a serious threat to his former colleague. colleagues at Creighton and their families, too. They got especially nervous when they found out that Garcia had just bought another gun

in Indiana, like, as soon as he got back after the Brumbat killings. Was he planning another murder? So the investigators split up into teams. One flew out to California where Garcia's parents lived to serve a search warrant on their house, and the other team went to Indiana to put the grab-us on Anthony himself. Of course, nothing ever goes just as you plan it. The arrest team landed in Indianapolis and immediately set about trying to track Garcia down. They couldn't find him at first, and they were worried he'd gotten wind that they were on to him.

Maybe he was planning to run. They were able to ping his cell phone, though, and finally they located him, driving on the highway. When they finally got eyes on him, he was speeding along, tailcating at semi-truck. Of course he's a freaking tail-ball. Of course he freaking is. Of course. When the feds and state troopers converged on him and pulled him over,

Garcia's blood alcohol was twice the legal limit. It was 8.30 in the morning, by the way. And they found some intriguing things in the car. In addition to the cell phone, they'd been pinging to track his location. They found a 45-gauge pistol,

50 rounds of ammo, a crowbar and a sledgehammer. Yikes. Garcia told the troopers he was on a road trip, headed for New Orleans, but they couldn't help but notice he didn't have any luggage in the car. What he did have, though, was an LSU lab coat and stethoscope, the kind of get-up that would make it pretty easy to waltz into the medical school unchallenged. It made Detective Moy's stomach lurch to think about it.

Garcia had been fired from LSU in 2008. Was he planning on continuing his little vengeance rampage there? And there was more. They also found three Manila envelopes addressed to his parents and full of personal financial documents. A note inside read, please hold these documents in case of an emergency. Your son, Anthony Garcia. A to-do list read, Destroyed DUI and Justice, medical residences, and bad info on myself. Creepiest of all, there was a note that seemed to outline some kind of ominous sounding plan.

It said, rent boat, have fishing gear, look like a fisherman. In right hand, gun, hidden. In left hand, phone, passport driver's license, poison, hidden, knife, knives, hidden, cash, Mercedes keys, medications. Yeah. Later, the note detailed a plan to shoot himself, quote, in a way that makes my body fall overboard, so his family could collect on his life insurance. It looked to the investigators like Anthony was planning to take revenge on the LSU faculty who fired him, then rent a boat and take his own life at sea. It's possible they grabbed him right before he could pull the trigger on his

final endgame. When they searched his house back in Indiana, though, it became clear that Garcia had made quite a few different plans. Who knew which one he actually meant to execute? In Garcia's kitchen sink, they found a bunch of documents soaking in some kind of chemical. When they dried them out, they found, in addition to Garcia's termination letter from Creighton, some notes that made the hairs on the back of their neck stand up. One said, invade rich house, torture, murder, Jack, rich children,

gun, invade, kill, knife, garage, kidnap family, torture, kill. Holy BTC, that's terrifying. In another note, he outlined a kidnapping plot. Park around corner, common shoes, band-aids on tips of fingers, Doorbell, fake driver's license, take Jackhammer and Crowbar, get their cell phones, separate rooms in house, pawn furniture, jewelry, pin number, ATM, cash, plastic ties, scissors, beer. Like, I have to acknowledge, of course, that all of this is bone-chillingly fucking terrifying and unhinged.

Oh yeah. But I feel like I would not be doing my job as a true crime campfire. co-host if I didn't take a second and appreciate how bad this fucking numbschool how bad he was at it.

His goal with the papers and chemicals was obviously to destroy them and he couldn't even fucking do that right? Yeah, I feel like all you really need is bleach, man. And that would have taken like 10 seconds. Yeah. So, yeah, not great. In addition to the many, many misspellings,

What was notable about these notes was the lack of any specific victim's names. Who were the targets of these horror movie-style schemes? Who the hell knew? I mean, there were plenty of people on Garcia's bad side. Another note outlined a plan to steal another Anthony Garcia's identity. It said, arrive about 10.30 a.m. when no one is around. Steal pertinent mail from mailbox, where they shop, supermarket, mall, movies, etc., and shop with their stolen credit card info.

credit cards ATM cards only at those places take out loans credit cards etc with their info follow him to work etc it cut off there so we don't know what garcia was planning to do to this poor guy after following him to work but it probably wasn't going to be good garsia's house by the way it was something else there was a ferrari parked in the driveway but the inside of the place looked like a frat guy's apartment like right down to the inflatable air mattress on the floor and the empty beer cans all over the place you know man-child chic depressed man-child chic the rooms were mostly empty and so was the fridge except for beer there were hardly any clothes in the closet and the house itself was in foreclosure garcia was flat broke despite the mess though garcia had clearly been busy organizing his records on a table neatly cataloged and stacked were all his financial papers his home insurance car insurance loan and bank information it looked like the kind of scene you sometimes find in someone's home after they're have taken their own life. Garcia was getting his affairs in order. Whatever he'd been planning down at LSU, it didn't look like he'd planned on surviving it, or at least not coming back from it. Garcia's banking paperwork showed evidence of his spiraling, a hedonistic lifestyle over the past few months. Lots of charges for liquor stores, bars, and strip clubs, and no deposits. And as if we needed anything else to clarify his mental state, investigators found two more little

clues. On his tablet, Garcia had saved a quote from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. If you harm me, shall I not revenge? And one more handwritten note featured some lines from the movie The Grey, a scene where some men were surrounded by wolves. It said, into the filth we go. We live, we die. We live, we die. Yeah, this man's brain is not a happy place to be. Certainly not. When the Omaha investigators tried to talk to him after his arrest, Garcia lawyered up right away. And when Detective Moise told him he was being charged with murder, he said, oh, okay. And just

kind of rolled back to his cell. Like you do. The alleged Creighton killer, Dr. Anthony Garcia, was finally in custody. What had begun as a promising career in medicine was ending now in a capital murder charge, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty. And as word spread of Garcia's arrest, people started to ask questions. Why had it taken so long for the cops to solve the case? Clearly, the guy had been a hot mess for years. Was he on the Omaha PD's radar before the Brumback murders? As a matter of fact, he was. Way back in 2008, just four days after Tom Hunter and Shirley Sherman's murders, a couple of detectives, were sent to follow up on a tip from Creighton.

A woman named Angie Albarico had called in, wanting to alert investigators to a few med students who'd been dismissed from the program. She gave them the names of five students, including Michael the Russian, Balanky, two guys who didn't fit the witness description of the killer, somebody who'd been kicked out for substance abuse, and Dr. Anthony Garcia.

One of the responding detectives, Linda Collins, had taken notes on each person, person, but she hadn't given Garcia much attention. In fact, she wrote four or five sentences about everybody else, but Garcia only got one. A couple of months after this, Dr. Hunter had emailed Detective Collins, mentioning two people he'd fired from the residency program almost 10 years before the murders. The two people were, of course, Garcia, and the other guy he'd conspired with to make the chief resident miss his licensing exam. Dr. Hunter said he didn't think either of these two people would be so disgruntled almost a decade later that they'd murder his

son. But he did want to mention Garcia, he said, because he'd been disciplined by the Louisiana estate licensing board a few months before the murders for lying on his application, and because Dr. Hunter had been the one to tell LSU that he lied. Obviously, Dr. Hunter suspected Garcia on some level at that point, even if it was mostly subconscious. Now, Detective Collins did spend a couple a day's looking into Garcia after this according to her, but she didn't really take him seriously as a suspect, mostly because Dr. Hunter didn't seem to.

Yeah, I feel like that's not great police work. Yeah, and it gets worse than that. According to Detective Collins, when she looked at Garcia in 08, she didn't find a Honda CRV registered to him, but you know, there absolutely was one, and Detective Moyes didn't have any problem finding

it a few years later. So that doesn't line up. And the Omaha P.D.'s official line is that they have no record of Collins doing any follow-up on Garcia at all. So what really happened? I guess we don't know, but it seems like it's at least possible that the investigator should have had Garcia on their radar a lot earlier than they did. And it would have been nice, you know, to catch this dickhead five years earlier and spare the Brumbach's lives. It's a really terrible thought that there may have been a missed opportunity there. So anyway, one of the first things the trial judge did was order a psych evaluation for

Garcia just to make sure he was competent to stand trial, which he was, and he'd found an interesting dream team to defend him, a husband and wife, Bob and Allison Mata, from Indiana. They'd never handled a murder case before, but they did have some interesting bona fides. Bob was the son of Bob Mata Jr., the attorney who represented John Wayne Gasey at trial, the serial killer, an insufferable asshole, and it appears his son and wifey weren't much better. Right away, the Mata started making waves, cultivating a vote. vibe like, we're out of state outlaws, Omaha, you rubs aren't ready for us. Yuck, right?

And right before the trial, like the day before, Allison Mata announced that she had some bombshell news to share about the case. Her team had discovered DNA evidence that proved Garcia wasn't the killer. In reality, this was a lot less impressive than Allison Mada made it sound. What they actually had were a few alleles from Shirley Sherman's body, not a full DNA profile. and the stunt backfired. Instead of wowing the public and scaring the prosecution, it just pissed off the judge.

You saw it for exactly what it was, a blatant attempt to get at the jury pool before trial. Gross. The judge delayed the trial and went one further, too. Denied Allison's request to practice law in Nebraska. Don't try and pull shit like this, unless you're damn sure you're going to get away with it. Judges do not like being played with.

Now, the prosecution had a pretty sweet case. Not only was their ample proof of motive, and the first two murders happened two weeks after Garcia was fired from LSU, and the second two happened after a similar bout of career rejections, but they also had a lot of strong physical and circumstantial evidence. Their theory was that Dr. Chandra Butra was Garcia's original target in 2013. They had evidence that Garcia had looked up her address on his phone that day, and he left his DNA on her door when he tried to break in and set off the burglar alarm. Shortly after that alarm was tripped,

they had the credit card receipt for buffalo wings at a wing zone a mile away from the Butcher House combined with a search for the Brumbach's address on Garcia's phone. The gun parts at the Brumback House matched part of a gun found 20 miles away on the side of a highway. The gun was missing its barrel, but it was registered to Anthony Garcia. And they had eyewitnesses who picked out his car

as the CRV they'd seen at the Hunter Sherman murder scene. Oh, it gets better. one of the prosecution star witnesses was a woman named Cecilia Hoffman. Cecilia was a dancer at a strip club, and she'd met Garcia about four years after the Hunter Sherman murders. Anthony was trying to play Captain Save Aho, we've talked about this before, Camper's, and wanted to date her. Cecilia had no interest. She didn't need saving. She just wanted to do her job and go home.

And because she's a nice person, she wanted to let him down easy. So one night she said, look, here's the thing. I only date bad boys. You're too good for me. You're a doctor. Garcia had gone quiet for a moment. Then he said, A few years ago, I killed a young boy and an old woman.

Tried to make it sound badass, guys. I can't even do that. Now, yeah, you. Dancers hear a lot of weird shit, a lot of absurd bragging, a lot of weird lies. but this was a tad unexpected. She asked him why he'd done it and Garcia said, They had it coming. Cecilia was shocked.

She said, that sounds like two of the most innocent people in the world. But obviously that's not the way Garcia saw them. You know, I feel like when a woman says she's into bad boys, it usually means dudes who like maybe ride motorcycles and swear in front of their moms, Not some sad-sac loser who murders children and grandmas. Yeah, I don't think Anthony got the memo on that, but I'd like it noted that this is now the second case we've covered where an overgrown man-child has bragged to an exotic dancer about murdering an old woman and then acted all shocked Pikachu face when it blew up on him. It's like, what I thought I was going to get out of this, sex. What I actually got, prison.

So maybe not the best strategy, guys, future reference. Yeah, there's no stripper-strippy confidentiality clause, folks. They're obviously going to tell on you. So obviously Garcia's attorney went after poor Cecilia like a cheetah on a gazelle, tried to discredit her, paint her as a liar, harp on her job as a dancer, as if somehow that proved she was a bad person or something. Gross. Yep.

Brought her to tears on the stand, the whole thing. But Cecilia held up great. She was likable, down to earth, and clearly, clearly telling the truth. When defense attorney Mata suggested she was just testifying against Garcia for a, quote, TV interview, Cecilia scoffed at him. I've got nothing good out of this, she said. She had to change her phone number to dodge reporters. This had upended her life.

She was testifying because it was the right thing to do. And the jury could see that. She was a powerful witness. possibly the turning point of the whole trial. For his part, Garcia seemed mostly bored and kind of sleepy. He napped at the defense table for literally about half the trial. Now, why the judge let him get away with that? I can't imagine.

It's like, oh, are we boring you, sir? I'd have taped his damn eyelids open if I had to, like that guy in a clockwork orange. You're not going to miss this shit in my courtroom. You're going to sit your ass down and listen to what you did. You wet piece of shit. Anyway, the jury was not impressed by Garcia's nappy time. or by any part of his defense, which was basically just that, like, he's mentally ill, and, you know, obviously he is, like he's got, you know, severe depression. He had suicidal thoughts and everything, but being depressed and angry and mad at yourself for failing at your chosen profession does not justify a quadruple murder, I think you'll find. So the jury wasn't impressed by that, and neither am I, by the way. They convicted him on all counts, including four counts of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death. Garcia, true to form, nodded off during his sentencing.

Shirley Sherman's family showed up to the hearing in custom-made t-shirts with pictures of Tom and Shirley on them. Shirley's brothers and son all gave victim impact statements and so did Dr. Claire Hunter, Tom's mom. She said, in these cases, it's like throwing a stone into a pond and the ripples continue and continue and continue. A young child of 11 and 3 quarters years should never have to innocently leave his life in a fit of anger. Tom didn't deserve what Garcia did to him, she told reporters after the sentencing hearing. She said she wanted people to remember him for the talented, playful young man he was. We'll never know who Tom would have grown up to be. All because one man didn't have what it took to be a doctor and decided it was everybody's fault but his.

Garcia's family, by the way, were horrified by what he'd done and they made sure the victim's families knew it. The hunters, Brumbacks, and Shermans were all struck by how respectful they were during the trial. there was none of that my precious baby angel could never do wrong that you sometimes see with killers families Anthony's brother Fernando still completely in shock over the murders told the associated press that he and his parents had been praying for the victim's families praying that they might find peace this wasn't what they'd wanted for their son and brother Garcia's dad remembers packing up a van and driving Anthony to med school when he first got in high hopes and now four death sentences four innocent people

lost. I don't know if there's a lesson in this case, but if there is, it's probably about being true to yourself, following your own path and not the one somebody else lays out for you. They say failure can actually be a great gift because it can teach you so much about yourself. If you can take failure and turn it into insight, it can be a crucial part of your journey, but if your default response is to blame everybody else but yourself anytime life goes wrong, you're never going to get where you need to go. You're just going to get angry and bitter. You're going to marinate in your own negativity, and even if you don't end up as unhinged as Anthony Garcia, which of course most of us never would, you're still going to end up at the dead-ass

end of the line. So that was a wild one. Right, campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Lauren, Jessica, Missy, Tessa, Christina, Rebecca, Alana, and Sarah. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free, at least a day early, sometimes more, pleasant extra episode a month. And once you hit the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff. A free sticker at $5, a rad enamel pin while supplies last at 10,

virtual events with Katie and me, and we're always looking for new stuff to do. for you. So if you can, come join us.