Anthony Joseph Garcia (born June 7, 1973[1]) is an American serial killer and former medical doctor who was convicted of two separate double murders, committed in 2008 and 2013 in Omaha, Nebraska.
Garcia was born on June 7, 1973, in Los Angeles, California, to Fred, a postal service worker, and Estella, a Mexican native who was a nurse.
He then began a residency at Bassett-St. Elizabeth Family Medicine program in Utica, NY where he remained for approximately six months before being forced to resign for "unprofessional and inappropriate conduct.
[4] In July 2000, Garcia began another residency in the pathology department at the Creighton University Medical Center - Bergan Mercy in Omaha, Nebraska.
[3] He soon received poor written evaluations from his professor Dr. Chhanda Bewtra, who judged his attitude to be "passive/aggressive," stating that "Dr. Garcia showed marked lack of initiative and interest.
[8] He first caused a major incident when he placed an autopsied body facedown overnight, which "markedly distorted the face," resulting in a formal complaint to the university by a funeral director.
[10] Even though Garcia knew he was under review, he then called the wife of Dr. Hisham Hashish, a second-year resident, whom he had previously harasssed and who was off taking a critical exam, telling her that the "pathology department" insisted her husband interrupt it to return and attend a mandatory meeting.
Nguyen admitted he did nothing to stop Garcia, who was convinced that Hashish had previously used exams as an excuse to take time off, and was "very upset that he had left work for him to do."
He later told authorities that he left due to poor health, migraine headaches, and depression, moving back to his parents' home in Walnut, California.
[18] Witnesses described a heavy-set olive-skinned male in the vicinity, correlating him to a silver Honda CRV with an out-of-state license plate.
Reporter Todd Cooper noted that the Brumbacks were last seen and heard from the previous Sunday, Mother's Day, during an online chat with their daughter.
[29] However, on the eve of jury selection, Judge Gary Randall made a controversial decision to remove Alison Motta by revoking the court's permission for her to participate in Garcia's defense for violating a pre-trial publicity order by making public statements to TV stations and reporters about the supposed existence of exculpatory DNA evidence from two people, in what he considered an overt attempt to "poison the jury pool.
Investigators also found that when Garcia was in Louisiana, he had owned a silver Honda CRV with a license plate fitting the description of the car seen around the Hunter home at the time of the first killings.
[31] In addition, his saliva sample matched DNA left behind by the intruder who had tried to break into the Bewtra house on the day the Brumbacks were killed.
[23] Prosecutors also called a former stripper from Terre Haute, Cecilia Hoffman, who said that four years after the Dundee murders, when Garcia had tried to pursue her romantically, she attempted to rebuff him by saying that she only dated "bad boys."
"[23][31] Motta responded by noting that she had admitted to drinking the day of her conversation with the police about the incident, but Hoffman denied being drunk.
[32] Prosecutors also pointed out that the four victims had been stabbed in a similar manner and that the gun found in Garcia's car matched the type of handgun magazine that had been left behind at the Brumback crime scene.
[1] In November 2022, the public defender's office began attempts to appeal his sentencing[35] and by March 2023 had filed a motion for a new trial, calling his previous attorneys "a nightmare.
"[36] In his appeal, Garcia noted 130 alleged errors made during his trial that involved 15 topics, including motions to suppress, DNA and digital evidence, ineffective counsel, and constitutionality of the death penalty.
[37][38] In 2010, Creighton University unveiled a memorial to Thomas Hunter, installed on the southeast lawn of the school's Cardiac Center.
A fictionalized version of the case was included in the true crime series, James Patterson’s Murder is Forever, on the Investigation Discovery channel.