KILLER GRUDGE
Ex-doc convicted of four slays in Nebraska
OMAHA, Neb. — A former doctor was sentenced to death yesterday for the revenge killings of four people connected to a Nebraska medical school, including the 11-year-old son of a physician who helped fire the man from a residency program nearly two decades ago.
Anthony Garcia, 45, of Indiana entered the courtroom in a wheelchair and appeared to sleep through the hearing as a three-judge panel sentenced him to death. The judges, who heard arguments earlier this year during the sentencing phase of Garcia’s trial, also had the option of life in prison.
Garcia was convicted in 2016 for two attacks — that occurred five years apart — on families connected to Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha. Prosecutors argued the killings were motivated by Garcia’s long-simmering rage over being fired in 2001 by Dr. William Hunter and another Creighton pathology doctor, Roger Brumback.
Some of the victims’ relatives testified yesterday, including Jeff Sherman, whose mother was fatally stabbed alongside Hunter’s young son when she worked at the Hunter family’s home in 2008.
“I’m left with constant images from courtroom pictures of what happened to my mom,” Sherman said. “I can’t ever get those images out of my head.”
Investigators said Garcia fatally stabbed 11-year-old Thomas Hunter and 57-yearold Shirlee Sherman at the family’s home in an upscale Omaha neighborhood. Police collected a slew of evidence but struggled to find a suspect in the killings.
The case went cold in the following years. But that changed with the 2013 Mother’s Day deaths of Brumback and his wife, Mary, in their Omaha home. Police recognized similarities in the 2008 and 2013 killings, and Garcia was quickly eyed as a suspect. He was arrested two months later during a traffic stop in southern Illinois.
Yesterday, Thomas Hunter’s mother, Dr. Claire Hunter, spoke of the agony of losing her young son so violently. She said the boy “was a joy in everybody’s life.”
“You can’t begin to enumerate what an event like has had on us, on the entire community,” she said after Garcia was sentenced.
Garcia’s parents and brother, who live in California, also attended the hearing. They were tearful as the verdict was read.
His brother, Fernando Garcia, said it was hard for his family to imagine his brother committing the crimes.
“We just want the victims’ families to know we do pray for them. We feel their pain,” he said. “We’re sorry those things took place. We’re not an evil family. We hope they find peace somehow.”