Indiana doctor arrested in Omaha attacks
Suspected in killings involving former Creighton professors
OMAHA, Neb. – Authorities arrested an Indiana doctor Monday on suspicion of carrying out two attacks in Omaha in May and in 2008 in which four people were killed who had ties to Creighton University’s medical school, which fired him twelve years ago.
Dr. Anthony Garcia, who now lives in Terre Haute, Ind., was arrested by Illinois State Police while driving near the Indiana border Monday morning, Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer said. Officers said he appeared to be intoxicated when they arrested him, and he had a .45-caliber handgun with him.
Garcia, 40, is being held on suspicion of four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of using a weapon to commit a felony, Schmaderer said. An Illinois State Police official didn’t respond to a request for information about Garcia’s arrest or where in Illinois he was being held.
Garcia didn’t have a listed phone number in Terre Haute or in Chicago, where he previously lived, and it wasn’t immediately clear if he had an attorney.
No one answered the phone at Garcia’s family’s home in Walnut, Calif., Monday evening.
Public records show that since 2003, Garcia has held medical licenses in California, Illinois and Indiana, but his temporary Indiana license expired in January.
Investigators believe Garcia was responsible for an attack in May in which pathology professor Roger Brumback was shot to death and his wife, Mary, was fatally stabbed, Schmaderer said. They also believe Garcia was behind a 2008 home invasion in which the 11-year-old son and family housekeeper of another Creighton pathology department professor, William Hunter, were stabbed to death.
Roger Brumback and William Hunter fired Garcia from his pathology resident position in the department in 2001 for displaying erratic behavior, Schmaderer said. He declined to discuss details of the evidence against Garcia. But he said the task force of local, state and FBI investigators believe Garcia fits all the criteria of a serial killer.
“We didn’t feel this individual would stop unless an arrest was made,” Schmaderer said.
Schmaderer said the task force investigating this case is in the process of searching several places where Garcia lived since 2001, but officers believe he acted alone.
The attacks happened in Omaha neighborhoods where homicides are rare. The city averages about 40 per year.
One of the Brumbacks’ three children, Darryl, said the family had no comment about the arrest. A male relative of Sherman’s also declined to speak. The Hunter family didn’t respond to a phone message seeking comment.
The attack in which Hunter’s son, Thomas Hunter, and housekeeper, Shirlee Sherman, were killed at the family’s 3,700-square-foot home in the historic neighborhood of Dundee was featured last year on “America’s Most Wanted,” and a $54,000 reward was offered. Schmaderer said Monday that investigators don’t believe the boy and the housekeeper were the intended targets of the attack.