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Dr. Anthony Garcia appeared to be an admirable man, at least from the outside looking in. He lived in a nice house on a nice street in Terre Haute, Indiana, and he owned a Ferrari. He seemingly had it all.
But internally, police say his life was “falling apart.”
What Happened?
On Friday, NBC’s Dateline will examine the difficult life of Garcia, who was once an up-and-coming University of Utah medical school graduate before becoming a serial killer.
Police told NBC that Garcia was motivated by a years-long revenge scheme following his firing from Nebraska’s Creighton University in 2001 as he was followed by bad references from his former supervisors.
Garcia murdered four people on two separate occasions in 2008 and 2013. One of his victims was a doctor who dismissed him from Creighton. Another was an 11-year-old boy. All four victims were stabbed repeatedly. In two of the killings, police say he left a horrifying calling card: a knife stuck in the right side of their necks.
Garcia was charged with four counts of first-degree murder in 2013. In October, he was convicted, a ruling his lawyers have said they plan to appeal.
Investigators described the troubling scene they found in Garcia’s home in an exclusive clip from Friday’s Dateline, complete with empty rooms and closest, a nearly barren refrigerator and mortgage and insurance papers stacked on the dining table. As it turned out, Garcia was facing foreclosure on his home and was in serious financial trouble.
“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,” Omaha, Nebraska, police detective Derek Mois tells Dateline‘s Josh Mankiewicz in the clip.
“And we see those things, as homicide investigators, when [we] investigate suicides.”
Investigators also dug deep into Garcia’s online data and electronic devices. Mois notes in the clip that the former doctor regularly frequented strip clubs and liquor stores.
“He was not working regularly,” Mois says. “So it looked to us collectively like his life was falling apart.”
Who Is Anthony Garcia?
Anthony Garcia is a former University of Utah medical school graduate and former Creighton University pathology resident. Though a good student, Garcia struggled in his residency and was dismissed from Creighton in 2001. In 2008, he murdered 11-year-old Thomas Hunter, son of Dr. William Hunter of the Department of Pathology at Creighton University, and house keeper Shirlee Sherman. In 2013, he murdered Roger and Mary Brumback. Roger was the former Chair of Creighton’s Department of Pathology.
