Pathological

by Henry Cordes

  Mois, too, saw Garcia’s gun purchase as an ominous sign. But he was among those still questioning whether they had enough evidence for the takedown. Mois also knew the detectives still had a significant card to play: Garcia’s credit cards.

  Those records in recent weeks had been coming in at a glacial pace. The detectives had requested records going all the way back to 2007, just prior to the Dundee killings. It was a lot of work for both the banks and the detectives, ultimately producing enough paperwork to fill two file boxes. Yet up to that point, the reams of records produced had been of limited value.

  One of the banks Mois had not heard back from was Alabama-based Regions Bank. Feeling the urgency to act, Mois called Regions in late June for an update. He was told it would still take some time. Mois was now desperate.

  “Can you get me a limited response?” he asked. If he narrowed the records request to only the past few months, could they expedite it? Regions agreed. And just over a week later, on July 9, those records came in.

  Eyeballing the Regions statements, the Garcia team quickly found a reference to Omaha, Nebraska. Garcia had made a $7.69 charge at an Omaha business listed in the records as “Wingman.”

  Around the same time there was another transaction showing Garcia had spent $22.59 at a Casey’s General Store convenience store. That record didn’t say where the store was located, but Casey’s had locations in and around Omaha.

  Both purchases were dated May 14, two days after the Brumback killings. But Mois knew May 14 was just the date the transactions were posted by Regions. He’d need to go to the businesses themselves to document when the actual purchases had taken place. Mois tasked Davis to go chase down the Casey’s purchase while he went after Wingman.

  Mois had never heard of Wingman. But he soon figured out it was the corporate name for the Omaha franchises of a national chicken wing restaurant chain called Wingstop. Soon after, Mois was meeting the restaurants’ owner at his home, where he maintained his business office. It probably took Bob Morrison only a few minutes to dig up the sales receipt, but as Mois stood there, it seemed an eternity.

  Morrison finally handed the receipt to Mois.

  It showed Garcia had stopped in at Morrison’s 72nd and Pacific location. The time and date of the purchase were also printed right at the top of the receipt: 2:26 p.m. on May 12 — Mother’s Day.

  As with the phone records, this time fit perfectly with the detectives’ working time line for that day. The wing purchase came just nine minutes after the intrusion alarm at Bewtra’s. What’s more, her home was just over a mile from Wingstop. When the detectives drove the route, it took just 2 minutes, 25 seconds to get there.

  The restaurant was also just minutes away from the Brumback house. In fact, right about the time Garcia would have been sitting there eating his wings, the Brumbacks were wrapping up their Mother’s Day chat with their daughter. With this receipt, Garcia’s opportunity to kill the Brumbacks had now moved from Atlantic, Iowa, right into the heart of Omaha, just minutes from the Brumback home.

  Davis likewise hit a home run on the Casey’s purchase. Garcia had stopped at a Casey’s in Council Bluffs, Iowa, right across the Missouri River from Omaha, at 12:38 p.m. on Mother’s Day. And better yet, the store had surveillance video of the transaction.

  In this day and age, it was common for businesses and even homeowners to employ security cameras, and they’d become an important crime-fighting tool. Such cameras stand as silent, perpetual witnesses to all going on around them. Whenever investigating a crime, detectives were always on the lookout for any cameras in the area that may have caught something.

  The Casey’s video, obtained by Davis the next day, captured Garcia at virtually every moment during his stop at the convenience store. One outside camera showed the arrival of Garcia’s black Mercedes SUV. The view of another camera caught him walking inside and then disappearing into a restroom. The same camera showed him emerge minutes later, grab a case of warm Bud Light — yes, he strangely drank warm beer — and take it up to the register. Finally, yet another camera showed him put the beer up on the counter and pay for it, this camera view offering a good look at Garcia’s chubby mug.

  It seemed to the detectives that this beer purchase represented the liquid courage Garcia needed to commit his crimes hours later. It wasn’t lost on Mois that the mystery man seen outside the Hunter home five years earlier had been seen to stumble. Perhaps alcohol had dulled Garcia’s senses in both sets of slayings.

  As Mois watched Garcia in the Casey’s video, he knew this clip was almost bulletproof.

  Garcia couldn’t try to claim someone stole his card and used it that day. The man standing at the counter buying his Mother’s Day beer across the river was clearly Garcia, in the flesh. The Terre Haute resident would have a hard time explaining away how he just happened to be there the day the man who fired him was murdered.

  The video and wings receipt also helped alter Mois’ thinking about arresting Garcia. We have enough, Mois thought. That decision, though, was not ultimately his to make. Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine and his chief deputy, Beadle, would decide.

  Kleine and Beadle had long histories with both the Hunter and Brumback cases, having visited both crime scenes at the time of the killings. They often did so in high-profile crimes. While they could read every report and look over every photo, there was no substitute for scoping the scene with their own eyes.

  The prosecutors had recently been receiving regular briefings on the task force’s progress, including the growing interest in Garcia. Beadle had been in the task force room one day recently when Mois burst in with one of his team’s new findings. At that moment, it had given her chills.

  The prosecutors had also been feeling stress and anxiety over whether it was time to nab Garcia. The topic had already produced some tense discussions between Beadle and Kleine. Beadle, a veteran homicide litigator who had worked with Kleine for more than a decade, was the more edgy of the two. Kleine, the state’s most seasoned prosecutor, had been urging caution.

  The standard for conviction in court, of course, would be proof beyond a reasonable doubt. They didn’t want to move too quickly with an arrest in a case they ultimately couldn’t prove to a jury, Kleine argued. He thought it better to take the time to collect the evidence now rather than just hope they found more after an arrest. “Are we going to be able to develop more, or is this it?” he said. “Let’s make sure we have our ducks in a row.”

  As it turned out, Kleine wasn’t able to attend this key briefing in the task force room July 12. He was on the board of the National District Attorneys Association, which was holding its annual meeting in California. But Beadle went into the task force room with a deep understanding of where her boss stood. She knew what he wanted to see and hear.

  Mois, Herfordt and Davis flashed their PowerPoint up on a screen, walking Beadle through their evidence slide by slide: Garcia’s 2001 Creighton firing; the signature neck wounds of all four victims; Garcia’s silver SUV with the pastel plate; the verification letters from Hunter and Brumback that seemed to trigger the double murders; the cell call near Omaha; Garcia’s handgun; the wings receipt and the convenience store video.

  Beadle was excited by what she was seeing. The detectives had unearthed some hard evidence, a firm foundation on which prosecutors could build a case. With a mix of both confidence and elation, Beadle made the call.

  OK. Let’s go.

  With that decision, the recent breakneck pace of the Garcia investigators only accelerated. Mois was back in the office the next day, a Saturday. Again, there would be no rest for the detective.

  Sitting down at his desk computer, Mois started batting out an affidavit for an arrest warrant. In a clipped, just-the-facts yet riveting narrative, he walked the as-yet unknown judge who’d be reading the document through Garcia’s tale of failure, vengeance and blood.

  “T
hese affiant Officers further state that there is reasonable cause to believe the crime of First Degree murder, four counts, was committed and that said defendant committed said crime,” Mois concluded in stiff, lawyerlike fashion.

  As Mois finished and saved the document, the significance of the moment wasn’t lost on him. It had been five long years since that warm March night in 2008 when he became the first detective to take in the awful scene in the Hunters’ Dundee home. Now he and fellow Omaha cops were set to bring Tom and Shirlee’s killer home to face justice.

  CHAPTER 17: ‘HE’S MOVING’

  The commercial jet carrying the Omaha detectives broke through the clouds and touched down on the tarmac of Indianapolis International Airport. It was now Sunday, July 14, and the Omaha task force was ready to pounce.

  The plan called for the detectives to pick up airport rental cars, drive to Terre Haute, set up in a hotel and coordinate with local law enforcement. And then in the predawn darkness early the next morning, they’d follow behind an Indiana State Police SWAT team that would kick down Garcia’s door. Believing Garcia to be potentially armed and dangerous, the hope was to catch him in his sleep.

  All seven Omaha officers who made the trip to Indiana had their assigned roles. Mois and Warner would immediately follow Garcia to jail and try to interview him. Davis and Herfordt would serve a search warrant on Garcia’s home. Other detectives would fan out talking to neighbors, employers and anyone else who knew Garcia. At the same time, another team of task force officers was headed west. They would simultaneously hit Garcia’s parents’ home in California, serve a warrant and impound the silver CRV.

  But the best laid plans of mice and men and, as it turns out, multiagency law enforcement task forces, often do go awry. Not long after the officers landed in Indianapolis, they were all thrown for a loop. Lt. Fidone checked her cell phone and saw it right away.

  “Oh, my gosh,” she said. “He’s moving.”

  Since July 1, the task force had been secretly keeping an electronic eye on Garcia. Herfordt had gone to court for a search warrant authorizing the task force to “ping” Garcia’s cell phone. Every half hour, Fidone and Sgt. Ratliff received an email from the phone company with the current GPS coordinates for the phone.

  The last ping before the officers took off for Indy had shown Garcia at home in Terre Haute. They couldn’t get new ping updates while in flight. But catching up in the Indianapolis airport terminal, Fidone could see Garcia had driven west across the border into Illinois. He appeared to still be moving south into downstate Illinois.

  The task force members quickly gathered their equipment and headed out for the hour and a half drive to Terre Haute. Gathered later in a hotel room there, they could see Garcia was now two hours away in Salem, Illinois, a small town just off Interstate 57. He appeared to have stopped there, perhaps for the night.

  Now they had to try to figure out what he was up to. The detectives knew from their surreptitious viewing of Garcia’s emails that the doctor at times recently had been getting spot work doing contract wellness checks at various businesses. This move could be completely harmless. He might be out on such a job and before long would be back in Terre Haute.

  But there were other possibilities, too. They had to wonder whether Garcia was in flight. Could he have somehow learned they were probing his background, or been tipped off by someone? Could he have figured out they were closing in on him?

  They had another thought, too: Could he be on his way to kill again?

  One of the reasons they’d started pinging Garcia’s phone was concern the doctor at any time could return to Omaha on a new deadly mission. The task force leaders decided that if there was ever any indication Garcia was headed back to Omaha, they would arrest him immediately.

  With the southern trajectory Garcia was currently on, it didn’t look like he was bound for Omaha. But I-57 through Illinois was precisely the route one would take to get from Terre Haute to Shreveport. From their probing of Garcia’s background, Mois, Davis and Herfordt knew there were still people in Shreveport who had a direct hand in Garcia’s firing. “We had a strong concern this guy was a menace and could kill someone else,” Herfordt would recall of the moment. “If he’s on another vendetta, we need to stop him.”

  Taking all those things into consideration, the detectives plotted a new plan of action. And much of it came to revolve around a pair of Omaha FBI agents.

  Jonathan Robitaille and Kevin Hytrek were the two agents assigned from the start to the task force. They were now part of the arrest team. But rather than fly out to Indiana with the Omaha cops, they were en route to Terre Haute at the moment by car.

  Task force leaders decided the agents should now reroute south, locate Garcia and keep an eye on him. The FBI’s freedom to conduct such interstate surveillance was one of the reasons the agents had been brought into the task force in the first place.

  In the morning, everyone would wait and see what Garcia did. If he headed back to Terre Haute, the task force would be there waiting. If he continued to drive, the FBI agents would tail him and await further instructions.

  The agents hit Salem in the fading light before dusk. They pulled off Interstate 57 and drove west on the main road, scoping out a Walmart parking lot and some other businesses. Driving back toward the interstate, they finally spotted Garcia’s car in the parking lot of a Comfort Inn motel.

  The agents checked into another motel next door, carefully picking a room that would give them a clear view of Garcia’s SUV. They also contacted the FBI’s Springfield, Illinois, field office to request additional manpower to assist in the surveillance.

  By the time the three Springfield agents had arrived and been briefed, it was nearly 1 a.m. And the agents the next day faced a potentially long day tailing Garcia. Hytrek decided the best thing they could do at that point was get some sleep.

  “Be ready to start driving in the morning,” Hytrek told the agents. They set alarms for 5 a.m., figuring Garcia wouldn’t get on the road before then.

  They figured wrong.

  Hytrek awoke three minutes before his alarm went off and looked out the window. Garcia’s car was gone. The agents scrambled. Hytrek called Omaha’s Ratliff and asked for the latest ping location. He learned the last one still showed him in Salem. So if Garcia had left town, he hadn’t gotten far.

  The agents flew south on the interstate at speeds reaching 100 mph, scanning the road for a black SUV. They soon after got a new ping location from Ratliff.

  Garcia was now in Benton, Illinois — a half hour behind the agents.

  The agents flipped a U-turn to head back north, soon after spotting Garcia’s SUV heading towards them in the southbound lanes. Once he was out of view, they whipped around again and maneuvered in behind him. They got their unmarked car close enough to confirm Garcia’s license plate before backing off.

  Mile after mile they drove, destination unknown. Garcia was seemingly in no hurry, driving 55 in the 65 mph zone and tailgating closely behind a semi truck. The agents hung 200 yards back and blended into traffic.

  About an hour further down the road, Hytrek got on the phone again with Fidone. Garcia clearly wasn’t headed back to Terre Haute. And they were getting close to the Missouri state line. If Garcia crossed out of Illinois, they would have to involve a new FBI field office and engage other law enforcement jurisdictions who knew nothing of the case. “We were running out of Illinois,” Hytrek later put it.

  Hytrek and Fidone agreed that Garcia shouldn’t be allowed to leave the state. They alerted the Illinois State Police and requested they make the stop and arrest.

  That’s when Garcia again did the unexpected. Some 36 miles from the Missouri border, Garcia pulled off the interstate — right at the same exit where the two troopers who’d just been given the order to stop him were parked.

  Everyone involved was taken aback by this amazing coincidence.
Troopers Jeff Agne and Roger Goines were shocked to see the black SUV they’d just been ordered to stop suddenly driving right by them. And Garcia was clearly spooked at the sight of the troopers. Without stopping, he immediately headed for the on-ramp that would take him back to the interstate. Garcia only got halfway down the ramp before the troopers swooped in behind him with lights flashing. Garcia stopped.

  Guns drawn, the troopers ordered Garcia out and told him to drop to his knees on the pavement. As Garcia complied, the troopers called out again, asking if he was armed. Garcia admitted he had a gun.

  “I believe it’s on the passenger side, if I remember correctly,” he said. The troopers moved in and cuffed him.

  Though it was still early in the morning, the troopers right away noticed the strong smell of alcohol coming from Garcia. A quick breath test showed Garcia’s blood-alcohol level was double the legal limit. The troopers took him into custody and booked him for DUI.

  The doctor, though, would soon learn he faced much bigger legal problems.

  CHAPTER 18: THE RECKONING

  Anthony Garcia was still settling into his cell in the county jail in Jonesboro, Illinois, when he was told he had visitors. Garcia didn’t know them, but they were pretty familiar with him. Minutes later, he found himself face-to-face with Derek Mois and Scott Warner.

  With Mois at the wheel, the Omaha detectives had hit the road that morning as soon as it was clear Garcia wasn’t coming back to Terre Haute. During all the years they’d partnered in homicide, Warner frequently begged lead foot Mois to slow down. Not this time. They were hauling it. Both detectives were eager for the chance to question Garcia.

  After arriving late that morning at the county lockup where Garcia was being held, they set up in an interview room. Soon after, Garcia was led in, dressed in the same blue collared shirt and dark slacks he’d been arrested in that morning. The doctor shook both detectives’ hands. And for the first time, Mois sized up the man he’d been tracking virtually nonstop these past two months.