by Henry Cordes
The Chicago doctor remembered Garcia, simply saying, “He was not my favorite student, and I will leave it at that.” Herfordt decided he’d leave it at that, too. With Garcia now in custody, Herfordt figured it was best not to cause this doctor any undue concern. He thanked her for her time and hung up, never telling her the reason for his call.
But that doctor wasn’t the last potential Garcia victim Herfordt would discover as he followed in Garcia’s digital footprints. Herfordt soon after found Garcia in 2011 had also looked up the home and office addresses of the New York doctor who had fired him from his Albany residency, a woman now living in Los Angeles. Garcia had even looked up her bio page, which included a recent picture of her, and mapped the route from his parents’ home in Walnut to her office in Beverly Hills.
While the task force leaders had been concerned Garcia could kill again, even they might have been shocked to know just how many potential victims he’d been stalking. Between the Bewtras, the doctors in Chicago and Los Angeles and whoever he was targeting at LSU, there could easily have been a half dozen other murders had this pathological killer not been stopped.
The vindictive thoughts driving Garcia’s homicidal plotting were perhaps best summed up by still more evidence Herfordt would uncover in his high-tech sleuthing of Garcia’s iPhone.
One day Herfordt was sitting at his computer making random searches through Garcia’s phone data, just to see what came up. Thinking about Garcia’s motive, Herfordt typed in a word: r-e-v-e-n-g-e.
Up from the mountains of data popped a single hit. In February of 2013 — three months before his Mother’s Day visit to Omaha — Garcia had opened the browser on the phone and typed in four simple words:
shall i not revenge
Garcia must have been trying to recall a quote he vaguely remembered from some long-ago high school or college English lit class. Because his search brought from the depths of the internet a quote from Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice” — words from the bard that well summed up the reason for Garcia’s cold-blooded killing spree.
“And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
CHAPTER 22: ONE FINAL PIECE
More than a year had passed since Anthony Garcia’s arrest. The Omaha task force had largely wound down its work and handed the evidence over to prosecutors for Garcia’s upcoming trial.
But no one had more time and sweat equity invested in this case than Derek Mois. And rarely did a day go by in which he wasn’t obsessing over some detail. Is there something we’ve overlooked? Is there more we can do? Have we done enough? “Even when cases are ‘resolved,’ I find myself considering what happened, what we did, what could have we done better, or sooner, items that we were never able to reconcile,” he’d later say. “Cases stay with you. Maybe that’s just me.”
And one of the things that had continued to gnaw at Mois was Garcia’s SD9, the gun that killed Roger Brumback. Mois knew from experience that if you’re going to court to prove a homicide, it’s best to have the murder weapon in hand.
The SD9 parts left behind in the Brumback home could not be specifically linked to Garcia’s gun. When Davis and Herfordt searched Garcia’s house in Indiana, they did find the original box the gun had come in. The detectives had the sales record from Gander Mountain, too. But they could find no sign of the weapon itself. After the Mother’s Day massacre in the Brumback home, what did Garcia do with the gun?
The best theory was that he ditched it somewhere between Omaha and Terre Haute. Perhaps he threw it in a dumpster, a river or the weeds along the side of the road.
There were almost 600 miles between the two cities. That’s not even needle in a haystack territory. But despite the long odds, like a dog with his jaw locked on an old shoe, Mois was just too stubborn to give up.
Contrary to what one might imagine, there is no comprehensive database for guns in the United States, something gun rights advocates vigorously oppose. The only searchable national database for guns is for those reported by gun dealers to be lost or stolen. Clearly Garcia’s gun would not likely be listed there. Mois had gone ahead and queried that database a couple of times anyway.
Guns that come into the possession of law enforcement agencies also are not placed in any database. So even if another agency at the moment had Garcia’s gun in hand, it was hard for Mois to know.
Despite all the barriers, one day in September 2014, Mois began to draw up a list of every law enforcement agency along the interstate between Omaha and Terre Haute. It was a massive undertaking, with dozens of municipal, county and state agencies. But Mois was prepared to reach out to them all, one by one, to see if they’d found the SD9.
Mois told Scott Warner what he was doing. They both agreed there had to be a better way. Warner later gave it some more thought. And he was struck with an idea.
“If another agency did get their hands on the gun, wouldn’t they run the serial number through the database to see if it had been reported lost or stolen, just like we would?” he said to Mois. “Can we find out if anyone else has ever run the gun?”
If another agency had done so, Warner reasoned, that would be a tip-off that the agency now had the SD9.
It seemed no one, at least in Omaha, had ever thought about attempting what amounted to a search of the previous database searches. Mois took this idea to Kelly McDonald, the department data technician who handled such firearms queries.
That’s not how it works, she told him. But McDonald also didn’t dismiss the idea out of hand. She said she’d check to see what was possible.
The next day, McDonald emailed Mois. “There is one search that is not Omaha. Clark County Sheriff’s Office in Illinois. Here is their phone number.”
The technician had indeed figured out a way to search the previous queries. And as luck would have it, a rural sheriff’s office in Illinois had run the serial number of Garcia’s gun.
In July 2013, some two months after the Brumback killings, a truck driver had pulled off the interstate in Illinois, just across the border from Indiana. Nature was calling.
Looking down at his feet as he did his business, the trucker spotted the frame of a handgun — missing all its moving parts — amid the roadside gravel.
The trucker called 911 to report his find. The local sheriff’s office soon after came out to pick up the gun, later running the serial number through the lost and stolen guns database.
The moment Mois saw McDonald’s email in his inbox, he called Clark County. He was soon on the phone with the deputy who picked up the SD9. “Please tell me you still have the gun,” Mois told him.
“Let me check,” the deputy said, leading to the longest 15 minutes of Mois’ life. But the deputy ultimately came back from the property room with the gun in hand.
Within days, Mois was on his way to Illinois to pick up Garcia’s gun. He, Herfordt and two other detectives also went out to the interstate ramp where the gun was found and fanned out in the weeds and trees looking for more parts of the SD9.
In the end, they didn’t find any. But the piece they had was the most critical, including the serial number that proved it had belonged to Garcia. Given it was missing some of the very parts found in the Brumback home, it would be nice to have at trial.
Mois had to chuckle about it all. He knew this was a gift. There were obviously a million better ways for a crook to ditch a murder weapon than dropping it right on the shoulder of the interstate. “He’s not a criminal mastermind,” Mois would later say of Garcia.
But even the biggest of murder cases, Mois knew, are built on lots of little things. During Garcia’s upcoming trial, perhaps this gun could be the final piece of evidence that would assure justice for Tom, Shirlee, Roger and Mary.
CHAPTER 23: COURTROOM COMBAT
Circles around his eyes — 5 o’clock shadow already appearing, by 9:30 a.m. — attorney Jeremy Jorgenson spun around in his chair. He cran
ed his neck and looked around a courtroom pillar at the young woman who had just been led into the courtroom.
“Is that Celeste?” he whispered to the fellow members of Anthony Garcia’s defense team.
A private investigator glanced at the woman in the first row. “You mean Cecilia?” the investigator asked.
“Yes,” Jorgenson said.
“That’s her,” the investigator nodded.
Her presence set off a scramble. Jorgenson furiously whispered into the ear of Robert Motta Jr., another Garcia attorney. Motta snapped his head and looked wide-eyed at Cecilia Hoffmann.
The panic was a curious sight. After all, Hoffmann was destined to be a star witness during Anthony Garcia’s trial. She represented practically the only witness directly connecting Garcia to the March 2008 deaths of Tom Hunter and Shirlee Sherman — once hearing words from him that were tantamount to a confession.
That she would testify to those words was no surprise; her potential testimony had been the subject of numerous pretrial hearings during the protracted three-year buildup to this sensational October 2016 trial. So the prosecution called her on the trial’s ninth day. And amid her testimony, the defense asked to approach the judge.
“I’m going to need a recess,” Motta said. “I mean we were trying to find out who you were calling. I mean, we asked, we texted (prosecutor) Don (Kleine). ... Who are you calling? It’s hard to prepare for 70 witnesses.”
Judge Gary Randall indicated he would dismiss the jurors early for lunch. Kleine was incredulous. “So let me get this straight,” he said, “we’re going to take a recess because they’re not ready?”
He jabbed a thumb in the defense team’s direction, typical of the fierce animosity that had developed over the past three years between the opposing sides. Motta glared at Kleine. “We have a client facing the death penalty,” he shot back, “so I think a little time is warranted.”
So court recessed. And courtroom observers were again left to ponder what normally would be unthinkable: Could the two sides actually come to blows?
Anyone who watches court will tell you that, while the U.S. justice system is adversarial by nature, a trial is a remarkably civil, even collaborative, production. The two sides may disagree on guilt or innocence, but they often agree on matters like what witnesses can be called or evidence presented, and work through any differences in a spirit of cooperation.
This case was different: cold and combative. It pitted a proud prosecution team from Omaha against a brash band of defense attorneys from Chicago.
Kleine, who turned 64 during the trial, was Nebraska’s most experienced prosecutor — having handled more than 70 first-degree murder trials. A prosecutor for 30 years and the elected county attorney in Nebraska’s largest county since 2006, Kleine was a Democrat known for his fearless prosecutions of gang members, serial killers, even police officers.
Kleine was joined by his longtime chief deputy, Brenda Beadle, a veteran of 20 murder trials. Beadle, in her early 50s, combined a detective’s eye for detail with fierce drive and a storytelling knack. Sean Lynch, a junior attorney in the office, joined them at the prosecution table, back-stopping the lead attorneys.
On the other side was Team Motta, as it liked to call itself — Robert Motta Jr., his wife Alison Motta, and his father, Robert Motta Sr.
The junior Motta had never defended an accused killer, but his father had. As a young criminal defense attorney, Robert Motta Sr. was on the defense team that represented serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Gacy ultimately was convicted of sexually assaulting and killing at least 33 teenage boys in the Chicago area during the 1970s.
Bob Sr. went on to a productive criminal defense career — and came out of retirement just for the chance to try another serial murder case with his son.
Bob Sr. was as relaxed and folksy as his thick Chicago accent. Bob Jr. and Alison, on the other hand, were feisty and bold. The couple made their home in Chicago area courts, aggressively representing those accused of drug trafficking, DUIs and minor crimes. Perhaps their most notable case, before Garcia, was Alison’s representation of an ex-wife who claimed R&B singer R. Kelly owed her money for child support.
Then came July 15, 2013. On a sleepless night, Bob Motta Jr. happened to check his work voicemail. Fernando Garcia had been randomly picking the names of attorneys out of a phone book and had left a message. His older brother, Anthony Garcia, was locked up in downstate Illinois and needed an attorney. Right away.
It wasn’t long before the Chicago attorneys blew into Omaha — and blew up any idea that they would adapt their style to their modest Midwest surroundings. Garcia himself was the first to offer a glimpse into the defense team’s aggressive stance.
Typically, on the advice of their attorneys, defendants don’t talk to the press. But here was Garcia, leaving a voicemail for an editor at the World-Herald. “My attorneys and I were talking — we’re going to kick their ass,” Garcia said in the call, not long after his 2013 arrest. “You can print that.”
It wasn’t hard to see where Garcia got his bravado. Three years later, Bob Jr. leaned across a table during jury selection for Garcia’s trial. He eyeballed Kleine, 20 years his elder. “We’re going to kick your ass,” he said.
The comment was amazing in its audacity. Attorneys rarely make predictions, most simply saying they look forward to their day in court. In private moments, the Mottas’ boasts left Kleine and Beadle incredulous. Prosecutors heard so much bluster that Kleine came up with an analogy for Bob Jr.’s chest-thumping.
Before the first Gulf War, Kleine noted, Saddam Hussein used to brag about how the Iraqi army would destroy “the infidels” from the United States. Everyone saw how that one turned out. Still, it all made Kleine a little uneasy. “It almost makes you wonder if he has something up his sleeve,” Kleine said at one point. “Or is he just popping off?”
Say this about the defense team: They had little concern about what locals thought of them. Bob Jr. explained his philosophy to the judge during one pretrial hearing: “I don’t practice here, so I can take a scorched-earth policy.”
Once during another pre-trial hearing, Motta railed against Kleine. “I’m sick of his mouth!” It was just the latest of countless courtroom blowups that often had Motta screaming at the top of his lungs. During a teleconference hearing, Motta launched into such a screaming rant the judge repeatedly yelled at him to shut up.
Motta’s wife, Alison Motta, was no less aggressive. A diminutive woman at 5 feet tall, Alison was a plucky and, at times, ornery attorney — outspoken and loathe to concede anything.
Garcia clearly was impressed with his attorneys’ feistiness. The defendant often smiled, even chuckled, as Bob Jr. and Alison zigged, zagged and zinged their way through months of pre-trial hearings. But as the trial neared, the Mottas’ mouths landed them in serious hot water.
On March 28, 2016, Alison Motta called Omaha news outlets, announcing that a defense expert had linked DNA on Shirlee Sherman’s bandanna to another potential suspect. “The evidence conclusively exonerates Anthony Garcia,” Alison declared.
Big problem: The DNA swab taken from the bandanna didn’t provide a link to the man Alison mentioned. In fact, the sample was such a mix of various people’s DNA it didn’t implicate or exonerate anyone.
Prosecutors fumed. Kleine and Beadle suggested that Alison’s comments were an attempt to poison the jury pool less than a week before trial. They weren’t alone in their outrage. Days later, Judge Randall effectively booted Alison from the defense team. Alison would not speak at trial or sit at the defense table.
Alison’s ouster caused the latest of several delays that would combine to push back Garcia’s trial more than two years. Her role at trial would essentially be filled by Jorgenson, a mid-40s Omaha attorney who was the local attorney the Mottas needed on their team to be able to practice without a Nebraska law license.
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p; Jorgenson had his own colorful background. He had tried his only prior murder case while his license was on probation from the Nebraska Supreme Court, a penalty handed down after he had accepted fees on a case whose legal claim had expired. But with the defense team set, Garcia was finally ready to go to trial in October 2016.
In any trial, the defense team is stuck with the hand their client has dealt them. That was doubly so in Garcia’s case. In effect, the state had two major hands to play — one in the 2008 deaths of Tom and Shirlee, and the other the 2013 Brumback killings. Due to the similarity between the two sets of murders, Kleine had made the decision to try the cases together in a single trial.
When it came to fending off the charges in the Brumback killings, the defense case on its face seemed hopeless. Put simply, the state had vast amounts of physical evidence against Garcia in those 2013 slayings. Mois, Herfordt and Davis had been able to document Garcia’s digital footprints in and around Omaha on Mother’s Day. The task force also had a swab of DNA taken from Bewtra’s door after the failed break-in, an analysis of which showed it had been left behind either by Garcia himself or a male member of his family. Mois had tracked down the murder weapon. Throw in the trove of incriminating documents found soaking in Garcia’s home, and prosecutors could literally throw the kitchen sink at Garcia in the Brumback murders.
Contrast that with the scant physical evidence prosecutors had putting Garcia in Omaha during the killings of Tom and Shirlee: the fact that he owned the same make and color of car as the dark-haired, olive-skinned man seen around the Hunter home. Even that evidence was weakened by the fact that none of the neighbors had been able to pick Garcia out of a photo lineup five years after the fact.
The Mottas as a result knew their best defense was to win an acquittal on at least the Dundee slayings. For Garcia, such a feat might be the difference between life and death. A defendant in Nebraska who kills four people typically has a reservation on death row. A defendant who kills two people? Much less likely.