OMAHA, July 23 (UPI) -- An Illinois doctor accused of killing four people in Nebraska will remain in jail until his trial, a judge ruled Tuesday.
Douglas County Judge Lawrence Barrett denied bail to Anthony Garcia, a physician practicing in Chicago who has been accused of killing four people in Omaha connected to the Creighton University pathology department -- a doctor and his wife along with the son of another doctor and his house cleaner -- during a five-year period.
Garcia, who grew up in a wealthy Los Angeles suburb, was dismissed from the Creighton pathology residency program for undermining another resident. Two doctors, William Hunter and Roger Brumback, fired Garcia in 2001, the Omaha World-Herald reported.
Seven years later, after Garcia washed out of multiple other medical schools for similar reasons, police said Garcia drove to Hunter's home and killed his son, Thomas Hunter, 11, and the family's cleaning lady, Shirlee Sherman, 57.
Related
Police said both Hunter and Sherman were killed using a knife kept in Hunter's home. Leads on the case quickly went cold, police said.
Five years after Hunter and Sherman were killed, a similar crime took place when Brumback and his wife, Mary, were killed in May. Both were stabbed using a knife found in the home, though Brumback was also shot multiple times.
Police began piecing together the two double murders and arrived at Garcia as a common enemy. It became clear, investigators said, Garcia had sought to get even with the two doctors who dismissed him from Creighton.
Police located Garcia outside Chicago where he'd been living and working as an in-home physician and later as a contracted doctor at a federal prison in Indiana.
Garcia was formally charged with the four killings Monday. He pleaded not guilty.
