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Anthony Garcia Nebraska Death Row

Anthony Garcia was sentenced to death by the State of Nebraska for the murders of four people at the Creighton Medical Center. According to court documents Anthony Garcia was fired from the Creighton Medical Center, and would return years to later to extract his revenge. The first two murders occurred in 2008 when Garcia fatally stabbed 11-year-old Thomas Hunter and 57-year-old Shirlee Sherman. The case went cold until years later when Garcia returned to Nebraska in 2013 and murdered two more people in a similar fashion. The police were able to tie all four murders together and it led them to Anthony Garcia. Anthony Garcia was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death.

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A former doctor was sentenced to death on Friday for the revenge killings of four people connected to a Nebraska medical school, including the 11-year-old son of a physician who helped fire the man from a residency program nearly two decades ago.

Anthony Garcia, 45, of Indiana entered the courtroom in a wheelchair and appeared to sleep through the hearing as a three-judge panel sentenced him to death. The judges, who heard arguments earlier this year during the sentencing phase of Garcia’s trial, also had the option of life in prison.

Garcia was convicted in 2016 for two attacks — that occurred five years apart — on families connected to Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha. Prosecutors argued the killings were motivated by Garcia’s long-simmering rage over being fired in 2001 by Dr. William Hunter and another Creighton pathology doctor, Roger Brumback.

Some of the victims’ relatives testified Friday, including Jeff Sherman, whose mother was fatally stabbed alongside Hunter’s young son when she worked at the Hunter family’s home in 2008.

“I’m left with constant images from courtroom pictures of what happened to my mom,” Sherman said. “I can’t ever get those images out of my head.”

Investigators said Garcia fatally stabbed 11-year-old Thomas Hunter and 57-year-old Shirlee Sherman at the family’s home in an upscale Omaha neighborhood. Police collected a slew of evidence but struggled to find a suspect in the killings.

The case went cold in the following years. But that changed with the 2013 Mother’s Day deaths of Brumback and his wife, Mary, in their Omaha home. Police recognized similarities in the 2008 and 2013 killings, and Garcia was quickly eyed as a suspect. He was arrested two months later during a traffic stop in southern Illinois.

On Friday, Thomas Hunter’s mother, Dr. Claire Hunter, spoke of the agony of losing her young son so violently. She said the boy “was a joy in everybody’s life.”

“You can’t begin to enumerate what an event like has had on us, on the entire community,” she said after Garcia was sentenced.

Garcia’s parents and brother, who live in California, also attended the hearing. They were tearful as the verdict was read.

His brother, Fernando Garcia, said it was hard for his family to imagine his brother committing the crimes.

“We just want the victims’ families to know we do pray for them. We feel their pain,” he said. “We’re sorry those things took place. We’re not an evil family. We hope they find peace somehow.”

During the trial, prosecutors presented massive amounts of circumstantial evidence, including credit card and cellphone records placing Garcia in and around Omaha the day the Brumbacks were killed. One receipt showed Garcia eating a meal at a chicken wings restaurant within two hours of when police believe the Brumbacks were attacked.

Prosecutors also presented evidence that Garcia had sought to attack another Creighton medical school faculty member on May 10, 2013 — the same day the Brumbacks were killed. Prosecutors said Garcia pushed in a back door of that woman’s home but fled when the home’s alarm went off. Police believe he then found the Brumbacks’ address on his smartphone and attacked them.

Roger Brumback was shot in the doorway of his home and then stabbed. His wife was stabbed to death, much the same way Thomas Hunter and Shirlee Sherman had been stabbed, according to investigators.

Nebraska had not executed an inmate in more than 20 years until last month, when Carey Dean Moore died by lethal injection for the 1979 shooting deaths of two Omaha cab drivers.

However, the state’s mode of execution remains riddled with controversy and legal challenges in the face of difficulty in obtaining some of the drugs used to carry out lethal injection.

Under Nebraska law, Garcia’s sentence will be automatically appealed.

Friday’s sentencing was briefly interrupted when the lead judge in the case suffered a medical emergency and had to be carried from the courthouse on a stretcher. Gage County District Judge Rick Schreiner took over, explaining that Randall had undergone a medical procedure earlier in the week that caused him extreme back pain.

https://apnews.com/article/fbef916336c04b2589b745886f347b86

Patrick Schroeder Nebraska Death Row

Patrick Schroeder was sentenced to death by the State of Nebraska for a prison murder. According to court documents Patrick Schroeder was already serving a life sentence for murder when he murdered his cell mate by strangulation. At his trial Patrick Schroeder would tell the judge if he was given another life sentence he would keep killing until he received the death penalty. Patrick Schroeder was sentenced to death.

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The Nebraska Supreme Court on Friday upheld the death sentence of a prison inmate who admitted that he killed his cellmate, then told a corrections officer afterward that he would “kill again” if he weren’t sentenced to death.

Patrick Schroeder was already serving a life sentence for the 2006 slaying of a Pawnee County farmer when he was charged, and convicted, of choking his cellmate to death at the Tecumseh State Prison in 2017.

“If given another life term, I will kill again and we will be right back in court doing this all over again,” Schroeder wrote in a statement shortly after cellmate Terry Berry was found unconscious in their cell. Berry was pronounced dead four days later at a Lincoln hospital.

On Friday, the Supreme Court considered the automatic appeal granted to all inmates who receive the death sentence.

Schroeder, now 42, served as his own attorney during his trial for the murder of Berry, a 22-year-old who was placed in a solitary confinement cell designed for one inmate over Schroeder’s objections.

Berry was within two weeks of his release on a conviction for second-degree forgery, but Schroeder opposed being paired with him, calling him unsanitary and “a loudmouth, a punk,” who would not quit talking. Schroeder told his jailers that “something was going to happen” unless Berry was moved out of his cell.

At his trial, Schroeder submitted no evidence in his defense, or in opposition to prosecutors’ arguments that he deserved the death penalty.

But attorneys appointed to present his automatic appeal objected to the imposition of the death penalty, saying that the three-judge panel that sentenced him to death ignored mitigating circumstances, such as Schroeder’s dysfunctional childhood and the undue pressure caused by pairing him with a cellmate he detested.

Sarah Newell of the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy also argued that the state had an ulterior motive for seeking the death penalty — “to avoid and detract” from possible civil liability for placing two incompatible inmates in a cell designed for one prisoner.

Prosecutors with the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office, meanwhile, argued that Schroeder was not under “unusual” pressure, but acted to kill Berry out of “displeasure,” and that his actions were “deliberate” and “pretty cold-blooded.”

The three-judge panel that sentenced Schroeder to death ruled that while he “expressly welcomed” the death penalty, “it is the law, and not his wishes, that compels this panel’s ultimate conclusion.”

The Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Judge Jeffrey Funke, said that even though a corrections officer had a “gut feeling” that Berry was in danger by being placed with Schroeder and had even tried to get the assignment reversed, Schroeder made no formal request that Berry be removed and did not indicate that his cellmate was in “mortal danger.”

In comparing the case with other death penalty cases, the court found that it was similar to the case of David Dunster, who was serving a life sentence for two murders when he killed his cellmate and was sentenced to die. While the two cases are not “a color match,” they were sufficiently similar to justify the death sentence for Schroeder, Funke wrote.

https://omaha.com/state-and-regional/supreme-court-upholds-death-sentence-for-tecumseh-inmate-who-killed-cellmate/article_244b71b0-06f0-513d-8101-f946b2ee6dc5.html

Patrick Schroeder Death

atrick Schroeder, the man sent to death row in 2018 for killing his cellmate, died Monday, according to the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services.

Laura Strimple, chief of staff for the state’s prisons system, said the 45-year-old died at the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution, which is home to death row.

The cause of Schroeder’s death has not been determined, she said.

He is the fifth death row inmate to die while awaiting execution by the state.

Arthur Gales, 55, died last year of cancer. In 2015, Michael Ryan, 66, died of natural causes. David Dunster, 56, died of a health-related issue in 2011, and Roger Bjorklund, 39, of a heart attack in 2006.

“Mr. Schroeder had a hard and complicated life and we are saddened to hear of his death. His death like all deaths leaves behind people who loved him and who will miss him now that he is gone,” said Todd Lancaster of the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy.

Schroeder’s death leaves 11 men on Nebraska’s death row.

As is the case whenever an inmate dies in custody, a grand jury will review the death.

In 2018, Carey Dean Moore was the last inmate to be executed in Nebraska.

Moore, 60, was sentenced to death on two counts of first-degree murder in Douglas County in the 1979 deaths of Omaha cab drivers Reuel Van Ness Jr. and Maynard Helgeland. He had been on death row 38 years.

Schroeder had been serving a life sentence for killing 75-year-old Pawnee City farmer Kenny Albers when on April 15, 2017, he strangled Terry Berry in a cell at the Tecumseh prison.

Schroeder pleaded guilty to that crime and didn’t fight the death sentence.

When the three-judge panel pronounced his sentence, Judge Vicky Johnson said it was the law, and not the defendant’s wishes, that compelled the judges to choose a death sentence.

“Mr. Berry’s murder was disturbing in its own right and especially cruel,” particularly because he was two weeks from his release and Schroeder knew it, she said

Prosecutors alleged just one aggravator needed to make the case eligible for the death penalty — that Schroeder had previously been convicted of another murder — and Schroeder, who represented himself, chose not to fight the death penalty and made no argument or case for why the judges shouldn’t give it to him.

He admitted to strangling Berry, 22, because he wouldn’t stop talking.

At the time, Schroeder was in prison on a life sentence for beating Albers with a nightstick during a robbery in 2006 and dumping him, still alive, into an abandoned well. Albers died there.

Last year, the state agreed to pay $479,000 to Berry’s family to settle the lawsuit it filed over his killing.

Schroeder’s case brought questions and scrutiny from state senators and prisoner advocates alike who saw the killing as a failure of a prison system beset by one problem after another. Many asked how Berry had come to share a cell with Schroeder.

At Schroeder’s plea hearing, Assistant Nebraska Attorney General Doug Warner said Schroeder and Berry had shared cell No. 16 in a segregation unit from April 10 to April 15, the night a corrections officer doing normal checks came by and Schroeder said there was “something he needed to get out of his cell.

Berry was lying unconscious on the floor with a towel around his neck.

He was taken to a Lincoln hospital, where he died five days later.

https://journalstar.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/patrick-schroeder-on-nebraskas-death-row-for-killing-cellmate-dies-in-prison/article_37115cb0-65fb-5458-8781-9dc4be6ae94e.html

Marco Torres Nebraska Death Row

Marco Torres was sentenced to death by the State of Nebraska for a double murder. According to court documents Marco Torres went to the first victims home where he would tie up and torture the victim before killing him. Marco Torres would then murder another man who lived in an upstairs room. Police believe the murders were committed to conceal a robbery. Marco Torres was sentenced to death.

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Marco Torres 2021 Information

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Marco E. Torres Jr. sat silently, stared straight ahead and showed no sign of emotion as a three-judge panel announced he would pay for two murders with his own life.

“As to count one, murder in the first-degree, the sentence of death will be imposed,” Hall County District Judge James Livingston read from the decision he reached with Lancaster County District Judge Jodi L. Nelson and Douglas County District Judge Gary B. Randall.

Torres, 34, of Pasadena, Texas, was convicted on Aug. 28, 2009, of killing Timothy Donohue, 48, and Edward Hall, 60, in March 2007.

Livingston went on to sentence Torres to death on the second charge of first-degree murder, to 50 years each for robbery and three counts of using a gun to commit a felony, and to 20 months to five years in prison for unauthorized use of a debit card. Due to state statute, some of the sentences for the lesser felonies were ordered to be served after the sentences for the murder charges.

“I really don’t know how to react,” Hall County Attorney Mark Young said after the hearing. “We often talk about life-and-death decisions, and this one really was.”

Prior to being sentenced, Torres was given the chance to speak to the court, but he declined, with a simple “No, your honor.”

Livingston then outlined the case, going over the dates of the trial, the jury’s decision, Torres’ waiver of his right to have the jury determine the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, and the appointment of the three-judge panel. He also noted that the sentencing determination hearing was on Nov. 13, 2009, and at that hearing the attorneys presented evidence and arguments.

At that hearing, Young said the aggravating circumstance were clear: Torres committed the murders to conceal a robbery; he committed two murders at the same time; Hall was bound and gagged and likely suffered prior to his death, making it heinous and cruel; and Torres has a criminal record.

Torres’ court-appointed attorney, Kirk Naylor, argued that his client was under the influence of methamphetamine at the time of the murders.

Naylor also questioned the constitutionality of the death penalty. At the time of the murders, the state’s manner of execution was electrocution. Since then, electrocution has been found unconstitutional, so Naylor has argued that his client should receive life in prison instead.

Lethal injection was approved by the governor as the state’s means of execution in May 2009.

The three-judge panel overruled Naylor’s objections as related to the death penalty.

Livingston then went over each of the aggravating and mitigating circumstances before giving the panel’s decision on each. The panel determined that the evidence showed Torres was previously convicted of kidnapping and robbery; Hall was bound and gagged before he was shot, which made him helpless and caused him to suffer mentally; the men were killed to conceal Torres’ identity following the robbery; and both men were killed at approximately the same time.

As for the mitigating circumstances, the judges found Torres wasn’t under mental or emotional distress at the time of the murders, he wasn’t an accomplice, and he wasn’t unable to appreciate the wrongness of his actions. His attorneys presented evidence of meth use and the effects it can have on the user’s mental state, but Torres told an officer conducting the presentence investigation that he wasn’t using meth in March 2007.

After the sentencing, Young said he was happy for the victims’ families because he knew several of them were hoping for the death penalty.

Many of those family members sat in the courtroom Friday afternoon, along with friends, law enforcement personnel, courthouse employees, defense attorneys and prosecutors. A quiet murmur went through the crowd when the sentence was announced.

Donohue’s niece, Jennifer Henningsen, said she was relieved by the decision but was sad as well because the crimes should never have occurred.

“It was hard to breathe, listening to what they were saying,” she said.

Henningsen believes Torres deserves the death penalty because he has shown no remorse or pity.

“Why should he get to see his family? We don’t get to see Tim,” she said.

She recalls her uncle as a happy man who was very giving. She met Hall a few times and said he was soft-spoken and kindhearted.

“They did a lot for each other,” Henningsen said.

The sentence does give the families closure, even though appeals and requests for post-conviction relief could last for years, she said.

“Ironically, my dad helped build the prison he will spend the rest of his life in. The walls are very secure,” Henningsen said, smiling at her family.

Young said this case is the first one he has handled that resulted in the death penalty. The last death-penalty case in Hall County was that of Charles Jess Palmer, who killed Eugene Zimmerman during a robbery in March 1979. Palmer, 68, died in August 2006 while on death row, where he had been since 1980.

Young said he knew such a case could come up when he first filed to be the county attorney and he feels it is his job to follow the rules set up by the Unicameral.

“If I didn’t think I could handle it, I wouldn’t have run for office,” he said.

Young thanked his staff for their help, particularly Sarah Carstensen and Gail Vermaas, who assisted with the trial. Young commended law enforcement and the trial jury for their work as well.

Torres is already an inmate at the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution. In February 2008, he was sentenced, following a jury trial, to 90 to 140 years in prison for kidnapping, robbery and two counts of using a gun to commit a felony.

https://theindependent.com/news/local/torres-gets-death-penalty-for-double-homicide/article_3e37b3b5-2859-519b-bcc7-0ee2c127cf47.html

Roy Ellis Nebraska Death Row

Roy Ellis was sentenced to death by the State of Nebraska for the murder of a twelve year old girl. According to court documents Roy Ellis would abduct twelve year old Amber Harris who was sexually assaulted before being murdered after Ellis struck her twice in the head with a hammer. Roy Ellis was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death.

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Roy Ellis once told a fellow inmate that he killed Amber Harris, getting her blood on the hood and bumper of his car, according to newly released court records.

In a recorded jailhouse phone call to a girlfriend, Ellis also said that “something happened” in November 2005 — the month that Amber, 12, disappeared on her way home from a school bus stop. She was not seen again until May, when her remains were discovered, half-buried, in Hummel Park.

Amber died from blunt-force trauma to the head. Ellis, 53, is charged with first-degree murder in her death. Prosecutors say he killed Amber in an attempt to conceal a sexual assault or attempted sexual assault.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against him.

In eight search warrants unsealed Wednesday in Douglas County District Court, Omaha police investigators detailed evidence and interviews that led them to believe that Ellis killed Amber, including:

A police interview with a man who had been incarcerated with Ellis. Ellis reportedly told the man that he had killed Amber, and in killing her got blood on his car.

Ellis also told the man he tried to use a cloth to wipe up the blood.

Conversations Ellis had in jail with a corrections officer in February and March 2006. Ellis showed an “intense interest” in news reports concerning Amber, and asked the officer how long it would take a body to decompose after it had been buried.

When the officer replied that it could take up to two years, Ellis became visibly upset.

Ellis also asked the officer how long DNA in blood and semen would be viable for forensic testing.

Recorded jailhouse telephone conversations Ellis had with his girlfriend. After Amber disappeared, Ellis told the woman that “something happened last month but I don’t want to talk about it.”

Ellis told her that he had been “evil the last couple of months because of things going on in my life and not because of you.”

Recorded jailhouse telephone conversations Ellis had with a friend. Ellis told the man, “I need to clean my trail.”

The man told police that he let Ellis use his 1990 Oldsmobile Cutlass in November and December 2005, including one time during which Ellis kept the car overnight. Omaha police cut out cloth from the car’s seat covers and headrests for testing.

Investigators did the same to Ellis’ car, a 1988 silver Mercedes-Benz. From his car, they also seized cloth gloves, soil samples from its wheel wells and eyeliner from under a back seat.

From the house where he was staying, 2125 Ohio St., they seized a letter Ellis had written from jail, leather boots, a gold bracelet, a wood-handled hammer and a shovel with a broken handle.

DNA testing confirmed the presence of Amber’s blood on her jeans and jacket, which were in her book bag that was discovered Feb. 14, 2006, in a trash bin a block from Ellis’ home.

Ellis’ DNA showed up on the left leg of her jeans, near the hem.

A man who knows Ellis told police Ellis once described how he liked to intimidate females. Ellis would take a woman to a wooded area, dig a grave and then threaten to put her in it, the man told police.

Antoinette Pollock, a former Ellis girlfriend, told investigators that Ellis did that to her in September 2005 — two months before Amber disappeared on Nov. 29.

In court earlier Wednesday, Ellis waived his right to a preliminary hearing. At such hearings, a judge typically determines whether enough evidence exists for a case to move to trial.

Michael and Melissa Harris, Amber’s parents, were prepared to hear detectives testify about the evidence police have against Ellis.

To their disappointment, they didn’t get the chance.

Police officers usually testify at preliminary hearings about the evidence prosecutors are relying on to bring charges against a person.

Instead of hearing the details during Ellis’ brief appearance in court, the Harrises could only stare at Ellis.

Melissa Harris said she caught a half-second glance from Ellis as he left the courtroom. But what was harder, she said, was hearing his voice.

When Douglas County District Judge Greg Schatz asked Ellis if he agreed to waive the hearing, Ellis replied, “That’s correct.” He left the courtroom with his hands shackled behind his back and holding his black-rimmed glasses.

The Harrises, with their supporters, held a consistent gaze on Ellis during the short hearing.

“I want him to try to realize what he did, ” Melissa Harris said, “but I don’t think he ever will.”

https://omaha.com/inmate-roy-ellis-said-he-killed-amber-harris/article_d2850000-9238-11e5-9260-bb6485cbea65.html

Jeffrey Hessler Nebraska Death Row

Jeffrey Hessler was sentenced to death by the State of Nebraska for the kidnapping and murder of Heather Guerrero. According to court documents Heather Guerrero was delivering newspapers when the fifteen year old was abducted by Jeffrey Hessler. The girl would be sexually assaulted and murdered. Jeffrey Hessler would be arrested convicted and sentenced to death.

Nebraska Death Row Inmate List

Jeffrey Hessler 2021 Information

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On the morning of February 11, 2003, 15-year-old Heather Guerrero left her home in Gering, Nebraska, to make deliveries on her newspaper route. Heather never returned home. A search was conducted, and on the morning of February 12, Heather’s body was found in the basement of an abandoned house near Lake Minatare, Nebraska.

During the investigation of Heather’s disappearance, a witness who was walking his dog on the morning of February 11, 2003, reported that he had heard a scream and had seen a silver or tan Nissan Altima drive by at a high rate of speed. A car matching that description belonged to a friend of Hessler’s who had allowed Hessler to drive the car. A search of the car revealed three boxes of live ammunition, some spent casings, and Hessler’s wallet. After police questioned Hessler, Hessler gave police his semiautomatic handgun. In response to interrogation, Hessler admitted to having sex with Heather but asserted that it was consensual. Hessler said that after Heather indicated she would not keep the encounter secret, he “freaked out,” took her to the basement of the abandoned house, and shot her.

On February 26, 2003, the State filed an information charging Hessler with five counts in connection with the death of Heather: count I, premeditated murder; count II, felony murder; count III, kidnapping; count IV, first degree sexual assault; and count V, use of a firearm to commit a felony

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ne-supreme-court/1453206.html