reporter: as a building contractor brad waite spends a lot of time in his truck. reporter: he s haunted by the possibility that at the very moment his sister, shirlee sherman, was being murdered in march 2008, he was driving by, close enough, perhaps, to have heard her scream. i basically almost drove by hunter s house, and so it would have been at 4:00 that afternoon. i d had no idea shirlee was working there that day. reporter: later that night, brad says he heard about the two murders in dundee on the 10:00 news. even then he says he didn t know his sister was a victim. that news came later, in a phone call from his brother, dan. danny called me. it was at 11 at 11:30 that night and told me what happened. reporter: dan waite says from that night on, the word housekeeper has been used as shorthand for shirlee as if her job defined her. they re always calling her the housekeeper, and it s she
reporter: it was a quote similar to one in shakespeare s play the merchant of venice. if you harm me, shall i not revenge? not often does the merchant of venice come up in a murder trial. never before in my career, yeah. but that s your motive. sums up the case. that s our motive. yeah. reporter: they argued that garcia killed because he was angry about his termination from creighton and that it prevented him from being accepted into other programs to which he later applied. as he continues to try and have some sort of a career, it follows him. every time he tried to get into a different program or licensed somewhere, this creighton thing pops up. reporter: and prosecutors said items found in garcia s home indicated that he was trying to destroy traces of his troubled past. there s this trash bag sitting in the sink, a chemical odor emanating from that, and it s all these papers in there. in these papers after they re dried out is the termination letter from dr.
of his career and he d always said to me, if you get a juicy murder, that give me a call. i ll try it with ya. and i called him half expecting him to be, like, nah, you know, i m too old. i don t wanna do it. and he was onboard immediately, so this ended up being that case. that was that case, right. reporter: dr. anthony garcia insisted that he was innocent. but the mottas were concerned that extensive press coverage of the murders was giving potential jurors only one side of the story. they needed to hear that there were so many other people with means, motive, and opportunity that could have committed this crime that makes much more sense than somebody waiting 13 years to, you know, murder somebody that they knew for a very short period of time. reporter: in pretrial hearings, the mottas battled with prosecutors as if they were rival mma fighters. todd cooper remembers being in the judge s chambers one day when bob motta started shouting at prosecutors.
he had a blood alochol level twice the legal limit. the trooper said that his breath smelled of booze, and then when he went to had to relieve himself, that that smelled of booze, as well. reporter: garcia was arrested on the spot for driving under the influence. from his car police recovered a cell phone, a .45 caliber pistol, 50 bullets, a crowbar and a sledgehammer. he told cops later that he was on a road trip to new orleans but had no luggage. and then the most chilling thing to me was in that backseat was an lsu lab coat and a stethoscope. reporter: investigators knew garcia had been fired from lsu shreveport in 2008. was he on his way to confront doctors there? only anthony garcia knows. he clammed up when omaha detectives tried to talk with him. we introduced ourselves as detectives from the omaha police department and that we were
and there s something about putting tape on your fingers? tape on your fingers. park your car somewhere else and walk to the location. buy common shoes. buy common shoes. sort of a list that a killer would make. yes, it is. reporter: prosecutors said the two sets of murders, five years apart, correlated with garcia s career struggles. the first in 2008 came two weeks after he was fired by lsu-shreveport. the second, in 2013, followed another round of unemployment and financial troubles. he s trying to get jobs at temporary agencies. he s having financial issues. his home is going to foreclosure. reporter: but they argued that garcia s original target on mother s day 2013 was dr. chhanda bewtra, a professor at creighton who had written him bad evaluations. she was somebody that he really thought was too hard on him, was the cause of his