there to witness it all, friends and family of the victims. thomas hunter s mom claire hunter, who had been staying out of the public eye, and shirlee sherman s brother dan were two of the first people outside the courtroom. it s been eight years. you know? it s been going on for a long time. a lot of this stuff s a blur. reporter: douglas county attorneys don kleine and brenda beadle had been prepping this case for more than three years. you prosecuted all four murders. yeah. you ever think about, maybe we should just take the last two. that s easier? sure. that was a discussion that we had many times but the evidence, i think, would still come in. especially with the 2008 case. so, it seemed like the most logical thing was, if we re gonna do these, let s do em together.
we have dna tests that prove that our guy was not at the hunter-sherman scene. reporter: alison motta spoke with wowt-tv via skype. their physical evidence and their dna evidence establishes undeniably, unmistakably and without doubt that the murders were committed by two people and not anthony garcia. reporter: the claim was based on what the mottas believed to be a potential match between some unidentified dna found on shirlee sherman s bandana and some dna taken from a suspect in another case. they are taking alleles from dna, bits and pieces, and coming up with a theory that never made it to trial, but she throws it out there on the eve of trial, and prosecutors are incensed, and it really chapped the judge. reporter: the judge took it
defense team planned and prepped their expert witnesses. this really boils down to interpretation and every single lab can interpret something differently. reporter: the dna evidence linking garcia to the bewtra break-in they said was flawed. and the prosecution s timeline for the brumback murders was suspect. the state s window for when this had to occur because of where they had our guy at certain times through cell phone records, it had to occur sometime between 3:15 and 4:00, maybe 4:15. reporter: according to the defense, the brumbacks were killed later, maybe around midnight, long after anthony garcia had left omaha and headed for home. our pathologists made it very clear that because of the rigor mortis, the conditions of the bodies, the homicides didn t happen when he was in omaha. reporter: in the dundee murders, perhaps the biggest hurdle for the defense was the testimony of former exotic dancer cecilia hoffman. cecilia hoffman s statement was was huge. repo
not prove a link between gun parts found at the brumback house and the gun that was licensed to anthony garcia. the parts found in the house are parts of a weapon that went through a catastrophic failure. the parts of our client s gun that were found on the side of the road showed no evidence of a catastrophic failure. and although it s the right kind of gun to have committed the murders, it s not necessarily the gun. right one of the right kinds of gun. you can t fire a test bullet from the gun, right? no. reporter: the chicago based defense team worked late into the night while keeping a close eye on their beloved cubs who were in hot pursuit of a world series title. it s the top of the second. cubs have men on first and second. it s one out. reporter: it was during these sessions over lunch there s no point in showing the cards that don t need to be shown. reporter: during breaks and at their rental home that the
who did that search and not your client? i m not going to suggest that anybody, you know, specifically typed the name in. i m just going to say that the way that the state presented the case and, in particular, that piece of evidence was not exactly truthful. reporter: the defense attornies spent a lot of time talking about the gun found on the side of the road and the ammo magazine at the brumback house. in light of the fact that we have the very damaging magazine evidence, we want to cloud it up by talking about a bunch of [ bleep ] that doesn t matter. that s the only thing that i want to say. there s sound on this so f words probably hey, you want real life? you got real life. you re flies on the wall, man. edit it out, dude. i am who i am. reporter: in court the defense argued prosecutors could