the last best potential suspect in the 2008 murders was now top of mind for the 2013 case, dr. michael belenky. but get this, before detectives could get around to looking him up, something truly astonishing happened. after the brumback murders, he called our office because he had heard about the murders and said, are you guys going to need to talk to me again? reporter: he called you? uh-huh. i don t remember exactly what he said, but he made comments that he was glad dr. brumback was dead. reporter: i m glad he s dead? yeah, he made a comment to that effect, yes. reporter: that almost sounds like somebody s boasting about this? it could be, yeah, and, again, the same detectives turned right back around and started going through the same process. let s find out where dr. belenky was on mother s day 2013. reporter: turns out dr. belenky was living in the northwest, dividing his time between vancouver and washington state at the time of the brumback murders.
michael belenky. how many times did you hear the name michael belenky? i can t give you an accurate answer as how many. but his name came up again and again. reporter: dr. belenky was a former resident who d had left the pathology program and threatened to sue creighton a year before the murders at dr. hunter s home. he had had some trouble during his time at creighton university, but they weren t unlike other people s troubles. but he was just a little bit more boisterous about his i guess his perceived treatment by creighton university and some of the staff there. reporter: dr. belenky told detectives he d been working in pittsburgh on the day of the dundee murders. pittsburgh s like 900 miles from omaha, so correct. reporter: you re not driving that in a day. correct. reporter: presumably you re not doing that without air travel. right. reporter: and air travel s something you can check. right. we knew he was on the schedule. i believe we knew he had logged
that he was anywhere other than there. reporter: which is not an ironclad alibi, but it s not bad. it s not bad. and sometimes that s just the reality of our work. reporter: that seemed to be the end of the line. dr. belenky had been the investigators last best lead. unwilling to see the case go cold, shirlee sherman s family pooled their money and offered a reward. there were a number of contributions. i think there were some other people contributing as well. reporter: which made it how big? $50,000. reporter: so it was $50,000 in all counting everybody s contributions? yeah. we actually wanted it at $100,000. but they wouldn t allow that cause they thought it would be a bounty, which it was, in my opinion. reporter: when the reward failed to produce a break in the case, they hired a private investigator. part of the motivation of doing that was, we re going to send a signal. we re not going to let it cold case. reporter: you saw it becoming a cold case? wel
when detectives reinterviewed him, they wondered if they were missing something. could their primary person of interest have somehow slipped in and out of omaha undetected? reporter: any indication that he was in omaha? none. none. reporter: for his part, belenky told the cops he had nothing to do with the omaha killings, in fact, he denies ever saying he was glad dr. brumback was dead. in the end detectives had to scratch dr belenky off their list. back to the drawing board. if the suspect wasn t michael belenky, detectives figured it had to be someone else with creighton connections. we knew that we had to look at everybody in the pathology department, all of the staff, everybody there. reporter: that means there are, what, maybe a thousand, a couple thousand persons of interest all going in different directions? yeah. reporter: four days after the
brumback murders. when detectives reinterviewed him, they wondered if they were missing something. could their primary person of interest have somehow slipped in and out of omaha undetected? reporter: any indication that he was in omaha? none. none. reporter: for his part, belenky told the cops he had nothing to do with the omaha killings, in fact, he denies ever saying he was glad dr. brumback was dead. in the end detectives had to scratch dr belenky off their list. back to the drawing board. if the suspect wasn t michael belenky, detectives figured it had to be someone else with creighton connections. we knew that we had to look at everybody in the pathology department, all of the staff, everybody there. reporter: that means there are, what, maybe a thousand, a couple thousand persons of interest all going in different directions? yeah.