Inmate's death at state penitentiary is being investigated as suspected murder, investigator says

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The death of a 26-year-old inmate late last month at the Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln is being investigated as a suspected murder, investigators say in newly filed court records.

In a search warrant filed Friday, Nebraska State Patrol Investigator Henry Dimitroff asked a judge for an order to get DNA from Philip Garcia's former cellmate, who since has been moved to the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution.

The Journal Star isn't naming the 37-year-old since he hasn't yet been charged.

Garcia

Dimitroff said prison staff discovered Garcia unresponsive in his restricted housing cell, on his back with his legs crossed and a bedsheet fashioned into a rope around his neck, shortly after 4 p.m. Oct. 29.

They said Garcia's cellmate was out of breath and, when asked what happened, allegedly said "no comment," the investigator said.

Prison staff moved the cellmate and tried to save Garcia, but he was pronounced dead at 4:24 p.m.

Dimitroff said the room was in disarray as if there had been a recent struggle, and there were no obvious signs Garcia had been suspended from anything.

He said a day later Garcia's cellmate called his mother and said he had been trying to get mental health help for a week and had been ignored and just blacked out on Oct. 29.

"I don't really know what happened," he told her, according to Dimitroff.

He is serving a sentence of 13 to 17 years for attempted assault on an officer and possession of a weapon by a prohibited person, a drug charge and assault by a confined person.

He has been eligible for parole since 2020.

Garcia, a Scottsbluff resident, was serving a sentence of 26 to 46 years for felony theft, use of a knife to commit a felony and assault on a law enforcement officer.

Under state law, a grand jury is called when a person dies while in the custody.

The 2021 annual report for the Office of Inspector General for the Nebraska Correctional System took issue with double bunking inmates in restrictive housing at the state penitentiary.

"In the past four annual reports, the OIG has recommended that NDCS end the practice of double bunking in restrictive housing units for a number of reasons, including the safety of the two cellmates and the impact on their mental health. This practice primarily occurs at NSP (Nebraska State Penitentiary)," according to the report.

The inspector general called it a violation of the American Correctional Association's standard regarding square footage for inmates in restrictive housing.

A new employee of the Adult Book and Cinema Store disappeared overnight April 18, 1974, along with 51 bondage-themed adult magazines, a calculator and $30. A cord leading to an extension from a pay phone had been cut and the shop door left unlocked.

Two and a half days later, a man went to feed cattle on a vacant farm he owned east of Hallam and found her bullet-riddled body.

Patricia Carol Webb was nude under the hay, except for a quilted jacket, one of 143 extra-large jackets distributed by a feed mill and given to customers or sold to employees. Webb, 24, had a piece of tape over her mouth.

Thirty-eight years later, her death remains one of Lincoln's greatest murder mysteries.

"This case has been investigated, reinvestigated, reinvestigated. A lot of effort put into it," said Lincoln Police Sgt. Larry Barksdale, who was tasked with the investigation since the early 1990s. Barksdale retired in 2012, but the case remains open.

Together, Lincoln police, the Lancaster County Sheriff's Office, Nebraska State Patrol and FBI logged nearly 15,000 man hours during the first year alone. They even consulted clairvoyants.

Tina McMenamin, an 18-year-old UNL freshman, was stabbed and sexually assaulted in her apartment on July 25, 1995.

Gregory Gabel, a mentally ill Lincoln man, was arrested in the homicide and has always been the prime suspect, an investigator said, even after pivotal DNA evidence failed to link him to the crime scene. Gabel has a computerlike memory for numbers and facts and a history of following women at businesses and public events, retired investigator Rich Doetker said in 2005.

McMenamin was killed in the minutes before she was due at work at Godfather's Pizza at 5:30 p.m. that night in 1995. Roommate Sarah Bognich found her friend in a pool of blood that night.

"The apartment was ransacked. I walked past the bedroom a couple of times before noticing her on the floor. My life changed after that. I tried to go back (to college), and I couldn't ever finish."

A single hair clutched in McMenamin's hand led police to Gabel. It matched his DNA, a one-in-1,049 chance. Circumstantial evidence also linked Gabel to the apartment building. And a man matching Gabel's description was seen fleeing the crime scene, Amberwood Apartments, 4600 Briarpark Drive.

That night, Gabel was a block away at a Sonic Drive-In. He was there every Tuesday night, cleaning up in exchange for food. And Gabel had earlier convictions for third-degree sexual assault and public indecency. Police arrested him a year after the crime.

But two years later, when a different DNA test proved the hair was not Gabel's, he was released. That hair, however, didn't necessarily belong to the killer, Doetker said. The investigator also has suspicions about the validity of the second DNA test, conducted in a Pennsylvania lab.

"There were questions that came up: Was it the right hair? The same hair?" he said.

Murder charges were dropped against Gabel with the hope that additional evidence would be found to re-arrest him, Doetker said. If the case went to trial and Gabel was found innocent, Doetker added, he could not be retried if new evidence came to light.

Mary Hepburn-O'Shea, who has worked in the mental health field in Lincoln for decades and has known Gabel for many of those years, said in 2005 that the man lost two years in jail for something he didn't do.

Hepburn-O'Shea runs downtown O.U.R. Homes, the city's largest provider for developmentally disabled people that also houses people with mental illnesses. Gabel lives and works there. "He's a weird kid," she said. "He's not ever a violent kid."

Then-Assistant Police Chief Jim Peschong, speaking in 2005, added that you can't try a case on personal beliefs and supposition. Peschong said he personally believes there is a suspect in the crime, but he declined naming anyone.

A 30-year-old Iraqi refugee with a new bride and a new home was slain in 2001 in the city where he came to begin a new life. Ali Saleh Al-Saidi's body was found in June 2001 in Salt Creek, east of the North 70th Street bridge near the Abbott Sports Complex. Then-Police Chief Tom Casady said Al-Saidi suffered "significant traumatic injuries."

Friends and family members said that Al-Saidi moved to Lincoln from Dallas a few months earlier. He had lived five years in Texas and was in a Saudi Arabian refugee camp before his arrival in the United States.

Casady called Al-Saidi a "Gulf War era" refugee and said he had recently married an 18-year-old Lincoln resident and fellow Iraqi exile.

Al-Saidi wed Azher Alghazawi on June 16. She spoke about the husband and friend she lost. "He's a good man," she said. "I love him very much." A welder by trade, Al-Saidi also loved to fix cars. He enjoyed making people laugh with funny faces.

Azher said her husband left their South 18th Street apartment to find an apartment key around 10:45 p.m. the day before his body was found. It was the last time she saw him alive. Just hours earlier, said Saleh Al-Daraji, a longtime friend of Al-Saidi's, he had helped Al-Saidi move some belongings from his old D Street apartment.

Authorities did not know whether the slaying took place near Salt Creek or whether the body was moved. Police found Al-Saidi's 1991 Chevrolet Caprice parked beside a curb at the corner of 21st and Dudley streets, then-Capt. Allen Soukup said.

In September 2001, a Lincoln couple who had been earlier interviewed by police about the slaying were arrested while trying to flee the country, authorities said.

Rabeha Kadhim Zaher Al-Atbi and her husband, Asaad Al-Asady, tried to board a flight to Syria from O'Hare International Airport, Lincoln Police Investigator Kathy Phillips said. "I'm not going to label them suspects," Lincoln Police Capt. Gary Engel said.

According to the affidavit signed by Phillips seeking the arrest of Al-Atbi as an accessory to a felony, she lied to police during a July 5 interview about Al-Saidi's whereabouts on the night of his slaying and about having had an affair with him. She later admitted to police she had had an affair with Al-Saidi, according to the affidavit.

The arrest affidavit goes on to describe how interviews with Iraqis in Lincoln have led police to believe Al-Saidi's death was a "crime of honor" and that Al-Saidi was killed for having brought shame or dishonor to his or another Iraqi family.

Gina Bos disappeared near Duggan's Pub in downtown Lincoln on Oct. 17, 2000, at the end of open mic night. She put her guitar in her trunk and then vanished.

The cold case is classified as a missing persons case, although it's highly unlikely Bos, 40 when she disappeared, is alive. Koziol declined to detail the leads the department has chased, citing the open investigation.

Bos was a middle child in a large, close-knit family; she was waiting for a Habitat for Humanity house and had begun a new job when she vanished.

Bos’ sister, Jannel Rap, became the family's spokeswoman early in the search. She started the Squeaky Wheel Tour, traveling the country performing and bringing attention to Gina and others who are missing in the cities she visited. She also started 411 GINA, a website with a hotline for tips about her sister's whereabouts.

Said Koziol: "Someone knows what happened to her. Hopefully one day they will finally find it in their soul to come forward."

Law enforcement hoped someone would remember seeing the dated minivan Ann Marie Kelley was driving when she disappeared. Neither has ever been found.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7237 or [email protected].

On Twitter @LJSpilger

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Public safety reporter

Lori Pilger is a Norfolk native and University of Nebraska-Lincoln graduate who has been a public safety reporter for the Journal Star since 2005.

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