Chapter 112: In Cold Blood-The Death of Dr. Eric Garcia w/ Chris Connelly

0:01 Every story has a beginning, but not everyone has an ending. In the shadows of headlines and buried police reports lay the voices of the missing, the murdered, and the forgotten, waiting to be heard and have their stories told. This is The Book of the Dead, a true crime podcast where we remember forgotten victims of heinous crimes, reopen cold cases, re visit haunting disappearances, and uncover the truths buried beneath the years of silence. I'm your host, Courtney Liso, and every week we turn to another chapter, one victim, one mystery, one step closer to justice. Brought to you by Darkass Network Indeed Podcasts with the Twist. Hello, Hello, Welcome to the next chapter in the Book of the Dead. Today we have a special episode. In the small town of Ketchikan, Alaska, a respected doctor, Eric Garcia, was found dead in the home he lived in all alone, his death shaking the tight ning community to its core. While at first doctor

1:31 Garcia's death presented as a suicide, it was quickly apparent to police that things weren't adding up. The case is as complex as it is disturbing, but at the center of uncovering its many layers is journalist Chris Connolly. In his new podcast, Cold Blooded Mystery in Alaska, Chris takes listeners deep beyond the headlines of this case, speaking directly with doctor Garcia's loved ones, the officers who worked the investigation, and the locals still reeling in the aftermath. Today, he is joining me to talk about what it was like to walk the same streets trying to make sense of a killing that seemed at first to have no rhyme or reason at all. Chris, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm very, very thrilled to have you.

2:19 Thank you so much for talking to me, Courtney, I appreciate it. Can you give us a brief overview of who doctor Garcia was, not just professionally but personally. You know, we know he's a doctor, he's a surgeon, but what did you learn about him through your reporting in this case. Well, you start by thinking of doctor Eric Garcia as almost a heroic figure. He's a man who comes from Puerto Rico. He's dedicated from the very beginning to becoming some sort of medical figure. His grandmother had a lingering heart problem, and this evoked something strong in him growing up. He wanted to take care of her, and so this became kind of a guiding light for him as he proceeded quite successfully through school and coming an eagle scout and things like that, always wanting to be a doctor.

3:04 So he wound up doing a lot of his training and stuff in Chicago, and then became a surgeon and wound up on the Rio Grande just this side in Texas, taking care of indigenous people down there and looking out for people who didn't always have the ability to pay. Becoming an elite surgeon in all areas, doing every kind of surgery and really becoming kind of a key figure as he was so good at this. But he liked to take cruises, you know, he liked to see the world. He traveled so much already, but he loved seeing the world. And at one point he took a cruise up to Alaska, as many people do. Out of Seattle or out of Vancouver. Your first stop is the town of Ketchikan, about eight thousand people. It's remote by any normal sense of the world.

3:51 You can't drive there, if you fly there, you have to take a ferry to get to the town. But doctor Garcia was captivated by Ketchikan is physically so beautiful, the landscape, birds, the outdoors, the animals, the seals. It takes your breath away everywhere you look, and so he always kept it in mind. So when a recruiter happened to call him months later and said there's an opening for a general surgeon in ketcha Can, he thought it was fate, and so he went up there and took the job. And so here's this, here's this talented general surgeon, one of only two in the town, coming to a town that's so far away on the map from where he started, right as an outsider in a place where, you know, where people have been there for a long time.

4:40 But doctor Garcia became a beloved figure in ketcha Can, not just because he was a talented surgeon, I think anyway. You know, surgeons are amazing human beings. They do incredible things, but sometimes they're technicians, right, Sometimes they just are really good at, you know, the physical. But doctor Garcia was more than that. He was seen as a wonderful diagnostician, and he really cared about his patients. You know, when you're up in Ketchiken, you're dealing with people who you know, have everything, but from cancer surgeries to intestinal matters, to accidents that take place in the rugged wilderness that Ketchikin, you know, provides. So he had to do it all, and he became a very beloved figure from his coworkers, to his friends, to the people in town. When I spoke to his brother, Saul Garcia, Saul remembers visiting his brother Eric in Ketchikan, and he remembers a trip to the grocery store. He said, we almost couldn't get out of the grocery store for people stopping my brother and thanking him for having taken care of their sister, their aunt, their child, and he understood the cases and checked in with them and all the rest of it. So he became this key figure, very beloved again reaching out to the indigenous community in Alaska to making sure they had health care as well. But just someone who really created a warm feeling around people he was with, even though as a human being he was somewhat shy, and I think that also kind of endeared him to the population there.

6:15 You know, he kept to himself a little bit emotionally, I guess you would say, but that made him even more lovable in a way. And so he was this treasured figure and someone who really made a difference in this town, and everyone he touched from a professional standpoint, had a good thing to say about him. As we discovered when we were up there. That's wonderful he based on my research into him, he did just seem so profoundly kind and it's evident in all of the people that loved him so much. So obviously, Keajukan, as you said, is very small community's only eight thousand people. When you arrived to cover this case initially, you know, what kind of atmosphere did you encounter. How were the people where the residents kind of reacting to what had happened to him.

7:05 I mean, the people are amazing. The people are so warm and just so great. You know, so many of them work so hard that some of them have multiple jobs. You try to keep money coming in and stuff, and the town exists on time on kind of two timeframes. It's like there are the winter months, you know, where everybody kind of bunks down and it can be a challenging period I think winter in Alaska, and then there are the summer months when the cruise ships come to town and the cruise ships transform the city. You're talking about tens of thousands of people stopping there and sort of going through the town to shop or to stretch their legs or something on an ongoing basis. So it's an enormous economic influx to the town. And you'll notice that around where the cruise ships are docked, there's the kind of shopping opportunities you would imagine for a situation like that, and a lot of people in the town make their money sort of tending to those things. And then behind that there's the town that's there all the time, with the ruggedness and the beauty and all the rest of it. So by the time we got there, this case had gone on for some time, delayed by a number of venue changes and the predations of COVID and things like that. But what hadn't changed, as you allude to, is the way that people felt about doctor Garcia. It still burned in them like how special he was. He had not been forgotten, and people went out of their way to tell you the kind of human being he was.

8:36 From Don Hank, who was his kind of you know, aid de camp at the hospital, but who also became his close friend to nurses who had just worked alongside him, to the man Bobby Jackson, who sold him that house on the hill that he lived in alone. People couldn't stop telling you what a swell guy he was, and they wanted you to know, you know, that he was more than someone who died, he was someone who lived there. When you were speaking with the locals about the case, what was kind of your interpretation of their thoughts on it. Were they hesitance talk about it? You know? Were they fearful of talking about it because it you know, it originally started out as being a perceived suicide and I think very quickly that was realized to be not the case.

9:23 I think they wanted people to know how special doctor Garcia had been in their lives. You know, they really felt like that was a message they could they could get across. The thing that's so striking about this case, and you've done such a wonderful job with the ones that you've done. And I don't know if you feel this way, but there's some cases where the twists and turns of the evidence are amazing. Right. You have You're presented with one thing and all of a sudden a revelation comes up and it takes the investigation in a different direction and their incredible revelations and secrets that have been buried for years and they get you know, they get opened, and it's just it's an amazing investigation. This case has that. Then for me a lot, there are the emotions of the people involved, and some cases present as a sort of situation where the emotions of those close to the deceased are very strong and powerful, and they're what move you, you know, the sense of loss or the way that they touched people's lives or what their lives have been like since somebody has been gone.

10:25 This story has that too, and that makes it that much more compelling. And then in a third sense, if you follow crime fiction or if you watch Agatha Christie movies or things, you know how that final act, whether it's Nine Perfect Strangers or Death on the Nile, is everybody gathered together. Right, Everybody who is somehow touched by their connection to the deceased is together, and each of them has sort of a different story, and there's drama in what happens when they gather and what each of them knows and isn't telling right, And that happens in this case too, except that instead of it happening at the end, as it does in fiction, it happens almost at the beginning, and those three elements, I think make this a really gripping story.

11:22 Absolutely there, and I want to expand on that a little bit, because at first glance, you know he's there. The police come, they do a welfare check on him. A couple of times. There are a couple of welfare checks. I believe they do a welfare check on the house. There is a call that comes from out of states saying, I was supposed to be with doctor Garcia and I don't know where he is. I think you should go to his house and see what's happening. Officer Devin Miller goes to the house and he walks around, and he doesn't see anything remarkable. He can't get all the way around the house, but he looks in. The front door is locked and the lights are on in the sort of way that lights go on when somebody is going away on vacation. And it turns out that doctor Garcia has had a vacation planned. He's told people at the hospital he's going to Las Vegas for a medical convention.

12:11 So that's what he understands. The story is about doctor Garcia and that's why he's not at the hospital. And then the other thing that Officer Miller notices is that his pickup truck is not there, and that checks out. Also, Ketch again, is not a place where you get an uber to the airport. You know, you drive your car to the lot and then you take the ferry and you go. So the fact that his pickup truck is in there indicates he's on vacation. He's must have driven his pickup truck and all the rest of it have done that, so it all checks out. But then these the same person keeps calling and asking for you know, for another welfare check. Says that he was supposed to be with doctor Garcia and he hasn't heard anything. Says that he's been concerned because doctor Garcia was depressed and you know, expressing some ideas about maybe suicide or something.

13:02 These calls are coming in from a man named Jordan Joplin who's in Washington State. But they're not the only people now who are worried because don Hink, his best friend at the hospital, has not been hearing from doctor Garcia as she normally would during a vacation. She sent him pictures of her son at a parade or something and said, isn't this great? She says, usually on vacation she'd hear from him twenty or thirty times, nothing, so she's a little concerned too. Then Don gets a call from doctor Garcia's mother, who is also concerned. So now there is this level of concern in the town among people who know him. Finally, this caller from out of town, this Jordan Joplin, says, I still haven't heard from him.

13:45 I have keys to the house. I'm going to fly from Washington to ketchikin and I want to go in the house and see what's going on. He asks the police, will you come with me? My attorney says this is what should happen, and the police say yeses. And so I think it's March twenty seventh, twenty seventeen. It's nine in the morning on a Monday, and you have what turns into a remarkable scene. You have two police from the Ketchikan Police Department outside doctor Garcia's fabulous home. You have Don Hinck, and then you have this Jordan Joplin turning up with a young woman with him, and he's driving doctor Garcia's car, which strikes people as a little unusual, but that's all good. Then the arrangements are made to open the door of the house, and what you will hear on our podcast is this exclusive extended audio of the body cam of the officers as they enter doctor Garcia's home and begin to call out for him. Their guns are drawn that standard procedure. They are calling out doctor Garcia Ketchikan Police. You know, they're looking around on the first floor and you hear them call calling out to him and saying things. They're not expecting to see anything.

15:05 They told us later, they're not expecting anyone to be in the house. But they walk up the flights of stairs to the second story, which is a big vaulted living room, and you hear them, and all of a sudden, it gets quiet, and they stop yelling because they see doctor Garcia on the sofa and he's dead. And you even get the sense that it's kind of washing over them, that this is something eerie and strange. It's not entirely unusual, as I understand it, for police in Alaska to go in on one of these welfare checks and find someone deceased. You know, it's a it's a rugged part of the world.

15:47 You know, doctor Garcia was in his late fifties, but they weren't expecting this. This is someone they know. For Officer Miller, he was treated by doctor Garcia. So this is a momentous thing. Plus they have people downstairs who don't know yet that they've discovered the body of doctor Garcia, and so it falls to one of the officers to come downstairs. And now a couple more people are there. I think Don Hank's husband, Will Hank is there too, although I think we're not one hundred percent sure about that, but Don Hank is there, Jordan Joplin is there with a female friend of his, and Bobby Jackson, who sold doctor Garcia that house, he's there now too. An Officer Cheatham comes down and says, there's no and you'll hear this.

16:32 There's no easy way to say this, but doctor Garcia is dead. And it's a moment of you know, heartbreak and drama and what turns out to be very telling behavior on behalf of everyone involved. And you'll hear it all as it happened. Obviously, that is such a profoundly sad moment for everyone there because they all obviously they all know him, they all cared about him, they all loved him, and immediately, or at least initially, they believe it to be suicide. What were some of the things that kind of changed the police's thinking on that.

17:12 Well, remember, because it's not so unusual, their first thought is that it's natural causes. When they pulled Don hinkover, one of the first questions they ask is what kind of situation was he medically, and she rightly says, he had heart trouble. You know, he had a history of heart trouble. He had been taken I think he'd been like almost metevacked at one point Seattle for a triple bypass, So there's a history of heart trouble there. At one point in Ketchikan, he experienced some sort of chest pain while he was in the oar and he was taken from the oar to the er because he was dedicated to his job by having some sort of heart trouble. So that's the first thing they're hearing. And remember that's kind of in keeping with something that they often see, so perhaps it's natural causes. And then some unusual aspects of what they see, as you allude to, make them start to wonder there's an empty pill bottle next to him for you know, the medication that we normally refer to his valim. There's a smell in the house that they immediately notice. It's a charcoal smell. And as they get up to the second floor, they look and they see that there is a door open, a door that Officer Devin Millard was not able to see when he first checked the house. It's a door and it's propped open with a pillow. And on the deck past the door is a charcoal grill. Why is a door propped open with a charcoal grill right next to it? And

18:44 not only that, there is a charcoal briquette right next to doctor Garcia, right next to his body. There is a little charcoal residue, I think on his T shirt. There's maybe another little like stain up there too. So all that's kind of puzzling. You know, what does this mean? Is this a like you say, is this a you know, is this a suicide? Is it a heart attack? What it could be? And then they look up, as one does, and they see a remarkable site. They look up and they see braces for smoke detectors. But the smoke detectors themselves are not there. What could that mean that there are all these braces for smoke detectors and the smoke detectors aren't there. Here's the thing about doctor Garcia, wonderful guy dedicated to his work. The least handy man in Alaska literally had no sort of house, rugged outdoorsmen skills, not a kind of guy to like build himself something or anything like that. Not a kind of guy that anyone had ever seen on a ladder. So that makes people think also that grill. Nobody in Ketchikin would ever grill to the south I guess the Southwest. I'm trying to remember now because that's where the wind came from.

20:09 You'd never do that, now that you know. Was that like a low fi version of turning the car exhaust on in your garage? People are trying to figure out what it is next to his body. There's a slice of bacon, a slice of raw bacon. So you've got a slice of raw bacon, that charcoal grill, that one piece of briquette. These are odd things to be discovering. What do they all mean? It's a puzzle that doesn't seem to have an answer. So they go downstairs, and as we talked about, Jordan Joplin, appears to be just destroyed in grief. Each grabs his chest, he falls to the ground. Don hink is you know, insensate with grief, and she's sick to her stomach and she's telling police as we mentioned that doctor Garcia had some heart trouble.

21:00 And then Bobby Jackson shows up. Remember Bobby Jackson is the guy who sold doctor Garcia his house. Bobby Jackson is a legend in Ketchigan. Great guy. I mean, you could talk to him forever about the history of Ketchigan. Just a wonderful, warm guy. He knows everything about the place. But while everybody else is grieving, and certainly Bob Jackson is too, he is agitated. He has a new energy out there, and he is agitated, and there is something that he wants to tell the police, and he's really like on fire about it. And it's as I imagine this scene, I think this must have been really remarkable, you know, for these people in grief, and all of a sudden, here's Bob going, I gotta talk to you.

21:43 So Bob pulls one of the officers aside and you'll hear this too, because he's on the body camera and he goes, there are thousands of dollars of valuables in this house, thousands of dollars of valuables, sea, collected coins, liquor, all this kind of material, and it was a big deal for him to have it. Bob Jackson is inflamed with telling the cops you have to check to see if that stuff is there. He's got tens of thousands of dollars worth of luxury goods in that house. And the cops go, well, okay, I guess we will. And so they turn again to Jordan Joplin, who's got keys, because Bob Jackson goes, I know where he kept it.

22:32 He kept it in this little storeroom under the stairs. So they turned it. Do you have keys to it? Well? I do. So the storage area is locked, right, they unlock it with Jordan Joplin's with the keys Jordan Joplin gave them, and they open it and it's empty. Nothing is there. It's gone tens of thousands of dollars in twenty year old whiskeys, and you know, prime spirits of all kinds, valuable coins, actual pieces of gold, all kinds of hard goods that doctor Garcia collected, monitored on his computer, had a spreadsheet for them, talked about to everyone in town, gave them away, sometimes as a gift because he was kind of profligate that way. They're all gone. So now what's going on. You have a dead person upstairs and you have a major theft. And so now the cops are faced with two things that they need to investigate the death of doctor Garcia and what's happened to his goods.

23:40 You've got a major theft or is it a theft because doctor Garcia gave away so much stuff. Maybe doctor Garcia has given all this away. That's possible. Everyone in town knew that doctor Garcia would just give you stuff. He would give you like watches that were really expensive, just because he did that kind of thing. Don Hings, his husband, used to say to him, you know, Eric, you might want to slow down with givenness. Maybe you shouldn't have that piece of gold out there where the pizza delivery guy can see it. But it made doctor Garcia happy to give these sort of expensive gifts to people, even as he loved collecting them. The special coins, the pieces of gold, the luxury watches and the luxury liquors.

24:23 He liked to give them away, and not always in the kind of like in way that they thought was kind of profligate and maybe maybe endangered his life a little bit. People knew that he had lots of stuff there, and so there were always concerns about that. Will Hank had even offered to kind of construct, you know, a safer place for some of this stuff to be stored in the house because they were worried about it. Bobby Jackson had gone to the bank with doctor Garcia to get his mortgage for this big house, and he wondered if he could use all those coins, as you know, as a way to pay them mortgage. So that's the dilemma that's facing police. You've got the death of a beloved surgeon and thousands of dollars in luxury items missing from his home.

25:10 When you spoke to the police after the fact, did they share anything specific about like how complex this case was for them to investigate the challenges that they may have faced while they were working at. I think one of the things that Eric Mattson, the chief investigator, said was that stuck in my mind was we couldn't assume anything like. We couldn't assume that the death of doctor Garcia and the theft were in any way related. We couldn't assume it was a theft. We couldn't assume it was a murder. You know, we had to find We had to wait and see what everything was going on. But they had essentially two investigations. There was going to be a toxicology report on doctor Garcia that wouldn't come in for a while, but there would be the investigation into his passing, and then there would be the attempt to figure out what had happened to all these goods. And it was that second investigation that seemed to be more urgent and that took immediate flight, and that had some key developments right away, and so Eric Matson, you know, sort of took us through what those were and how that developed into a real race against time to figure out what had happened to these tens of thousands of dollars in luxury goods.

26:25 Did they ever express doubts to you that they were feeling during the investigation, whether it was how they were trying to understand the case or you know, looking for suspects, and just even in the terms of the missing goods. Oh gosh, look what is that bacon doing there? What is that slice of bacon doing there? There's a grilling but nobody there's no there's no barbecue tools out, Like, what does that mean? That's strange? Why is the door propped open? What is going on with those smoke detectors and the braces involved? Everything is a p and a mystery. Nothing seems to make sense. They do notice also that the computers down on the first floor seem to be gone, Like they notice that there are chords there, right, but the computers and the electronic equipment seem to be gone.

27:13 So they note that as well. Why has Jordan Joplin shown up in doctor Garcia's car? That's surprising. Also, there is nothing but mysteries. One of my favorite mysteries, or one of the details it always sticks with me, is they look in the dishwasher and they find a red Solo cup in the dishwasher. A red Solo cup and a dishwasher. What does that mean? Don't you just throw out a red Solo cup? Why would you wash it? So they're trying to make sense out of all these details, but it is it is a real puzzle. What holds all these things together? What is this? What is this scene telling us that will answer the questions about how and why doctor Garcia died? And then they begin investigating doctor Garcia's life as well. And that's the other investigation.

28:03 What do we need to know about doctor Garcia to help find out what had happened to him? So we have the investigation into the goods and then the investigation into the life of doctor Garcia and the things people knew about him and the things they did. Not when they were originally considering either natural causes or suicide. Were the people in his life convinced that suicide could have been a possibility at all? Was this something that they had thought that he was considering, Was there any inkling to that kind of thought process for him, or was this something that they were adamant that was absolutely not the case. He never would have done it.

28:46 You make a good point, because no, they pushed back really hard on the idea that he was in any way suicidal or depressed that way. He had a festive shirt on the last day he was at the office. He was going to go to Las Veigs. I guess and't have a wonderful time. You know, he was looking forward to some big events in his family's sistory. I think there was a big birthday coming up for one of his parents. He had a couple of trips of his own plan for down the road. No, in no way did they find that he In no way did they believe he was depressed or suicidal, and this would become a big issue at trial, also going that far because what he was was something else, and this was something that his brother, Saul told me, struck him very hard because after learning of his brother's death, saal Garcia came to town and stayed in that big house where doctor Garcia lived alone. And Saalgarcia told me, and you'll hear him tell you as well, I just had to be there twenty minutes and I felt how lonely it was.

29:51 I was overcome by how lonely it was. Remember, this house has the most beautiful views in the most beautiful place imaginable. Saul felt to be there alone was challenging, like it made you feel isolated. It made you feel kind of alone. That's not the same as suicidal or depressed, but there was this sense of isolation would certainly come to play with doctor Garcia in a big way. Throughout the throughout the investigation, they get two big breaks right away. One is somebody looks in the garbage can in the kitchen and it turns out there's a receipt there from Walmart for some big containers. Okay. And then they look at that pickup truck that's doctor Garcia's but that they saw Jordan Joplin driving, and there's a receipt in there for a shipping company. It's called AML, and it's the shipping company that if you want to send anything out of Ketchikin you use. And so now they have some places to check, and they go to the Walmart in town and they get the surveillance footage and they see Jordan Joplin buying huge amounts of container, a lot of containers.

31:05 You can see him piling the containers into one of those carts and stuff and wheeling them out to the pickup truck. So that's significant. And then they go down to AML and they confirm that Jordan Joplin has shipped all this stuff, two tons of stuff, maybe more than forty four hundred pounds of stuff he's shipped to his house, just outside Seattle and Washington. So they want to look at the stuff. The police do and you know, the guys at the shipping con well, you're too late. We sent that out like nine or ten days ago. So now it's a race against time. Now, some of our investigators get on a plane and they go down to Seattle, and they've got to try to intercept that stuff before anybody else gets a look at it, because they want to see what's inside. And so the investigation into the stuff is revved up and ready to go. And so a couple of our guys from Alaska, you know, fly to Seattle, hook up with some of the local cops there who we also talked to, and they've developed kind of a two prong approach for what they're going to do.

32:15 When they get to Washington. They want to search Jordan Joplin's house. You know, this friend of doctor Garcia is that nobody knows that much about in Ketchikin, that maybe had turned up in Ketchikin once or twice, but that doctor Garcia had not really talked about burying me. And they want to see what's inside those containers. And so that's the first level of drama. What will happen with things at the house, and what will happen when they get a look inside those contained. So obviously police now are looking at Jordan Joplin. As you said, no one really knows much about him in ketchac Can What were some of the things that police learn about him that make them more suspicious of him and his relationship with doctor Garcia looking past these shipping containers that he had sent to his home.

33:08 They seem to have a quite a close relationship, you know, Jordan Joplin has been to They've spent a fair amount of time together, you know, both in Washington and in Ketchikan. Jordan Joplin is substantially younger than doctor Garcia is, and he has it turns out that he's had quite colorful past. He's involved in a lot of things. He wants to, you know, grow marijuana. He's been working in pornography, in gay porn and stuff. He has a whole bunch of various girlfriends that he's deodated more than once. He has a he has a fiance, he has the woman that he turned up in ketchikin with. He has other people who've spent time with him, you know, and he also works as a massewer, and this appears to be the way that the two of them first met. Remember when he had that triple bypass operation in Seattle. I think it's around that time that doctor Garcia meets up with Jordan Joplin to get a massage, and so I think he finds Jordan Joplin's name on a website somewhere online and he gets a massage. But the two stay in touch and they seem to build a relationship. And what seems to be clear is that to some degree, doctor Garcia has been funding Jordan Joplin's lifestyle. He's been giving him gifts of money and of objects and stuff over

34:38 the years. And as they continue to probe, it appears that this relationship that they have is maybe more than just friends. That there seems to be intimations of an intimate relationship and a kind of romantic relationship between the two. And so you know, this attracts obviously the attention of investigators, and it's not something that the people in Ketchikan, although they might have suspected know about doctor Garcia, who did not discuss his personal life, who was very private about his personal life, which they respected. You know, although as the details about doctor Garcia's relationship with Jordan Joplin come to light, I do think that people I talked to who knew doctor Garcia felt a little sad that doctor Garcia couldn't share with them, or didn't feel like he could share with them the details of his relationship to Jordan Joplin. You know, they hoped that they didn't. They would have wanted him to know that they were supportive of whatever relationship he might have, But I think they worried that doctor Garcia worried that they would react, you know, in a particular way if he shared what his relationship was.

35:57 While the police are looking at Jordan Joplin, was there anyone else that they were suspicious of during the investigation or dated center solely on Jordan. They were still waiting for toxicology reports to see what it was that had taken his life, and there was you know, there were any number of possibilities on that front, and they would determine sort of how that part of the investigation would go right. But the key thing was sort of finding out what was in those containers, at least on the theft side of things, or on what had happened to the stuff side of things. Let's put it that way. They wanted to find out what was going on with that stuff, and so they come up with kind of a ruse because they don't want Jordan Joplin at his home when they come to search him.

36:45 Perhaps he'll have a weapon, or perhaps he'll be in an ill frame of mind. But Jordan Joplin is very keen to get his hands on his shipment, and he's been calling the port to ask if the stuff has come in yet or not. So they they come up with a way around this. They say, hey, there's been a little snaffoo with your stuff. You have to sign something. You have to come to Seattle and sign this. It's you know, I think he lives in a place called was it Maple Grove? Maybe an hour away. You got to come in and sign this stuff. So he goes, okay, So he drives to the port to what he thinks is to sign the papers. Now they know he's out of his house and the police have a search warrant to search the house, which they do, surprising his fiance who is just stepping out of the shower as they do. So, so he's driving there, and so this is a momentous time because they have gotten inside those shipments and it's all doctor Garcia's stuff, all those luxury goods we talked about, the coins, the gold pieces, the watches, the liqueurs, tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff, and not just that, his passport, his cell phone in a faraday, which is that thing that keeps the cell phone from getting any signals from outside identification, a lot of those computers we talked about that we're missing from the It's all there, and so that really sets off their radar. They are

38:17 ready to arrest him for theft in the case of all this stuff. So they begin to search his house and they find more of that stuff. They find more of his IDs and things like that around the house, and then when he arrives at the site to what he thinks will be a chance to sign, they arrest him for theft. So he's in custody after that. While they search his house, they find notes from doctor Garcia, and they are very affectionate notes, you know that they exchange, and one of them sort of stays in my mind, and I think stayed in the mind of the investigators. This was a high intensity relationship between two very different people, needless to say, and I guess at one point, doctor Garcia writes him a note saying, you know, I mean essentially saying, what you know, we have this crazy relationship, that kind of thing, and he says, you'll probably kill me.

39:13 And so they are all these texts and back and forth. I can't wait to see you. It's going to be so exciting. It's you know, all the rest of it that they exchange. Doctor Garcia seems incredibly devoted to Jordan Choplin. But Jordan Joplin's got a lot of stuff going on in this personal life, two or three women at a time, all kinds of things, and he certainly seems to be he's been living off of a lot of this stuff that doctor Garcia has given him, and he's begun a career in pornography, and he works as a stripper sometimes, and you know, he's taken steroids to try to bulk up, and so he's got a rich, full past to him, I suppose. And so all these things are going on, and they arrest him for the theft, and eventually I think extra item to catch again. Now you're wondering what happened to the toxicology report. Here we have even more of an enigma of some kind. One of the things that comes up is that doctor Garcia had a very elevated carbon monoxide count, like three or four times what the normal human being would have. Remember that charcoal grill outside, Remember those smoke detectors, It's like, what was going on with those? Well, he had I guess what you would consider it. I'm not, you know, expert in this. You know, a dangerously high level of carbon monoxide, okay, but that's not what killed him. What killed him was an overdose of morphine. Morphine morphine. There's no morphine in the house,

40:45 there's no sign he's been injected anywhere. But he's dead from a massive overdose of morphine. How did that happen? What's the morphine from? What could it all mean? So while they're pondering that, they take another look at those That carbon monoxide thing is interesting on any number of levels. Remember those smoke detectors we talked about, Remember how all the braces were up on the wall. Why were the braces up on the wall and the smoke detectors weren't there? And nobody had ever seen doctor Garcia on a lad or anything like that. Well, remember saw Garcia. His brother is staying in that house. Remember he feels the loneliness of the house, the oppressive loneliness of the house. This is the kind of thing that only happens in real life, because you wouldn't believe it in fiction. Saul Garcia takes a walk around the neighborhood after he's kind of feels oppressed by the loneliness and isolation. So he's going down this hill and he's crossing across this beautiful like I guess it's a little ravine that has kind of a little bridge over it. You know, everything in Ketchikin is beautiful.

41:55 But he's not looking at that. He's looking at his phone. So he's looking down at his phone because his phone off, and he looks down his phone. But as he's looking down crossing that ravine, something catches his eye. In the ravine below the bridge, it's something white, like maybe thirty or forty feet below. It's all these white things sort of masked under the bridge somewhere, and he goes, could those be the smoke detectors? And they are. Saul Garcia has found the smoke detectors. The cops show up, they collect them all. They match the serial numbers to the braces on the wall. That's where they are. Someone has dumped the smoke detectors from doctor Garcia's house into this ravine.

42:47 The mystery continues. It's quite literally stranger than fiction. It really is. Right, Saul was sure that Eric was guiding him somehow. You know, it's as if he sort of I mean, I think Saul at one point told me Eric, we need we need help from you to figure out what happened to you. So the pieces fit together a little bit, don't they. You know, It's like it appears that it was staged to look like a suicide. There was the pillbab right, but there wasn't any appreciable amount of valium in his system. There was the charcoal thing that made it look like maybe he was gonna take his own life, but although the level was high, it was not enough to take his life. It was that pointed all the fingers at Jordan Joplin.

43:37 When you spoke to the police and they were kind of telling you about the investigation, did they kind of explain Jordan's demeanor when they spoke to him after his arrest. You know, is there any indication that he was behind this elaborate plot to murder doctor Garcia st his belongings, because obviously it's very clear at the end of the day that's the motive was all of these belongings. But was there anything that he said or did or how he behaved that kind of gave them an idea of what was going on? How he could have come up with all of this.

44:20 Remember we talked about at the very beginning, like the drama of that scene when they're outside the house and the death of doctor Garcia is revealed. And remember we talked about how Bobby Jackson was agitated right and mentioned the valuables and Don Hink was sick to her stomach and talked about the heart attack. Well, they spoke to Jordan Joplin on that occasion, and you'll hear that too on the Body Camp. And so right from the beginning, Jordan Joplin gives contradictory answers, did you know there were valuables in the house? And I think his first answer is no, and then like thirty seconds later it's like, so you know, one of the please, did you know there were valuables in the house. Oh yeah, oh yeah, I knew there were valuables in the house. And they went said, you know, you want to tell me the truth.

45:09 Bob Jackson and Don Hink did not like the vibe they got from Jordan Joplin, you know whatever. His gnashing of teeth and rolling on the ground they did not like. They distrusted him, and so right from the beginning he was I guess you would say squirrelly with the cops that way. You know, how had he come upon doctor Garcia's car so we could drive it in from the airport when he came to catch a him. I mean, it all sort of, it all puzzled them in many ways, and so there was always this kind of level of unease and suspicion connected with him a little bit. But I think the fundamental thing that really kind of broke the heart of the people who cared about doctor Garcia, and I think we can all understand this. Every day of his professional life in the operating room, doctor Eric Garcia showed great judgment and saved lives. That's why people loved him. But in his personal life, well let's call it his private life, did his perhaps his lack of judgment put his own life at risk. I think that's the fundamental heartbreaking thing. He'd had so little experience in data, nobody could remember really like someone special in his life of any kind, and by not talking about this, he didn't have anybody sort of to tell him, oh, this young person, this may not be, you know, someone you really want to like get involved with. Somehow, he was

46:40 on his own on this. He was conducting this pretty much in secret, and so they worried his naivete, his inexperience, and that loneliness. We talked about that sense of isolation, that need to connect this man who was so beloved by this town, but who wanted, like we all knew, someone special. Could that have led him to endanger his life in a way that maybe other people could have warned him about but didn't have the opportunity. Absolutely, because it's it is. It's incredibly heartbreaking that it could have very easily been this profound loneliness that led him to overlook some of the warning signs that I'm sure Jordan Joplin was displaying.

47:26 And he looked great, you know, and he had this kind of charisma that really did kind of put people in the red zone. You know, we talked to people who dated him and who knew him, and your first few meetings with Jordan Joplin could really like, you really thought, this is quite a guy. He'd worked at a food bank where one of his future girlfriends had worked, and he was doing all the good work. He was taken. You know, he was looking out for kids and doing so. He had qualities that really like drew you to him. But he also had this, I guess, this dark side, and obviously he was not he was not engaged in the same relationship to Garcia was engaged with with him. When you were speaking with the locals, especially as the trials going on and the aftermath of learning what happened to doctor Garcia, what was your impression of the locals do you think that were they I don't want to say happy with the outcome, because obviously there's there's no happiness in that. But were they okay with how the investigation panned out? Were they accepting of the resolution of the case.

48:34 Well, they know these cops, you know, they're parts of the community. Everybody knows everybody there. Because of the change of venue, I think the trial took place in Anchorage, which is a long ways away. However you get there. We are from Ketchikan. The trial itself took place quite a ways away, you know, because so many people knew and cared about, you know, Eric Garcia. In Ketchikan, they decided to change a venue. I think it was a very juno and then they moved it to Anchorage, and then there was COVID and so years and years are passing, so you can imagine there's some frustration in the amount of time it's taking to get justice for doctor Garcia. But significantly after the verdict, after Jordan Joplin was found guilty, the sentencing returned to Ketchikhin so that the victim impacts statements came from the people in the community, And as you point out, or as you suggest, that was the moving moment for them, the chance to stand up in court and to literally put their eyes on Jordan Joplin and to tell the court what Eric Garcia meant to them and what they felt of the man who had taken his life. And so I think they were satisfied with the way that the legal system played itself out.

49:50 But I think that was kind of an emotional climax for them, you know, and for Saul Garcia. As he told me and as you'll hear him say, he got to stand up and tell Jordan Joplin what he thought of him. He used the metaphor of a gambler to talk about all the things that Jordan Choplin had gambled away kind of and it's a powerful thing. It really kind of sticks in your mind. You know. They are not like fulesomely emotional, but it's very strong. And so they got to say exactly what they thought, and that was a big moment for them. I'm sure I was getting to to look him in the eye and say how terrible this impact had been on the community, and how he could have done something so terrible for something so selfish, or for a reason so selfish.

50:39 That's the one of the great enigmas of this. It's like, you know, if you were if you were an associate of Jordan Joplins, you could say, why are you killing the Golden Goops? But you had a pretty much going your way, didn't you. You had these you had gotten this guy to provide you with with hard goods and financial support. Why did you need to take his life and take all of it in a way that in retrospect was fairly self evident to see. I think in court where he testified on his own behalf significantly, he tried to claim that doctor Garcia was playing to retire to Washington State, that he was helping him move his stuff down for retirement, that you know that some of these were gifts. If you looked at the situation, you would go, well, why did this have to happen at all?

51:28 Absolutely, And I think people that experienced this like high level of greed. It's there's a lot of allure to that, and you need or you want more and more. And I think that was part of the problem, was that allure of the nice things that Eric Garcia had, it was he I at least in my opinion, I don't think he could ignore the draw of that, or Jordan couldn't ignore the draw of that. Here was somebody, you know, here was Jordan Joplin, just scrambling to make a living, like with lots of different things going on with the law once or twice, all these kind of side hustles, multiple intimate relationships. It was a chaotic kind of life. And here was this guy who was settled as settled could be in a lot of ways. Who was making very good money, no question about that, and who put that money into specific hard goods and travel, but like you know, didn't have dependence or anything, so really had sort of done that. But everybody knew Eric Carsia's heart. And that relationship that he had with Don Hink I always think is a really special one. It's that special kind of work relationship where you feel understood by somebody. It's not romantic, it's not inappropriate.

52:43 It's just like they get you, you know, they get you for your flaws and they get you for your strengths. And there was such a connection between these two, like she looked up to him as a kind of father figure. She took care of everything in his life. You know, he was not the handy guy. All Garcia said once if his house was burning down, he would call you and go, can you call the fire department? Because I think my house is burning down. They're just things he couldn't do. But they were perfectly suited in a work relationship for them. And one of the most dramatic moments for me is Don who is worried sick about doctor Garcia and is there the moment when Jordan Joplin hands the keys to the house to one of the officers and the officer opens the house. Because Don looks at the keys, Jordan Joplin says he has a set of keys that doctor Garcia has given him. When that key passover happens outside the house in March of twenty seventeen, Don takes a look. It's the key ring that she gave doctor Garcia from her honeymoon. He would never give that to Jordan Joplin. She knew at that moment that something terrible was going to happen. It comes over her just in that moment. I know doctor Garcia, and he would never give that away to somebody. And it takes your breath away.

54:07 Oh, it absolutely does. That's chilling her having almost like that almost like that premonition that she needs. It's like an epiphany. Exactly, Yes, an epiphany, having that epiphany that's something terrible was going to happen when they open that door, just based on that keychain, and you know, based on how well she knew him. If you could go back, now that the case is done, he's been convicted, the sentence has been passed. If you could go back and just ask one person one last question, or visit a moment in this investigation. What would it be you would love to tell doctor Garcia. These people love you in a way that maybe you can't even appreciate. You can tell them what's going on in your life and they'll want to help you. One of the most touching things I remember, because again it kind of reserved guy, but he loved dogs. Bob Jackson had a dog, and he said, when I want to think of doctor Garcia, I remember him literally getting down on the floor with my dog, just rolling around the floor with my dog and getting the hair all over him and laughing and laughing and laughing. When I want to summon up one image of doctor Eric Garcia, that's the image I get. I wish we still had that person among us.

55:18 That's beautiful. That's a beautiful moment. What do you hope listeners take away from listening to the podcast? You know, what is the one thing that you hope they take from it? Well, it's a gripping story, and you get a census to the complexity of the investigation and how what looks like an unsolvable puzzle presenting itself to investigators, winds up being solved in a number of different and unusual ways. And we also take you inside the trial in a way that we weren't able to do so on television, and you really get to hear the drama of what the testimony back and forth was like. But I think what you'll leave with is the sense of, you know, a man from a different part of the world who came to town and was welcomed both for what he did and for who he was.

56:07 Chris, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been a pleasure having you Gordeon. It's been great to talk to you. Thanks for you and continued success. Thank you. The murder of doctor Eric Garcia had a profound impact on his loved ones, his family, his friends, as well as Ketchikan as a community. A lot of mystery and questions surrounded this case from the very beginning, but now finally the story behind the headlines is being told. You can hear all about the murder of doctor Eric Garcia, including information and details and not covered here today, by listening to Cold Blooded Mystery in Alaska, which is available every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts. To you, guys, Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you have a wonderful week. As always, I will see you in the next chapter. Bye, guys, Another page closed. But the story isn't over for the families left behind, the pain doesn't end when the headline's fade. And for the victims, we owe them more than silence for our on solved cases.

57:21 If you have any information, please reach out to local authorities or visit our show notes for links and resources. Someone out there knows something, maybe it's you. Thank you for listening to the Book of the Dead. If this story moved or spoke to you in some way, talk about it, share it, keep their names alive. Until next time, I'm Courtney Liso. Stay safe, stay curious, and stay vigilant, and remember the dead may be gone, but their stories will not be forgotten. A