The After Show: Cold Blooded

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I'm going to put on a parka.

Hi, everybody.

It's Deborah Roberts.

And on today's episode of 2020, The After Show, we're going to talk about a story that couldn't have more twists and turns.

A beloved doctor goes missing, then is found dead.

A man that people said had no enemies.

But it turns out he had a lot of secrets.

ABC News contributor Chris Connolly takes us from Alaska to Washington State to put the puzzle pieces all together.

And what he ends up with is a stunning surprise, even to the doctor's closest friends.

Chris reported on this for 2020's episode called Cold Blooded, which you can stream again under season 47, episode 1.

Chris also hosts now a new podcast series, which expands on his reporting from this episode of 2020.

The podcast series Cold Blooded, Mystery in Alaska, is available now and you can listen right here in our podcast feed.

Let's take a listen to the trailer.

City Dispatch, I can help you.

In March 2017, police in Ketchikan, Alaska got a worried call.

Nobody's heard from him, his parents,

yeah, 10 days since then.

It was about a beloved surgeon.

one of just two in town, named Eric Garcia.

And I haven't heard from him, so I'm getting

Dr.

Garcia lived in a big house on a hill overlooking Ketchikan, a town of 8,000, best known as the starting point for Alaskan cruises.

When police officers arrived to check on the doctor, they found him dead on a couch.

There were no signs of foul play or forced entry, but the more officers searched the house, the more they realized things seemed very off.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in valuables were missing.

It's all gone.

There was nothing, nothing left.

Who could have gotten into the house so easily and stolen from Dr.

Garcia so brazenly?

Dr.

Garcia definitely had secrets.

And how did Dr.

Garcia end up alone and dead in his big house on a hill?

Is it a suicide?

Is it a murder?

What is it?

To find out what happened, investigators would have to go far far beyond Ketchiken, far beyond Alaska.

They'd have to untangle a web of deception.

It sure seemed like anytime Eric was anywhere near this character, something hokey would be going on with his finances, and it just didn't sit right.

His zest, his positivity, I mean, it was intoxicating.

And then he used that to manipulate.

I can't believe I let him fool me

From ABC Audio in 2020, cold-blooded mystery in Alaska.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

So, to talk more about this, joining me now is my pal, Chris Connolly.

Hey, Chris.

Hey, Deborah, how are you?

I'm good.

I'm good.

This is an incredible tale.

I mean, the murder, and I remember the story so clearly, and viewers who saw it will remember it, but some of our listeners may not have heard of it.

So, the murder of Dr.

Eric Garcia in March of 2017 took his small town of Ketchiken, Alaska by surprise.

A beloved doctor.

I mean, talk to us a little bit about this small town and how this story landed on your radar.

Well, I mean, the thing that's so powerful is exactly as you say.

Dr.

Eric Garcia was so beloved in this town of Ketchiken, town of 8,000, the first stop for cruise ships on their way up from Vancouver or Seattle.

And the great thing about doing this as a podcast is we get into exactly all all the twists and turns in this incredible story and the nature of this amazing town, the history of Quechua, and why it was so special.

Dr.

Garcia discovered it while he was on a cruise himself.

And although he was from Puerto Rico and had trained in Chicago and was working as a surgeon on the Rio Grande on the border between Mexico and Texas, he fell in love with the place.

And Chris, you talked to us about the town in the 2020 episode as well.

Here's a clip:

population of Ketchique is about 8,000 or so, but that comes with an asterisk because between the months of April and October, Ketchikan is a cruise ship mecca.

As many as 15,000 passengers disembark from these massive boats every single day.

What is it like when it's busy here?

Wall-to-wall folks stumbling over each other.

It's good for our economy.

They want to see whales.

They want to see eagles.

They want to see bears, all of which we have.

And of course, people come here a lot to catch the fish.

We're known for being what we call the salmon capital of the world.

He just felt like this was a place he could be really happy.

And you could not go to this wonderful town of Ketchiken, which we did,

and not meet people who wanted to tell you what a wonderful person Dr.

Eric Garcia was.

People who had worked with him, people who had been treated by him, people who had just gotten to know him in the town.

They wanted you to know what a special human being Dr.

Eric Garcia was.

And we heard from some of them in the 2020 episode.

Let's take a listen.

I had a numerous amount of people calling me his daughter, which I always wore as a badge of honor because he was, you know, such a fatherly figure in so many aspects to me.

I felt like if I felt pain, this man was going to feel the same pain.

His death was heartbreaking to them.

In Ketchikin, the love and affection for Dr.

Garcia lives on in so many ways.

We heard from everyone in Ketchikin how they like to remember your brother, Dr.

Eric Garcia.

How would you like us to remember him?

I think Eric's legacy is about compassion and caring, but

he helped so many people along the way.

with medicine or just being friends with people and connecting with them.

At the hospital where he worked, a memorial tree planted during a beautiful ceremony, a lasting tribute to someone who was once an outsider, but was embraced by the townsfolk here as one of their own.

Dr.

Eric Garcia was clearly beloved, which is why what happened next was so shocking for Ketchikan residents.

When we come back, we'll dig into the investigation into Dr.

Garcia's death.

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We're back now with my colleague Chris Connolly, the host of Cold Blood at Mystery in Alaska.

And it seems like there was a lot of mystery surrounding the death of Dr.

Eric Garcia and a lot of discussions about it around town.

And the mysteries that it seemed to unravel were, you know, were very compelling for them and I think are compelling for everybody who hears this story.

Yeah, a small tight-knit community, which, you know, we discover so often in these stories that we report.

Oftentimes they're small communities and everybody knows everybody.

And of course, it's juxtaposed against this beautiful setting.

Well, this story, as I said, had so many surprises that we decided it was ripe to hear so much more.

And it's a six-part podcast series.

And, you know, I've jumped into the world of podcasting and now you get a chance to do this.

And how do you think that helps you in trying to tell the story and to offer kind of a different version of storytelling?

As you know, Deborah, we have a fantastic podcast team and they have taught me a lot about how podcasts work on the side of narrating them.

So I've been putty in their hands, just like I'm so grateful for the people who do such a great job on our stories for 2020.

But the storytelling is really fascinating and incredibly compelling.

You hear these voices and they really stick in your head.

And we get to pay a kind of attention to detail and to take you really deep inside everything that the police were trying to find out and the slow dawning realizations that something.

terribly amiss was going on.

It's really powerful stuff and it's great to get to be a part of it.

Yeah, and you said the voices and that's what really resonates in these podcasts because you really do hear these voices and you spoke with Dr.

Garcia's brother Saul and others who were close to him too and sharing their memories and some of them of course were surprised I mean they learned things about him that they didn't know and you revealed that to us you know there with that part of the world the great you know up north and stuff is famous for its its compelling tales I guess right going back you know to the days of the Yukon and stuff and this is another one of those very powerful tales.

And as much as Dr.

Garcia was very much beloved in this town by his patients and by his co-workers, his brother Saul confirmed to us just the sense of loneliness that I think he felt his brother must have felt.

He sat in his brother's house after his brother's death, and he felt like he could sense the loneliness that must have been part of his life there.

There's no lights outside, it's so quiet.

And inside that house, I just felt the loneliness that, you know,

even though I'm married and everything,

I just could not imagine him living in there,

being so lonely.

Even being there for 20, 30 minutes, it was horrible.

And that loneliness and the secrets that being so lonely might have engendered, as popular as he was in this community, is a lot of what our story is about.

Dr.

Garcia definitely had secrets, and I think a lot of people may have known that.

No one ever pushed the envelope.

Makes for a very compelling and haunting tale.

Yeah, I think so too.

Well, one of the biggest secrets uncovered in the investigation involved a man by the name of, quote, Logan Cruz.

He was later identified as Jordan Joplin, a friend who lived in Washington state, and police had to dig deep to find out not only Logan Cruz, but who this man's real identity was and his connection to Dr.

Garcia.

The probe into Dr.

Eric Garcia's mysterious death, it's become a criminal investigation.

Amid the toxicology results, the missing valuables, that strangely placed barbecue grill, and the absent smoke detectors, it's looking like someone might have had a hand in Dr.

Garcia's death.

In my gut, this death wasn't what it was as it had appeared.

To unravel that mystery, cops dig deep and they're looking into every aspect of Garcia's life, including his financial records.

We want bank records to show where he's got accounts and what banks.

And they make a startling discovery.

Garcia had made wire transfers to several people, including someone named Logan Cruz.

Where's all this money going to?

Who is Logan Cruz?

Turns out police have a pretty good idea of who Logan Cruz is.

Nobody's heard from him yet.

What's your name?

My name's Logan.

Oh, well, my real name is Jordan Joplin, but everybody calls me Logan.

Sorry.

The caller uses two different names, and we didn't find out till later what that was about.

Some of Dr.

Garcia's friends had met Jordan Joplin, a.k.a.

Logan Cruz, but still, he was a bit of an enigma to the people on the scene that day when Garcia's body was discovered.

There are two fascinating people at the heart of this tale.

There's Dr.

Garcia, and there is Logan Cruz, aka Jordan Joplin.

And we learned a great deal about Dr.

Garcia when we were in Alaska, And we learned a great deal about Jordan Joplin when we were in Washington State.

And the way their two very different worlds intersected and the way the police began to unravel the secrets and the mysteries underneath their

relationship was incredibly compelling.

And the things that people told us, you know, really stick in your mind.

And I'm glad we're able to share so many of them on the podcast.

Yeah, yeah, this story is so layered.

Murder, secrets, small town, all those things that you really just kind kind of make for fascinating, fascinating listening.

Well, Chris, it's a pleasure to chat with you again.

I'm looking forward to your podcast.

It's called Cold-Blooded Mystery in Alaska.

It's a six-part series, and you'll be able to find it right here in the 2020 podcast feed.

Thanks a lot, Chris.

Deborah, thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

Always a pleasure.

The 2020 After Show is produced by Amira Williams and Sasha Aslanian with Joseph Rhee, Chris Connolly, Karen Shipman, Amanda Carr, Brian Mazurski, and Alex Barenfeld of 2020.

Theme music by Evan Viola.

Janice Johnston is the executive producer of 2020.

Josh Cohen is the director of podcasting at ABC Audio.

Michelle Margulis is the operations director.

Laura Mayer is the executive producer.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

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This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

It's Brad Milke, host of ABC's daily news podcast, Start Here.

Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians.

These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds.

Visit progressive.com to see if you could save.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates, potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations.