NY nursing supervisor gets life for killing couple in Valentine’s Day rampage that left 4 dead

Killer gets life for Valentine’s Day rampage in NY

CANANDAIGUA, N.Y. — A twice-fired nursing supervisor drew a life sentence Tuesday without the possibility of parole for shooting a couple to death during a Valentine’s Day rampage that left four people dead in western New York.

Investigators say Frank Garcia was enraged at two co-workers who accused him of sexual harassment and got him fired from successive jobs.

Garcia declined to address the court and showed no emotion as he got the maximum penalty for first-degree murder plus two consecutive 25-year sentences for holding his victims’ two teenage children hostage.

Garcia “cut a swath of terror, destruction and unspeakable acts,” said Judge Craig Doran, concurring with the prosecutor that Garcia is “a dangerous man and should never see the light of day again.”

Garcia, 35, was convicted last month in the execution-style slayings of Kimberly and Christopher Glatz at their home in Canandaigua on Feb. 14. After being held captive for three hours, the couple was ordered to lie down and shot from behind while their children cowered upstairs.

Garcia will be tried in November for a pre-dawn attack eight hours earlier and 50 miles away in Brockport. A nurse, Mary Silliman, was slain along with Randall Norman, 41, a motorist who intervened when he saw her being roughed up in the parking lot outside Lakeside Memorial Hospital.

Investigators contend Garcia targeted Silliman, 23, and Kimberly Glatz, 38, after their workplace complaints led to his dismissal from a nursing home in Rochester in October and from the Brockport hospital in February.

Police recovered his DNA from gum and cigarette butts he discarded at the Glatzes’ house. He also left his fingerprints on a notepad in which Christopher Glatz, 45, had written farewell notes to his loved ones.

“I don’t care why he did it, what he thought he was accomplishing,” Stephanie Glatz, Christopher Glatz’s daughter from a previous marriage, told the judge. “He’s not worth my anger, tears or distress.”

The couple’s 15-year-old daughter, Haley, said she heard Garcia from an upstairs bedroom demanding $25,000 from her parents. Kimberly Glatz was awarded $25,000 in compensation after alleging in a complaint that Garcia sexually assaulted and harassed her.

Before leaving, the teen said Garcia taunted her and her 12-year-old brother, asking them “if we wanted to live or die” and then forcing them to say “Thank you, Frank” for sparing their lives.

Garcia was arrested at a restaurant in Rochester that afternoon after negotiating a surrender by cell phone. He was carrying a loaded .40-caliber Glock pistol that police determined was the murder weapon.

The defense maintained there was either insufficient or conflicting evidence pointing to Garcia as the triggerman. But prosecutor R. Michael Tantillo said forensic evidence and eyewitness testimony pointing to Garcia as the killer was overwhelming.

Tantillo called him “a truly evil psychopath … devoid of any sense of even basic humanity.”

Garcia found out Feb. 13 he’d been fired by the Brockport hospital after Silliman complained he had sexually harassed her and offered her money in exchange for sex. Hospital officials said they learned only after the slayings that Garcia had also been dismissed by the nursing home.