Justice visits husband of three

When Heather Sullivan married Nicholas Garcia in 1998, she found him friendly, charming and caring. What Sullivan didn’t know was that Garcia was already married to Ana Garcia, and she couldn’t imagine that within 10 years he’d also marry Jesse Samantha Summer Moore – without divorcing Sullivan or Garcia.

“I think there are five of us wives all together, and there’s a new girlfriend, too,” said Sullivan, who grew up in Spokane and graduated from Shadle Park High School.

Since 1998, Sullivan, Ana Garcia and Moore have filed 15 similar police reports accusing Garcia of rape, assault and domestic violence, but Garcia successfully navigated the court system in California and remained free.

Justice finally found him in Spokane.

On Friday, Garcia was sentenced to 60 months in jail by Superior Court Judge Linda Tompkins, and Sullivan was granted a lifelong protection order against him after enduring 12 years of abuse.

“It’s over. We’re done,” said an elated Sullivan after the sentencing.

Jurors found Garcia guilty of first-degree burglary, domestic violence and felony harassment. They also found exceptional circumstances – a pattern of domestic violence, and at least one instance of Garcia beating Sullivan in the presence of their children – that allowed for a longer sentence.

A sobbing Garcia told the judge that he loves his four children and that he didn’t understand why Sullivan was “vengeful.”

Still, Tompkins handed down the five-year term.

“This matter speaks for itself,” she said. “Hopefully, the children can live free of this dispute in the future.”

It was Sullivan’s mother, Jeanette Strasser, who began looking into Garcia’s background a couple of years ago after seeing bruises on her daughter’s body.

The mother examined public records on Garcia from Nevada, where he’d married her daughter. She discovered that he’d married two other women there, but apparently never divorced them.

“It was easier for me to figure this out from the outside,” Strasser said. “She was in his clutches – I wasn’t.”

When she married him, Sullivan had no way of knowing Garcia was married to other women. There exists no registry of marriages in the United States that would have sent up a red flag when they applied for a license.

But their relationship deteriorated. Garcia beat Sullivan, pulling out chunks of her hair, she said. During periods when the two lived separately, he called to threaten to kill her, she said.

And when she finally found out he had other wives, “I was hurt, but I wasn’t shocked,” Sullivan said in an interview Friday.

Garcia’s abusive relationship with Sullivan followed a common pattern. They had moved in and out of each other’s lives, filed a flurry of protection orders and police reports, moved back and forth between California and Washington. They had four children, now ages 2 to 8.

“She had the last child while he was in Nevada marrying wife No. 3,” Strasser said.

But it was Garcia’s alleged violence against one of his other wives that set Sullivan’s new path into motion.

About two years ago, Garcia was arrested in Los Angeles, where the couple lived at the time, because his third wife, Moore, had filed charges against him.

Sullivan’s parents, who live part of every year in Spokane, swung into action. “They came over with a truck and picked up me and the kids and all our stuff,” Sullivan said. She moved back to Spokane, where she was granted full custody of the children.

Then Garcia also moved to Spokane – and the two continued seeing each other, maintaining separate households.

One day in March 2007, Prosecutor Bob Sargent told the court, Garcia forced his way into Sullivan’s home, where he punched her, tried to choke her and threw her to the floor. When she tried to dial 911, Garcia grabbed the phone and hit her with the receiver, Sargent said.

Garcia grabbed one of their children and took off.

“When police came to his house to arrest him, he wouldn’t come out,” Sargent said. “They worried about the safety of the child, so they backed off a bit and talked to him through the window.”

It was days before he came out of the house, Sargent said. After he did, he was arrested.

Addressing the court toward the end of the hearing, Sullivan said: “Other women have tried to charge him, but he gets away with this all the time. I know of five women – he has children with all of them and domestic violence issues with all of them. I don’t think he’ll learn from this at all.”