A nationwide manhunt continues for Dr. Timothy Jorden, a surgeon in Buffalo, N.Y., suspected of murdering a receptionist, who was also his ex-girlfriend, at the Erie County Medical Center Wednesday.
By msnbc.com staff and wire reports
Updated 1:05 p.m.: Authorities found the body Friday of the Buffalo, N.Y., trauma surgeon suspected of murdering his ex-girlfriend, NBC News affiliate WGRZ reported. He was killed by an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The body of Timothy Jorden was found in the woods along a creek behind his home in Lake View, N.Y. Sources said he was wearing hospital scrubs, WGRZ reported. One of Jorden’s neighbors had told police Thursday that he heard a gunshot in the area around 9 a.m. on Wednesday morning.
Police launched a nationwide manhunt for Jorden, 49, after the death of hospital administrative assistant Jacqueline Wisniewski, 33, who was found dead in a stairwell at the Erie County Medical Center.
Jorden was considered armed and dangerous. He joined the National Guard in high school, went into the Army after graduation and served with the Army’s Special Forces, first as a weapon’s expert, then as a medic in the Caribbean, Japan and Korea.
A friend of Wisniewski’s told WIVB-TV that she used to live with Jorden but left him because she believed he was having affairs with other women. But, Heather Shipley said, “when they broke up, he wouldn’t let go.”
She said Jorden had once held Wisniewski captive in her home for a day and a half, wielding a knife, and he also put a GPS tracking device in her car.
“She told me if anything happened to her,” Shipley said, “that it was him.”
Neighbors and colleagues said they suspected something was wrong with Jorden, a decorated surgeon and respected community member, when he began putting less effort into things he previously cared about, became less friendly, and changed his appearance.
“I saw him at the beginning of the season and noticed how much weight he had lost,” June DuPree, a neighbor of Jorden’s in an exclusive cluster of homes on the shore of Lake Erie, told the Associated Press. “He said, ‘Yeah, I lost a little bit.’ But it was more than a little bit. It was a lot. He wasn’t too friendly that time I saw him. He just didn’t want to talk.”
One of Jorden’s colleagues estimated Jorden had dropped about 75 pounds in recent months.
Additionally, neighbors say Jorden’s waning attention to maintaining the well-manicured grounds of his half-million dollar home in his Lakeview neighborhood south of Buffalo suggested something might be wrong.
“He had a lot of money invested in his house and the landscaping. And when I came back from Florida in May, it was really neglected. I was just shocked,” neighbor Tom Wrzosek told the AP.
“We presumed he was sick, that maybe he had some sort of major ailment,” he said. “He was sick, but not in the way we thought he was sick.”
Jorden’s colleagues told the Buffalo News that Jorden, normally a soft-spoken and even-keeled man, had been acting strangely in recent months, avoiding eye contact and basic communication.
A police official told the Buffalo Newsthat Jorden may have been having mental health issues or “some type of serious physical ailment that caused the drastic weight loss.”
Jorden's office may offer clues to his mental status. A police source said it appeared he had been living in the office. Hidden above ceiling tiles, police found rancid takeout containers and dirty laundry, the Buffalo News reported.
Jorden, described as a bald, black male, about 6-foot-2-inches tall and weighing 250 pounds, has been licensed to practice medicine in New York for a decade. He has a medical degree from the University of Buffalo and trained at the Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Wash. He received his certification from the American Board of Surgery in 2004.
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