Overlooked testimony, new evidence could hold the key for Paul Garcia in 2008 case

The system believes it got a conviction right in the slaying of a Los Gatos businessman, even as questions remain

Paul Garcia’s family has amassed hundreds of documents detailing every aspect of the murder case that sent him to jail for life.

Paul Garcia in an undated photo published in The San Jose Mercury-News about a decade ago. The photo was provided by the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department.

The documents range from mundane and nearly indecipherable 15-year-old cell phone records to dramatic recorded interviews with witnesses and purported accomplices in an alleged murder-for-hire plot. Put together, the documents tell a variety of stories from vastly different perspectives about the days and weeks leading up to the shooting death of Los Gatos, California businessman Mark Achilli in 2008.

When prosecutors and detectives gathered and examined the evidence, they pulled out a thread and decided what they had told the story about a love triangle gone wrong and a murder plot instigated and paid for by Paul Garcia.

They said Paul and Mark were both involved with the same woman, Tessa Donnelly, a bartender at Mountain Charlie’s, the restaurant Mark sold to Paul and his brother a few months before Achilli’s death on March 14, 2008.

But, what if there was another story to tell?

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