A man whose murder conviction was overturned for its connections to a disgraced ex-detective is now wanted for another murder

A man whose murder conviction was overturned because of its connection to disgraced former Philadelphia homicide detective Philip Nordo is now suspected of committing another homicide, according to police.

Authorities have issued an arrest warrant for Arkel Garcia, 31, for the fatal beating of an elderly acquaintance on Wednesday inside a fourth-floor apartment in the city’s Stenton section in what authorities believe was a robbery, according to law enforcement sources.

Shortly before 11 a.m. Wednesday, 35th District officers responded to a report of a person with a weapon at an apartment unit on the 4900 block of Stenton Avenue, according to a police report. After a maintenance worker let officers into the unit, they discovered David Weinkopff, 68, in a wheelchair, with blunt force trauma to his face and stomach, his apartment ransacked.

Paramedics pronounced him dead a short time later.

The crime does not appear to be random, said the sources, who asked not to be identified to discuss an ongoing investigation. Neighbors told police they had seen Garcia — whom they knew as “Mike” or “Black” — going in and out of the building in the past. Witnesses said he was friendly with several residents, including Weinkopff, who they said had been struggling with drug addiction, police records say.

It was not clear what Garcia may have taken from Weinkopff, but drug paraphernalia was found on the scene, along with several blood-stained metallic rods.

Police records indicate investigators also obtained video and audio footage linking Garcia to the crime.

Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore said a warrant for his arrest on murder charges was approved Friday, the sources said.

Ten years ago, Garcia was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the shooting death of Christian Massey, a 21-year-old man with special needs who was killed over a pair of Beats by Dre headphones in Overbrook.

But in 2021, District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office helped overturn Garcia’s conviction. Prosecutors said they believed that Nordo — who by then had been charged with raping and sexually assaulting male witnesses — had obtained a false confession from Garcia while trying to pursue sexual relationships with two other key witnesses.

“Nordo had ulterior motives during this investigation that had nothing to do with solving this murder,” prosecutors said at the time, citing emails and recorded phone calls between Nordo and men they said were his sexual targets.

A confidential informant who spoke to Nordo about the Garcia case later told The Inquirer that Nordo sexually assaulted him during the investigation, and also failed to protect his identity, leading to threats from neighborhood drug dealers. The informant was later convicted of killing someone during what he said was a confrontation that stemmed from having been labeled a snitch.

A judge agreed to throw Garcia’s case out, and Krasner’s office declined to retry him.

Still, Garcia was not released from prison right away. He had been separately convicted of aggravated assault for fighting with a sheriff’s deputy inside the courthouse moments after he was found guilty of Massey’s murder. A judge sentenced him to five to 10 years in prison for that crime, and Garcia remained incarcerated for it until last fall, when he was released on parole.

Nordo, meanwhile, spent two decades on the force and was at one point considered one of the city’s most prolific homicide detectives. But in 2022, he was convicted of sexually assaulting witnesses and informants during murder investigations, and a judge sentenced him to 24½ to 49 years in prison.

After Krasner’s office charged Nordo with sex crimes, it began reinvestigating more than 100 cases the detective helped build, and prosecutors later moved to overturn at least 15 convictions tied to him. Some reversals were considered exonerations — instances in which a conviction was overturned and charges dropped — while others were overturned and resulted in guilty pleas to lesser charges.

Garcia’s impending arrest marks at least the second time that a person whose case was overturned due to Nordo’s misconduct was accused of committing another crime.

James Frazier was sentenced to life in prison after he confessed to being an accomplice in a 2012 ambush slaying of a man and his girlfriend. But he later appealed, arguing Nordo had coerced him into signing a false statement of guilt.

Frazier’s conviction was overturned in 2019. But he was later charged with shooting a man twice in the leg in 2021, apparently as part of a botched drug deal. He pleaded guilty the next year and was sentenced to 11½ to 23 months in jail, court records show.

In Garcia’s case, detectives recovered video footage showing a man with crutches, believed to be Garcia, entering and exiting the apartment unit at different times around the time of the killing, police records say. While the man with crutches is inside, audio recording captured sounds of a struggle, and a loud thud, according to the report.

Garcia later called another man who lived in a nearby unit and told him to check on Weinkopff, police records say.

Additional objects linked by police to the murder scene, including several more metallic rods, cleaning supplies, and discarded clothing, were discovered on SEPTA tracks nearby.