Police say they found body of fugitive Buffalo surgeon

Authorities in Buffalo, N.Y., announce that they have recovered the body of Dr. Timothy Jorden in a wooded area near his home. Jorden suffered what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

By msnbc.com staff and wire reports

Updated 6:35 p.m.:?A scrubs-clad body found in a ravine south of Buffalo, N.Y., is the trauma surgeon suspected of shooting his ex-girlfriend at a hospital, police said Friday.?He was killed by a?self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head, they said.

The body of Timothy Jorden was found in the woods along Eighteenmile Creek behind his home in Lake View, N.Y.?One of Jorden?s neighbors had told police Thursday that he heard a gunshot in the area around 9 a.m. on Wednesday morning.

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Police launched a nationwide manhunt for?Jorden, 49,?after hospital administrative assistant Jacqueline Wisniewski, 33,?of West Seneca,?was?found?dead in a stairwell at the Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo.

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.

Police Commissioner Daniel Derenda?at a Friday evening news conference said Jorden apparently planned the killing and suicide. Jorden, he said, had withdrawn about $36,000 and had been giving away gifts of cash.

No suicide note was found, Derenda said.

A?personal video surveillance system at his home showed Jorden?returned?to his residence?at 8:37 a.m. immediately following the shooting at the hospital, returned to his car and?re-entered the house and?four minutes?later went out his back door?to the woods behind his home, he said.?Hamburg and Buffalo police found the body Friday morning. A handgun of the same type used in the killing was found in his hand, Derenda said.

Hospital video had shown Jorden toting a handgun and a shotgun before the shooting, he said. Jorden apparently lured Wisniewski to the stairwell through a 17-minute phone conversation with her. He shot her five times with the handgun, Derenda said.

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.?

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.

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 Lake View 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 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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