Killer Nurse

by John Foxjohn

  Somehow he lay low until 2002. On April 15, 2002, he was pulled over for doing 95 in a 55 mph zone. Of course when police pulled him over, they also found that his driver’s license had expired.

  Christine filed for divorce on May 1, 2002. A week later, on May 8, 2002, Cody was arrested for public intoxication. And if that wasn’t enough, Cody followed that up with another arrest for public intoxication on June 14, 2002.

  After the divorce became final on July 9, 2002, Cody went almost ten years before he slipped again, but slip he did. He was again arrested for public intoxication on February 22, 2012.

  Cody Fowler had a long arrest record, but mainly for minor infractions that either called for fines or a few days in jail. Although driving while drinking was serious, he managed not to get into any accidents, and his later alcohol charges did not involve driving. There’s a huge distinction between minor traffic infractions or misdemeanor drinking, and murder.

  Although he and his sister, Kimberly, were raised the same way and in the same place, by the same parents, their history would be different.

  From the time Kimberly Fowler entered school, people said that she didn’t work as hard as the other students. She participated in sports, especially softball, but she didn’t put in the effort to excel.

  The longer she stayed in school, the more activities she dropped. In the eighth grade she was a cheerleader and participated in University Interscholastic League events, but by her sophomore year she was no longer a cheerleader and participating halfheartedly in the Central Junior Varsity softball team, which lost all four of the games it played that year.

  Most of the students who talked about Saenz during her formative years described her as overly quiet—even morose at times. Small and marked with an acne problem, she didn’t quite seem to fit in. A classmate said of her, “She was there, but in ways she wasn’t.” He couldn’t explain his sentiments further—perhaps evidence that Kim didn’t leave much of an impression on people. In fact, very few people she grew up going to school with professed to know her all that well, even the ones with whom she’d played sports.

  Some of that changed for Saenz in 1990, her sophomore year, when she became involved with a Central senior by the name of Chris Dion Hopper. Chris was everything at Central High School that Saenz wasn’t. In 1990, his senior year, he was voted most likely to succeed and most spirited by his class. Not only that, he played basketball and baseball all four years of high school, and was honorable mention all-district in basketball in the 1988–89 school year, and topped that off with second team all-district in 1990.

  Chris Hopper had a long and distinguished list of accolades that included the student council, yearbook staff, and later yearbook editor, and won a Tops in Texas award in 1988 for his work on the yearbook. Besides being Who’s Who in computers and Who’s Who in journalism, he also won awards for English, and was not only a member of the National Honor Society, but its vice president. As an active member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, he helped unite the school’s two Christian groups to form one group called Students for Christ.

  After Chris Hopper graduated in 1990, Saenz’s extracurricular activities stopped. One former fellow student said that Saenz was only into Chris. Evidence seems to back up that statement: on July 26, 1991, before the beginning of Saenz’s senior year, she gave birth to a son she named Jacob Hopper. Two months later, in September, the time most of her Central classmates were settling down into their senior year, the new mother was marrying Chris Dion Hopper.

  Speculation at the time, whether true or not, was that Saenz had gotten pregnant on purpose in order to “trap” the boy she thought of as Mr. Right. Many of the students agreed that Chris Hopper was Mr. Right but had married Ms. Wrong, for him anyway, and few thought the marriage would last.

  The marriage actually lasted six years, until October 1997. After the divorce and with a six-year-old child, Saenz went to work for Fleetwood Transportation Services in Diboll, ten miles south of Lufkin.

  At what point Kimberly Fowler Hopper’s life began its downward spiral is a matter of opinion. But the fact that her life became like a vortex is not up for debate.

  Kimberly Hopper was still working at Fleetwood on September 9, 1999, when she became extremely ill. Her family rushed her to Memorial Hospital in Lufkin with pneumonia. Her condition was so bad the hospital couldn’t handle it, and they sent her on an emergency trip to the Methodist Hospital in Houston, where her illness was treated aggressively. Friends said she later referred to September 9, 1999, as a near-death experience. Kim later told others that this was the time she became a Christian. “I felt my ride would be downhill from that time,” she said. By “downhill” she meant coasting—as a Christian who’d put her faith in the Lord, she assumed it would be easy streets from here.

  But another significant event in her life marked an entirely different kind of downhill slide. At Fleetwood Transportation, she met an employee by the name of Mark Kevin Saenz, who went by Kevin.

  Kevin was a recent resident of the county. Previously, he’d lived in Harris County, Houston, but evidence suggests that he didn’t agree with Harris County or vice versa. On August 13, 1994, the Houston Police Department had arrested Mark Kevin Saenz for theft greater than $750 but less than $20,000—a third-degree felony. Records of this arrest show him to be a white male, five-feet-seven and a hundred and thirty pounds, with a date of birth of January 28, 1969.

  This wasn’t the last of his problems with law enforcement in Houston. On November 14, 1996, the Houston Police Department arrested him on another felony: possession of more than five but less than fifty pounds of marijuana. Yes, more than five pounds. (To put that into perspective, average recreational users buy their pot in Ziploc baggies. Five pounds is like a standard-size metal office wastebasket stuffed to overflowing with marijuana.) Quantities that large usually mean the person is dealing.

  Records indicate that Kevin Saenz pleaded guilty to this charge on February 3, 1997, and was sentenced to four years in the Department of Criminal Justice at Huntsville (the Texas prison system). He began his sentence on March 5, 1997, and was paroled to Angelina County, where his mother lived, on August 14, 1998.

  While on parole in Angelina County, Saenz was also pulled over for a traffic violation on October 13, 1999, in Wickenburg, Arizona (in clear violation of his parole). At the time, he listed his address as Green Sanders Road in Pollok, Texas. As it happened, that was the address Kim C. Hopper listed as her own, too. The ticket would have been minor and the last he heard of it if he’d paid it, but he didn’t, and the state of Arizona issued a warrant for his arrest on failure to appear.

  None of this dissuaded Kimberly Fowler Hopper, who married Kevin Saenz on June 10, 2000, six months pregnant with his child. Saenz was finally released from parole on November 14, 2000. (Whether or not Texas authorities knew that he had a warrant out for his arrest from Arizona is unclear, but Arizona finally got their pound of flesh—almost twelve years later. On August 22, 2011, they collected the money Saenz owed for his traffic violation and failure to appear.)

  With a young son and a baby on the way, Kimberly Clark Fowler Hopper Saenz quit Fleetwood Transportation on June 23, 2000, less than two weeks after marrying Kevin Saenz. She’d held the job for almost three years, and when she left, they would have hired her back. As things turned out, this distinction made them unique among Kim’s employers.

  Saenz gave birth to a daughter, Madison Grace, on December 22, 2000, and for the next year and a half, life seemed to have quieted down for the Saenzes.

  On July 24, 2002, Kimberly Saenz’s parents paid $14,000 to Angelina Savings Bank in Lufkin to pay off the loan on their property. The property then played Ping-Pong. They sold it to Kimberly Saenz for a $20 token fee. However, less than a month later, Kimberly Saenz sold them back that same property for the same fee.

  Then one month and three days after paying the loan off,
Saenz’s family used that same property to borrow $24,225 from the same bank. That loan coincided with their daughter’s start at Angelina Community College in the nursing program.

  Saenz graduated in December 2004 as an LVN (licensed vocational nurse) in Texas. Naturally her parents and other members of the family were proud of her. In an E! Program interview, her father, Kent, talked about how hard she’d worked to become a nurse. He said, “It was a full-time job just to become a nurse.” He also said his daughter hadn’t pursued nursing for the money. “It was about helping people,” he said. “She just liked to help people.”

  Her son, Jacob Hopper, told the same program, “I always got to go to school knowing my mom was out there saving lives.”

  Fate, however, had other plans.

  The same month she graduated from nursing school, Saenz went to work for Memorial Hospital, one of the two hospitals in Lufkin, but she worked there only five months. Exactly one month after leaving Memorial, Saenz went to work for Woodland Heights, the other hospital in Lufkin. There’s no official indication as to why she left Memorial Hospital, but in August 2005, two months after going to work for Woodland Heights, she was fired for stealing Demerol—a highly controlled narcotic. Records also indicated that she supposedly gave Demerol to patients who were not in pain.

  As the whirlpool swirled around her and with a bad work record for the two nursing jobs she’d held in less than a year since earning her degree, complete with the charges against her at the last one, one might assume that Saenz would not get another nursing job anytime soon. However, federal employment laws only allow employers to disclose if they would hire that person back or not. Although Saenz had a serious charge against her nursing license, the Texas State Board of Nursing only lists the allegation against a nurse’s license after they have investigated the charges. At that point, the board hadn’t yet investigated the Woodland Heights charges about the stolen Demerol. At the time Saenz was looking for another job after Woodland Heights, potential employers only had a clear nursing record to look at. Despite her two no-rehires, nurses were hard to find and in high demand.

  Saenz’s next job was at Wright Choice Home Health. She worked for them under two months. Employees said that, in the beginning, she was pleasant and on time, and seemed to enjoy the job. However, her mood and work record quickly changed drastically. She became morose when she was there, and often arrived late. Finally, Wright Choice let her go because she was constantly late and didn’t call in—and sometimes just simply didn’t show up for work.

  Kevin Saenz told people at this point that his wife was so depressed that she couldn’t get out of bed and he was taking her to Brentwood Hospital in Shreveport, Louisiana, for treatment. She was, in fact, admitted there for depression and suicidal thoughts. While there, she also complained about how Kevin treated her.

  After the Brentwood stay, Kimberly applied for employment with the Lufkin State School, a state-supported living facility for people with developmental and mental disabilities. She began work there on October 1, 2006, as a probationary employee. Thirty days later on October 31, 2006, they terminated her employment because she was not suited for her assigned position.

  At this point, she’d been a nurse for less than a year and had been fired from four nursing jobs—and had four no-rehires on her record. Then before she celebrated her first year as a nurse, she got her fifth job. On November 27, 2006, she went to work for the Children’s Clinic of Lufkin.

  The fact was, Kimberly Saenz was having some real problems in her life—problems that people she’d gone to school with, gone to church with, or who knew her socially had no idea about. In addition to her depression, she and Kevin were experiencing serious financial difficulties, which was putting incredible strain on the marriage and surely exacerbating her depression.

  The family got some welcome good news when Kevin found a job as an appraiser with the Angelina County Appraisal District, a job that paid well for the area. Whether or not they knew about his criminal history and time in prison is unknown. As an indicator of what he might have made in 2005, in 2012, Chief Appraiser Tim Chambers asked the appraisal board for permission to hire two additional appraisers. The two new employees would cost the county approximately $130,000, which included salary, benefits, equipment, and car allowance. That’s roughly $65,000 a year apiece. Considering that a policeman earns in the low $30,000s, and a teacher with a college degree begins in the mid-$30,000 range, $65,000 is a good salary, especially for Angelina County.

  Kevin Saenz’s annual salary was likely more than many families in Angelina County lived on per year. However, the couple was supporting their eight-year-old daughter as well as Saenz’s teenage son, Jacob, from her previous marriage, for whom she hadn’t received financial help until on January 23, 2006, when the Texas Attorney General filed a motion to make Chris D. Hopper pay child support.

  However, the extra income didn’t seem to help. On Friday, December 15, 2006, Green Tree Servicing and Conseco Finance Corporation filed a lawsuit in Angelina County against the accounts, contracts, and notes of one Kim C. Hopper; in other words, she was being sued for nonpayment. With all of these financial strains in play, the family had a hard time making it, even with Kevin’s relatively generous paycheck.

  And just when Saenz really needed job stability, she wouldn’t find it at the Children’s Clinic. On March 20, 2007, the clinic reprimanded her for missing eight and a half days of work without calling in. But the reprimand didn’t help, and after working there for six months, her last day there was May 29, 2007.

  That wouldn’t be the last the Children’s Clinic heard from Kimberly Saenz. After they fired her for basically not showing up for work, she filed for unemployment compensation. Some people said she was actually surprised when it was denied.

  At this point in Kimberly Saenz’s life, the question was not if she’d go down, but how far, and the trip continued. Whether financial troubles were the tipping point or not, on June 7, 2007, Kevin and Kimberly Saenz split up. This in itself wasn’t all that unusual, but the police don’t usually get involved when a couple separates.

  Lufkin police officer Sterling Glawson responded to a disturbance call on Tulane Drive in Lufkin. When he arrived, he was told that an argument had begun between Kimberly and Kevin Saenz at their home in Pollok. Kevin had fled from the home to his mother’s boyfriend’s home on Tulane Drive, but Kimberly had followed him. In a scuffle, he was injured.

  Glawson arrested Kimberly Saenz for assault causing bodily injury and issued her a criminal trespass citation. She spent the night in jail and was released the next day on a $1,500 attorney bond, but once out, she discovered that her husband had gotten an Emergency Magistrate’s Protective Order against her. Between June and August 2007, Kim and Kevin worked things out, temporarily at least.

  With her employment record as a nurse in Angelina County showing that her longest stint was the six months at the Children’s Clinic—and showing her five no-rehires—it seemed a long shot that anyone would hire her again. However, the State Board of Nursing still hadn’t investigated that charge from Woodland Heights in Lufkin. A check of Saenz’s nursing license didn’t show those charges.

  Against the odds, Saenz was hired in August 2007 as an LVN, or licensed vocational nurse, working for the DaVita Lufkin Dialysis Center. Kevin Saenz told the E! Program, “She was ecstatic and excited to go to work for DaVita. . . . Her exact words were, ‘This job has to be a Godsend.’”

  But as events would play out, the “Godsend” turned out to be anything but.

  CHAPTER 3

  DAVITA

  Upon entering the DaVita Lufkin Dialysis Center, visitors and patients alike sat in a waiting room dominated by a “wall of fame” board that covered most of the wall. The board consisted of photos of patients in the middle of a red heart. Large words next to the pictures proclaimed, “Concentrating on compassionate care the DaVita way.” The wall of
fame board, a point of pride for DaVita, was where patients and staff shared a little about their lives outside of the clinic. DaVita was so proud of this board that each of their 1,300 clinics had to have one.

  On most days, the center was full of mature to elderly people waiting to begin their treatments. The patients’ ages, physical characteristics, and backgrounds varied, but all had one thing in common: they were there because their kidneys were failing them. Human kidneys help sustain life in many ways. The kidneys maintain blood pressure, convert vitamin D to calcitriol, a form of vitamin D that treats and prevents low levels of calcium in the blood. They also regulate calcium, and secrete the hormone erythropoietin, which triggers red blood cell production. They also act as a filtering system to get rid of impurities in the blood and discharge waste through the urinary tract. People with renal failure need dialysis because the treatment does what the kidneys no longer can. Without dialysis, the patients would die.

  Inside the treatment area, the DaVita Lufkin Center had an atmosphere of cleanliness and, like most medical facilities, an antiseptic feeling. In addition, a hint of bleach lingered in the air. Bleach was the predominant disinfectant and sterilizer at DaVita, and other dialysis clinics. In April 2008, the staff at DaVita ran a bleach solution through all the dialysis machines once a week, on Thursdays. After they did that, they then rinsed all the bleach out of the machines. They also used bleach on the floor, where occasionally nurses or PCTs spilled blood. After every patient left a chair where treatments took place, the caregiver wiped the chair, machine, and area down with a bleach solution.