Killer Nurse

by John Foxjohn

  As for the reasons medical professionals kill patients, Yonkers’s answer in the article was spine-chilling. She said: “Nurses who kill patients do so for a variety of reasons. Orville Majors, convicted of six counts of murder in Indiana in 1999, was sick of complaining patients. Genene Jones, a pediatric nurse convicted of murder in Texas in 1984, apparently enjoyed watching babies go into cardiac arrest.”

  She went on to say, “Some are motivated by Munchausen syndrome by proxy,” a psychological disorder attributed to those who create medical emergencies in those under their care to draw attention to themselves.

  Her last answer was the most chilling of all. She said, “Possibly the biggest reason that some nurses kill is that they can.”

  Speaking with Yonkers was what had led Herrington to say in his closing, “Why do mothers sometimes scald their babies, why does it happen?”

  In effect what he was saying was that sometimes we don’t know the reason, and even if we did, we wouldn’t understand it. Sometimes it’s best not to know.

  When Sergeant Abbott initially told Herrington about the case, the DA’s first coherent utterance had been, “Holy cow, that can’t be true.” After a few minutes, Herrington had then realized that if it was true, he still might not manage a conviction, which was the reason he contacted Yonkers and others.

  Before this came up in Lufkin, Herrington had not realized how prevalent these kinds of accusations against medical personnel were, and his first impression about the difficulty proving them was correct. All across the world, similar accusations are brought forth, but they are extremely difficult to prove. The public simply doesn’t want to believe such things can happen.

  The public has a tendency to hold certain professionals to a higher standard—the policeman, the judge, the district attorney, and member of the clergy. These people are trained to help and serve the public. Held to an even higher standard are medical professionals. The last thing the public wants to think is that the person they trust to heal them could, in fact, be attempting to kill them.

  The American public has a tendency to categorize such crimes as “angel of mercy” killings—an attempt to rationalize how health care professionals, although wrong to kill, might’ve had a good motive for doing it. When Nancy Grace profiled the Kimberly Clark Saenz case on her March 7, 2012, show, she even referred to Saenz as an “angel of mercy.”

  Ron Panzer, president of Hospice Patients Alliance and the author of Stealth Euthanasia: Health Care Tyranny in America, states, “Most medical serial killings, or to use a more politically correct term—Health Care Serial Killings are not the work of madmen, alone. Nor are they the work of a person with compassionate characteristics. For the most part that is a fallacy. Those that are killing are doing so because: they can and/or because they are being rewarded financially, but very rarely is anyone killed to end anyone’s suffering, out of a claim of compassion by the murderer, and all the other flowery excuses that are tossed about.”

  Exactly what does a health care serial killer, or for that matter, any killer look like? This was one of Herrington’s big concerns before and during the trial. Most murderers don’t have beady eyes and aren’t outwardly cruel. Nor do they have SERIAL KILLER written on their foreheads. Neither did Kimberly Saenz, and hence Herrington’s worry. People didn’t look at her and automatically see a serial killer. Even after she was fired from DaVita and the police arrested her for aggravated assault against Ms. Risinger and Ms. Rhone, and her name was splashed across the news in East Texas as well as the world, not only was Saenz still able to walk into the Lufkin Dermatology Clinic and apply for a job—they hired her! Of course she lied on the application, but not about her name. And mostly: she didn’t look like a serial killer.

  Besides all that, health care professionals work with patients who are very sick—some are old and some young, but it wouldn’t surprise many people if they died. In Saenz’s case, she worked with elderly patients who had kidney disease; many of them, as Dr. Germain stated, were frail and sick. She also had access to drugs, syringes, IV tubing, all the things that science provides to help with the healing process. And all of which could also be used to end the patient’s life.

  After Ms. Metcalf and Ms. Strange died on April 1, 2008, DaVita knew something was wrong. They spent a lot of time and money investigating the problem, and they knew one existed. However, they never looked at the employees.

  Because of Herrington’s talks with Yonkers and others, he knew that, for the most part, the medical professionals who were eventually convicted were typically because of a confession rather than a trial. He found out that, on average, prosecutors were able to convict only around 50 percent of the health care professionals charged with killing or harming patients. Medical professionals are trained in science, kill with science, and it is extremely difficult to convict them with science, and in most cases, that is the only way.

  When the Lufkin police arrested Saenz the first time for the two aggravated assaults, the hope was to get a confession out of her, but that didn’t work, and without that confession, all that is left are educated guesses. Herrington, for instance, believed that Saenz was just what Wanda Hollingsworth called her, a sociopathic serial killer.

  “I think her whole life was coming apart,” he said. “She had marital and other personal problems. She was addicted to drugs, severely depressed, and hated her job.” He also said, “Talking to some of the folks who worked with her at DaVita, it sounded to me like her husband was forcing her to continue to work there. She was frustrated and took it out on the people who were helpless to her.”

  Chris Tortorice, Layne Thompson, and Sergeant Abbott agreed with Herrington’s assessment. However, mitigation specialist Cheryl Pettry had another theory. She believed that Saenz wanted DaVita to hire more employees and they wouldn’t, so she took it upon herself to show them.

  The jury also agreed with these professionals on the motive of Saenz, but they took it a step further, all on their own, in their probability study that no one else did—no one had access to the DaVita work calendar because Herrington didn’t present it in trial, just placed it into evidence. In the twenty-eight days of April that DaVita employed Saenz, she worked twelve of those days. There were ten events on six days—all days that Saenz worked, and she was the only one to work all those days.

  If a person closely took a realistic look at Kimberly Clark Saenz’s life, put certain events from her personal life down on paper, and then overlaid that with the DaVita patients’ deaths or injuries in April 2008, the ones Herrington charged her with, the correlation would be frightening and illuminating.

  For instance, on February 15, 2008, Capital One Bank had filed a civil suit against Kimberly Saenz. The papers were delivered to her on April 14, 2008. Kimberly Saenz did not work on April 15, but she did on April 16, and that was the day Mr. Kelley coded, went into a coma, and eventually died. However, it was also the day Ms. Castaneda coded while on the dialysis machines.

  Another example would be the day leading up to April 26. Friends and some family members say that just prior to this date, Kimberly and Kevin had a huge fight that ultimately led to him filing for divorce. The next day, the twenty-sixth, Kimberly Saenz worked. On that day she encountered Ms. Debra Oates, Ms. Cora Bryant, and Ms. Opal Few. Two of these patients died, and the other, Ms. Oates, came close.

  There is some validity in what the friends and family members say because on April 29, the day DaVita fired Kimberly Saenz, Detective Mike Shurley met with Kevin Saenz in his attorney’s office, where he was in the process of filing for divorce.

  This also doesn’t account for April 28, 2008. That was the day that the two witnesses observed Saenz injecting Ms. Risinger and Ms. Rhone with bleach. No one who ever looked at those two accusations in detail doubted what those two women saw. Everything they told Amy Clinton and the police proved true, and was backed up with science.

  However, som
etimes people lose sight of what had happened before Saenz injected the two patients. That morning she was scheduled to be the med nurse—a job she loved, but was switched from the duty back to patient care—something she hated. She was so upset by the switch in duty that Amy Clinton had to coax her into going back to work.

  Just thinking of how many people could have died on April 28, 2008, or the days after, if these two patients hadn’t seen her, or told anyone what they’d seen, is chilling.

  Looking at this, it is easy to conclude that Saenz was indeed taking her frustrations out on people who were powerless to do anything about it—people who trusted her to care for them.

  However, to take it a step further, there’s also the specific people whom Saenz actually killed or injured to take into account. It wasn’t a question of race, ethnicity, or sex: Ms. Metcalf, Ms. Strange, Ms. Few, Ms. Risinger, Ms. Bradley, and Ms. Oates were white. Ms. Bryant and Ms. Rhone were black as was Mr. Kelley, the only male, and Ms. Castaneda was Hispanic.

  As stated earlier, for the most part, dialysis patients are sick, old, cranky, and difficult to deal with. But not Ms. Opal Few or Mr. Garlin Kelley Jr. Not a single employee had a bad word about either of those two—they were two of the most beloved patients at DaVita. Both had buoyant, warm personalities and made it a point to do things on their own so they wouldn’t be a burden to others.

  Employees of DaVita, past and at the time of trial, went out of their way to say good things about these two patients. Even the other patients had good things to say about these two.

  Ms. Cora Bryant and Ms. Clara Strange had also been well thought of, and while Ms. Thelma Metcalf had been harder to care for than the others, because she had to be lifted in and out of her wheelchair and, in some cases, gurney, no one had a word to say against her.

  When Ms. Debra Oates took the stand to testify, she’d looked at Saenz and said, “Hi, Kim.” She’d considered Saenz a friend. She told people that Kimberly Saenz had helped her pass the long dreary hours by telling her jokes while she was hooked up to the machine.

  Although Ms. Risinger didn’t live to see the trial, her husband, Jim Risinger, swore that his wife told him that Kim didn’t do anything to her. She even credited Kim with saving her life once. Jim Risinger believed this so much that he testified at trial for Kimberly Saenz twice and even went on the E! Program to declare her innocence.

  Obviously these were not difficult patients or even contrary to Saenz.

  However, like all dialysis centers that treat older, extremely sick patients, DaVita Lufkin, according to employees past and present, did have quite a few difficult, hard to get along with, patients. As it happens, Saenz did not harm any that exhibited frustration or anger like she had. It’s obvious to see that Saenz was taking her personal problem out on the patients—but not the ones who were weak or unhappy or unkind. It was as if she’d targeted the ones who weren’t as miserable as she was.

  Another huge question on people’s minds before and after the Saenz trial was why the defense didn’t ask for a change of venue from Angelina County.

  This was a question broached to Steve Taylor, the experienced defense attorney and the death penalty specialist for the Saenz defense. In answer, he said that a change of venue was a lot harder to obtain than most people think. First, the defense would have to find three people from Angelina County—three who had nothing to do with the case or the defendant—who would swear in an affidavit that the defendant couldn’t receive a fair trial in the county.

  Then the prosecution would submit three affidavits from three unbiased people that the defendant could receive a fair trial. For the most part, this is usually easier for the prosecutor then the defense.

  If all the affidavits are presented, the judge usually says, “Let’s wait and see what the prospective jurors say. Wait for voir dire.”

  The judge will base his decision on whether the potential jurors can be objective—something all potential jurors are asked anyway.

  Taylor said that one of the hardest parts of the process for the defense is to show the judge that the jury has been poisoned—something both Herrington and the police department had gone out of their way not to do.

  Also, Taylor said to transfer a case to an adjacent county in the same jurisdiction or other nearby county is expensive—something that is taken into account.

  However, when looking into a change of venue for this case, there were some major differences in this one and others, and a little had to do with that expense Taylor talked about. In most cases, to change to another county, there are either transfer costs of taking the prisoner back and forth for trial, or for another jurisdiction to house and transfer the prisoner.

  The difference: in this case there was no prisoner to transport. Unlike most murder suspects, especially ones suspected and charged with serial killings, Saenz was free on bail. However, as a stipulation to that bail, she was not allowed to leave the county. She had a GPS ankle bracelet on to ensure that she didn’t. A change of venue would mean the judge either had to revise the bail set or allow Saenz free movement, something Herrington was sure to fight, or revoke it, which Saenz most likely wouldn’t have liked.

  Of course, this brings in another factor that may or may not have played a part in this decision. Saenz was out of jail on an attorney bond. This is a practice accepted in Texas, but most if not all other states won’t allow it, and the American Bar Association is totally against it. In this case, if Saenz decided to skip, then Deaton would be the one liable for paying the entire bond that guaranteed her release from jail.

  Of course there are other factors. If the case had been moved out of Lufkin and East Texas, then Deaton could not have played the sympathy card he did in closing about the huge Fortune 500 company taking this East Texas girl out of her home.

  That card didn’t work with an East Texas jury, but it sure wouldn’t have worked if the trial had not been held in East Texas.

  CHAPTER 24

  THE POSTSCRIPT

  Not everyone believed the jury got the verdict right. Brian Thigpen, one of Kimberly Clark Saenz’s relatives, said simply, “She is not guilty and the courts got it wrong.”

  Several from the Saenz camp said that Kimberly Saenz was a good Christian woman who wouldn’t have done what she was accused of doing.

  Saenz’s close family had sat through the entire trial and heard all the evidence, but barring a confession, they would never believe what they’d heard, and they heard only what they wanted to believe.

  However, the judge, and the prosecution team all believed the jury had done a fantastic job from start to finish.

  Would the prosecution have said the jury did a great job if the jury had found Saenz innocent? There’s reason to believe that they would. The three prosecutors were the type of people who would have said, “It was my job to prove the case and I didn’t do it well enough.”

  Defense attorney Steve Taylor said of the DA, “Herrington wanted the same thing I did—a fair and impartial jury, and he was satisfied when the twelfth was chosen. In my heart I was satisfied that they wouldn’t kill her, and it would have been so easy for them to have done so.”

  Even The Lufkin News complimented the jury. In their “Toast and Roast” section after the trial, they commented, “A toast, first and foremost, to the 12 jurors and three alternates who heard every minute of evidence. It is hard enough for anyone to pay attention to a preacher’s entire lesson on Sunday morning, but it was obvious that this group was going to listen to every witness’ every word, as if someone’s life depended on it—because it did.”

  They went on to say, “Attorneys from both sides did a good job of selecting what we thought was a fair representation of Saenz’s peers.”

  As the spectators watched the jurors over the course of the trial, it became clear that the jury was extremely cohesive. Several people made comments during the trial that they didn’t kn
ow what verdict the jury would come back with, but they would come back with one. That group would not be hung. They simply got along too well.

  A month after the trial, ten of the jurors came together as a group to talk about the Saenz trial. The other two were out of town. To a person, they were proud that they’d served on the jury, and every one of them was equally convinced they’d come to the right decisions. They were also unanimous in their beliefs about the key players in the trial and the witnesses.

  The jury had paid attention to what was going on during the trial. They watched everybody, especially the attorneys. They saw the professional demeanor from the three prosecutors and compared them to a defense attorney who sat in the courtroom and ate candy bars or spit his dip into a cup during trial.

  The entire group agreed that the prosecution team of Herrington, Tortorice, and Thompson had done a great job throughout the trial. One juror said, and the others all agreed, “We were impressed with their professionalism and organization, their demeanor throughout the trial.” There were never any issues with their credibility either.

  They also paid special note to how well the prosecution team had worked together.

  Larry Walker said, “Clyde Herrington is great but he knows his limitations and that scientific stuff—he turned it over to Chris Tortorice,” who had also impressed Walker. “I thought the world of him,” the foreman said of the young lawyer.

  Their reaction would not be the same for the defense. As far as credibility went, Deaton’s was less than zero with most of the jurors. They believed that he continuously attempted to deceive them. He didn’t give them facts, he attempted to hide the facts from them, and he wasn’t that good at it.

  After the trial was over, the prosecution team met with the jurors. During that conversation, Kimberly Flores said she asked, “Being new to the judicial system, the other side that we saw, is that how a defense attorney is supposed to behave?”