The Angel Of Death (True Crime Documentary) | Real Stories

in a California hospital patients are mysteriously dying on the graveyard shift their internal organs are paralyzed they slowly suffocate the deaths devastate families searching for answers the death toll climbs and rumors and innuendo point to murder police must rely on science to stop an angel of death [Music] in this program some of the names of the participants have been changed as well as the name of the hospital in the hospital's intensive care unit doctors struggled to keep Trisha Johnson alive her husband Larry stayed by her bedside she had been in the ICU for days doctors believed the worst was finally behind her [Music] around three o'clock a.m. he went to get a cup of coffee [Music] as he left his sleeping wife's side he had no way of knowing it was the last time he would see her alive [Music] only moments after he walked out of her room Tricia's vital signs began to plummet the nurse's station was alerted she was in full arrest the drama team rushed to Trish's room her heart stopped when Larry returned he saw the doctors surrounding his wife [Music] there was nothing else they could do 247 she was dead respiratory therapist Bob Baker had become accustomed to sudden deaths in the ICU we do work around a lot of emergencies a lot of death a lot of sadness we've had patients that we thought were stable and all of a sudden they died the staff at the ICU worked with patients who were on the edge between life and death they're in a very fragile state were there to monitor the life-support systems are on and care for them many of them we stabilize them and they're they're very predictable and then there's the other group of patients that are very unstable some of the patients were placed in the ICU to recover for a few days after routine surgery [Music] John Schwartz was admitted to ICU after he had his hip replaced his granddaughter Mary Nikol was grateful his recovery was going so well his prognosis was he's going home in four days it was the holiday weekend it was a Friday and they wanted him to go home on Tuesday Schwartz had been restrained so he didn't reinjure his hip [Music] [Music] when a nurse went to check on Schwartz later that night he found him on the floor it seemed he had struggled free of his restraints the code rang and all the staff on duty rushed to Schwartz's aid [Music] I got here doc he was healthy and he just needed rehabilitation you know using your learning to walk again on with a new hip and that's all of us he didn't have anything else wrong with him [Music] the doctors nurses and respiratory care specialists did all they could but it was not enough [Music] Schwartz died 15 minutes after he was found Mary Nichol was shocked let's call it 137 I wasn't ready for it I had no inclination that he was going to pass because he was healthy he had a good heart it was extremely unusual for someone to die after a routine hip replacement Schwarz his sudden death seemed especially odd a nurse checked on him just an hour before no one could explain how he escaped his restraints the rising number of strange deaths bothered the respiratory therapists as well no one was certain whether something was wrong or if the deaths were just a coincidence over the next months the ICU continued treating a large number of patients when Sara Ascari was rushed to the hospital she was having trouble breathing but now she was off the respirator and stable this particular patient had a very severe lung disease but she was improving to the point where she could go home we had her on a what we call a bypass she didn't need that anymore she was getting better but Sara Ascari would never make it home at 4:10 a.m. a respiration rates suddenly shot up four minutes later she stopped breathing then her heart stopped [Music] please help the patient had a do not resuscitate order so the staff could not make any attempt to revive her sarah Ascari was dead okay it's just gonna prepared I'll call the resident to pronounce her I'll call the attending if you could put the family in the middle so get into the conference soon it was a big surprise to me to find out that she had all of a sudden died it was another sudden unexplained death of a patient who seemed to be recovering something about Ascari's death didn't seem right the strange deaths concerned Bob Baker his suspicions grew when he came upon a used syringe with a vial of drugs taped to it in one of the hospital's storage rooms he thought it might belong to one of the labs but they told them they didn't keep anything in that storage rot there never supposed to be sitting out when I found out that it didn't belong to the Bronco I thought well maybe somebody's abusing this was a violation of procedure narcotics were kept in a locked refrigerator this is starting to sound serious I just thought okay this is another piece to the puzzle Baker went to talk with the other respiratory therapists if one of them was abusing drugs he wanted to get it out in the open his co-workers thought it might have been an oversight and dismissed it Baker wasn't so sure throughout this entire time Jean Coyle was a frequent patient of the hospital seeing her through her many hospital beds was her daughter Michelle Elmore she started having more and more breathing problems and more frequent visits to the hospital and she would be at breathing treatments each time she was short of breath she would call the staff her hands seldom left the call button pressing the button on to take care of it nurses on their way my mom would get frightened about her breathing and she felt more secure being at the hospital when she couldn't breathe at 2:05 a.m. jeans blood pressure dropped to zero minutes later she went into respiratory arrest [Music] [Music] good you're doing great gene bounce back quickly within 40 minutes she was stable and well oriented I got a call from the hospital late at night I was shocked because I just talked to her and she was fine before that I asked the nurse what had happened did she have a stroke or a heart attack or something what caused that and she said that they didn't know the cause it just happened how are you doing Michele's mother explained what had transpired mom told me that she had felt funny that evening and she couldn't breathe so she pushed the button for the nurse and she remembers waking up to being being resuscitated by mr. Ephron's Saldivar who was the respiratory therapist the next morning evarin Saldivar took the blood sample to the lab for testing [Music] baker tested it to measure the amount of oxygen in her blood at the time of her arrest her oxygen levels were normal this was highly unusual for someone who had suffered a heart attack and nearly died [Music] strange events at the hospital continued to concern Baker Jean coils attack occurred on Efrain Saldivar's ship he was a kind of bad luck guy you know it was ever on you know cuz it's bad luck because patients die when he's on the next morning as he was leaving Baker got some startling news from another respiratory therapist named Everett we're we're walking out to the car and we're talking about golf and he says oh you know that patient everyone did that killed her [Music] I don't know he told Baker rumors were going around Saldivar killed one of his patients to go in and kill a patient with by using a magic syringe it just didn't seem very real to me hearing all these rumors but my concern was with exactly what was their friend doing it made me mad that he would have anything to do with my patient at all because I didn't like his therapy and I didn't like him Baker told Saldivar to stay away from his patients understood Baker decided he had to do something I heard it frequently enough and it was just shortly after I had been told about my patient up and CCU that somebody that everyone had killed my patient it was just a little while after that and I said you know what was this sounds serious we need to bring this to somebody's attention in April of 1997 Baker went to his boss and told him about the rumors I said in short people are saying that Ephron's killing his patients they told me that he killed this one particular patient and CCU and I could get you the name if you need it Baker had made a serious accusation but the idea someone was killing patients in the hospital seemed impossible to believe a string of unexpected deaths at a California hospital sparked rumors that one of the respiratory therapists had a magic syringe the rumors all centered around one man Efrain Saldivar to try and confirm or refute the rumors hospital officials tallied the deaths on Saldivar's shifts over the past year they compared them to the number of deaths at other times but found nothing statistically unusual respiratory therapist Bob Baker had brought the rumors to the hospital's attention they tried to match up the days that Efrain was working and did more patients died that night than when he was off there was no big difference or big increase in patient deaths they just dropped it at that point and said well you know there's nothing to it the hospital could find no link between any of their employees and the deaths the ICU remained busy Myrtle Brower was admitted after coming down with pneumonia she was being cared for by her great niece Vicki Lowry when we took her to the hospital we figured she'd be home in a couple weeks I expected to bring her home her birth after several days in the ICU she suddenly stopped breathing [Music] but her heart continued to beat she was slowly suffocating the puzzling deaths were difficult for the families to accept when you care about your loved one you bring them into the hospital you expect them to be taken care of you go home that night knowing that they're safe and being taken care of by professionals and you take solace in knowing that life is sacred to the people who work in that institution and we're gonna do everything we can to help you relative and care for them hospital officials were aware of the rumors that something strange was going on but did not have enough information to do anything about it that all changed when an administrator received an anonymous call a man claimed a lady friend on the hospital staff told him a respiratory therapist was helping patients die the man refused to reveal his friends identity but told the administrator to look at Efrain Saldivar the administrator asked the caller for his name and he told her it was Jeff Brodin thank you hospital officials went to the police Glendale Police Officer John McKellen I got a call from the chief's office come to the office we have a situation that we have to discuss you don't get invited to the chief's office to discuss a case normally it's a I knew there was something something major going on hospital administrators related what Geoff Broden told them the officers advised the officials to take Saldivar off their work schedule for a few days while they investigated Lilly's suspected Broden may have an ulterior motive detective Anthony fuschia ran a background check when somebody's making an allegation that people are being killed we want to know whether or not these individuals were making these comments you know our good moral character we ran the Geoff's background through the computer system and found out that he had a pretty extensive criminal history he was arrested for attempted murder he was arrested on some theft charges narcotics possession charges so he's familiar with the criminal justice system and he's got a criminal mindset he may have cooked up the story to extort money from the hospital detective fuchsia and his partner will curry located their informative I'd like to talk a few bouts of complaints over the hospital but brozen changed his story he told them everything was a big misunderstanding he must have heard wrong nobody was killing any patients in the hospital [Music] when you slay on the door in our phase investigator career now I just kind of looked at each other and said huh this isn't the place to start we're gonna have to find another you know individual to talk to to see if we can you know work this uh from a different angle hospital administrators told police Evelyn Abrams could be Broder's lady friend she often worked the graveyard shift with Efrain Saldivar she said there was no basis to the rumors it was all just rumor and that she had worked with effort for a very long time and she didn't believe that he was capable of doing anything like that Abrams went on to explain she's been involved with both Jeff and Efrain to Anthony fuchsia this seemed to explain the entire situation there was a consideration on our part that maybe the fact that Efrain had was having a sexual relationship with Evelyn may have been the motivation for Jeff to make the call and allege that effort was doing this as a way of getting back at him she told the detectives Jeff must have made up the story we wrote the opinion that that's you know it was just one of those vicious rumors that sometimes occurs in the workplace maybe this was just a rumor and innuendo and that in fact there was really no basis to the allegations investigators questioned Bob Baker he insisted they meet outside we talked to him out in the parking lot at the hospital he had told us that particular tonight about a prank that he had pulled on ephraim along with another respiratory therapist Baker told him about something strange he found one night while he was working the graveyard shift with Everett we're they decided to play a trick on one of the other respiratory therapists they were rigging up his locker so that when he opened it he would be covered with flour they had taken some things from his locker needed a place to stash them knowing Saldivar was not scheduled to work for a few days they decided to borrow his locker inside Baker noticed a plastic bag bulging with drugs the bag of drugs was was fairly huge and it was full of morphine and Demerol and Valium and bag just stuffed full of drugs you could think at that point well maybe he's selling it to someone and then I saw on the show two vials of succinylcholine succinylcholine chloride paralyzes the muscles and is used to make it easier to insert breathing tubes it can be an extremely deadly drug if administered him properly when you are paralyzed with succinylcholine you can still hear and think and feel and that's the reason we give the morphine or give them a sedative to put them into a dream state because it's it extremely terrifying if you can imagine being completely paralyzed and you can see and you can hear and you can't move a muscle and your brain is completely working normal when I saw the succinylcholine in the locker it's obvious that he could not abuse this drug this could not be for personal use he would kill himself Baker told the officers he kept quiet about what he had found nobody outside of the doctor is supposed to be in possession of that so when he saw that in efrain's locker you know it raised a red flag for him but he told us he didn't go to anybody with that information because he was in Ephron's locker kind of what he thought illegally suspicious of Baker's motives the detectives went to Baker's supervisor he said it was common knowledge Baker and Saldivar hated each other he thought Baker made up the magic syringe rumor in an effort to ruin Saldivar's reputation there may have been some bias there on the part of Bob Baker as to the statements that he was giving us you know were they skewed a certain way to make to put effort in a bad light you know that's something that you take into consideration the detectives hadn't uncovered much both Broden and Baker had motives were making up the rumor and in the middle was Saldivar's coworker on the graveyard shift Evelyn Abrams we're on this roller coaster ride from day one we all kind of thought at that time that was it was probably just a dark rumor or it was just someone's ploy to get money out of the hospital the hospital it kept Saldivar off work for the entire week but for detectives the next step was clear based on everything we're getting dead end dead end dead end no it's not happening and then you know ultimately we got down to okay let's bring in a friend well it was time to pull in Saldivar they had no idea what surprises he had in store for them I'd like to speak with Efrain Sal the Bartlett rumors of murder at a California hospital sparked a police investigation all the rumors seemed to Center on one respiratory therapist to find out whether they were true detectives decided to question Efrain Saldivar they asked him to come down to the station at this hour detective will Currie was the only investigator on duty mr. Sal he told Saldivar about the rumors and asked him to take a polygraph test to clear the matter up why don't we just go and meet with detective Youngblood Earvin Youngblood was the polygraph examiner mr. South Korea briefed him on the investigation he had mentioned to me that they really didn't suspect that this was actually occurring that this may have been someone who just didn't like him and was giving some polish rumors so they wanted to put it to rest thank you sure detective curry left Saldivar alone with the polygraph examiner and went to the department's bug room where he could monitor their conversation Saldivar told Youngblood he didn't want to take the polygraph and all of a sudden changed my perspective of things at that point I felt that there's something wrong with the person being that fearful of this so I decided to step up my interview toward an interrogation when I began to ask him did he kill the one he was hesitant in his answer and he said I may have assisted in one way or the other and that's why I'm afraid to take the polygraph then I asked him to explain to me what he meant by assisted Saldivar began to tell Youngblood of an incident that occurred early in his career there was a patient with a cancer patient and it had been determined that the patient was not going to survive and the doctors had said they were going to take the patient all for the respirator but they had not done so he described to me up as how he saw that the patient was still breathing [Music] Saldivar said he informed one of the intensive care nurses the nurse indicated she expected him to do something about it so he decided to go in and literally cause the patient to suffocate Saldivar told Youngblood and took the patient 15 minutes to documentary New York correctly or Saldivar admitted there were other times when he helped patients to die Youngblood pushed him to reveal the number of patients he admired Saldivar thought it was less than 50 but was unsure of the exact number and he later said that it was could be up to around 90 and then he began to tell me that this had also occurred at two other Hospital that he had moonlighting at so the figures went up even more and before it was over be Tobin it could be as many as 200 I was really amazed edited it was really hard for me to keep my composure there because I was just wondering how could he have done such a thing know the legal implications of Saldivar's confession soon hit Youngblood I need to confer with one of the detectives and decide how we're going to continue with this I was thinking I need to find a way to get out of the room without those who report with this man and coming back and talking with them Youngblood rushed from the room to find Currie waiting for him the men needed to read Saldivar his rights but they were afraid of spooking him and losing his cooperation [Music] detective hurry divisive of his constitutional rights and surprisingly he waived his rights and continues to talk to us the investigators expected Saldivar to deny everything but suddenly they had a serial murder confession detective curry asked for help sergeant McKillop got the call and it was will curry telling me that we've got a major problem and I better come back to work he said this guy's rolling over detective curry placed Saldivar under arrest detectives fuchsine McKillip arrived within the hour they also called the district attorney in their chief this was potentially the biggest case of their careers if Saldivar's confession was true then he had murdered more people than Jeffrey Dahmer Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy combined he said that he had been doing this he killed his first patient approximately six months after he became a respiratory therapist and he became a respiratory therapist in 1989 and remember this interview that we were conducting was Saldivar was taking place in March of 1998 so we're looking at nine years of you know work that he had been doing it local hospitals Saldivar's confession was shocking almost unbelievable according to Glendale detective Mario Yagoda did we have a person that was psychologically unstable or did we truly have a murderer and that's what made it difficult even after his confession because the confession a lot of things he was saying a lot didn't make sense a lot it makes sense according to the District Attorney's Office the confession was not enough to convict Saldivar of murder they needed corroborating evidence the district attorney told us at this point all we had was a confession we had no physical evidence we had no identified victims that there were a number of things that we had to do before we can even think about filing charges against mr. Saldivar for murder the detectives had only 48 hours to find hard evidence of Saldivar's crimes without they'd be forced to free him if he was a serial killer the investigators knew putting him on the streets could mean more innocent people would die rumors a serial murderer was killing patients in the ICU at a California hospital prompted a police investigation they had their suspect Efrain Saldivar behind bars but to keep him there they had only 48 hours to find physical evidence of his crimes if they failed Saldivar would walk free the next morning detectives arrived at Saldivar's home armed with a search warrant they were looking for something to prove he had been poisoning patients Saldivar lived with his parents his older brother stood by watching as they searched Ephron's bedroom the officers uncovered almost a hundred pornography tapes but they didn't find any paralyzing drugs they did find versiv a sedative often used in conjunction with a paralyzing drug called pavulon [Music] detective John McCallum was disappointed when they didn't have better luck at the hospital we didn't find pavulon or six mo : chloride and again you know we believed those drugs were used so the only thing we could rely on was up to that point was the word of Bob Baker who said he saw one of those drugs in his locker but we didn't we can't prove that he saw it because we never found that in his locker they did find the printout of a blood gas test the name on the bottom and certain police one of the things that sticks out in my mind was a paper that where he had listed himself as dr. Jack Kevorkian on the paper and obviously we all know dr. Kevorkian as an individual who believes in assisted suicide and that kind of struck us as odd and suspicious in and of itself that here we have somebody who's confessed to killing a number of patients and he's got something in his locker at his workplace identifying himself as dr. Kevorkian the doctors they didn't know the significance of their find and it still didn't prove Ephraim killed anyone that's not sufficient in itself substantive information what do you got guys here's the luck as far as the law goes you can't just file criminal charges on somebody by what they say and if it's a murder in particular you have to have a body and be able to prove that the body was murdered in this case you know we didn't have a body we had no proof that any person in particular was murdered confession was not enough by itself the detectives had run out of time their 48 hours were up they hadn't found enough evidence to formally charge Saldivar the detectives would now have to put a confessed serial killer back on the street I just started thinking about what we have to do now to get the evidence and I could have killed a lot of people how can you just let him go the Glendale Police needed to find some hard evidence to put Saldivar behind bars but it now seemed that finding it would be nearly impossible none of us had ever dealt with a serial killer before so it was something that took us all by surprise along with the fact we have no evidence of any homicides nothing all we have is a confession so there wasn't really anything tangible for us to identify at that point so it was there was a bunch of different emotions that were going through all of our minds the detectives set up headquarters at a house on Hospital property they needed a secure place to conduct their investigation information leaks could prove fatal to building a case against Saldivar we knew we were gonna be under scrutiny from the public and from the press and we also knew that we had a suspect out on the loose he was no longer in custody the progress of the case had to be kept very confidential from him from the news we really needed to keep this one under wraps and being in the police department was such a big investigation there's no way we could have kept the information confidential the officers started gathering the hospital records of Saldivar's patients in them they hope to find evidence of murder [Music] while detectives began looking into the past they made sure not to lose track of their suspect Saldivar could run at any moment and investigators knew there would be nothing they could do to stop him Efrain Saldivar had admitted to killing as many as 100 patients at a California hospital but without physical proof to back up his confession detectives are forced to free him detective Randy Osborne conducted interviews with Saldivar's friends and family to see if they could shed any light on his guilt or innocence I wanted to find out as much as I could about Efrain Saldivar dating back to his early childhood I even went to his high school I got a copy of this yearbook contacted schoolmates detectives tracked down one of Saldivar's high school girlfriends she said her last conversation with Saldivar disturbed her tell me about they had a conversation about their futures and what they wanted to do in life in Efrain at that time explained to her that he was gonna be participating in training for respiratory therapy she told him that she was impressed by that that that was a very noble and worthwhile profession but then the discussion took an unsettling turn he mentioned to her that he wanted to get in this profession so he could help people but also so he could help people by putting them out of her misery and he explained that he had a hard time seeing people suffer and that he would not have a problem with killing people detective Osbourne also interviewed Saldivar's co-workers I learned that Efrain was a very quiet individual most people that I spoke to described him as standoffish and quiet he kind of existed in the shadows many of his co-workers described him as someone who was lazy and who was uncaring towards the people that he was being paid to take care of a nurse who often worked with Saldivar spoke with the detectives she told them a few years ago he did something she found very disturbing she explained to us that she was working at the hospital with Ephraim and that there was a male patient in one of the rooms who was there in very bad condition near death and one night she heard an alarm go off in the patient's room stop breathing Efrain was in the room at that time she started to work on the patient she looked up at Efrain and she stated can you come help me this patient is flatlining at that time he raised his finger to his mouth and wench as indicating to her don't do any work on the patient leave well enough alone and just let him pass away that shocked her and at that moment another nurse came running into the room and they were able to resuscitate the patient that really shook her she didn't want to work with Saldivar after that at that time she said she felt she had to come forward with this information this information about Saldivar was troubling if he was poisoning patients then investigators would have to try and understand why in order to find his potential victims John tress trail of the regional poison center in Grand Rapids Michigan has devoted his life to the study of poison and those who use it the Angel of Death would be the kind of person who plays God he selects a group of people or an individual to eliminate them and this power gives them some kind of a psychological rush to be able to say I will take your life whenever I choose and these people tend to be what I call stealth killers they come at you when your backs turned they come at you in the dark poison is very hard to find unlike a gunshot wound where the bullets entry is easily recognizable if investigators don't suspect poison they won't look for it in a poisoning case the unknown offender rate is 20 to 30 times higher than any other form of murder what does that mean it means that the chances are 20 to 30 times better that you'll get away with this than any other form of murder death by poison is particularly insidious the victim has little chance of avoiding his fate if you are the victim you'll never see it coming there's no defense breathe it drink it eat it inject it you'll never see it the officers realize the prospect of finding poison was not good they asked for help from many agencies who all told them they had little chance of finding paralyzing drugs detective Daniel Hinojosa we had consulted certain members of the FBI and they had worked on similar cases cases involving the drugs that we were looking for involving the drug pavulon and the drug succinylcholine chloride it was their opinion that we needed to find a certain type of toxicologist who could assist us in extracting these samples because as far as the majority of the scientific and medical community was concerned we weren't gonna find these drugs the detectives had no choice but to move ahead if they ever hope to find evidence of poison it was now buried with the suspected victims to find the victims the detectives realized they would have to decipher thousands of complex medical charts it was unfamiliar territory we got these medical records you can imagine that it's like setting down and trying to read a language that you don't know how to speak so all of us had to go out and buy medical dictionaries to understand a lot of what was being said in these medical charts in terms of the treatments that the patients were receiving the medical conditions that they were being treated for the detectives began searching the charts for suspicious death they consulted experts like dr. Dale I say F to help them identify the possible use of poison well particularly I would look for and I saw a number of examples of this is that the patient had been admitted with a serious illness had responded to treatment and was doing relatively well in review of the vital signs of respiratory pattern pulse blood pressure heart rhythm on the monitor appeared to be stable and then the patient abruptly experiences a decrease in heart rate for the heart would progressively decelerate or go slower over a relatively short time period over a few minutes or so or the patient would experience and in full cardiac arrest with the heart activity just ceasing altogether notes made by the hospital staff provided initial clues I then went back and very carefully looked at the nursing notes and tried to make a determination how that patient been doing clinically if all the vital signs were stable the nurses concluded the patient was doing well in fact in some of the patients it was anticipated that there was going to be an early discharge either home or to another facility and then to see a note in the chart patient found dead in bed was something that caught my attention doctor I say if told investigators to search for a reverse of the normal dyeing process normally a patient's heart stops then their respiration fails but if a person is poisoned with a drug such as pabulum the reverse would occur if an individual is given a paralyzing agent one of the first things that happens is the patient or the individual is not able to breathe or the impaired there's impaired breathing function that very quickly leads to not being able to breathe the heart will survive for a time but then rapidly will slow down and the heart will stop this type of death leaves behind disturbing clues according to Mario Yagoda we knew that these patients there was a desire to live so you see the racing of the heart so in other words like when a person scared you know the the heart speeds up so we'd see these speeding up of the heart rhythms on the EKG strips and that's what we look we look for these rhythms in the heart that would show some sort of fight-or-flight cinema the detectives hoped information on patient medical charts would lead them to some proof of murder the medical charts were only the first step to finding hard evidence Avalon or succinylcholine chloride in human flesh well we're altima gonna have to exhume bodies we're gonna have to have specialists come in to test the tissue samples that we got during the autopsies to see whether or not these drugs were present whether or not these drugs were even going to be detectable the detectives had to find some way to narrow the potential victim list so we decided that we would probably pick a number of about two years prior to the incident from that we had to go through and compile every patient and had been that had died at this hospital while mr. Saldivar was on duty because more recent cases offered a better chance of finding traces of paralyzing drugs they ignored Saldivar's first seven years that brought their list down to 171 of those 54 were excluded because their remains were not available that left 117 deaths to investigate each detective took a series of patients if they found anything suspicious they had to present it to the group and we had to go to bat for them we had to fight in round table type of atmosphere where we all got together we presented our cases and we discussed our cases are individual cases and why it is we thought that they should be exhumed and of course we couldn't exhume them all when they found a patient who fit the profile okay they posted their name on a board of possible victims to exhume the list was beginning to grow deciding who to exhume was their first problem finding evidence of poison was their second [Music] for help the contacted Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory a high-tech government research facility near Oakland California it employs approximately 10,000 scientists doing chemistry physics nuclear and forensics work Brian and Driessen is director of the labs forensic science center he was unsure he could help when he first learned of the drugs the police were searching for I looked up these drugs and everything that had been known about them it was interesting a lot of these drugs of course to be used in people have to be tested and tested and the data on that testing has to be published and I read all those papers but no one had really taken these drugs out of a healthy human and then analyzed it after someone had died and been buried for a long time because those were that kind of work had not been done with these drugs to any great extent Andreessen also learned succinylcholine chloride the drug spotted in Saldivar's locker quickly breaks down into chemicals that are naturally found in the body their best bet was to test for pavulon but no test existed that could detect pavulon and decomposing human tissue you would have to develop one thing i wasn't that confident because it never really had been done before but i was willing to give it a very substantial try to see if i could develop a protocol that would work on March 27th 1998 the story of Saldivar suspension and the possible murders broke in the media the community was outraged at the possibility their relatives had been murdered in their hospital beds the phones were ringing off the hook at the station as well as the off-site where we were now housed at with people wanting to know whether or not their loved one was a victim of Saldivar's officers used the information provided by family members to aid their investigation the inquires that we received from the families helped us in two ways one is we went back and looked at those particular cases if they felt there were suspicious maybe it warranted some additional research on our part but this case is suspicious well this warrants an additional interview with this family member what did you see where were you where were you at bedside at the time that your loved one passed away in the midst of the media frenzy officers watching Saldivar's house noticed he had not returned for several days at that point I believe he was still in hiding we didn't know his whereabouts so we did lose track of him for a while after he was released from custody if Saldivar had fled the detectives knew they'd have little chance of ever putting their suspected serial killer behind bars in Glendale California outside of Los Angeles a small hospital was experiencing a rash of unexplained deaths patients like Trisha Johnson were fine one moment and then suddenly went into an unexplained crisis Trisha was in full arrest the trauma team rushed to her room but despite their efforts they could not save her the staff began to suspect someone in the hospital was causing the patients to die they started to point the finger of one another when the employees began to find drugs hidden in strange places the suspicion grew all the rumors seemed to point to one of the respiratory therapists a man named Efrain Saldivar he was questioned by the police and shocked them with a confession but without any evidence they had to release him to find proof of murder police turned to thousands of complicated medical records to expand over nine years Glendale police detective Daniel Hinojosa because of the amount of potential victims involved we were talking about probably the largest murder case this city has ever seen in its history it might have made him probably the largest mass murderer in the history of the United States for that matter the media descended on Saldivar's heaven his brother told reporters Efrain had gone to stay with relatives he also told reporters Efrain was innocent lady officers say Saldivar targeted elderly patients within our says Larry Schlegel saw a news report on Saldivar's confession Slagle 'he's mother Eleonora had died of respiratory failure at the hospital more than a year earlier they had listed a number of conditions that seemed common to the people he had and claimed to have killed she was there in the time frames Larry called the hotline and told investigators his mother fit the criteria they otherwise Doceri Slagel told police how his mother's frequent hospital visits were a matter of increasing concern for him it's always a scary thing when she began one of these bouts and need to be rushed in but once the medication kick can and and her lungs cleared up then she was always ready to go home and and get on with the rest of her life she had come down with pneumonia I was having trouble breathing she was resting comfortably when Larry came to visit her on New Year's Eve my son and I stopped by to visit weather and and we were there for about an hour and she was sitting up and breathing about as well as she could and unable to carry on a conversation for for all that hour Eleonora was looking forward to going home but the next day pasadena would be crowded with visitors for the Tournament of Roses Parade in the Rose Bowl football game places the zoo for at least 24 hours in advance so the doctors figured we don't even have to think about this one you know it's New Year's Eve we'll decide after New Year's Day about a release date they decided it would be okay for her to stay in the hospital a couple more days [Music] when Eleonora Schlegel checked in she had asked that she be classified as a DNR or do not resuscitate on the early morning of January 2nd her vital signs was stable and she was planning to go home later that morning the nurse returned to check on her you [Music] she had stopped breathing and no pulse could be detected [Music] the last time I talked to my mom she had been well down the road of recovery and it just hit you like a ton of bricks to Larry the possibility that his mother was poisoned seemed impossible to believe we hear all sorts of things on the evening news that you know happened to other people and that was basically my reaction oh this is this is something that happens to other people the detectives told Slagel they would check into his mother's case the police hotline was jammed with hundreds more calls just like Larry's in the first three days police received more than 230 messages from worried relatives whose family members had died any covering the media frenzy sent the hospital into damage control they suspended the entire 44 member respiratory department including Bob Baker the atmosphere in the hospital changed almost immediately and all of a sudden you had you know a massive investigation it changed everything at that point then it it was like a tornado hit the hospital 39 employees were eventually cleared but Evelyn Abrams and three others remained on suspension the following week Saldivar emerged from hiding appearing on nationwide television he told two news magazines shows that he had made up the confession the task force was shocked Saldivar claimed he lied to the police making up the confession because he was depressed and he wanted to die so his rationale was that if I confessed to killing a number of people that I'll be found guilty of murder in a trial sentenced to death by the state and the state can do what I couldn't do for myself [Music] Saldivar was taking his case to the public detective Hinojosa recalls the frustration the officers felt because I was being accused had this just been some kind of a sick joke that he had been playing on us by making this story up we as investigators wanted to get to the truth and if that was the truth then we were obliged to take that information and figure out which side was the truth did he do it or did he not do it the task force watched with frustration Saldivar recanted his confession before an audience of millions the heat was now on to prove that he was an angel of death a confessed serial killer was on the loose but detectives had no idea who he may have murdered it was a whodunit reversed according to Glendale Police detective Daniel Hinojosa what we have here is a backwards case usually we have a victim and from that victim we go forward and try and find the suspect in this instance we had a suspect and no victims and so that is completely the opposite of what we're used to handling the police's prime suspect in the case was a respiratory therapist named Ephraim Saldivar as police narrowed the list of Saldivar suspected victims they kept an eye on him he was hiding out at the home of a former coworker the detectives also consulted criminal psychologist Kris mohandie they hoped his experience with other serial murderers would help them identify Saldivar's victims he told the detectives they should not believe all of efference confession they may use substances other than the ones that they say that they're using so you may need to expand your search beyond the obvious into a much larger victim pool we learned from other cases that these perpetrators will choose victims who are not just on their shift who are not just fitting their criteria but they will actually expand their hunt to other individuals dr. mohandie gave the detectives of sketch of Saldivar's psychological makeup my initial impression of Saldivar was an everyday guy who's somewhat socially awkward a little geeky doesn't quite fit into any particular group desperately hungers to be liked and recognized by other people mohanty looked into Saldivar's past and found he chose his profession to counteract his sense of inferiority it's interesting to look at why Saldivar became a respiratory therapist somebody came into the supermarket where he was working had the uniform of the respiratory therapist complete with stethoscope I guess and he was attracted to it because it looked medical it looked official it looked like it had Authority and power imbued in it Mahon day also warned the detectives that given the opportunity Saldivar would commit more murders and once they get a taste of it by actually doing it's like you can't put the clerk back on the bottle the genies out of the bottle and you can't put it back in because then no fantasy is gonna really measure up to actually doing it the detectives continued to talk with everyone who worked with Saldivar they hoped that someone had seen something specific they could use to identify a body to be exhumed in his confession Saldivar mentioned his coworker Evelyn Abrams knew about the killings and tried to stop him investigators granted her limited immunity and returned for any information she could provide she essentially came clean with us at this point and told us that yeah she knew that something was going on and that she was aware of a particular time when Efrain came to her and said that he had inadvertently given a patient pavulon investigators hope she could point them to a specific patient but Evelyn couldn't recall anything about the person male female anything I didn't she did say that Saldivar told her about his criteria for deciding if a patient should die and when he targeted one of her own patients Evelyn warned him to leave the woman alone leave her alone [Music] so there's Netherlands admission was incriminating but it still didn't point investigators to any victims but one nurse did remember a disturbing incident involving a patient named Linda sheriff's key she had trouble breathing and was placed on oxygen the nurse asked Saldivar to collect a blood sample [Music] [Music] a couple of minutes after she left she ruffs Keys room the nurse said she saw Saldivar come out and call a code blue [Music] the nurse was surprised to find the patient totally unresponsive Karofsky had suddenly stopped breathing and her muscles were flaccid as if she were paralyzed and yet the monitor showed that her heart was still beating strongly [Music] [Music] Sharov STIs family had authorized in meds only code the doctors could medicate the patient but they were forbidden to attempt any resuscitation it took Linda Sherazi 40 minutes to die [Music] the nurse was confused because the woman had been responding well to treatment [Music] investigators placed sharrouf's key on their list for exclamation the detectives continued to monitor Saldivar's whereabouts as he changed jobs they still feared he might try to flee we believed he was thinking of taking off and he had made a statement again through the surveillance we saw him talking to somebody at the credit union when he made withdrawal and upon follow-up the credit union said he made a comment about you know fleeing the country so there was a real concern all the way through and that was another hidden pressure to get to the bottom of this case we didn't want to lose him finally find the evidence and he's gone helping to find the evidence was Brian Andreessen of Lawrence Livermore his fur ends excite Center he was struggling to create a test to find pavulon an exhumed human tissue there was a number of people who voiced opinions that this could be a waste of money could be a waste of time because the drugs are so low concentration it was a long shot and Rison knew pavulon could sometimes be detected in urine he planned to process tissue samples from the exhumed bodies to make a urine like substance which could be tested with a mass spectrometer a machine that determines the makeup of a substance by measuring the weights of its elements he had no idea whether it would work he had dedicated nearly a year trying to perfect the test I got involved with it and I started just putting in the hours and going on and on it would be 16-hour days day after day with failure I mean it's kind of depressing because I couldn't get anything to work I almost abandoned my house I was like living in the lab the my neighbors were worried because the law was never cut things weren't picked up then the sacrifice began to pay off when Andreessen looked for help from a very unlikely source we have a big program on a detection of chemical weapons and their breakdown products in the environment and I took one of these what's called the solid phase extraction cartridges they didn't work for chemical warfare agents I says well let me just try this and sure enough all of a sudden it trapped pavulon it was like one of those Eureka moments and dreesen had found his test now he just needed the police to find the victims Saldivar's victims however remained mute and unknown John Schwarz who died after mysteriously falling out of bed may have been one of them his family filed a lawsuit convinced Schwartz had died by Saldivar's hand he admitted to murdering many people and with all of the discrepancies with my grandfather's records and with him being on shift and dying so quickly my grandfather was checked on one moment I believe it was like 3:30 and then he was deceased a half an hour later a half hour to 40 minutes later and that was just when the attending physician declared him dead because they had to find someone to declare him dead the whole thing was pretty suspicious you know he gave us reason to be suspicious of him by admitting to so many things the task force followed up every lead detectives went to meet with Larry Schlegel his mother died mysteriously while under Saldivar's care I got a call from some detectives in the police department and their questions were much more specific much more about you know what had been done with my mom's body had she been cremated had she been buried Eleonora Schlegel had been buried the detectives notified Larry his mother was a prime candidate for excavation by the middle of March 1999 the investigators had identified 20 possible victims that was the largest number of bodies they could exhume at the original time of death doctors had declared that every one of those deaths was due to natural causes mckillop and his detectives would have to prove them wrong it was difficult for the victims families but Detective Mario Yagoda knew they understood the need for the exhumations majority of them did cooperate and we're willing to help us they too were looking for the truth because keep in mind some of those family members had that suspicion all along they knew something just wasn't right when their loved one passed away [Music] one of the first to be exhumed was the body of Myrtle Brower the casket was enclosed in a burial vault made of concrete the crew from the cemetery hoisted it from the ground the team took soil samples for testing they doubted pavulon would be present in the soil but they could not afford to overlook anything anticipated Saldivar's defense attorney may argue that chemicals had seeped into the bodies from the surrounding earth detective Anthony fuchsia made certainly officers were careful not to make any mistakes during the exclamations we use the same coroner's investigator each time we did an exome ation we use the same coroner pathologist to do the autopsies every time the same forensics technicians from our department do any collecting of samples of water or what have you at the grave sites we had the system down and we used the same people every time just for purposes of chain-of-custody so that an issue wouldn't arise as to how things were collected Cemetery workers remove the casket from the burial vault and loaded it into a van for the trip to the coroner's office brower's body had been buried for nearly two years to positively identify the remains the task force supplied the coroner with hospital x-rays photo identification and dental records when all was ready the investigators broke the casket seal they checked the mortuary van to positively identify the body the remains were surprisingly well preserved doctor Andreessen had warned them that if the remains were too decomposed finding pavulon would be virtually impossible the autopsies were unsettling for detective Hinojosa these were people that I felt I had almost come to know at this point in the investigation I had done a lot of research on these particular people I had spoken to their family members I had seen photographs of them I knew about where they had lived who they were what their jobs or careers were and to see these people now in this way is definitely difficult to say the least I could only hope at that time that it was it meant something that it was not all for naught dr. Andreessen directed the coroner to remove the tissues that would best reveal traces of pavulon [Music] each tissue sample went in a separate jar and they all went into a box for transport to the Forensic Science Center the officers continued to carefully handle all the evidence they collected our whole case hinges on these samples we couldn't afford to have these things out of our sight for even a minute I mean these things had to be accounted for at all times from the minute they were extracted from the body to the minute they arrived at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory we had to be able to count for them there was just no exception to that anything less could have meant our whole case the next morning the killer bin curry made the drive 334 miles up interstate 5 along California's grapevine to preserve the chain of custody and deliver the tissue samples to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory technicians there took custody of the autopsy samples they'd spent months waiting for this moment [Music] the doctor and driessen's test was unproven if it failed all the painstaking investigative work would be for nothing and confessed serial killer Efrain Saldivar would remain a free man to catch suspected serial killer Efrain Salim our investigators must reopen the graves of 20 of his possible victims it was their only hope for finding the physical evidence to put him behind bars that evidence a paralyzing drug called pabulum must be extracted from the exhumed bodies by an experimental procedure if it fails the investigators will have no way to prove their suspect as a murderer Glendale police officers hand delivered autopsy samples to forensics expert dr. and Risa the immediately began processing the exhumed tissue he started by grinding up the samples into a paste-like substance I first just looked at kidney and the lung tissues those tissues that receive a lot of blood supply because theoretically at the moment of death the blood is still circulating greatly in the bodies and the lung tissues would have great circulation we can confirm that the drugs present and recent filtered it through a polymer that would stick to the drug he then tested the samples using a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer which can detect compounds weighing less than a billionth of a gram what a mass spectrometer does it actually weighs molecules and I know the exact weight of pavulon I present this unknown sample to this mass spectrometer it gives me the weights of all the chemicals and from that I could say sure enough I do or do not have pavulon in this sample and the first couple samples I didn't see anything in them at all and initially these samples were coming back negative and I thought melt maybe there has not been a crime committed to these patients died naturally but them and Driessen discovered the evidence the investigators so desperately needed one night I was working up the samples started looking at the data and there was fabula the first time I'd seen it in a real exhumed tissue sample it about would say took my breath away but I looked at it I said is this true this is true there is pavulon and his patient six weeks after the first specimens were delivered detectives got the call they had been waiting for and dreesen had a solid hit in liver tissue from one of the exhumed bodies he had found traces of papular the task force was related after more than a year of investigation their hard work finally paid off [Music] then they discovered a problem the victims medical records showed he'd received two milligrams of pavulon in the course of his treatment at the hospital it had been given to him on August 7th 1997 eight days before he died detective mckillip was losing his patience we went from shock and happiness jubilant - here we go again every time we get a piece of evidence there's something that pulls us back and says that's not gonna be good enough while the drug would have metabolized in 20 hours long before the man's death Saldivar's attorney might argue this is why it was in his system if the team guessed wrong and pavulon failed to show up in any other bodies their case against Saldivar would collapse the exhumations continued Bob Baker had told investigators he suspected Saldivar used his magic syringe on Serra Askari based on this information the scurries body had been slated for excavation the cemetery workers found water in the burial vault so detectives took samples of it for analysis the captain of the department called the lead detective John MacKillop and to account for his progress or the lack of it mckillop steamed have spent the past year and a half working the case but they still had not found anything proving Saldivar's guilt it was all about finding the truth I mean if we could prove that it didn't happen that was success just like proving that it did happen what everybody was afraid of is being unable to prove that it happened because what does that mean it means we can't prove it happened and we can't prove it didn't happen what's going on captain informed the killer because the brass was losing their patience we're a department of two hundred and twenty sworn police officers with a budget that's not the same as a major you know multi thousand person Police Department so we really knew we were draining our resources financially the lab work alone it cost a hundred and fifty thousand dollars the task force needed hard evidence soon or the department would shut them down the success of the entire investigation now rested on doctor and driessen's shoulders he needed to find some evidence of the drug soon or suspected murderer Efrain Saldivar would remain free [Music] detectives in Glendale California exhumed the remains of people they suspected were murdered in an area hospital the laboratory detected traces of a paralyzing drug in one of the bodies but the drug had been legitimately administered by the hospital they had identified a suspected serial killer but still had not located any of his victims investigators got a break when dr. and Driessen at Lawrence Livermore labs started getting hits Sarah Ascari and Linda sheriff ski the results were overwhelming he told the taskforce he had found massive amounts of pavulon in the woman's lungs kidneys bladder heart tissue liver and brain investigators finally had hard irrefutable physical evidence to confirm Saldivar's confession they were ready to arrest Saldivar on three counts of murder but investigators wanted to make sure they gathered all the evidence they could the exhumations continued pavulon turned up in three more patients jorge Agathe Eleonora Schlegel and myrtle Brauer six out of the 20 bodies exhumed had traces of the paralyzing a drug we expected we would be lucky if we got one so now we're getting five six we're starting to think we've got one of the biggest serial killers of all time they now had potentially linked Saldivar to six counts of murder the prosecutor wanted to make sure there was no other explanation for pabulum being in the bodies to solidify their case the detectives obtained all the medical records they could find for all six patients going back over their entire lifetimes they examine them for any traces of pavulon the patient's medical histories showed that Eleonora Schlegel had received pavulon on two occasions in 1983 in 1984 aside from her in the first patient none of the others had ever received pavulon as part of their legitimate medical treatment the only explanation for pavulon being in their systems was Saldivar's magic syringe the detectives believed they had a rock-solid case but their optimism wasn't shared by the DA's office the prosecutor had some discouraging news the wrongful death lawsuit brought by John Schwarz his family had been thrown out the judge had cited the lack of evidence the ruling only exacerbated the detectives fears they went back to review all the charts of every patient in the hospital all 450 beds on the night's the six patients had died they wanted to make sure Saldivar was not actually treating someone else at the times he was accused of committing murder he could have been present at each murder after years of searching for evidence of murder the investigators finally had enough to make an arrest On January 9th 2001 the detectives gathered and set out in unmarked cars police had kept a close watch on Saldivar they knew his schedule for every minute of the day [Music] they were waiting for him as he left for work that morning [Music] as he left his house the officers latched on to saldovar's bumper it had been two and a half years since Saldivar's confession they almost had him in that grasp but all they could do was wait for the right moment to arrest the serial killer they had no idea he might do when they finally pulled him over and they couldn't take any chances when Saldivar turned onto a deserted road the officers made their [Music] he didn't fight as the officers surrounded the murderer of defenseless people was now defenseless himself detective fuchsia cuff Saldivar a lot of police officers don't get to say they they bagged a serial killer during their career and you know there was a lot of times during the investigation where I didn't think this case was going anywhere and there was a lot of frustration and thought this day would never come and when it was finally there and to be able to place the handcuffs on him it was a good feeling it was one of satisfaction Saldivar's freedom that come to an end for myself as the detectives read him his rights the investigators long journey to capture Saldivar was finally over change your mind at any time request your Lord be present before you answer any further questions understand these rights Saldivar had taken the lives of countless patients for nine years he had gotten away with murder but now the law would call him to account for his crimes [Music] [Music] now the officers hope they could discover his motives for killing detectives brought Saldivar into the station to question in one more time brought to the interview room when he got in there it wasn't about so we want to ask you did you do it it was about we know you did it let's get over that hump let's talk about why and you know let's see if we can put an end to this and maybe keep us from exhuming another 20 bodies and disrupting another you know 20 victims families lives detective MacKillop told Saldivar six of his patients who tested positive for pabulum I just told them it's over we're here to find out why you did it not if you did it you know if you're gonna give us that baloney then we Mazal end this conversation he said you know be a really low volume type way he just basically said that he did it because of workload that too many patients and too much work and he was doing it to just you know thin out the crowd but this second confession conflicts with what police psychologist Kris mohandie believes was Saldivar's true motives for killing that the core of his being is some sort of deep-seated sense of inadequacy or inferiority which killing remedies that the power that one experiences the omnipotence that one experiences by having control over life and death is what would drive him to do these kinds of things the omnipotence control over life and death is the perfect antidote for a person who feels insignificant perhaps unloved powerless out of control what better way to wield control than to have the ultimate control over life and death to be almost godlike detectives called the relatives of Saldivar's victims it was devastating for them to finally learn their loved ones had been murdered but with Saldivar's arrest they would at last find justice by his own account Saldivar was near the top of any list of serial killers he told detectives that he killed on impulse and after he did it he never thought about it again this explanation rings true to police psychologist Kris mohandie I don't think that Saldivar truly felt a sense of guilt or remorse I believe that to this day he feels justified and what he did but not in a mean-spirited way he truly thinks he was being helpful the District Attorney's Office began building their case according to prosecutor Albert McKenzie the key to a case like this is basically what I call connecting the dots there's no one thing that is going to convict the defendant it's the totality of the circumstances it's all the little bits of evidence that you have to present to a grand jury or a jury the prosecution team was concerned with the level of scientific detail they would have to present to a jury according to prosecutor Carla Kerlin in this case it may have been too technical and the jury just couldn't grasp the concept and it also was we were using established technology but it's not technology that people are generally familiar with but we were using it in a new way and so a good defense attorney will always put a spin on that to make it look like it's new never been done before experimental can't be trusted with that kind of thing at his trial Saldivar shocked everyone when he pled guilty in order to avoid the death penalty Larry Schlegel was in the courtroom that day given what he had done to my mother and to the other six named victims and he had injected them with pavulon and pavulon is one of the drugs used in in administering capital punishment in the state of California it would have been some poetic justice I suppose for him to have gotten similar treatment the judge gave Saldivar six consecutive life sentences and 15 more years for the attempted murder of Jean Coyle despite the prosecution's overwhelming evidence Albert Mackenzie felt it was best to accept Saldivar's plea let's bring resolution to all of these people if ever we got the death penalty on mr. Saldivar you know that might be years away and the people who cared most about the victims may no longer be around if we can bring closure to the victims if we can get mr. Saldivar off to prison for six life in prison without the possibility of parole sentences and one life sentence on top of that you know we've accomplished some justice here he cover a medical center has since tightened their controls but Bob Baker believes Saldivar has done irreparable damage this sacred institution was in a large sense of playground to Ephram he obviously didn't hold life sacred he violated this institution and it was felt all over the world I think that you take somebody like that and for them to feel that they can do this it's just it's unspeakable investigators may never know the actual number of Saldivar's victims the six murders he's known to have committed occurred in his last year at the hospital I think Saldivar killed hundreds and again it's based on his own words and just doing the math if we had that many in one year and then in his own words it was a slow year he must have killed hundreds of people I know that we found over fifty suspicious cases in that final year of employment so it's not like I'm just taking his word for it I think our own investigation proved that he killed a heck of a lot more than than what we were able to prove but thanks to the tireless work of police and scientists alike they do know that this angel of death will never claim any more victims [Music]

Channel: Real Stories

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Keywords: Real Stories, Real Stories Full Documentary, Real Stories Documentary, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, full episode, full documentary, true crime, crime documentary, amazing stories, crime stories, nightmare nurse, california hospital, murder mystery, mystery film, mystery documentary

Id: 0MYYt_REXQA

Length: 94min 21sec (5661 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 30 2020