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 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

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Alive her husband Larry stayed by her bedside she had been in the ICU for days doctors believed the
worst was finally behind her around three o'clock a.m. he went to get a cup of coffee as he left his
sleeping wife's side he had no way of knowing it was the last time he would see her alive 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 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 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 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 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 the doctors nurses and respiratory care specialists did all they could
but it was not enough 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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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 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 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 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

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 for
help the contacted Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory a high-tech government research

the angel of death true crime documentary real stories

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 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 she had stopped breathing and no
pulse could be detected 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 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 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 a couple of minutes after she left
she ruffs Keys room the nurse said she saw Saldivar come out and call a code blue 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 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
the nurse was confused because the woman had been responding well to treatment 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 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 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 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 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 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 they were waiting for
him as he left for work that morning 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 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 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

Source