Killer Nurse (23 page)

Was Saenz a future danger? The jurors heard from Herrington in
voir dire
that the best way to predict future actions was look at what that person did in the past, the way an employer might look at an applicant's grades in school. If that person had worked hard to achieve good grades, he or she would probably work hard at their job.

Both sides presented past actions by Saenz. However, the jury had one past action that weighed heavily on them: they'd just convicted her of capital murder and aggravated assault. If she was capable of doing it in the past, she could do it in the future. The question of whether she was a future danger to society was still an extremely difficult one to answer, and the jury's decision had to be unanimous.

If no, she wasn't a future danger, then they would submit that to the judge, and he would issue life without the possibility of parole.

If the jury answered yes, they did find her a future danger, they would go to question two, the “mitigation” question.

Described thus, it seems like a simple process. But that is the language of one society, the one who didn't construct the law. Here is how that other society says it:

(2) it may not answer any issue submitted under Subsection (b) of this article “yes” unless it agrees unanimously and it may not answer any issue “no” unless 10 or more jurors agree; and

(3) members of the jury need not agree on what particular evidence supports a negative answer to any issue submitted under Subsection (b) of this article.

Huh? What happens if ten of the jurors vote she would be a future danger? This is an important question because that is exactly what happened inside that jury room. The jurors were confused by this going in and they were confused by this coming out. A month after the trial was over, they were still confused over it.

Larry Walker, the foreman, said, “We didn't ever get to question two. We had to have ten or more jurors to go to number two, and we had exactly ten—actually I was one of those who wanted to take it to two. Juror Regina McAvoy was so shaken up, she got confused, she said, ‘What do I put down if I don't want to give her the death penalty?'”

Ms. McAvoy later confirmed that she was one of the two who'd voted no. She honestly didn't think Saenz would be a future danger, and she didn't want to give her the death penalty.

In fact, they were all confused. They couldn't vote yes, because they didn't have a unanimous vote. Could they say no, she wasn't a future danger? They didn't have ten or more say no. They only had two.

Under normal circumstances, the ten might have been able to convince the two that she would be a future danger. After all, they did have some ammunition to use in order to convince them, and if they hadn't been so confused about the ten or more, they might have tried. In this case they didn't. Once they had the 10–2 vote, Larry Walker asked them, “Do we need to discuss this?”

They did have a unanimous vote on that—no.

After that, they had no problem agreeing on giving Saenz the maximum sentence for the three aggravated assaults.

Forty-five minutes after beginning their deliberations, the jury returned with their verdict.

Kimberly Saenz had told people that she would rather get death if she was found guilty. Somewhere along the process she must have changed her mind. She mouthed “thank you” to the jury when the judge issued the sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus sixty years.

* * *

The day after Judge Bryan announced Saenz's punishment,
The
Lufkin News
led off with a quote from the daughter of one of the victims in big, bold headlines:
I HOPE YOU BURN IN HELL
.

After the jury had returned with Saenz's punishment, the judge had thanked and dismissed them, but the court process wasn't finished. What remained were the gut-wrenching victim impact statements.

Many of Cora Bryant's, Opal Few's, Thelma Metcalf's, Clara Strange's, and in a limited way, Garlin Kelley Jr.'s family members had attended most of the trial. With them was Ms. Marie Bradley, who had survived the bleach injection, and Mr. James Rhone, husband of Marva Rhone, another survivor who'd later passed away from natural causes.

The families had simmered with rage when Saenz turned around and smirked and smiled at them during trial. Their family members were dead, taken away from them, and here their accused killer was walking around laughing, giggling, and carrying on as if it didn't matter. As a matter of fact, many of the people watching her came away with the feeling that she was taunting them with her guilt, and her confidence that she was going to get away with it.

The feelings they'd suppressed erupted in the impact statements. With the exception of Garlin Kelley's relatives, who did not participate in the statements, the families of the murder victims all now addressed Saenz directly.

In fact, it was Wanda Hollingsworth, daughter of Thelma Metcalf, who'd uttered those words plastered across the headlines: “I hope you burn in hell.” She'd gone on to say to Saenz, “You are nothing more than a psychopathic serial killer.”

Marisa Fernandez, granddaughter of Clara Strange, took the podium, but was often too distraught to speak. At times she broke down and had to take a few moments before she could continue. She told about how her grandmother had raised her from the age of seven, after her mother died.

Her most heartbreaking words came when she related how she still kept her grandmother's number in her cell phone wishing she could call her. “Now I have my own children,” she said, “and I have no one to call. No one to ask questions only a mother could answer.”

Then, perhaps in a jab at Saenz for the torment she'd put the family through during the trial, Fernandez said, “When I go home I'll get to spend time with my children. You will not.”

Linda Few James followed. She was the daughter of ninety-one-year-old Opal Few, who even in her advanced age, was perhaps the victim in the best health. All signs had pointed to her having many years left—in fact, Linda Few James mentioned that her mother's oldest sister was about to turn one hundred years old. Linda Few James told Saenz how she'd robbed her mother of the benefit of dying at home surrounded by her family—which had been Ms. Few's wish.

The last person to take the stand to address Saenz was Angela Scott, daughter of Ms. Cora Bryant. She addressed some of her comments to Kimberly Saenz, but some she addressed instead to Bennie Fowler, Kimberly Saenz's mother, who sat in the first row behind the defense table. In one of the oddest quirks of the trial, Angela Scott, the daughter of one of the victims, and Bennie Fowler, mother of the convicted killer, worked together at Walmart. As Scott told KTRE-TV after the sentencing, “The sentencing was fair. [Saenz] got what was due to her. She's of age and she's held accountable for what she does.”

Kimberly Clark Saenz never expressed any emotion during the reading of the impact statements. She sat at the table, looking down and writing on a legal pad. But even her lack of reaction to the statements said a lot about her.

As the day ended, many questions remained unanswered, most notably the big one, the same one that had baffled people from day one: the one that even kept law enforcement detectives, federal agents, CSU people, and yes, even Herrington from believing Saenz initially guilty—why did she do it?

Although Herrington wasn't required to prove motive to convict Kimberly Saenz, he understood that people wanted to know. He'd taken extra steps to try to find out what might have spurred this young East Texas woman to kill the patients in her charge.

He contacted Professor Beatrice Yonkers, an RN and Director of Nursing at California State University, considered the foremost authority in the country on motives for criminal acts involving medical professionals.

In an article by
USA Today
writer Rick Hampson, Yonkers explained, “Fearing lawsuits, many hospitals will confirm only the dates of employment for a former worker and make no positive or negative recommendation to another hospital thinking about hiring the ex-employee. The problem has been exacerbated by a nursing shortage. Some hospitals just want a warm body with a nursing license and a CPR card who can be on the floor the next day.”

This was what had happened with Saenz. DaVita and the other places she'd worked had checked references, or as much as was provided, and they had no other means to get information. When DaVita hired Saenz, there was a serious allegation against her from Woodland Heights Hospital, but at the time, they didn't have access to that information.

In truth, DaVita had needed nurses badly, but whether they would have hired her even if they'd known the problems she'd had at other jobs, no one will ever know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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