‘Angel of Death’ Guilty Plea Expected

Efren Saldivar, the respiratory therapist who once told Glendale police that he killed dozens of hospital patients with injections of paralyzing drugs, is expected to plead guilty today to six murder counts and other charges in a plea bargain that will spare him the death penalty.

Families of the victims were notified by authorities Monday night that Saldivar, 32, had agreed to enter the plea this morning before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito. He has been in custody for 14 months, charged with using the muscle relaxer Pavulon to kill the six elderly patients at Glendale Adventist Medical Center in 1996 and 1997, and with injecting the drug into another patient who survived.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office announced only that there would be a hearing in the case in Ito’s court, and that Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley would hold a news conference afterward on “a major development in a pending murder case.”

Relatives of patients Saldivar was accused of killing said that they were told that he would plead guilty to all the counts he was facing in the “Angel of Death” case, and eventually be sentenced to life in prison without parole.

“It still seems so unreal,” said Larry Schlegel, whose 77-year-old mother, Eleanora, was found dead in her hospital bed Jan. 2, 1997. “It’s just that whole thing that ‘it can never happen to you.’ ”

“It’s a good thing after all this time,” said Michele Elmore, whose mother, Jean Coyle, 64, went into respiratory arrest after Saldivar allegedly gave her a potentially fatal dose of drugs a month later.

Saldivar’s lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Verah Bradford, declined to comment Monday night. A spokeswoman for the hospital also declined to comment.

Though Saldivar could conceivably change his mind at the last moment, his expected plea would be the culmination of a four-year investigation that began when the hospital received a phone tip that a respiratory therapist may have “helped a patient die fast.” Saldivar unexpectedly confessed soon after, then recanted his confession, sparking the creation of a police task force that eventually exhumed 20 bodies for testing.

Saldivar’s plea still would not settle the issue of how many patients may have been killed during his nine years as a hospital worker. Investigators have said they came to believe that the toll was well over 100 during his time as a graveyard shift respiratory therapist.

“He may have done hundreds,” said Glendale Police Sgt. John McKillop, who headed the task force.

If so, Saldivar would be among the most deadly serial killers in U.S. history.

In his confession four years ago Monday--March 11, 1998--the pudgy hospital worker told a polygraph examiner and Glendale Det. Will Currie that he used lethal doses of drugs to kill “40-something” patients at Glendale Adventist. Saldivar also said he had contributed to “anywhere from 100 to 200” deaths, there and at other hospitals where he moonlighted, by withholding medical care, such as by not providing CPR to patients.

Saldivar quickly repudiated that confession, however, saying he fabricated it because he was depressed and wanted to die.

In investigating whether patients had in fact been killed, the task force discovered that more than 1,000 patients had died on Saldivar’s shifts at Glendale Adventist or within an hour of when he was on duty. Police studied only the most recent deaths, however, on the theory that those bodies would be most likely to still have traces of any drugs.

Authorities exhumed 20 bodies in 1999, but Saldivar was not arrested until Jan. 9, 2001, when Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley announced that tests conducted at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had found Pavulon in six of them.

Saldivar was also charged with illegal possession of a sedative, Versed, which was found during a search of his Tujunga home. A subsequent indictment added an attempted murder count alleging that he injected Coyle, who was revived and is still alive.

Despite his 1998 confession, Saldivar maintained his innocence in periodic public statements after he was identified as a suspect. He was taken into custody after his confession, but released two days later when prosecutors said they needed independent evidence to corroborate his statements.

When years passed without any charges, Saldivar and an attorney representing him in a series of civil cases belittled the investigation. His lawyer dismissed Saldivar’s admissions to police as a “coerced false confession.”

But when Saldivar was rearrested last year--while heading to a construction job in the San Fernando Valley--authorities disclosed that they had found Pavulon in the exhumed bodies.

The drug, which suppresses natural breathing, is used by doctors and nurses to keep patients from gagging when breathing tubes are inserted into their throats. Respiratory therapists are not authorized to administer Pavulon, which is so potent that it is among the mixture of drugs used to execute condemned inmates.

Saldivar was charged with six counts of murder with two special circumstances--multiple murder and poisoning--that could have landed him on death row. In recent months, however, there were indications that Bradford, his criminal attorney, might be negotiating a plea to spare him that sentence. Several times, the filing of routine court papers was put off after closed conferences between Bradford, prosecutors and Judge Ito.

Though such a plea bargain would mean life in prison without parole, Saldivar’s brother told The Times last year that the former respiratory therapist was adjusting well to confinement in a high-security wing of Los Angeles County Jail.

“Once you do enough time it becomes almost like home,” Eddie Saldivar said. “He’s comfortable, it’s relaxed. . . . The guards like him.”

In his 1998 confession, Saldivar said he was trying to put terminally ill patients out of their misery and, while he felt “nagging guilt,” that emotion was “nothing compared to the anger, rage, of seeing somebody kept alive in this position.”

He also expressed anger at families he thought kept their loved ones alive too long, or who engaged in fraud to collect health benefits. Saldivar said he targeted patients who had “do not resuscitate” orders on their charts so their deaths would not raise suspicions.

But investigators have questioned any suggestion that he only killed patients who were going to die anyway, citing the case of Coyle. Five years later, she is still alive in a nursing home and was one of the witnesses called before the grand jury that indicted Saldivar in October.

Coyle told The Times earlier that she remembered blacking out in the hospital right after Saldivar came to her bedside. Coyle, who has emphysema and other ailments, uses a wheelchair and has a tube in her throat to help her breathe.

Veterans of other such hospital murder investigations say such serial killings are difficult to detect because the victims often are very sick, and their deaths may appear to be natural.

The police task force and Deputy Dist. Atty. Al MacKenzie had built the prosecution’s case for trial on Saldivar’s statements, the lab findings and testimony from other respiratory therapists. Potential witnesses included Ursula Anderson, who was often paired with Saldivar on the overnight shift and admitted having an affair with him.

According to records unsealed last year, Anderson said she once saw Saldivar inject a drug into a patient’s intravenous tube, “but could not remember which patient it was,” and another time stood outside a patient’s room while he went in “for the purpose of injecting the patient.”

She also told police that Saldivar admitted injecting a muscle relaxer into Coyle’s intravenous line.

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Times staff writer Richard Fausset contributed to this report.