Efren Saldivar Pleads Guilty to Murdering Six Patients at Glendale Adventist Medical Center
The plea spared the former respiratory therapist the death penalty. Prosecutors then revealed a second confession that police called far more callous than his first.
Published
For three years Efren Saldivar insisted he had made up his confession to killing hospital patients. On March 12, 2002, he stood before a Los Angeles judge and pleaded guilty to six murders.
Saldivar, 32, a former respiratory therapist at Glendale Adventist Medical Center, bowed his head and said "guilty" in a barely audible voice to six counts of murder and one of attempted murder before Superior Court Judge Lance Ito. Under the plea bargain he was spared the death penalty, agreed to life in prison without parole and waived his right to appeal, and prosecutors dropped a count of illegally possessing the sedative Versed. District Attorney Steve Cooley said his office had chosen not to seek death to avoid a costly trial, including drawn-out litigation over the tests used to detect the paralyzing drug Pavulon in the exhumed bodies of elderly patients.
The six patients, who died in 1996 and 1997, were Myrtle Brower, 84; Eleanora Schlegel, 77; Salbi Asatryan, 75; Jose Alfaro, 82; Luina Schidlowski, 87; and Balbino Castro, 87. The attempted-murder count concerned a patient who was injected but revived. Police had exhumed 20 bodies, chosen from about 1,050 patients who died while Saldivar was on duty or within an hour of his shifts, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory found traces of Pavulon in six.
After the plea, Cooley and Glendale Police Chief Russell Siverling revealed that Saldivar had confessed again after his arrest on January 9, 2001. In his first confession, in 1998, he said he had killed to end patients' suffering. The second time, Siverling said, he blamed simple "laziness" and annoyance at noisy patients. "He was not that kind of mercy killer," the chief said. "These patients did not ask to be killed and their families did not ask that they be killed." Officials said they did not expect ever to know how many people he killed.
On April 17, 2002, Ito sentenced Saldivar to six terms of life without parole, plus 15 years to life for the attempted murder. "I am truly sorry," Saldivar told the court. "And I ask for forgiveness, though I don't expect any." The judge then unsealed the second confession, in which Saldivar told police he had killed more than 100 patients, including some at two other hospitals where he worked part time. His lawyer called many of those statements exaggeration, and police and prosecutors said they would not try to tie more deaths to him.
Sources
- 'Chilling' Postscript to Saldivar Case Revealed, Los Angeles Times (Paul Lieberman)
- Hospital 'Angel of Death' Gets Life Without Parole, Los Angeles Times (Paul Lieberman)
Related News
- January 9, 2001: Efren Saldivar, the Hospital Worker Who Called Himself the Angel of Death, Charged With Six Murders