Killer Nurse (16 page)

Ms. Bradley told the jury that on April 23, 2008, she'd driven herself to her dialysis treatments at DaVita in Lufkin, as she always did. At the time she was feeling fine, and had no problems as the treatments began and progressed. But she woke up in Memorial Hospital in Lufkin two and a half days later—a time that she had lost forever. She had no idea what happened or how she got to the hospital.

She stated that after she got out of the hospital, she would not go back to DaVita—she started treatments at Henderson Dialysis Clinic. When she talked about DaVita on the stand, she had nothing good to say about them. She said that DaVita didn't know how to set up the machines, and DaVita used more clamps on the lines than Henderson did.

Similarly, she said that Henderson handled the heparin, a blood-thinning drug, differently. She said that Henderson gave it at the beginning of the treatment, whereas DaVita had given it at intervals throughout the treatment.

She stated that she felt so much better after a treatment at Henderson than she did at DaVita that it was unreal.

As Ms. Bradley answered Herrington's questions, the spot on the back of Deaton's neck glowed red. When Herrington passed the witness to Deaton, it became obvious why. Deaton hadn't spoken to her before she took the stand. She had refused to talk to him or his investigators before the trial. She told him flat out, she didn't talk to them because she didn't want to. She wanted to forget all of it.

Her statement didn't seem to make Deaton any happier. Herrington ended up objecting to Deaton's badgering her.

After Ms. Bradley, Herrington called Ms. Graciela Castaneda to the stand. The differences between Ms. Castaneda and Ms. Bradley were immediately clear. Ms. Castaneda was in a wheelchair and her husband had to push her into the courtroom, then she had to be helped from the chair to the witness stand. Unlike Ms. Bradley, the Hispanic woman appeared frail. She had black hair and a dark complexion. She also didn't speak English, and the court needed a translator.

Via the translator, Ms. Castaneda told the jury that she'd been a dialysis patient for ten years in April 2008, and on the day of the alleged bleach attack, she'd felt fine—no different than the other days of her treatment.

When Herrington asked her if she'd had heart or breathing problems prior to April 16, 2008, the day EMTs rushed her to the hospital from DaVita, she said no. Since that date, however, she has had both.

Ms. Castaneda testified that she remembered talking to a lady who was doing something to her dialysis lines, and then she didn't remember anything else. A couple of months later, when her daughter was looking at a picture of a woman on the front page of a newspaper, Ms. Castaneda pointed to the photo and told her daughter that it was the same woman who'd been messing with her dialysis lines when she passed out. The picture on the newspaper's front page was of Kimberly Clark Saenz.

On cross-examination, Deaton didn't get much out of Ms. Castaneda, but he did ask her if she ever chewed gum when she took her treatments. Ms. Castaneda said no, but Deaton introduced a document into evidence that would become important down the line. What he introduced was Ms. Castaneda's medical records. On the bottom of the page, someone—neither side ever figured out who—had written that when treating Ms. Castaneda on April 16, 2008, they had to pry a piece of chewing gum out of her throat.

The third survivor called that day was Ms. Debra Oates. Unlike Ms. Bradley, Ms. Oates was a large woman—short and very squat with light brown hair, and perhaps the youngest of all the alleged victims. However, like Ms. Bradley, Ms. Oates walked herself into and out of the courtroom and the witness box with no problems or need for assistance. Also like Ms. Bradley, she'd driven herself to and from treatments at DaVita, and she was still driving herself.

If anyone ever considered this to be an “angel of mercy”–type action, whereby Saenz was putting severely ill patients “out of their misery,” they'd only need to look at Ms. Bradley and Ms. Oates to knock down that theory.

When Ms. Oates took the stand, she did something no other witness at the trial, past or future, prosecution or defense, did—she looked at Saenz and said, “Hi, Kim.”

Under examination by Herrington, Ms. Oates testified that she was extremely familiar with the dialysis process, so much so that she knew the tastes of all the meds given to her while undergoing treatment. She explained that the meds were given through the IV port and patients could taste them. After a while, they learned to differentiate the meds by their taste.

She testified that as she underwent her treatments, she felt some strange sensations followed by chest pains. She said she couldn't breathe, and it felt like every bone in her body was being crushed and her site wouldn't stop bleeding.

Ms. Oates went on to say that she had a funny taste in her mouth, one that she never tasted with any of the drugs she was given, and she asked, “What did you give me?”

Deaton, who'd actually been the one asking the questions when she said this, asked her, “Who did you say this to?”

Ms. Oates replied, “I said it to Kim. She was the one giving me my meds.”

Most attorneys say that they shouldn't ask questions they don't know the answer to, or there are some questions best left unasked. This might have been an example of both those cases.

When Ms. Oates had greeted Saenz from the stand, the former nurse didn't say anything back, but she did flash a big smile for Ms. Oates. However, that smile vanished when the witness made this statement—one that another employee would later back up. With her face scrunched up and brow wrinkled, Saenz leaned over and whispered to Deaton. He then asked Ms. Oates if she was talking about the medications given at 8:30 that morning.

These were the kinds of things that went on with Deaton and Saenz during the entire trial as Taylor, the experienced attorney and death penalty specialist, sat far to the left of them, and led everyone, including the jury, to wonder just who was assisting Deaton.

As the day continued, Sharon Smith, an RN with DaVita in 2008 and a charge nurse, took the stand. She was one of the most important witnesses for the prosecution—so important she'd ultimately have to testify several times.

Sharon Smith reiterated what other DaVita employees had said, especially that syringes weren't used to measure bleach. But she was important for other reasons, too. Ms. Debra Oates had testified that after Saenz gave her the medication, it had tasted funny and she'd asked Saenz what she'd given her. Smith had come up just as Ms. Oates had asked that question—right before she became extremely ill. Smith heard and testified to that.

However, another huge part of Smith's testimony was crucial to the prosecution and deadly for the defense. She had been the charge nurse when Ms. Few coded and died. After Ms. Few was transported away from DaVita, Dr. Nazeer had asked Smith what meds Ms. Few was given. When Smith looked in the computer, she didn't see the meds documented, so she asked Saenz if she'd given Ms. Few her meds. When Saenz said yes, Smith told her to document it. Saenz then went on the computer and put in a time she'd given the meds.

The 3ml syringe Saenz had used to give Ms. Few's meds that day, clearly marked with her name and information, had been dropped into a sharps container. This was the syringe that Christy Pate found—the one that tested positive for bleach and started the murder investigation.

When Smith finished testifying, that spot on the back left of Ryan Deaton's head that turned red when he was angry, upset, or things weren't going his way was glowing like Rudolph's nose.

Smith had done well with her testimony while Herrington questioned her—very well, in fact. But like Arlene Gamble, Sharon Smith had a temper on the stand when Deaton questioned her. It is entirely possible that Deaton was counting on this when he opened his cross-examination by asking her, “Why did DaVita fire you?”

The question brought an immediate objection from Herrington, which was sustained by the judge. The question was improper. There was no evidence that Smith had been fired by DaVita, and never would be. She'd gotten a good recommendation from them when she left, and her present employers had nothing but good things to say about her.

However, the damage was done. Smith was livid and showed it. After that, Deaton made his jaunt to the witness stand with the laptop, leaned on the rail close to her, and Smith asked the judge to get him away from her. She didn't want him close to her. As he asked her questions, the judge had to order her to answer the questions several times.

She was the first witness that had a little talk with Herrington or the judge after she testified about her conduct on the stand, but she wouldn't be the last.

PART IV

THE STORM BLOWS

They call this war a cloud over the land. But they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say “Shit, it's raining!”

—CHARLES FRAZIER,
C
OLD
M
OUNTAIN

CHAPTER
17

THE GATHERING CLOUDS

There's a saying in East Texas: “You can't ride a dead horse.” No one seemed to have told Ryan Deaton, however, because he kept putting the saddle on and hoping his horse would move. From the time he'd taken over the Saenz defense, he'd laid claim to the scapegoat theory. He pronounced it in the papers leading up to the trial and he'd boldly said in his opening that his client was innocent, and she was being used as DaVita's scapegoat.

Deaton's manner might give one the impression that he never had a guilty client.

In his theory, the real guilty party was DaVita, who would then also be responsible for one of the greatest and most complex cover-ups in history. But that didn't daunt Deaton.

One DaVita employee after another heard the same thing from him. “You still work for DaVita, don't you?”

His question to the employees was laced with as much disdain for the witness as could possibly be put into seven words. No one doubted the disrespect he heaped on them and the implication that because they wouldn't say what he wanted them to say, therefore they were liars and a part of the conspiracy against his client.

Deaton also seemed to take issue with the DaVita attorneys and almost came to blows with one of them, Joel Sprott. As a big, rich, Fortune 500 company, DaVita had attorneys there to represent their employees, and during the trial, Sprott had lodged a complaint that Deaton constantly tried to talk to his clients when he wasn't present—even after he'd told him not to do it several times.

After the trial, when asked what was the biggest obstacle the defense had to overcome, Steve Taylor replied, “Deaton's arrogance. You can only beat up on someone so much and then you start losing points. Defense attorneys should try to negate testimony that has already come in or give a different light on it to help soften it, but when you get up there and call him a lying sucker to his own face in front of twelve people . . . Jurors use their eyes, their ears, and their noses. They know when something stinks. If a skunk walked through the room, they'd remember it and would ask themselves later if the skunk was still around.”

Juror David Bradford was tall, solid, had white hair, and stood out in a crowd. He was also a juror that Deaton had wanted. During
voir dire
, Taylor had questioned most of the potential jurors and Deaton questioned one every now and then. Bradford was one that Deaton took—maybe because he thought they could relate. Bradford had not starred on the Lufkin football team as Deaton had, but his son, the starting quarterback, and later punter for the University of Texas, did. But if Deaton thought he had an ally on the jury, he was sorely mistaken.

David Bradford said after the trial, “About the third day of the trial, I was so tired of Deaton beating us over the heads like dumbasses. I said to myself, lay it out and let it go but don't beat us to death with it.”

Bradford was referring to that dead horse—the alleged conspiracy and that question dripping with sarcasm, scorn, and loathing for each of the DaVita employees.

* * *

Wanda Hillyer, another DaVita employee, followed Sharon Smith, and her testimony repeated what all the others, including the ex-employees, had said. But Herrington took her into another area, the cleaning of the dialysis machines.

In 2008, the routine was that on every Thursday, after all the patients were out of the clinic, the staff cleaned all the dialysis machines. This included running bleach through them. When they were finished, the machines were supposed to be thoroughly rinsed so no bleach remained. They were tested to make sure.

Since, as previously stated, the water in DaVita was on one continual loop, it meant that every machine got the same water and bleach when cleaned and rinsed.

Hillyer took the jury through the cleaning process. It was abundantly clear that if DaVita was responsible for bleach being in the bloodlines and harming patients, this was the best opportunity for it to get there. However, Herrington took her through every one of the incidents where patients were harmed and died, and not one incident occurred on a Friday after a Thursday night cleaning, as would have been expected. And again, one fact kept popping up with every witness: if the water was bad, every patient being dialysized that day would've been affected, not only one or two.

Deaton asked Hillyer the same question he'd asked the other DaVita employees. He asked if she'd ever seen or heard of other DaVita employees using another's password to get into the computers. None of the others had.

When Deaton asked Hillyer the question, the attorneys met at the bench for a few moments, then the judge sent the jury out of the courtroom, and they
voir dired
Wanda Hillyer on this question. In answer, she said that she'd heard of it once. When Herrington asked her what happened to the person who used another's password, she responded that DaVita had fired the employee.

Herrington told the judge that he was okay with the jury hearing this testimony.

Deaton, however, must not have been because when the jury returned, he didn't continue to pursue that line of questioning.

The next-to-last witness Herrington called on day three was a young black man named Werlan Guillory, who projected an aura of intelligence and honesty. He was dressed nicely, but not flashily. He also appeared totally credible.

In April 2008, Guillory was a PCT at DaVita and a friend of Kimberly Saenz's. He was also aquatinted with Ryan Deaton, having played basketball with him.

Prior to the trial, Guillory said, he'd spoken to Deaton once for about ten minutes when he ran into him at the grocery store. Although on the stand Deaton attempted to insinuate that Guillory's friendship with Saenz was more than it was, Guillory did admit to caring for Saenz as a friend. But there were things about her that really disturbed him.

He related the story on the stand about how he'd called Saenz after she'd been sent home on April 28, and asked her if she was going to be at the meeting the next day. He said that she told him that she wasn't, she was going to her daughter's field day at the Expo Center in Lufkin instead.

When Saenz really didn't show up for the meeting, Guillory drove to the Expo Center to check on her. To him it was nothing that a friend wouldn't do for another. Saenz's appearance shocked him—she was crying, her eyes were swollen, and her hair was disheveled. Not only that, although they'd worked together for eight months and he considered her a friend, she acted at first like she didn't even know him. While they were talking, Saenz, an emotional wreck, told him that her husband had accused her of harming the patients.

This in itself was damning, but Guillory was about to stick a dagger into the heart of Saenz's defense.

He told the jury that when Ms. Strange coded on April 1, Kim had acted like she didn't care. Then on April 26, when Ms. Few coded, he ran outside to get Kim, who was smoking a cigarette, but she didn't respond or come in.

This little tidbit got a reaction out of the jury and Deaton. The red spot on his head was flashing like a neon sign.

Who would want their health care provider to choose to continue to smoke a cigarette instead of attempting to save his or her life? It was something the jury never forgot, nor did they forget Guillory's answer when Deaton asked him why he ran outside to get Kim.

He said, “I just felt that I needed to get Kim off break to save a life.”

Herrington's last witness was also devastating. It was Kimberly Saenz herself.

Herrington played the tape of her police interview, and all twelve members of the jury sat forward on the edge of their seats, as did the spectators.

Meanwhile, Saenz turned in her seat and was laughing, smiling, and mouthing words to her family. Most people in the court, including the jury, couldn't understand what was so amusing about what was being shown.

Everyone in the courtroom heard Saenz tell the police that she thought the problems with the patients in April had to do with blood pressure, and she said she'd never researched bleach on the Internet. This raised some eyebrows from the jury because from Herrington's opening they knew that Internet searches on bleach had been found on Saenz's computer, and from Deaton's opening, they knew her husband was going to discount this evidence. Whatever was coming with those computer searches, they knew it would be important.

In the interview, Saenz couldn't remember when her last day at work for DaVita was or who her patients were, even though the interview took place on April 29, the day after she was sent home. This left everyone wondering about her mental state.

From Herrington's point of view, it was the absolute best time to play Saenz's interview. The jury had sat and listened to a long line of DaVita employees who testified that Saenz not only hated her job, but hated a bunch of the patients. Whether coincidental or not, the patients they named that she hated just happened to be the ones she was accused of harming or killing.

Now on the tape Saenz was telling police how much she loved her job.

But that wouldn't be all she said in that interview as she rambled on. Saenz told them that she was supposed to use a measuring cup to measure bleach, but used a syringe when she didn't have a cup. She said that when she used a syringe, she'd pour the bleach into a measuring cup—the one she supposedly didn't have—and then draw the bleach into a syringe from that.

One other thing she said also didn't make any sense: Saenz said all she'd injected into Ms. Rhone's line was saline. Now the jurors looked at the dialysis machine that stayed in the courtroom as a prop. Both sides had used it numerous times. The jurors could easily see the saline bag hanging over the machine with a line leading down from it. Attached to that line was a clamp. Loosening that clamp allowed the saline to be released into the patient's lines.

In other words, why inject saline into a bag full of saline?

* * *

Other witnesses came and went, and then RN and DaVita monitor Amy Clinton took the stand. When the jury was asked after the trial which witness was the most impressive, most said Amy Clinton right off.

The jury had watched Arlene Gamble and Sharon Smith lose their cool on the stand, and might have expected the same from Clinton. If Deaton did, he would be sorely disappointed. Clinton's temperament never changed. It was obvious that Amy Clinton was the regional director of DaVita for a reason, and it had nothing to do with her good looks. She ended up testifying four times, but each time the court saw the exact same thing from her: intelligence, professionalism, and deportment. She could not be shaken. Her voice didn't change from the questions Herrington asked to the grilling she got from Deaton—nor did her body language.

Deaton wasn't able to break the next witness either, arguably the most important person in the entire case—Sergeant Stephen Abbott.

Sergeant Abbott took the jury through the entire case from day one. He never showed emotion. It was the facts, just the facts, and like Clinton, he couldn't be intimidated or swayed. In fact, Deaton lost a point with the jury whenever he said Sergeant Abbott's name—or rather, mis-said it, since he insisted on verbally demoting.

He never referred to him as Sergeant Abbott, and it became a point of total disrespect. He called him
Officer
Abbott. The way Deaton said it, the jury could hear and almost see the disdain dripping off the word.

In any case, Abbott could add his name to the long list of witnesses Deaton had harassed on the stand. He'd badgered Ms. Hall and Ms. Bradley while they testified and had had objections sustained on both of them. When people talk about Judge Bryan, they invariably mention how patient he is, but Deaton was trying that patience already. So far Deaton had just irked him, but that was soon to change. Deaton soon stepped in it with both feet.