The nurses who have killed vulnerable patients have taken despicable advantage of their positions of trust and their ethical duty to do no harm. Also, some nurses have murdered people in settings outside the workplace. In some cases the victims are family members.
Some people would say that the very mention of murderous nurses is unbecoming on a professional nursing forum. In fact, others would say that that this subject is downright distasteful and generates negative attention. However, since I feel that the topic is somewhat interesting, I have decided to write about it.
The reality is that a handful of nurses have purposely taken the lives of other human beings. Some have killed at the workplace, whereas others have murdered people during their free time. A few of these cases have drummed up massive publicity while others have remained obscure. I have compiled a list of former nurses below, along with a brief description of the crimes that they have committed. By no means is this list all-inclusive.
Yolanda Saldivar
Saldivar, the fan club president of the popular singer Selena, was also a nurse in the San Antonio area of Texas. Saldivar shot and killed Selena on March 31, 1995.
Andrea Yates
Yates, a Houston-area housewife and stay-at-home mother with a history of mental health problems, became a registered nurse in 1986 and stopped working outside the home after giving birth to her eldest child in 1994. She drowned her five young children in the bathtub of the family home on June 20, 2001.
Charles Cullen
Cullen killed patients while on duty during his 16-year career as a registered nurse and is known as the most prolific serial murderer in the history of New Jersey. He was arrested in 2003. 29 victims are confirmed, while several hundred more are suspected.
Dana Sue Gray
Gray, a registered nurse who lived a lifestyle well beyond her means, killed three elderly women inside their southern California homes and stole their money in early 1994. She attempted to murder a fourth victim before she was caught.
Kristin Gilbert
Gilbert, a registered nurse, was convicted in 2001 of killing four patients at a VA hospital in Massachusetts by overdosing them with epinephrine.
Daniel Conahan
Conahan, a licensed practical nurse, came to be known as the Hog Trail Murderer in the 1990s after authorities connected him to the abductions and murders of multiple homosexual men in the woods of Charlotte County, Florida.
Kimberly Saenz
Saenz, a licensed vocational nurse, was convicted in 2012 of killing five hemodialysis patients in Texas by injecting bleach into them. More victims are suspected.
Vickie Dawn Jackson
Jackson was convicted in 2006 of killing 10 patients at the Texas hospital where she was employed as a licensed vocational nurse. Her third husband's grandfather was one of the victims. She purposely overdosed them with mivacurium chloride.
Genene Jones
Jones was a pediatric nurse who killed multiple young patients while on duty at the Texas healthcare facilities where she had been employed.
Orville Lynn Majors-former Licensed Practical Nurse in Indiana convicted of murdering six patients. He was suspected of as many as 130 patient murders between 1993 and 1995.
I was just a teenager when this all came out but given that I live in Indiana, it was BIG news. Definitely not something easy to forget.
Specializes in Hospice, corrections, psychiatry, rehab, LTC.
I've also heard that Washington state has many depressed people and the highest suicide rate of all the states in the union. Perhaps the incessant rainfall, gray skies and lack of sunshine affects peoples' mental health negatively. Who knows.
I had a coworker who once lived in Seattle. He moved to Las Vegas because his wife has seasonal affective disorder, which causes her to become extremely depressed with prolonged cloudy, rainy periods like those in the Pacific Northwest.
I read "The Good Nurse," a book written about Cullen by a former med student. It was well-written. It made me mad that all those hospitals turned a blind eye.
Gary Heidnik was a serial killer in Philly. He lured women into his home, killed them, cut them up and stored them in his freezers. He was an LPN. I remember the PA BON newsletter that listed his license revocation.
I read "The Good Nurse," a book written about Cullen by a former med student. It was well-written. It made me mad that all those hospitals turned a blind eye.
Gary Heidnik was a serial killer in Philly. He lured women into his home, killed them, cut them up and stored them in his freezers. He was an LPN. I remember the PA BON newsletter that listed his license revocation.
Wow, I've read about Heidnik but somehow missed the part about him being a nurse.
His crimes were horrendous.
If you google female serial killers, it's amazing how many were "nurses" (some were aides but called "nurses", I'm sure).
Virginia Jaspers creeped me out... Google her picture... she looks so mean.
What about Joy Woomer? She was convicted of killing a child as a homecare nurse but the case against her was very weak. I think the biggest mistake her defense team made was trying to pin it on the parents instead of simply maintaining her own innocence.
I think it's important to make a distinction between killers who happened to be nurses (Andrea Yates) and nurses who kill 'in the line of duty' (Orville Majors). The 'line of duty' killers are much, much scarier in my opinion, because they use their position of trust as a weapon- whereas (for the most part) the 'happened to be nurses' killers are of a substantially lesser threat to the general public, as their crimes tend to be domestic in nature.
The victims are no less dead, just pointing out a difference in the two types.
Specializes in Oncology; medical specialty website.
What about Joy Woomer? She was convicted of killing a child as a homecare nurse but the case against her was very weak. I think the biggest mistake her defense team made was trying to pin it on the parents instead of simply maintaining her own innocence.
I read "The Good Nurse," a book written about Cullen by a former med student. It was well-written. It made me mad that all those hospitals turned a blind eye.
Gary Heidnik was a serial killer in Philly. He lured women into his home, killed them, cut them up and stored them in his freezers. He was an LPN. I remember the PA BON newsletter that listed his license revocation.
When I went to PN school, the instructors told us all about Gary Heidnick (even though I remember hearing about it on the news). He was a LPN, and the school was located 2 blocks near the "torture" house where the found a few women alive that he planned to kill...creepy!
I remember when Cullen was caught and reading the BON newsletter when they revoked his license.
Specializes in Oncology; medical specialty website.
When I went to PN school, the instructors told us all about Gary Heidnick (even though I remember hearing about it on the news). He was a LPN, and the school was located 2 blocks near the "torture" house where the found a few women alive that he planned to kill...creepy!
I remember when Cullen was caught and reading the BON newsletter when they revoked his license.
Lucky for you he was gone by the time you were in school! I can still remember watching the news at night and his story being one of the lead stories.
Specializes in Care Coordination, MDS, med-surg, Peds.
There was a nurse in Columbia, Mo who was accused of killing 10 patients in a VA hospital. Also a local nursing home he was Director Of Nurses in had a "higher than usual" death rate while he worked there!!! his name was Richard Williams, this was in 1992.
YoungStud
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