Acquaintances remember little about suspect in hospital deaths

From his childhood near rural Waynesville, Mo., to his recent adult life in suburban St. Louis, what stands out about Richard Williams is not so much what acquaintances remember about him, but what they don't.

By many accounts, the man charged last week with killing 10 patients at a Columbia veterans hospital 1992 had done very little to draw people's attention.

High school classmates say he wasn't involved in much. Some former teachers have trouble remembering him.

In Houston, Mo., where Williams moved after graduation and met his wife, former hospital co-workers described him as quiet.

Neighbors in the St. Louis suburb of St. Peters, where Williams was living when arrested, say they never got to know him well -- in part because he usually pulled straight into the garage and closed the door behind him.

Bill Moreton, the chief financial officer of Panera Bread Co., said he was notified several weeks ago by the FBI that Williams -- one of his employees -- was being investigated.

Moreton worked with Williams daily and said there was nothing out of the ordinary or remarkable about his personality. "He did fine," Moreton told the Columbia Missourian. "He didn't stand out at all."

Classmates from Waynesville High School said much the same.

A photograph in Williams' 1984 high school yearbook shows him as a curly-haired senior with dark-tinted glasses, crossing a stage with a scholarship in hand from the Disabled American Veterans.

"He wasn't an outcast," former classmate Earl Arnold told the Waynesville Daily Guide. "He just never hung around with any of us ... he was just never involved, just sort of invisible."

A retired counselor at the high school, John Kinsley, only vaguely recalled Williams.

"The curly hair and horn-rimmed glasses I remember -- I don't remember anything out of line," Kinsley told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Lived in trailer park

He said when the murder investigation first surfaced about 10 years ago, faculty at the high school struggled to remember Williams. "He didn't stand out at all," Kinsley said. "He kept a low profile and didn't cause a problem."

Williams grew up in a trailer park near the Army post of Fort Leonard Wood. After graduating, he moved to Houston, where he met and married Melissa Brown.

She met Williams while she was in high school and he was working at Texas County Memorial Hospital. Carolyn Bell, a nursing director at the hospital, recalled Williams' demeanor as an emergency medical technician.

"He was a quiet man, and he worked very hard," Bell told the Missourian. "We worked 24-hour shifts together, and nothing struck me as odd about him."

Williams received his state nursing license on March 13, 1992, while he was working at Truman Memorial Veterans Hospital in Columbia.

Shortly thereafter, some co-workers noticed that an unusually large number of people were dying during Williams' shifts.

An investigation determined that 41 patients died during a few-month span while Williams was on duty -- a rate 20 times that of any other nurse.

Williams worked at Ashland Healthcare, a nursing home south of Columbia, during parts 1993 and 1994. Again, an abnormal number of patients died. Williams is not charged in any of those deaths.

From Ashland, Williams moved to the St. Louis area, where his wife gave birth to triplets in September 2000. Two of the babies died in the week following their birth and are buried in Houston.

Neighbors said they seldom saw the Williams family. For the most part, they kept to themselves.

The murder charges filed Monday were "just surprising," said neighbor Irl Otte. "We never had any suspicions or anything like that."