Technology said key in charging nurse in hospital deaths

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Peppered with questions about why a decade passed before a long-suspected former nurse was charged with 10 patient deaths at a veterans hospital, authorities said Tuesday that a relatively new tissue test broke the case.

"The linchpin here is the development of the forensic science," Richard Griffin, inspector general for the Department of Veterans Affairs, said at a news conference with state and federal law enforcement officials.

Still, some relatives of the alleged victims of Richard A. Williams expressed puzzlement and frustration about why 10 years went by before charges were filed.

"I felt like a mushroom -- always in the dark. I had about given up hope," said Sherman Courtois, son of World War II veteran Agnes Conover, who died July 28, 1992, at Harry Truman Memorial Veterans Hospital in Columbia.

Authorities said Williams was a nurse for all 10 patients who died between March and July 1992. "Mr. Williams is the common denominator to each of these 10 patients," said Kevin Crane, Boone County prosecutor. He declined to discuss any alleged motive.

In all, 41 patients died in 1992 under Williams' care. While those deaths were deemed suspicious, usable tissue samples from 1993 exhumations remained from just 10 bodies, authorities said. Charges were filed in all 10 of those cases.

"We never quit on this case," Griffin said as reporters pressed him about the VA's handling of the matter. Griffin said VA reviews in January 2001 led to a consensus among investigators that succinylcholine, a paralyzing muscle relaxer, may have played a role in the deaths.

Tissue samples were delivered in November to National Medical Services, a private laboratory that works with the FBI.

Succinylcholine test

National Medical Services developed a test for succinylcholine but won't provide details without law enforcement clearance because of the pending case, said Irene Carty, the company's director of client support.

Boone County officials received the test results on May 7, and by May 31 the Boone County medical examiner concluded the deaths were homicides.

Williams, 36, was arrested and charged Monday with 10 counts of first-degree murder, more than 10 years after the first of the suspicious deaths on the hospital's Ward 4 East.

"Technology finally got him," Sterling Owens, Conover's son-in-law, declared Tuesday.

VA co-workers had expressed concerns at the time of the deaths about Williams' possible involvement. And a 1992 analysis by a VA physician in Columbia concluded patients were 20 times more likely to die on Williams' watch than on those of other nurses.

In 1998, a federal judge ruled in a wrongful death lawsuit that Williams was responsible for the death of a patient at the hospital. But Crane said he wasn't comfortable charging Williams until the new test results arrived.

Authorities said Williams had access to the drug used to stop natural respiration when mechanical breathing equipment takes over during surgery. But for the 10 deceased patients, there was no reason for the drug's presence.