← The Binge Crimes: Cut, Color, Kill
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- [00:00]
Jesse Tyler Ferguson
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- [01:06]
Unnamed Senator
The bench.
- [01:12]
Jake Edelstein
Campsite Media.
- [01:17]
Eddie Edelstein
In December of 1993, Richard Williams resigned from his job as a nurse at the VA Hospital in Columbia, Missouri. About a year and a half had passed since allegations broke that he was an angel of death. And then within a few months, despite the pending FBI investigation, he was hired on full time at a different job. And not just another job. It was a job with even more power than he had previously. He was now working with arguably an even more vulnerable population of patients. Williams was named Director of Nursing at a nursing home in Ashland, Missouri, a town just south of Columbia. And here's the thing I find most unbelievable. According to the St. Louis newspaper Riverfront Times, the VA had even written Williams a letter of recommendation for his new gig. My father, Eddie Edelstein, couldn't believe it either. He had watched the FBI investigation into Williams grind to a halt. So you can imagine how he felt when he saw a report from the Missouri Board of Nursing about Williams tenure at his new job. According to the report, in the 12 months Nurse Williams had worked at the nursing home, 30 people died. That is an astonishing number. Let me break it down for you. Over a 22 month period between 1993 and 1995, Ashland Healthcare recorded a total of 36 deaths. Of these 36 deaths, 30 of them occurred during the 12 months that Williams worked there. During the other 10 months when Williams did not work there, there were only six deaths. So this could be a statistical anomaly. But it sure appeared that Williams time in Ashland had coincided with a second string of mysterious deaths. Now, by the time my dad learned about this, Williams was already gone from Ashland. After only six months in his new position, he was fired, as was an administrator. This was after the state inspections found issues with the facility's overall care and cleanliness. He was never accused of wrongdoing related to the deaths. He just left the nursing home and faded away. The investigation back at Dad's own hospital wasn't dead, but it had certainly stalled. The FBI had exhumed the bodies of 13 VA patients. The VA and the FBI brought on a famous medical examiner named Dr. Michael Bodden to do the autopsies. But then the Bureau had gone quiet. So what the hell was the FBI doing? According to news reports, the FBI had been dealing with two other much higher profile cases, Waco and the first World Trade center bombing. My dad thought it was lame excuse.
- [04:08]
Dr. Michael Baden
It's actually quite unbelievable. As a medical examiner, we get toxicology all the time on every patient that dies. So the argument that they gave me was that because they were so busy studying the people who died in the Waco disaster that they didn't have time to do that. That clearly doesn't make any sense. There's entire laboratories. The National Medical Laboratory devoted the entire thing to doing toxicology. They actually had done it in record time, I'm sure. So this. It doesn't make any sense at it just means they didn't want to know. I actually believe they did the toxicology and tended to ignore it.
- [04:46]
Eddie Edelstein
To my dad, this was an outrage. He did not want to sit on the sidelines. And finally, an opportunity presented itself for him to speak out. He was asked to testify against the VA in an emerging civil case. To do this, he would need to gather evidence to suggest that the VA should have handled the accusations against Williams more seriously. The report from the Missouri Board of Nursing could give him an opening. But when he asked the organization for the documents, they denied his request. At first, they even denied that the report existed. So dad decided to take matters into his own hands. He called the nursing home himself.
- [05:27]
Dr. Michael Baden
As a medical examiner, you have powers. You say, this is Eddie Adelsina, medical examiner. They come right to the phone. Cause you're like a policeman. They like think you have stuff on them. They know you wouldn't be calling them unless there's something funny, something weird, like it's some death it shouldn't be. So when I called, of course they let me in there.
- [05:48]
Eddie Edelstein
Dad jumped in his car and made the 20 minute trip from the VA to Ashland to do a little digging.
- [05:53]
Dr. Michael Baden
You know, you Kind of feel like a detective because you are a detective. You're like checking it out and seeing you don't really know what you're looking for, but you're just looking.
- [06:04]
Eddie Edelstein
He pulled up in front of a one story L shaped building off the highway. The rooms for the residents looked out at some nice trees with rustling green leaves. It was a tranquil setting meant to be the backdrop for peaceful twilight years. Dad asked if he could review the cases of people who died under William's supervision.
- [06:23]
Dr. Michael Baden
I probably spent two or three days there going through the records.
- [06:27]
Eddie Edelstein
It was a lot of material and dad wasn't allowed to leave with it. So he basically camped out at Ashland poring over death notes from morning to night. And he began to notice a pattern in the notes written by Richard Williams that gave him the creeps.
- [06:41]
Dr. Michael Baden
The part that was interesting to me was he wrote very detailed notes about their death. Like they're breathing slower, you know, their color looks funny. It was almost as though he was documenting their deaths. Not normally, not most people don't. So I considered it unusual and strange for him to do that.
- [07:06]
Eddie Edelstein
Williams was observing his patients and writing detailed notes every 10 minutes or so, like a scientist might for lab rats. Dad's numbers started looking a lot like Gordon's. Death rates spiked when Williams was on duty. Also when Williams worked in Ashland, the number of patient deaths quadrupled compared to a typical year. Four times the standard number of deaths.
- [07:32]
Dr. Michael Baden
And I recognize what a horrible thing it was to put him in charge of a population of the most vulnerable people there are.
- [07:43]
Eddie Edelstein
From Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment. You're listening to witnessed Night Shift. This is episode five, Trials and Tribulations. I'm Jake Edelstein.
- [08:05]
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- [08:34]
Jake Edelstein
My dad works in B2B marketing.
- [08:36]
Eddie Edelstein
He came by my school for Career Day and said he was a big roas man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laugh at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn you'll be able to reach people who do get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com campaign to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com campaign. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn the place to be. To be. In the fall of 1992, the FBI launched their investigation into the cluster of unexpected Deaths on Ward 4 East at the VA hospital. And in early statements from investigators, the Bureau said that the deaths had to be unnatural. An agent on the case even said as much to one of the families. Here's a clip from ABC Primetime, which covered the case in the late 90s. Despite their inability to determine the cause of the death, the FBI believed the veterans were the victims of foul play. At least that's what one agent told Agnes Conover's family. Well, I'm gonna play a tape here which you're familiar with, because it is a conversation that you taped with an FBI agent. I said, I think that probably your mother did not die from natural causes. But then a year went by and another year.
- [10:02]
Dr. Michael Baden
So the FBI, which initially started this investigation with hardworking honesty, basically suddenly wouldn't answer our phone call and disappeared, literally disappeared for a couple years.
- [10:16]
Eddie Edelstein
The Bureau, for reasons that were unclear to my dad and Gordon and others at the hospital, was acting like there was nothing to these allegations of murder. Word about this stalled investigation even spread to Washington, D.C. and I haven't heard a peep from the Attorney General, nor have I heard anything from the FBI. So you know, what in the world's going on? This is Iowa Senator Charles Grassley pressing FBI Director Louis Freehouse in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is a very important case, and why can't I get straight answers?
- [10:48]
Unnamed Senator
Senator, it certainly is an important case and one that should be investigated and accounted for forthrightly. I will. I will get you a response to the extent that I can with respect to those questions.
- [11:04]
Eddie Edelstein
But answers didn't come. And meanwhile, the clock was ticking because the FBI had used a civil rights investigation to give itself jurisdiction over the. The statute of limitations was only five years. It seems a little odd to me that Dr. Baden was only ordered to run the toxicology reports around four years into the investigation, right when time was almost up. So now you get the picture. The feds had five years to finalize this case, and four of them were spent in a stand sill because the tissue samples were left untouched in a freezer. Whether this was intentional or just ineptitude, the FBI was going to let the case expire. And that probably would have been the end of the matter. With no accountability for anyone Involved. But then, out of the blue, a lawyer named John Kurtz arrived on a white horse with a bald eagle perched on his arm.
- [12:05]
Jake Edelstein
Ah, yes, it's a giant eagle.
- [12:07]
Unnamed Senator
How you doing? Hey, did you want to see the eagle over there?
- [12:09]
Jake Edelstein
I would love to see the eagle.
- [12:11]
Eddie Edelstein
We did want to see the eagle.
- [12:12]
Unnamed Senator
Well, hey, come on. You didn't get to see it.
- [12:14]
Eddie Edelstein
Okay. Not a literal eagle, but a big painting of one. It was on the side of the tall brick building in Kansas City where John Kurtz has worked for 25 years. There was a smaller bald eagle on his business card, too. When Shoko and I and our producer Amy arrived, Kurtz was wearing an American flag necktie that waved in the wind. Kurtz is tall, really tall, with sunken eyes and wooly white eyebrows. He kind of looked like Lurch from the Adams family, but being around him, you feel like you're hanging out with a real life Atticus Finch. As we entered his law office and sat down around a big wooden table, it became clear that this guy truly believes in an ideal America where all men and women actually are created equal.
- [13:01]
Unnamed Senator
Patriotism equates with attention for the down and out. And as a plaintiff's lawyer, we represent those kind of people.
- [13:15]
Eddie Edelstein
People like the family of a VA patient named Elzie Havrem. Without someone like Kurtz, Elzie might have just died quietly and been forgotten. Elzie Havrem was a born and bred Missourian. His life was a classic 20th century American story. He married his wife Helen when they were teenagers. Within months of the wedding, he was drafted into the army to fight in World War II. But while he was in the Philippines, Elzie suffered from a shrapnel injury to his face and a bad case of malaria. He was shipped back to the US With a Purple Heart on his chest. After he came back, Elzie and Helen started a family and raised three kids together. Else, he supported his family by working long hours at the factory firing bricks. Here's his son, David.
- [14:07]
Unnamed Senator
He worked there probably, I don't know, 45 years or something like that. See how they're real dusty in there? You know, I remember him probably back when he was like 40 years old, 45. You know, I can remember him having breathing problems then, you know, so he had them for a long time.
- [14:28]
Eddie Edelstein
Eventually, Elsie was diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. By the time he was in his 60s, his breathing problems were so bad that he was regularly in and out of the VA Hospital in Columbia. On June 14, 1992, David and his wife Sydney Went to an auction in Kansas City. When they got home, they found out that Elsie's breathing problem was acting up again. One of his granddaughters drove him to the va and he was admitted for observation and treatment. Sidney and David went to see him that evening. Doctors had stabilized Elsie, and he was alert and able to communicate. Here's Sydney talking about it.
- [15:12]
Sydney Havrem
And he had put a. Sitting on the edge of the bed, put a wash rag over his head because he was, you know, he's hot.
- [15:20]
Eddie Edelstein
He asked for a painkiller, and Sidney and David waited with him until it kicked in.
- [15:25]
Sydney Havrem
We stayed there till about 11:30, and then we come on home.
- [15:30]
Eddie Edelstein
Sidney and David planned to get some rest and go back to the VA to see Elsie the next day. But then an hour and a half later, the phone rang. It was their niece.
- [15:43]
Unnamed Senator
And Angie then called us about one or two something. Whatever time it was, I said, he died.
- [15:52]
Eddie Edelstein
Did that come as a shock to you?
- [15:55]
Sydney Havrem
It did come as a shock, because I've been talking. We've been talking to him and carrying on with him, and it come as a shock.
- [16:06]
Eddie Edelstein
The official cause of Elsie's death was listed as copd. However, a doctor who later examined Elzie's chart was disturbed by what he found. How could a man in stable condition, whose only complaint was a headache, wind up dead in a matter of hours? People with COPD can live even into their 90s with the right treatment. Elzey was only 66, and his condition when arriving at the VA had not been dire.
- [16:32]
Sydney Havrem
I've seen other people that are sick die, and it takes a while, and it's a slow process. None of that happened, you know, with him. I mean, he just was setting up one minute and boom, he's dead.
- [16:54]
Eddie Edelstein
Elsie's death was shocking enough. But then came the calls from the FBI and the press. And then, months later, agents asking the family permission to dig up Elsie's body. It was actually Elzie's grave, where in the Last Episode, reporter Rudy Keller held vigil for 24 hours, waiting for the FBI to return the body. And so Elzie was among the 13 veterans who had a tissue sample, a piece of his flesh, waiting in a freezer for four years as the FBI apparently tried to wait out the clock on the investigation. As the Havrem family sat at home and waited for some kind of news. They didn't know what to do. Until one day, the Havrems told their story to a lady who came to look at a piece of real estate they were selling. She happened to be a lawyer and.
- [17:44]
Sydney Havrem
She said, I'll tell you who could see to that or maybe do something about it, would be John Kurtz.
- [17:53]
Eddie Edelstein
It seemed like a long shot. No lawyer in their right mind would want to go up against an institution like the VA backed by the FBI and ultimately the United States of America. But when the family reached out to John Kurtz, he did not need to be convinced.
- [18:09]
Unnamed Senator
My father was a World War II veteran. My great grandfather fought in the Union army on the north side of the flag in the American Civil War. And so I've always been moved by veterans.
- [18:24]
Eddie Edelstein
Kurtz went down to the Havrems ranch style home in Fulton to meet the family, including Elsie's widow, Helen Hafram.
- [18:30]
Unnamed Senator
She was a dream plaintiff in that. She wasn't loud, she wasn't vicious, she wasn't vulgar. She was just pure sweetness. And in that first meeting, I loved that lady and I loved her family.
- [18:50]
Eddie Edelstein
Kurtz dove into the case. He tried getting some of the other families to join the lawsuit, without success. Maybe they'd already gone through enough. So it was just the haverms standing up for themselves, but also in a way, standing in for the 41 other families who were still waiting for answers. Kurtz would be going up against the United States government, and he needed every weapon he could get his hands on. He gathered evidence, spoke to witnesses. Sometimes he did trial prep in the chambers of the presiding judge.
- [19:20]
Unnamed Senator
And I remember very clearly one time Judge Nanette Lowry saying something like this, Mr. Kurtz, I see you have a very difficult uphill road in this case. You have a long, long way to go. Do you understand that? And I said, yes, ma'am, I do. I just wanted to make sure you intend to go there. Yes, ma'am.
- [19:51]
Eddie Edelstein
Now, Judge Lowery wasn't being a naysayer. It's just that Kurtz was representing a humble family from Fulton, Missouri. And his opponent, the United States government, had a team of U.S. attorneys with almost unlimited resources and an unlimited budget. This case would be a modern day battle of David versus Goliath. The Havrem case was filed in the Western District of Missouri. The presiding judge, Nanette Lowery, knew the stakes were high for the hospital because really, that's who was on trial here, the va, not Richard Williams.
- [20:27]
Judge Nanette Lowery
You know, this case really was about the negligence of the va, not the culpability of the nurse.
- [20:34]
Eddie Edelstein
In other words, Curtis Job wasn't to prove that Richard Williams was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Rather, he would have to convince the judge that the preponderance of evidence showed that Williams had killed Elsie Havrem, thus resulting in Elzie's wrongful death, and that the VA could have reasonably prevented it from happening, but did not. But of course, proving all that meant that Kurtz also had to investigate the prime suspect in those deaths, former VA nurse Richard Williams. As he prepared for trial, Kurtz learned more about where Williams had been before and after working at the va.
- [21:15]
Unnamed Senator
I know that Richard Williams had questionable nursing practices at his prior employment in Springfield, at his subsequent employment in Ashland, including deaths in Ashland.
- [21:28]
Eddie Edelstein
We told you about Ashland earlier in the episode. But before he worked at the VA, Williams worked as an LPN, a licensed practical nurse at St. John's Hospital in Springfield, Missouri. And he'd been fired from the institution for failure to distribute medication and falsifying charts. Kurtz also learned about someone close to Williams, his wife, Melissa. The two had met in the late 1980s when Richard was working for Texas County Memorial Hospital in Houston, Missouri. Melissa was a senior in high school, volunteering at the hospital as a candy striper. Richard began attending the church where Melissa played piano, and they got married there soon after. Later, they'd end up working at the Columbia VA at the same time. At the time of the suspicious deaths, Melissa was actually a nurse working on five east, one floor above her husband on four East. Throughout the investigation, she claimed her husband was innocent. In an FBI interview, she even claimed that she had overheard another nurse get drunk at a party and claimed that he was the murderer. The FBI looked into this lead, and nothing came of it. But it shows that Melissa Williams didn't shy away from the investigation, and she was willing to go to bat for her husband. Kurtz also learned about another incident, and it pointed to a secret the couple was keeping. In November of 1994, almost a year after Richard Williams left the Columbia VA, the Ashland Police got a phone call at 11:37 at night. It was Richard on the line. He told them that he'd been trying to leave his trailer home when Melissa had hit him in the face. An officer named Jack Hastings drove to Goldenwood Mill, the trailer park where Mr. And Mrs. Williams lived. Richard was waiting outside. Officer Hastings could see that Richard had a scratch under his eye and a red mark on the right side of his face. Richard claimed Melissa had been throwing things around the room, and that's when she'd hit him in the face. He said he had sat on his wife to keep her from wailing on him. He insisted that he didn't want Melissa to get arrested. He just wanted to get his stuff so that he could escape from for the night. Officer Hastings said, I get to make the call if anyone is arrested. To which Richard responded, fine. I wasn't hit. The officer pointed out that there were obvious physical marks on his face. Then he went inside to speak to Melissa, and she had a different story to tell. Melissa said she had tried to leave when Richard physically restrained her. She hit him. Then came the real bombshell. Melissa told the officer that they had been fighting about the FBI's investigation. And things escalated when Melissa urged her husband to confess to the VA murders.
- [24:28]
Unnamed Senator
She was trying to get him to confess that he'd done it, and I presume she thought he'd had.
- [24:34]
Eddie Edelstein
Up to this point, Melissa had seemed to be on Richard's side. Now she wanted him to fess up to the murders. She seemed to have reached a breaking point and told the officer she was planning to file for divorce the next day. We have a copy of Officer Hastings incident report. Ultimately, he decided not to arrest either Richard or Melissa, and he allowed Richard to get some clothes and leave. The next day, the police got another call, this time from Melissa. She was worried about Richard because he hadn't come home. When the officer on the phone pressed Melissa about her wanting Richard to confess, she backtracked, this time talking to a cop. She said that she didn't think he had anything to do with the deaths at the VA hospital. Melissa did say that Richard's behavior had worried her. She caught him looking at a medical book to see, quote, how much you would have to take of a drug to kill yourself. Later that same day, Officer Hastings went back to the trailer park and found Richard had returned. He told the officer he and Melissa were working things out, and Richard and Melissa were still together by the time the Haverim case got underway. We reached out to Melissa, but she didn't respond to us. Most of what we know of her perspective comes from her deposition with Kurtz. She also declined to take the stand at trial. In fact, Kurtz was struggling to find anyone helpful who would testify.
- [26:08]
Unnamed Senator
There was loads of people at the VA Medical center who were scared to talk, didn't want to talk. God bless them. I don't. I understand it perfectly, but there were.
- [26:18]
Eddie Edelstein
Some exceptions to that rule.
- [26:20]
Unnamed Senator
But there were nurses who, when we took the depositions, they were willing to talk.
- [26:25]
Eddie Edelstein
Two nurses in particular. Kurtz took their depositions, and what they told him was chilling.
- [26:30]
Unnamed Senator
I said, you worked there with him. Yeah. And was there ever any conduct of his that you particularly remember that relates to the death of veterans? Yes, there was. What was it? Well, one night, I had lost three veterans overnight, which is a large number. And he, Richard Williams, came in with a big smile on his face and said, what are you trying to do? Race me? Another nurse was testifying. I said, were there any particular memories you had about his, referring to the death of patients? Yes. One morning I came in. There had been five die overnight. And he looked at me with kind of a smile on his face. I said, I took five more out last night.
- [27:26]
Eddie Edelstein
We found the transcript of this exchange, and it looks like Kurtz is misremembering the number. According to this nurse, Williams had said, I took another three out last night. Still, if you believe these stories, it almost sounded like the nurse was playing a very deadly game and the VA had just let that game play out. It was infuriating to him.
- [27:49]
Unnamed Senator
Not that we just gave them negligent care. We gave them death sentences in our facility.
- [27:59]
Eddie Edelstein
Kurtz now had the depositions, but he was still lacking one thing. Key witnesses who were willing to speak at trial. Without it, his case would seem flimsy in court. Luckily for Kurtz, there were two employees crazy enough to speak out against the shady hand that buttered their bread.
- [28:18]
Unnamed Senator
Lo I stand at the door and knock, you know, and I was knocking and we were knocking, and Adelstein and Christensen had the courage to speak up.
- [28:35]
Eddie Edelstein
Now, Kurt's had allies in his impossible fight against the US Government. He needed them. Considering the system seemed to be protecting Richard Williams.
- [28:44]
Dr. Michael Baden
You realize that this gentleman was protected by all the wrong things by the entire legal system in the United States, the FBI, the IG of the va. Everybody worked the best they could legally to protect him from being prosecuted.
- [29:05]
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- [30:05]
Eddie Edelstein
Elsie Havrem died in 1992. Six years later, his family finally got their day in court on July 27, 1998, the trial of Helen Havrem v. The United States of America began. The trial didn't take place in your standard courtroom. It was held in an auditorium, essentially a classroom, that was also a courtroom at the law school, ironically, a block away from the VA hospital right on the campus of the University of Missouri. It was a very public event. You might call it a circus. Almost every day, there were swarms of media and locals stepping in to see what was going on. They were curious to see if the family from rural Missouri was actually going to pull off suing the VA for wrongful death. First to take the stand was Gordon.
- [31:00]
Unnamed Senator
Dr. Gordon Christensen was allowed to give testimony that the chances of all these deaths happening as they did by chance, rather than by causation of something, some force or something, was one in a million.
- [31:16]
Eddie Edelstein
It was a bittersweet moment for Gordon. He had been trying to speak publicly about his research for half a decade, and he'd finally gotten the chance. My dad had his own challenging path to the witness stand. The VA and the US Government made it clear to him that they did not want him to testify. They tried to stop him.
- [31:35]
Dr. Michael Baden
So when I testified in the Havrem case, as I got ready to testify, the lawyers for the FBI said to me, we don't believe that you can testify. We believe if you do, we'll have to charge you with a crime because you work for the VA and we don't think you can testify. And Dr. Dix, who's the medical examiner, doesn't think you should testify either.
- [32:00]
Eddie Edelstein
Dad himself had a lot to lose. His position at the VA and a government pension for retirement. Dad loved that job and poured his time and energy into it. And the VA could take it away in a split second if they wanted to. But dad could not be swayed. He pointed out a loophole that the VA was not his sole employer. He also worked part time for the county as a coroner.
- [32:23]
Dr. Michael Baden
So I said, well, you understand, I only work for the VA 5/8 of the time. So I'm testifying on the time that I wasn't working for the va. Everyone.
- [32:32]
Eddie Edelstein
Knew that this was a big case for the US Government. They stood to lose not only face, but money. The Veterans Administration management had said nothing happened. The FBI told Congress and the Haverms that they found no evidence of criminal activity. If the government were to lose this case, they would all look like fools and it would reopen a file that the FBI and the US Government seemed to feel was completely closed. And behind them, men like Gordon and my dad were obstacles. They needed to discredit them, and they were ready to do it.
- [33:07]
Dr. Michael Baden
So I got up and testified for a couple hours, and at one point, the prosecutor said to me, isn't it true that you don't take yourself seriously as the medical examiner? And I said, that's true. I don't take myself seriously, but I take my work seriously. And then I saw an opportunity to go somewhere they didn't want to go. I said, but let me tell you what my role has been in this as a medical examiner. I went to the Asheville Nursing Home, where he received a letter from the director of the VA saying that he was qualified to take care of anybody. And while he was there, like, 30 people died. So then when I got done with that statement, the prosecutor said, get him off the stand.
- [33:51]
Eddie Edelstein
Despite the impassioned testimony from my dad and Gordon, the odds that the government would be found responsible remained slim.
- [33:57]
Unnamed Senator
Our case was built upon the idea that there had been many, many deaths there and that we had expert testimony of varying varieties. But the government had Michael Bauden.
- [34:10]
Eddie Edelstein
Dr. Baden was the famous medical examiner brought on by the FBI and the va. Baden, of course, was someone the judge would take seriously as an authority on these deaths. He had actually examined the 13 bodies. Gordon and Eddie had never gotten that opportunity. Now, originally, Boden said none of the 13 people had died natural deaths. He couldn't determine a cause of death for any of them.
- [34:35]
Unnamed Senator
He didn't define anything. But he said, I cannot agree that they died in accordance with what's on the death certificate. That's all he said. Well, then he turned and he said, but they didn't die from this. They didn't die from that.
- [34:50]
Eddie Edelstein
Up until this point in the trial, Kurtz's argument had, in part rested on the idea that Williams used codeine to kill the patients.
- [34:59]
Unnamed Senator
And Bod said, no, no, it wasn't Codine. It was not Codine. But his position was, you can't prove any of these deaths were caused by the things that you're saying about. And he was a total defense witness, and he was wiping out the 42 deaths altogether, including Elsie. Hebron.
- [35:22]
Eddie Edelstein
Baden was doing exactly what the government had hoped he would do. He'd undermined Kurtz's argument and even undermined the idea that there was anything unusual about the deaths at all. If Baden denied that codeine was what killed Elsie, arguing instead that he died by natural causes, well, that was a death blow to their case. But then, with Baden on the stand, Kurt saw an opportunity, and he sure as heck took it.
- [35:49]
Unnamed Senator
And I said, doctor, you have said, have you not, that there are ways that you know about to kill people that no one will ever be able to detect the means of death? And I'm just. I'm just looking at him, you know, eye to eye, about 10ft away, thinking, come on, Mike, come on with it here. And he says, that is true. I have said that. I said, would you give us examples? And he listed about four examples off and certain mixtures of this and that, so on. So he said it. Now here's where it went. Now we're in there proving codeine, codeine, codeine, codeine with our expert witnesses. And the government's expert witness says, you know, there's ways to kill people that you'll never be able to identify what it is.
- [36:41]
Eddie Edelstein
When we spoke with Dr. Baden, he didn't remember what methods he had discussed at the trial. But without hesitation, he rattled off four ways you could kill someone in a hospital. Four ways that even a post mortem investigation wouldn't reveal anyway. This single exchange changed the whole focus of the trial. Kodin, Schmodin. The fact that this drug wasn't detected in Elzie's body didn't really matter anymore.
- [37:07]
Unnamed Senator
So what, we don't have to identify it, we have to just identify that it killed him.
- [37:12]
Eddie Edelstein
It was a Perry Mason moment. Kurtz had just taken the government's witness and, well, he'd made Baden his ally. Kurtz took his seat after Baden's testimony, knowing full well that he'd changed the rules of the game, because proving the cause of death had now become a secondary issue. Kurtz, along with the help of a fellow lawyer and a law student, had done some good work. He had argued Elsie Havrem had been killed and the VA hadn't done enough to stop it. And with some help from dad, he had introduced the mysterious deaths in Ashland into the record. Finally, he seemed to have turned the government's expert witness against them, making him an expert who bolstered the Haverms case. Now it was all up to the judge. John Kurtz spent about three years preparing for the VA trial. Over that time, he made multiple visits to the Haverums family home. And through all the visits and conversations and all the days of trial, the family remained amazingly unruffled.
- [38:34]
Unnamed Senator
I never saw anybody in that family cry. Never. I thought, well, these are just solid, solid mid Missouri people.
- [38:42]
Eddie Edelstein
Finally, a little over a week after testimony began, the last day of the trial arrived. It was August 7, 1998, a Friday. No one was as anxious to hear the verdict as the Havrem family. They had been helping Kurtz build the case for years now and were there every day of the trial. Here's Elzie's daughter in law, Sydney.
- [39:03]
Sydney Havrem
We didn't miss a minute of it. Not a minute.
- [39:08]
Eddie Edelstein
At 12:50pm Judge Lowery made her announcement. Journalist Rudy Keller was there.
- [39:14]
Dr. Michael Baden
And the judge said before she took.
- [39:16]
Unnamed Senator
A recess for lunch that she would make a decision in the afternoon. And so a rush to get a story out that it was coming, and then it was back to the courtroom to hear the verdict.
- [39:38]
Eddie Edelstein
Judge Lowery wanted to make a ruling while all the evidence and testimony was fresh in her mind. It was a guiding principle she'd learned from another judge during her training.
- [39:48]
Judge Nanette Lowery
Don't dawdle. Go ahead and get it done. And that's what, in fact, I did.
- [39:57]
Eddie Edelstein
She returned to her chambers and prepared to make a decision.
- [40:01]
Judge Nanette Lowery
And so we had a very hectic, intense period, my law clerk and I, where we're making sure, you know, dotting every I, crossing every t. Because once you say it out loud in the courtroom, you can't go back in the written record and say, oh, you know, really, that wasn't right. And really, I should have said it this way. And you had to be sure.
- [40:25]
Eddie Edelstein
After about 90 minutes, she returned to the bench with a ruling.
- [40:29]
Unnamed Senator
I'm sitting up on the table like this, and here she comes to read and deliver her opinion. And more or less, the first words out of her mouth were these. By every bit of evidence in this case, it is extremely clear that Mr. LZ Haverham was a fine and very decent man. But that cannot be a reason to rule in favor of the plaintiff. At which time I sat there and I thought, oh, my God, these people are sitting right behind me, and I have just lost this case. Oh, my God. I will tell you, at that point where I thought I had lost the case, I had a physical phenomenon that is, I've never duplicated anywhere anyplace else. And this probably does not belong in anything you preserve, but my sinuses opened up and my nose was like a faucet. You just on the table, and I'm seeing what is this? And so I start wiping it up and then putting it on my socks.
- [41:29]
Eddie Edelstein
And then while Kurtz's sinuses emptied like a cloud during a summer thunderstorm, Judge Lowery continued to read her verdict. I'm going to read you directly from her written order. Quote, viewing the record as a whole, the court finds that the hospital was negligent in failing to take action to protect its patients prior to June 14, 1992. Then she went on, I must also.
- [41:56]
Judge Nanette Lowery
Find that it is more probable than not that Richard Williams killed Elsie Havram. Among other things, I considered the. The inconsistencies and alterations in Elsie Havrem's death note, the decision not to call a code blue, the timing and location of death, Nurse Williams, prior problems with not giving medication that he said he had given, the absence of a respiratory flowchart, the unexpected nature of the death, the absence of a natural progression.
- [42:31]
Eddie Edelstein
To be clear, Richard Williams had not been convicted of a crime. Remember, the case was not against him. It was a civil case against the VA hospital. And the va, backed by the mighty US Government, had lost Kurtz, and the Havrems had won. Sitting right behind Kurt was Helen, her children, and the rest of the family who'd been waiting on this day for six years.
- [42:55]
Unnamed Senator
I turned around, and every single one of them was crying. The only time I ever saw them cry. And it was just. It was so moving.
- [43:11]
Eddie Edelstein
Helen Havrem was awarded $450,000 for the wrongful death of her husband and the validation that her instincts had been right. It was a highlight of Kurtz's career and a scathing judgment of the VA's response.
- [43:26]
Judge Nanette Lowery
You know, the VA is a government institution that we all expect to operate in a certain way, that they do our work for the whole society, and so we have more of stake in it. The VA didn't intentionally do anything bad, but they were negligent, in my opinion, in the sense that they were aware of complaints and several complaints about this nurse and his conduct and unexplained deaths on this ward and didn't investigate it.
- [44:12]
Eddie Edelstein
And though this hadn't been a criminal trial for Richard Williams, the judge had something to say on this matter. She believed he had killed Elsie Heffram.
- [44:21]
Judge Nanette Lowery
The statistical evidence was incredible. There was no explanation that was given by anybody how there could be such a discrepancy between the deaths that were occurring on the night shift during that time period that this nurse had become the supervisor of that ward. And I think that was very persuasive.
- [44:53]
Eddie Edelstein
Decades later, Lowery stands by her decision.
- [44:56]
Judge Nanette Lowery
You know, it's always nice to feel like you did what was, quote, right. Sometimes the law is consistent with what's right. And, you know, this was one of those times. And I never thought that the Havrems were interested in money. I thought that the Havrems were interested in changing the practices at the VA hospital.
- [45:25]
Eddie Edelstein
And that's a really important point. If you don't punish institutions for neglect, they have no reason to change. That is one of the reasons we have a legal system. So even if Richard Williams hadn't been held responsible, it was almost as important to put the VA on trial. Because if they chose PR over patients once and got away with it, what's to stop them from doing it again and again and again? The government had lost this case, and the verdict lit a fire under the ass of the FBI. But it had another effect too. It really angered the Veterans Administration, which wasn't just going to give up. In fact, the VA seemed determined to exact revenge on the employees who had testified against them, especially two men, Dr. Gordon Christensen and Dr. Eddie Adelstein. My dad. Next time on Witnessed Night Shift.
- [46:24]
Dr. Michael Baden
Then a week later, they announced that they were sending a team to investigate me for stealing drugs. That's just like they don't care. I mean, they just, they just like how many mean things can they do to you?
- [46:35]
Judge Nanette Lowery
It was a very, very frightening years there. I remember Gordon and Andy swept our house thinking that there might be bugs.
- [46:44]
Eddie Edelstein
This is a case from the very, very beginning that has been botched by everybody. Not just the FBI, but everybody.
- [46:58]
Jake Edelstein
Unlock all episodes of Witnessed Night Shift ad free right now by subscribing to the Binge Podcast channel. Not only will you immediately unlock all episodes of this show, but you'll get binge access to an entire network of other great true crime and investigative podcasts. All ad free. Plus, on the first of every month, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series that's all episodes all at once. Unlock your listening now by clicking subscribe at the top of the Witness show page on Apple podcasts or visit getthebinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. Witnessed Night Shift is a production of Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment. The show was hosted by Jake Adelstein. It was written and reported by Jake Edelstein and me, Shoko Plambeck. Amy Plambeck is the producer. Elizabeth Van Broecklyn is the managing producer. Michael Kanyon Meyer is our story editor. Fact checking by Aboukar Adan. Josh Dean is our executive producer. Sound design, mix and original scoring by Erica Wong. Additional music from Mike Harmon and apm. A special thanks to Eddie Edelstein and Benny Edelstein. Thanks also to our operations team, Doug Slaywin, Ashley Warren, Sabina Mara, Destiny Dingle and David Eichler. Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa Gregoriatis, Adam Hoff and Matt Schaer. If you enjoyed witnessed Night Shift, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcast.