Real Crime/Paranormal/Conspiracy Theories Book III

Orville Lynn Majors

Orville Lynn Majors (April 24,1961 – September 24, 2017) was a licensed practical nurse andserial killer, who was convicted of murdering his patients inClinton, Indiana. Though he was only tried for seven murders andconvicted of six, he was believed to have committed additional casesbetween 1993 and 1995, the period of time for which he was employedby the hospital where the deaths occurred, and for which he wasinvestigated. It was reported that he murdered patients who heclaimed were demanding, whiny, or disproportionately added to hiswork load.

Early life and career

Majors was born in Greenville, Kentuckyin 1961. He took care of his elderly grandmother as a teen, and theexperience led him to go into nursing. He graduated from NashvilleMemorial School of Practical Nursing in 1989, and took a job atVermillion County Hospital in Clinton, north of Terre Haute. Hebriefly took a higher-paying job in Tennessee, but returned to VCH in1993.

Investigation

Majors was one of the most popularnurses at VCH, especially among elderly patients. He received glowingevaluations.

However, suspicion developed when thedeath rate at VCH jumped significantly after Majors returned toIndiana. In the year before his return to VCH, an average of around26 patients died annually at the 56-bed hospital and four-bedintensive care unit. After Majors started working at the facility,however, this rate skyrocketed to more than 100 per year, with nearlyone out of every three patients admitted to the hospital dying.

The circumstances of the deaths alsoraised eyebrows, even though most of them were elderly. Some diedfrom an erratic heartbeat following respiratory arrest, a reverse ofthe normal pattern. Others died from conditions they did not havewhen they were admitted or took a sharp downturn despite beingotherwise healthy. At the same time, patients began coding at analarming rate.

Eventually, Majors' coworkers begannoticing a correlation between the spike in deaths and when Majorswas on duty, joking about when the next patient would die. However,in 1995, nursing supervisor Dawn Stirek was concerned enough to checkthe time cards to see who was on duty at the time of the deaths. Shediscovered that Majors was on duty for 130 of 147 deaths between 1993and 1995. Alarmed, she alerted hospital officials, who called in theIndiana State Police. Majors was suspended pending investigation. TheIndiana State Nursing Board suspended Majors' license for five yearsafter it determined he had exceeded his authority by giving emergencydrugs and working in an ICU without a doctor, and VCH fired him.

Investigators subsequently determinedthat when Majors was on duty, there was an average of one death every23 hours, or almost one death per day–a pattern that held when heworked on weekdays or weekends. When he was off duty, the death ratedropped to one every 23 days. They also determined that a patient atVCH was 42 times more likely to die when Majors was on duty.

Majors adamantly denied wrongdoing.While running a pet store in his hometown of Linton, he hired alawyer and made the rounds of talk shows to proclaim his innocence. Prosecutors and the state police were hamstrung at first; while theybelieved from the beginning that Majors was a killer, they could notprove how he did it. However, after Majors began his public relationsoffensive, several relatives of patients who died at VCH called thestate police to report suspicious behavior on Majors' part beforetheir loved ones died. They recalled that their loved ones eithercoded or died within minutes of Majors giving them injections, insome cases before he left the room.

The state police medical team noticedseveral patients' heart patterns widening around the time Majors wason duty. They called in electrophysiologist Eric N. Prystowsky tolook at the EKGs. He suspected that there were only threeexplanations for these patterns–a potassium overdose, a suddenheart attack, or a large clot in the lung. With this in mind, inSeptember 1995, state officials began exhuming 15 patients who hadbeen witnessed getting injections and had widening heart patternsaround the time they died. None of the bodies had signs of a heartattack or clotting in the lung, which proved they had been murdered.After a former roommate recalled seeing potassium chloride andepinephrine vials in their house, police obtained a search warrantand discovered numerous vials that could be traced back to thehospital.

Prosecution and trial

After a two-year investigation, Majorswas arrested in December 1997 and charged with seven murders. Asmentioned above, investigators believed he killed 100 to 130 people.However, prosecutors chose to focus on just seven to keep fromoverwhelming the jury. A total of 79 witnesses were called to thestand at his trial in 1999. Some of the witnesses testified that hehated elderly people, and that he believed that they "shouldbe gassed."

Majors was convicted on October 17 forsix murders; the jury deadlocked on a seventh because the victim tooklonger to die than the others. He was sentenced to six consecutiveterms of 60 years, the maximum possible penalty under Indiana law atthe time, virtually assuring that he would die in prison. Presidingjudge Ernest Yelton described Majors' crimes as "diabolicalacts" and "a parallel of evil at its most wicked,"and concluded that "the maximum sentence is the minimum sentencein this case."

Aftermath

VCH, which had been renamed WestCentral Community Hospital after ousting Majors, was slapped withwrongful-death suits by the families of 80 patients who died atMajors' hands. Most of them settled the suits and were compensated bya state patients' fund. The hospital was subsequently fined $80,000for negligence and code violations, and was briefly forced to shutdown after losing its accreditation. By 2009, it had been taken overby Terre Haute-based Union Hospital and renamed Union HospitalClinton.

Majors appealed to the Indiana SupremeCourt, which let the verdict stand in 2002. He served his sentenceat Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, where he died of heartfailure on September 24, 2017 while arguing with correctional staff,Officer R. Houston.

Television

The story of the police investigationand prosecution of Majors is featured in a segment of an episode ofThe New Detectives entitled "Broken Trust" (Season9, Episode 11).

The story was also covered in anepisode of Oxygen's License To Kill, entitled "LethalInjections."

Majors' crimes were also discussed atlength in the Infamous Murders episode "Angels of Death".