Those days the hospital was immersed in a true reign of terror after the death under strange circumstances of several patients. The center's management suspected one of its workers, but they did not know who it could be. Until two patients with kidney failure, who were waiting their turn to receive dialysis treatment, witnessed something as unusual as it was terrifying.
His nurse was crouched on the floor a few meters away. That position caught the attention of the women, who watched as the health worker took a syringe, filled it with a clear liquid from a cleaning bucket, and then injected it into another patient's intravenous line. Nurse Kim Sáenz had just been caught red-handed with one of her fatal bleach injections.
Little is known about the childhood and adolescence of Kimberly Clark Fowler, better known by her married name Sáenz, except for some biographical notes. For example, our protagonist was born on November 3, 1973 in Fall River (Massachusetts), although she spent much of her puberty in Pollok, a suburb of Texas. During her time in high school, Kim was one of the most popular girls and was part of the cheerleading squad.
However, an unwanted pregnancy at the age of thirteen cut short all her dreams and plans. The girl had to abandon her studies and dedicate herself to raising her first-born child. Although she eventually got married and had a second child, she finally chose to graduate and obtain a diploma in nursing. That was her vocation.
Kim began her career as a nurse in several hospitals in Lufkin (Texas), where she had moved with her family in 2006. In less than a year, the woman changed jobs up to four times after being fired for multiple negligence. Among them, the theft of Demerol (an opioid pain medication) and cheating urine tests to avoid the detection of narcotic substances.
Kim was a drug addict, suffering from depression and taking stolen prescription drugs. In addition, her husband had asked for a divorce from her and for a protection order against her when she was involved in a domestic altercation that landed her in jail for public intoxication and trespassing.
In the midst of this personal chaos, a new job offer came for the DaVita Lufkin Dialysis Center. It was the fall of 2007. Her job was to take care of the dialysis treatment of patients with kidney failure and provide them with the relevant medication intravenously.
A few months later, in the spring of 2008, a strange event began to hit the hospital: patients died of heart failure after dialysis. So much so that the United States Emergency Medical Services Agency (EMS) went to the DaVita facilities up to thirty times in the month of April, when in the last fifteen months they had gone only twice. Something was happening.
To investigate the incidents and manage a new procedure to find out what was causing the exponential increase in deaths, the hospital appointed a new coordinator, Amy Clinton, who arranged changes to workers' shifts and positions.
One of the “injured” was Kim Sáenz, who after learning of her change of duties became upset and upset. But no one gave it much importance.
Until on April 28, two patients at the clinic, Leraline Hamilton and Linda Hall, observed Kim in a suspicious attitude: she picked up a cleaning bucket, placed it next to her and, while bending down, filled a tube with a liquid. transparent and injected that same fluid into the intravenous lines of two patients.
Linda and Leraline notified Amy and the supervisor confronted Kim, accusing her of introducing bleach to her patients. The nurse denied the major and she was suspended from work and sent home.
In the following 24 hours, the facts were brought to the attention of the authorities, the intravenous lines handled by the nurse were analyzed and it was confirmed that the injected fluid was bleach. Following the results, the hospital fired her worker and provided investigators with the file of the five who died in the last month.
For their part, the agents searched the nurse's home and seized her computer. This became a key test. Among the searches found in the history was everything related to “bleach poisoning” and the possible detection in dialysis treatment.
When police questioned Kim, the woman mentioned using bleach before the detectives themselves brought it up. That gave her away. Furthermore, she claimed to have used a syringe to measure the fluid because there were no measuring cups, a justification that was of no use to her.
Kim Sáenz was arrested and charged with five homicides and five counts of aggravated assault, the latter for the five victims who suffered injuries and survived. The trial against the murderous nurse began in March 2012 and district attorney Clyde Herrington put on the table the motive that led her to commit these crimes: “She was depressed. She was frustrated and I think she took those frustrations out on the patients.”
However, that explanation did not serve to calm the anger and distress of the victims' families. Wanda Hollingsworth, daughter of Thelma Metcalf, addressed the defendant as the jury deliberated: “You are nothing more than a psychopathic serial killer. You have disgraced your family and the medical field. I hope you burn in hell.”
On April 2, 2012, almost four years after the first deaths, Kim Sáenz was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and 20 years for each count of aggravated assault. Once the verdict was known, the granddaughter of other victims, Marisa Fernández, said with satisfaction: “It is my duty as a Christian to forgive you. And I'll do it. I just hope, for your sake, that you can come forward and ask for forgiveness for yourself.”
