Hospital Worker Denies Confession, His Brother Says

The whereabouts of the Glendale hospital worker who purportedly admitted killing 40 to 50 terminally ill patients remained uncertain Saturday, with his brother contending that Efren Saldivar is staying with relatives and has denied confessing to police.

“He’s not an angel of death. He’s just an angel,” Eddie Saldivar said of his older brother.

“He knows this is going to blow over,” he told The Times. “We all know it’s going to blow over.”

One day after he was identified as having told police he killed dozens of patients as a respiratory therapist at Glendale Adventist Medical Center, there were these developments in the case of 28-year-old Efren Saldivar:

* Glendale police said they did not know where Saldivar was and defended the department from questions about how it lost track of him after his alleged confession. Though Saldivar was arrested March 11, the department could not immediately develop the corroborating evidence to charge him and, after his release, did not have the staff to keep Saldivar under constant surveillance, a spokesman said.

* Police said their investigation had been seriously damaged by the release of Saldivar’s name and purported confession. That information was disclosed by a state agency that oversees respiratory care after it suspended Saldivar’s license.

* Hours after the bizarre allegations surfaced in news reports, both the hospital and Glendale police were deluged with calls, many from relatives of patients who died at the hospital or are receiving care. Police said some callers provided tips, but that none were considered “real substantial.”

Although police sources said they were unsure of Saldivar’s location, family members said he fled--not from police, but from the glare of the media.

“He’s with some relatives. He’s fine,” said his brother, Eddie, who spoke on the patio behind the single-story Tujunga home where he has lived within his brother and parents for more than 20 years.

Eddie Saldivar accused authorities of “twisting things” that his brother may have said during questioning. The proof of his brother’s innocence, he said, is that he has been released and that he has not bothered to hire a lawyer.

“There are no arrests, there’s no evidence . . . but he confessed?” Saldivar said incredulously. “Did he really confess?” he asked in a sarcastic tone.

Even as his brother denied any wrongdoing by Saldivar, authorities were vigorously pursuing a criminal investigation.

Police Angered by Release of Details

As the purported confession of Saldivar wrought panic in some quarters of Glendale, police set up shop inside the 450-bed hospital for an investigation that, by all accounts, will be daunting: A police affidavit said Saldivar confessed to killing near-death patients--identities undisclosed--over a six-year period.

As one law enforcement official said: “We’re not negating the fact this guy has confessed to 40 or 50 murders. But we gotta be able to prove it. And I have concerns about proving it.”

That concern was apparent at the Glendale Police Department, where a spokesman said that the criminal investigation had been hobbled by state medical officials releasing details about Saldivar’s case Friday.

“The release of this information in an untimely manner has destroyed the investigative process,” said Glendale Sgt. Rick Young. “[Friday] night, there was anger. Today, we are very concerned about their lack of thinking and not working with us.”

But state officials said the administrative files were released only after their attorneys--and attorneys for the hospital--unsuccessfully sought on two occasions and before two judges to have the records sealed in recent weeks.

With those sealing requests denied, state officials said they had no choice but to turn over the relevant medical board case records when they were requested by the media Friday. “I understand that [police] have a different burden of proof. But as a public agency, we release public records,” said Cathleen McCoy, head of the state’s Respiratory Care Board.

Even with that disclosure, it was unclear what authorities had in the way of evidence or even potential suspects.

Although it was evident from court records that Saldivar was the focus of the criminal investigation, one law enforcement source said a search warrant names two other respiratory therapists at the hospital as part of the inquiry.

Several officials versed in the case pointed out that Saldivar’s activities first drew suspicion in April when the hospital received an anonymous tip about an alleged mercy killing by the employee. At that time, the hospital conducted an internal investigation that failed to produce conclusive evidence of wrongdoing.

Then, in February, hospital officials received another tip that Saldivar was hastening the deaths of terminally ill patients.

“This time, [hospital officials] brought in the police,” one law enforcement source said, suggesting that hospital officials were clearly concerned. They “are the ones who have patient charts. They know the death rates. So . . . they must believe they have more” evidence than before.

“They also suspended so many people,” the source said, referring to the hospital’s decision to suspend its entire 44-person respiratory care staff during the investigation. “And I just don’t think [officials] would take it so seriously unless they have some sort of . . . body of evidence, however flimsy it may be.”

Nevertheless, how police could lose sight of someone who had reportedly just confessed to a string of slayings remains one of the more vexing questions in the case.

“That’s unbelievable,” said one law enforcement official familiar with the case.

But Glendale police spokesman Young said there was no way the agency could have watched Saldivar 24 hours a day.

“We don’t have the staffing to do that,” Young said.

Six investigators have been assigned to the case full time, including half of the department’s six-person homicide squad. The department has also received help from medical experts.

Authorities said that without more independent evidence of a crime, there was nothing that could be done soon about Saldivar’s purported acts.

“At this point, all we are doing is investigating. But as far as specifics, I’m not prepared to say more than that,” said Victoria Pipkin, director of communications for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

“It is a very extensive investigation. It has to be, because they are very serious, serious allegations,” Pipkin said.

In an affidavit filed so state authorities could suspend Saldivar’s license, Glendale police said they launched a criminal investigation March 3 after meeting with hospital officials about a caller who had alleged that a respiratory therapist “helped a patient die fast” at Glendale Adventist.

Four days later, according to the affidavit, police spoke to respiratory therapist Bob Baker. Baker, the affidavit said, told them that 18 months ago he had expressed surprise at the death of one of Saldivar’s patients and was told by another respiratory therapist, Elmer Diwa, that Saldivar had a “magic syringe.” Diwa and Baker could not be reached for comment.

In addition, Baker purportedly told police, he saw several vials of morphine and two vials of a paralyzing medication in Saldivar’s locker at Glendale Adventist. Baker, according to the affidavit, said he did not bring the matter to the attention of authorities because he had made his discovery while playing a prank on Saldivar and was in his locker without permission.

Contents of Affidavit

On the evening of March 11, the affidavit says, Saldivar told Glendale police that in 1989, some six months after joining the hospital, he “basically suffocated” a patient who was still breathing about an hour after being taken off life support. Saldivar, according to the affidavit, said he held the respirator “breathing tubes” together to block the flow of air and that the patient died after about 15 minutes.

During a taped polygraph examination, Saldivar not only retold the story about that alleged killing but cited other incidents in which he had “failed to provide” medical care for patients who then died, according to the affidavit.

“Saldivar talked about anger at seeing patients kept alive as opposed to the guilt he would feel at the failure of providing life-saving care,” the affidavit said.

Polygraph examiner Ervin Youngblood asked Saldivar if he considered himself an “angel of death,” and the hospital worker answered, ‘Yes,” according to the affidavit.

During that interview, Saldivar also allegedly recounted how he injected one patient in August with medication that led to paralysis and then death.

Later that evening, according to the affidavit, Saldivar “admitted” that he caused 40 to 50 deaths at the hospital by lethal injections or by cutting off the oxygen of patients who were on ventilators.

Saldivar, the affidavit said, told authorities he only picked patients who were unconscious, had “do not resuscitate” orders on their charts and looked like they were “ready to die.”

Said the affidavit: “Saldivar said he prided himself in having a very ethical criteria as to how he picked his victims.”

That same day, March 11, Saldivar was arrested. The next day, Glendale police notified the district attorney’s office about a potential case. But on the 13th, with no corroborating evidence to support his alleged confession, police had no choice but to release Saldivar, officials said.

Notwithstanding Saldivar’s purported statements, authorities have said, the law requires prosecutors to produce evidence of a crime beyond a defendant’s confession.

As state Supreme Court Justice Stanley Mosk wrote in a January opinion: “The rule arose because of the law’s unease with inflicting punishment when a ‘confession’ may have been misreported or misconstrued, elicited by force or coercion, based upon mistaken perception of the facts or law, or falsely given by a mentally disturbed individual.”

Meantime, new details about Saldivar emerged from an interview with his brother.

A graduate of Verdugo Hills High School where he was a straight-A student and a member of student government, Saldivar attended Valley College Medical and Dental to become a respiratory therapist, his brother said.

An avid mountain biker and movie buff, Efren Saldivar “is a constant joker, always trying to make a point to put a smile on someone else’s face,” his brother said. “He’s never ever had an enemy. What does that tell you?”

In the Saldivar home, where snapshots of smiling family members adorn the refrigerator, Saldivar’s parents were huddled in their bedroom, devastated by the allegations against their eldest son.

“It’s constant headache and heartache for them,” Eddie Saldivar said.

Likewise, the allegations of a hospital worker turned killer rocked many at Glendale Adventist and families with loved ones there.

Hospital officials said a telephone hotline was jammed by more than 230 calls, many of them from the media.

And officials circulated a letter to patients to ease their anxiety. “We want to assure you that we firmly believe there is no reason for concern regarding safety,” the letter said. “We have taken every reasonable precaution to protect patients, and we are committed to doing whatever it takes to get to the truth in this investigation.”

Also contributing to this story were Times staff writers Jill Leovy and Joe Mozingo, and Buck Wargo, a staff writer for the Glendale News-Press, which is published by Times Community News, a subsidiary of Times Mirror Co., which publishes the Los Angeles Times.