Ex-Nurse Charged In Deaths Prosecutors Charge Him With Killing Patients With Injections

A former nurse who was on duty when dozens of hospital patients mysteriously died was arrested Monday and charged with killing six of them with injections.

Orville Lynn Majors, 36, was on duty when 130 of 147 patients died from 1993 to 1995. Police have said he was a suspect in as many as 100 of the unexplained deaths, and a search of his former home this year turned up a variety of drugs, syringes and needles.

In at least one case, investigators say they have an eyewitness, Paula Holdaway, who said she was in the room when Majors came in and gave her mother, Dorothea Hixon, an injection.

“Majors kissed her on the forehead, brushed her hair back and said ‘It’s all right punkin, everything’s going to be all right now,”’ Detective Frank Turchi said in an affidavit filed in court.

“Within 60 seconds after that, Hixon rolled her eyes back and died.”

No injection had been ordered by Hixon’s doctor, according to the affidavit.

His lawyer said there is no evidence Majors did anything wrong.

State police and prosecutors, who spent $1.5 million searching for the cause of the deaths of mostly elderly patients, declined to elaborate on the charges.

However, a state police commander said an extensive study of the victims finished in early November was a turning point.

During the period Majors worked at Vermillion County Hospital, now known as West Central Community Hospital, a death occurred every 23.1 hours that he was on duty, according to the study. When he was off duty, a death occurred every 551.6 hours.

“Once we got that (study), things sailed right along,” said Lt. Charles P. Ellis, commander of the state police post at Terre Haute.

The investigation included the exhumations of 15 patients, including the six people named in Monday’s court affidavit who all died from injections.

An autopsy revealed that three of the patients’ deaths were consistent with the injection of potassium, which can cause the heart to stop.