1981 — March-April, hospital nurse kills elderly patients, Perris & Banning, CA — 12

–12  New York Times. “Nurse Sentenced to Die in Slayings.” 4-2-1984.

–12  Press-Enterprise (De Atley), Riverside Co., CA. “‘Angel of Death’ dies in prison.” 8-12-2010.

 

Narrative Information

 

April 12, 1984, NYT: “Los Angeles, April 11 — A nurse convicted of killing 12 elderly patients with overdoses of a heart-regulating drug was sentenced today to die in the gas chamber. The coronary care nurse, Robert Rubane Diaz, 46 years old, received the sentence from Judge John H. Barnard of Superior Court with little show of emotion.

 

“On March 29, Judge Barnard found Mr. Diaz guilty of the killings at two Riverside County hospitals in 1981. The verdict ended a five-month nonjury trial in which prosecutors asserted that Mr. Diaz had murdered elderly patients in his care by injecting them with lidocaine, a powerful drug used to control irregular heartbeats….

 

“Mr. Diaz was arrested Nov. 23, 1981, after an investigation into the mysterious deaths of several elderly patients at the Community Hospital of the Valleys in Perris and the San Gorgonio Pass Memorial Hospital in Banning. Eleven of the 12 deaths occurred at the Perris facility in March and April 1981…

 

“Investigators determined through autopsies that the patients were homicide victims and that the bodies contained more than 1,000 milligrams of lidocaine at the time of death. A normal dose ranges from 50 to 100 milligrams.

 

“Prosecuting attorneys had argued that Mr. Diaz, who worked as a temporary nurse on the night shifts at both hospitals, was the only link between the two facilities’ intensive care units at the time….

 

“…a critical-care nurse at the Perris hospital, testified Mr. Diaz had foreseen patients’ sudden medical problems and had carried medical syringes and vials in his pockets, a violation of hospital procedure.

 

“The original investigation in the case had been based on the unusual pattern of deaths among elderly patients in Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside Counties. Investigators said as many as 50 patients might have been involved, but said evidence allowed them to formally charge Mr. Diaz in the deaths of 12.” (New York Times. “Nurse Sentenced to Die in Slayings.” 4-2-1984.)

 

Aug 12, 2010: “Robert R. Diaz, the ‘Angel of Death’ nurse convicted of killing a dozen of his patients in Riverside County, died of natural causes Wednesday, 26 years after he was sent to San Quentin’s Death Row. He was 72. Mr. Diaz died at a community hospital near the prison, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Terry Thornton said. He had a lengthy illness….

 

“In an era of bizarre serial killing cases in California, Mr. Diaz’s was one of the most unusual. His victims, ages 52 to 95, all had to be exhumed; he shunned a jury trial on his attorney’s advice; and a challenge to his closed-to-the-public preliminary hearing resulted in a major First Amendment decision by the Supreme Court.

 

“Patrick Magers, a retired Riverside County Superior Court judge who was the prosecutor in Diaz’s case, said the case began when officials at what was then Community Hospital of the Valley in Perris had a cluster of patient deaths in 1981. ‘They realized something was very, very, very wrong,’ Magers said. The officials contacted the coroner’s office, which in turn talked to the district attorney’s office. The investigation grew to other care facilities. Eventually 38 bodies were exhumed. Tissue from the bodies was sent to a lab in Utah, which worked on analyzing the samples for three months, Magers recalled. The conclusion was 12 of the patients died from a huge overdose of the drug lidocaine, a heart muscle relaxant. And further investigation showed that the nurse on duty when each of the patients died was Robert Rubane Diaz, Magers said. ‘We are not talking about a therapeutic misadventure,’ Magers recalled in a phone call interview from Florida. ‘We are talking about a huge amount of lidocaine — 1,000 to 2,000 milligrams. The average dose is 100 milligrams. So the victims received one injection that was 10 to 20 times higher than any injection should have been.’” (Press-Enterprise (Richard K. De Atley), Riverside County, CA. “‘Angel of Death’ dies in prison.” 8-12-2010.)

 

Sources

 

New York Times. “Nurse Sentenced to Die in Slayings.” 4-2-1984. Accessed 5-25-2017 at: http://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/12/us/nurse-sentenced-to-die-in-slayings.html

 

Press-Enterprise (Richard K. De Atley), Riverside County, CA. “‘Angel of Death’ dies in prison.” 8-12-2010. Accessed 5-25-2017 at: http://www.pe.com/2010/08/12/angel-of-death-dies-in-prison/