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Thread: How a Nuclear Weapons Lab Helped Crack a Serial-Killer Case

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    How a Nuclear Weapons Lab Helped Crack a Serial-Killer Case

    How a Nuclear Weapons Lab Helped Crack a Serial-Killer Case
    A prominent forensic science center played a crucial role in helping to solve a notorious 1990s murder case.

    https://undark.org/2024/02/09/wilo-s...r-nuclear-lab/





    N
    NUCLEAR WEAPONS laboratories don’t often help solve serial-killer cases. But in the investigation of Efren Saldivar, data from such a lab provided the clinching evidence that led to his conviction on six counts of murder.


    As a respiratory therapist at Glendale Adventist Medical Center in California, where he started working in 1989, Saldivar was at times tasked with caring for terminally ill patients. One day in 1998, according to a report from the Los Angeles Times, the hospital got a tip that someone had “helped a patient die fast.”

    Hospital officials had previously investigated Saldivar because of an internal tip about alleged misconduct — he had a reputation for having a “magic syringe,”


    Police soon became involved, calling Saldivar in for questioning.


    During that session, Saldivar confessed to dozens of murders after his employment began, and continuing up to 1997, stating that he poisoned patients with overdoses of the paralyzing chemicals pancuronium bromide, also known as Pavulon, and succinylcholine chloride. He was arrested immediately.


    But there was little physical evidence to back up his self-incriminating claims. And without that outside corroboration, authorities had to set Saldivar free — a freedom during which he publicly retracted his confession, citing his own depression and pressure from a detective as reasons for the alleged lies. Now left without Saldivar’s word, investigators scrambled for actual evidence. They thought the chemical part of the confession might hold the key: Perhaps prosecutors could prove Pavulon and succinylcholine chloride were in his victims’ systems when they died.








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