California respiratory therapist Efren Saldivar killed somewhere between 50 and 120 patients who already were near death from 1988 to 1998.
Saldivar was born in Texas. After completing his education, he took a job on the night shift at a California medical center, where the killings by injection took place.
His motives for these killings remains unclear. Perhaps he wished to help people in distress die rather than suffer further. Perhaps not.
He confessed to 50 such killings, then recanted. Twenty of his alleged victims were exhumed, and abnormal levels of a morphine-like drug were found. He pled guilty to six counts of murder in 2002 and is not serving two life terms without a chance for parole.
Even if he actually did kill 150 people, he was still far behind a Brit, Dr. Harold Shipman, alias Dr. Death, who is thought to have killed as many as 508 victims in a similar manner between 1975 and 1998.
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