In a small Texas town, people receiving medical treatment
were in extreme danger.
- My mother had several hospitalizations,
and I just didn't understand.
- It just seemed like there'd be one setback after another.
Every time he'd go, he'd get sick.
- During dialysis, the patient
should be getting better, not worse.
- Was it just a horrible coincidence...
- It was something there-- faulty equipment,
tainted Heparin, tainted water.
Something is not right.
- Or was it something more menacing?
- The patient said, "What did you give me?"
and I had never seen that before.
- These people are seeing their friends just fine one moment
and then in severe cardiac arrest the next.
[machine beeping]
- Police demanded an explanation
and turned the clinic into a crime scene.
- They collected every sharps container
in the entire facility.
- Thousands would d t be an exaggeration.
- The clock was ticking to figure outouou
why patients were dying.
- I wanted to know who disconnected her that day.
- It's almost as if you have this silent killer
that's just striking people down seemingly at random.
- It was pure evil.
- Who's next?
- As a doctor and certified expert
for the California Medical Board,
I know firsthand that most medical professionals
will go to any length to help their patients.
But in some cases, there are those
with a deranged mind
and a license to kill.
In the first half of the last century,
kidney failure was a death sentence,
but the invention of the dialysis machine
has become a lifesaver for over half a million people
in the United States.
Receiving kidney dialysis is a routine procedure
that very rarely results in complications,
but for Thelma Metcalf,
it turned into her worst nightmare.
[upbeat music]
a lot of shopping and things to do.
We're close to Houston
if you need something from the big city.
I really like it. I like the people.
- Lufkin, it's a small town, but it's a busy little town.
You're gonna go to Walmart,
and you're gonna see a lot of people that you know.
[bluesy guitar music]
- Thelma Metcalf was my mother-in-law.
I'm married to Johnny Metcalf.
That would be Thelma Metcalf's youngest son.
She was very loving.
She was not one that, you know interfered much.
You know, as long as her kids were happy, she was happy.
- My mother was such a jokester.
She was a happy person,
and she just kind of took things kind of lightheartedly.
You know, she was a kind of "go with the flow" type person.
- Thelma was very social.
She liked to go to church, women's group,
or exercise groups, Bible study-- anything like
that she could find a way physically to do it.
Sometimes there would be challenges,
but she would do it.
- She was a diabetic, and she had hypertension.
- Her level of care was a little bit more,
you know, involved.
It took a little bit more hands-on.
It was a little bit more than my father-in-law
could handle on his own.
My sister-in-law is, you know, a nurse.
She's an RN. She was very hands-on
with her health care.
- I just fell into that role,
even before going through nursing school.
I'd fill her medication box for every week.
I always went with her to the doctor.
Stayed on top of what we should be doing
and what we shouldn't be doing as far as physical therapy
or exercises at home or diet.
- Mobility had gotten a little bit harder after some strokes,
so, you know, things were just getting a little harder.
- Mother began to lose some of her kidney function
because of the hypertension and the diabetes.
Her kidneys had not completely failed,
but we found out that she was going to have
to go onto dialysis.
Even though I'm a nurse, I mean, I don't know dialysis.
I'm not a dialysis nurse. I had to go in and learn
exactly what the patient should experience.
We asked for recommendations, and we had
a couple of facilities here in Lufkin at the time.
- We picked DaVita.
We knew that they're probably one of the best in the nation,
so she and my father-in-law
decided that was the best course of treatment for her.
That's where she was gonna go.
- My dad would drive her in to the dialysis unit
on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
She had nurses that she really liked.
She enjoyed the other patients,
almost become like family,
friends, definitely,
and they look after one another.
- It wasn't long after Thelma started going to dialysis
that it just seemed let there'd be one setback after another.
We'd get a phone call. She's at the emergency room.
She had an episode at the dialysis clinic.
Several times, it was too much Heparin
had been administered to her.
- Of course, being a nurse,
I didn't want to accuse anybody of doing something wrong,
but something there was not right.
- I remember one time, Thelma had woke up one morning,
and she couldn't move. She couldn't talk.
My father-in-law took her to the emergency room,
and they admitted her.
The doctors had said that she had been given so much Heparin
that her blood had thinned enough
that it was able to permeate through her spinal column
and into her spinal fluid,
and so, when that spinal fluid was tainted,
it caused her some paralysis.
- Heparin is an essential blood-thinning medication
that makes dialysis treatment effective.
Patients' reaction to the agent may vary, however,
making it crucial for nurses
to carefully monitor their dosage of Heparin.
- She had had several hospitalizations,
being admitted directly from the dialysis unit itself,
and I just didn't understand.
The things that went through my mind were,
"What's going on? Why is this happening?"
- I think she was torn.
She knew that her health care was important,
but I think she'd just made such a routine
there that change was a little concerning to her.
We all felt like her level of care
was not where it needed to be.
Every time you go, you get sick.
Something there-- faulty equipment,
you know, tainted water, whatever the theories
could have been-- but just something is not right.
- She can come to the hospital and have dialysis
for two or three days, and she's back, happy-go-lucky,
and then, in a month,
will go back down in that valley,
same things are happening again.
We're back in the ER. We know something's going on,
but we-- well, we have no clue what it is.
We actually reached out to the clinic at this point
wanting answers, wanting my mother's records.
- While the family was waiting for the medical records,
it was crucial for Thelma
to continue her life-saving dialysis treatment,
so she decided to stay at DaVita.
- Though she even admitted she felt better
when she wasn't going there.
She would say, "I'm happy there.
"I sit in the chair next to my friends.
"We share pictures of our grandchildren.
We talk about our days."
She didn't want to leave those people
that she had become friends with.
About this time, we started hearing the news
that there was a recall on Heparin, so we thought,
"This must be it. The Heparin must be tainted."
So we're getting back in the routine,
we're doing our three days a week. We felt good.
- Miss Metcalf, she was a sweet lady,
and I would sit back there with them a lot
just conversating with Miss Metcalf,
and she enjoyed that. But the last time
I saw Miss Metcalf, she told me that she felt funny.
[phone ringing]
- One morning, we just got a phone call
that it wasn't good,
and that something had happened at the dialysis clinic again.
I made a phone call to my husband, who was at work,
and he answered the phone,
and he said, "It's my mom, isn't it?"
And I said, "Yes, it's not good."
We just felt the pull this time more than the others
to get there as quick as possible.
- My mother was in cardiac arrest.
[machine beeping]
Of course, I immediately come up there.
But when I get there, she had already passed.
They'd already pronounced her dead.
And we walk into the room, and my younger brother's there
and my sister-in-law, and my older brother
and my dad.
It was just almost like a meltdown.
I wanted to scream and break down,
but, you know, you try to be strong
and be there for my father
and my brothers, my sister.
There's really no words to describe
how it is to lose your mom.
- And so we're all just kind of reeling.
"What happened this time?"
"Was it the Heparin again? Was it poor care?
"Was no one watching her,
not measuring her vitals?"
- I was angry, because DaVita didn't call me.
I could have been there,
and I could have seen her before she passed,
which is probably one of the hardest things for me.
You know, you always want to blame somebody
when you're angry like that,
and we just didn't know who to blame,
so I wanted to know who took care of her
that day-- who disconnected her that day.
That's what I wanted to know.
- Coming up... - The doctors let us have
some alone time with her,
and I was just leaning down just to kiss her good-bye,
and I remember this smell.
- Kind of burned your eyes.
It was the smell-- bleach is what it smelled like.
- They collected every sharps container
in the entire facility.
- I was concerned someone was actually
hurting these patients intentionally,
and I don't know how I'm gonna prove that.
- After several trips
to the hospital
following dialysis treatment, Thelma Metcalf passed away.
Surprisingly, her death was not caused by kidney failure,
but instead by a heart attack.
- The doctors let us have some alone time with her,
and I was just leaning down just to kiss her good-bye,
and I remember this smell.
And it burned my eyes, made my eyes water.
I just thought maybe it was a chemical in the room,
or maybe some medicine had been administered to her, something.
- I noticed an odor, and I have been in the room
and around people when they have passed,
of course, being a nurse.
It was a familiar odor,
but it was not something that you would expect.
Kind of burned your eyes as you got close to her,
and it was the smell-- bleach is what it smelled like.
We thought they, you know, used a cleaner or whatever.
The smell, you know, it was kind of strong,
which was strange.
We walked outside just to kind of get a break.
Security officer came up
and said that she had been the third person
from the dialysis unit that had came in that day
and the second one that had died that day.
- And we were shocked.
Clara Strange was one of her friends at the dialysis clinic.
They both passed away.
- I think we all had kind of a gut feeling
that something unusual happened.
It was just off.
- DaVita was not releasing a whole lot of information,
and you just feel like, "This is surreal."
- Nobody was telling us nothing.
Everything that I was saying in my mind,
"Is something going on?"
And I just didn't know what it was.
- Two deaths on the same day at the same clinic?
It seemed unlikely they were just a coincidence,
given the high success rate of dialysis treatment,
so what was really going on here?
- Garlin Kelly was the most friendly thing
coming up in that clinic,
and that particular day, me and another coworker
was working a group of people, us together.
I went to break for 15, 20 minutes.
The machine went off. I just heard something pop.
[machine beeping]
And I looked over there, and when I looked at it,
it looked like some big old gob or
something jumped in that tube.
I thought it was hair.
[machine beeping]
- The patient care tech described it looked
like a black hairball,
and it went in through the line,
and the patient, Garlin Kelly, said, "What did you give me?"
and immediately went into cardiac arrest.
[machine beeping]
- It's like he wasn't breathing.
He went to the hospital and passed away.
Garlin Kelly was the only patient died on me.
It was a bad day for me.
I didn't talk no more that day.
I didn't socialize no more that day.
I was just trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
- It is extraordinarily rare to have a patient code
while being dialyzed.
In fact, only 1 in about 180,000 dialysis
sessions actually involves a patient
going into full-blown cardiac arrest.
Yet, in just 15 days, a total of three patients at DaVita
died of cardiac arrest. Understandably,
the clinic launched their own internal investigation
to figure out the potential cause of this anomaly.
- DaVita as a health care provider said,
"Something's wrong,
and we've got to find out what it is."
One of the things that DaVita did for each patient
that had suffered a cardiac event,
they collected and preserved their dialysis lines.
They also collected all of the Heparin
and switched it out, and they tested the water.
They tried to find out, "What's going on?"
- The staff on the floor was just on edge.
Everybody was just on edge, because patients were dying,
and I had never seen that before.
Things was happening to the machines that we had never saw.
We knew something was not right.
- Opal Few was an elderly woman,
but in otherwise great health-- I mean, very spry.
Just a very lively woman in her 90s.
Everyone knew Miss Few and really liked Miss Few.
- Miss Few was a sweet pea.
I mean, she would say, "Look at you."
I'd say, "Yeah, honey, I'm here," you know,
and she'd get on over in the chair.
- The nurse, Kim Saenz, was attending to Miss Few,
and takes a break.
That nurse is in the back area
outside smoking a cigarette,
and immediately after she goes on break,
Miss Few codes on the machine.
[machine beeping]
She's in cardiac arrest.
One of the other nurses comes out and says,
"You need to come now. Miss Few's coded."
And Kim Saenz said,
"I got to finish my cigarette first."
That's insane.
When you hear that a patient is coded, you run.
You don't walk. You run.
- When a person code, you gonna throw that chair back,
and you're gonna get ready to do CPR.
That's what I don't understand. How can you not help a patient?
[machine beeping]
- Miss Few died almost immediately.
- When he called me and told me she had passed,
it really upset me,
'cause that old lady had started doing good.
- There's a great deal of fear going through the clinic.
You know, who's next?
It's almost as if you have this,
you know, silent killer, this unseen thing
that's just striking people down
seemingly at random.
It was terrifying.
- There's a fair amount of fear
and panic at the clinic.
These people are seeing their friends just fine one moment
and then in severe cardiac arrest the next,
and it's happening over and over again.
- While receiving frequent dialysis,
a patient's health should be improving,
but at the DaVita dialysis clinic in Lufkin, Texas,
patients were dying at an alarming rate.
But after an internal investigation,
no evidence of foul play was found.
That is, until one morning, when a patient
at the clinic noticed something very disturbing.
- We were contacted by our chief,
and he said, "Y'all need to go down
to the dialysis clinic there. They've got a problem."
When we arrived, we were met by lawyers for the facility
as well as the district manager.
They laid out this tale of
what had happened that day.
- Two patients reported to the employees of the DaVita clinic
that they had seen the nurse
draw bleach up in the syringe,
and she went over to the patient.
- They see her go to a patient,
pull a syringe out of her jacket,
inject it into the patient's line,
and then she would go to another patient
and do the same thing.
They are horrified.
They call another health care provider over
and tell her what they've seen,
and they say, "We don't want her treating us."
The two victims she injected go into cardiac arrest.
[machine beeping]
[siren wailing]
- The nurse who's suspected of injecting patients with bleach
was Kim Saenz.
- Saenz's job was to administer medications to the patients,
and she often did that through the intravenous approach,
so you really wouldn't suspect she was doing anything wrong
by connecting syringes to patients' dialysis lines.
It was the bleach accusation that was outrageous.
Could the witnesses have been mistaken?
- The clinic, before they call the police,
kind of does their own internal investigation, like,
"Did this really happen? Is this really what you saw?"
- The regional manager at the dialysis clinic
made the decision to sequester two sharps containers
where the two syringes had been thrown.
- They end up testing the syringes to determine
if there's any bleach using test strips,
and they come back positive.
DaVita's flummoxed by what is going on.
- The clinic immediately put Kim on leave for the day
until they can sort things out.
- I was shocked. I really was.
I couldn't imagine something happening like that at DaVita.
I worked with Kim.
I just didn't want to think of Kim as a person
like that, you know? That's what bothered me
the most-- that I couldn't see nothing.
- The clinic found bleach in syringes used by Saenz,
but she denied any wrongdoing.
Without an admission of guilt,
police did not have enough to arrest her,
so law enforcement closed the clinic
and launched an official investigation.
- We're all hearing that they've been shut down.
The newspaper just said "unusual spike in patient death
at the dialysis clinic." So now we want to know,
is our loved one part of that unusual spike?
How many is unusual? What's the number?
- Based upon what had happened that day,
I was concerned that there was a possibility either A,
there was some medical malpractice,
or B, someone was actually hurting
these patients intentionally, and made the decision
to treat the entire facility as a crime scene.
We told them that we were going to take items,
and they agreed to allow us to take them rather than get
a search warrant and make a bunch of publicity.
We started processing the scene that night.
If they mentioned and thought it might be relevant,
we took it.
We learned they had kept all the dialysis lines from people
who suffered cardiac events during the month of April,
so we decided to take those.
- They collected
every sharps container in the entire facility.
- We took 36 containers,
which contained over a month of medical waste,
so thousands would not be an exaggeration.
We also wanted to be able to trace those sharps containers
back to the seats they were at the night we found them,
so we had photographs taken of them in place,
every sharps container,
showing the sharps container, the station number,
and the machine it was associated with.
We stayed there till about 10:00 that night
removing all the items we felt we might need.
We were working with the CDC's epidemiology team.
They had people who pored over every medical chart
for every patient in there for the time of the events.
The only person who was present for every incident
which occurred in April
where somebody died was Kim herself.
- The medical records directly linked Kim Saenz to the deaths
at DaVita dialysis clinic, but the next day,
an even more shocking piece of evidence was discovered.
- Kimberly Saenz's husband contacted a lawyer
to make an inquiry about a divorce,
and the lawyer notified the police department.
They went and talked to him,
and they got a search warrant
for a computer that Kimberly Saenz had used.
- We see internet searches at 4:30 in the morning,
and internet searches for things like,
"Can bleach be detected in a dialysis line?"
and "Effects of bleach in adult bloodstream."
She might as well be searching for,
"Am I going to get caught?"
and at that point, it's really hard to not accept the reality
that's staring you in the face.
- The main thing that we wanted to do as soon as possible
is interview Kimberly Saenz.
- It's an unbelievable story
that an LVN, a nurse,
would intentionally inject her patients with bleach.
Your first reaction is, "There is some other plausible
"explanation for this that doesn't involve a random
"health care worker
intentionally murdering her patients."
That's really not the first conclusion you want to draw.
- People kill people because they're mad at them,
or people kill people because they get revenge,
but why would someone kill a patient
that's no threat to them,
that they don't get any financial benefit out of?
It doesn't make sense. But Kimberly Saenz
is the person that the witnesses reported
seeing draw the bleach up and inject it,
and that was the immediate concern.
- Is it Kimberly or Kim or...
- You go by Kim?
- All right, Kim. I'm Corporal Shirley.
This is Sergeant Abbott.
- It's really an information gathering event.
We're just trying to identify
where she was when these events occurred,
what occurred, what her actions were, what her reactions were.
- Did you work the whole day yesterday?
- As she told her story, some of the actions
paralleled what were seen by the witnesses.
- Okay, were you near any patients
when all this happened?
- She brings up bleach before we do.
- Was this a guilty slip of the tongue?
Detectives need to learn more about bleach in the clinic.
- Can you tell us anything about the bleach in procedures?
- At DaVita, when they use bleach as a disinfectant,
the nurses mix a dilute bleach solution
to wipe down the patient areas,
things that the patients have contact with.
- I'm a little bit confused,
so maybe you can help clarify this.
Do you use a syringe to pull
your 10 Ccs of bleach up?
- Protocol for creating
a disinfectant solution at the clinic
dictates the 10 CCs of bleach
should be used in each bucket of water,
and bleach should only be poured from a measuring cup,
never drawn into a syringe.
So why is Saenz using a syringe
as a delivery method for bleach?
- Kimberly Saenz alleges
that she used a syringe to measure bleach
because they were out of measuring cups.
- When you use a syringe to draw up the bleach
before you make your mixture up,
what happens to that syringe?
- Kim, at least at some level, knew,
"I need to explain why there's bleach syringes
in sharps containers," and I guess she felt
that some explanation was better than none,
even if it's a bad explanation.
But because Kim admitted
that she drew the bleach in the syringe,
she is essentially putting the gun in her hand.
- We charged her with five charges of aggravated assault
for the patients who did not die
and five counts of capital murder,
and so she was arrested,
but she refused to talk any further.
- We just opened up the paper one morning,
and there it was. Front page.
Kim had been arrested for capital murder.
There were the five murder victims, including Thelma.
- I was shocked. I really was.
I just couldn't believe Kim would shoot bleach up
in people like that, just kill people.
Who would think to do something like that?
And them old folks still had a lot of life in them too.
You know? You don't just take nobody's life.
- Honestly, I think that the day Mother died
was not the first time that Kim had done something to her.
You know, she experimented.
She did different things, giving her too much Heparin.
That's why she had had several hospitalizations,
being admitted directly from the dialysis unit.
It wasn't an accident.
It was pure evil.
- The next day, Kim Saenz was released on bond.
She maintained her innocence while she awaited trial,
but her nursing license was suspended,
and she was required to wear an ankle monitor at all times.
- Kim Saenz obtains her bond,
but one of the conditions of her bonding
is that she is not to work in a health care facility.
- Little by little, people kept telling us,
"I saw her." You know,
"She goes to basketball games. I saw her at the nail salon."
That left a very uncomfortable feeling for us,
because this is a small community,
and we have kids the same age as Kim and her husband,
so we would go to a youth sports event or something,
you're always looking around to see, 'cause, you know,
we saw her mug shot, we knew what she looked like.
So that was very uncomfortable,
to know that we could run into her any time.
- You could see her at Walmart. I mean, she had times
that she could go out
and do things in the community, and I didn't understand,
how could she be accused of this
and be able to wear an ankle monitor and be out.
- Coming up, while the families waited anxiously for justice,
investigators encountered an unexpected roadblock.
- There's not a lot of research on, "Does bleach kill people?"
- It's just not the kind of thing
to the standard lab panel.
It's just not tested.
- And fears grew that Kim Saenz
may have committed the perfect crime.
- We were terrified that this woman was going to walk.
- While Kim Saenz was out
on bond
and charged with the murder of five patients,
detectives had the challenge of proving
that bleach found in syringes and dialysis lines
actually entered the victims' bodies and caused their deaths.
- This is a really tough case,
because this is medical science,
and we didn't know anything about dialysis.
- I don't like people just to hand me information
and me not be able to verify it,
so I educated myself really quickly.
I went and borrowed a nursing textbook,
started reading it. Then I immersed myself in it.
- You know, we continued to work really hard
so there's justice done for
the numerous victims.
- DaVita collected and preserved
their dialysis lines for each patient
that they believed had suffered a cardiac event,
and in Mr. Kelley's line, there was a syringe
that was found that was still attached to his dialysis line,
and that syringe tested positive for bleach.
We actually went to the hospital,
and we put bleach in the blood to see what it would do...
And it turned black.
It was really kind of eerie when we saw that.
It was one of those moments that we go,
"Oh, that makes sense. That's what the nurse saw."
- When I looked at it, it looked like
some big old gob or something jumped in that tube.
I thought it was hair.
- When bleach is introduced into the bloodstream,
it causes the red blood cells to burst.
When red blood cells burst, they release iron,
which produces a thick, black liquid.
This process is called hemolysis,
which supports what the witnesses saw
in the victims' dialysis lines.
The next challenge investigators faced
was being able to prove
that the bleach actually left the dialysis lines
and entered the patients' bloodstreams,
which would cause hemolysis inside their bodies,
triggering cardiac arrest.
- We had a treasure trove of evidence.
We have forensic evidence
indicating Kim Saenz injected bleach.
We have eyewitnesses indicating she injected bleach.
What we don't have is proof of bleach
in the bloodstreams of the victims.
Intuitively, it seems like it's obvious it must have,
but intuition is not enough in the courtroom.
You've got to prove,
by reasonable scientific certainty,
that the bleach is what caused the injury
or the death to the patient.
- So we go to the CDC and say,
"Is there any way to test blood
for the presence of bleach?"
They said, "Well, no.
It's just not the kind of thing to the standard lab panel.
It's just not tested.
- Although the result of the detectives' experiment
was compelling, it wasn't enough.
They were the ones putting bleach into a blood sample.
What they needed to be able to do was to show that bleach
was already present in the victims' blood,
and at that time, a test for that did not exist.
Did that means Saenz could have committed the perfect crime?
- It was daunting. I'd become convinced
that this person is actively hurting and killing people,
and I don't know how I'm gonna prove that.
We began to look for an agency or a lab
which could test those items and confirm,
scientifically, that there was bleach in there.
- There's not a lot of research on,
"Does bleach kill people?"
because it would be unethical research.
Chris found an expert who could actually test the blood
of some of the individuals
who had died at Kim Saenz's hands.
- Fortunately for us, Dr. Mark Sochaski
was on a bioterrorism council
and does research on chlorine gas.
- One of the projects that I had was developing a test
for evaluating chlorine exposure,
and that test was the chlorotyrosine test.
Chlorotyrosine is an amino acid
that is not naturally present in the body.
It can only be formed through the exposure
of chlorine or bleach.
- So we send 51 samples of blood to Dr. Sochaski.
It's a blind test.
All he has is control numbers. He doesn't have any names.
Those samples include dialysis patients,
they include non-dialysis patients,
they include patients who we suspected
were injected with bleach, and it included patients
who we didn't think were injected with bleach.
- I come in the next day and start analyzing these samples,
and I go through the first few samples.
There's nothing there.
You know, I'm a little bit relieved.
I get to the third sample. There's nothing.
Fourth sample, nothing.
It's probably around the sixth or seventh sample,
all of a sudden, there's this huge chlorotyrosine peak
that just shows up.
Suddenly, this goes from a hypothesis to reality.
These people had been exposed to bleach in some way.
Otherwise, those chlorotyrosine peaks wouldn't be there.
We got 100% accuracy.
It wasn't even close.
- Dr. Sochaski identifies nine samples which he believes
have been exposed to a chlorinating agent.
Those were all our victims.
So we have the bleach syringe, we have bleach
in the lines, we have the 3-chlorotyrosine research
that Dr. Sochaski did, we have the internet searches.
A combination of relief and kind of exhilaration
that we have this really compelling
and very strong evidence. This is a person
who randomly selected people and killed them.
- This was the piece of evidence investigators
needed to take this case to court.
- The first day of the trial,
as we were walking through the courthouse,
we began to kind of pick up on the feel of,
"Oh, there she is. That's her."
- To sit in a courtroom with her,
you know, maybe 15 feet at the most away from you
while she smiled and she laughed,
and it was like it was a big game and a big joke for her,
it was all I could do to sit in my seat and behave myself,
but I know causing problems
wasn't going to bring my mother back.
- It's an enormous pressure
to know that these families need closure,
and we have to champion their cause,
and we have to see that there's some justice.
- The defense counsel, in his opening statement,
says, "These people were not poisoned with bleach.
"They were killed because the water at the facility
was inadequately filtered and maintained."
So we all look at each other like, "Oh, my God."
We had just not realized that that would be something
he would attempt to utilize,
and we don't have an expert designated on that issue.
We were completely ambushed.
We were terrified that this woman
was going to walk.
- The defense theorized
that the patients died
'cause the water was not properly purified
that was used in the dialysis process.
- I remember the defense saying
that it was the water contamination,
basically, is what would cause the patient's injury or death,
and not their client, Kim Saenz.
- The defense's theory had a significant problem.
Some patients were absolutely fine,
and others were dropping dead.
- Moreover, in the event of a chlorine breakthrough,
cardiac arrest is not the outcome.
It's anemia. And, you know,
a patient becoming anemic is a very slow and-- process
you have to determine through lab results.
Patients don't just fall over and die.
It wasn't a credible theory.
- A critical point in the trial is the defense
brought a pathologist named Amy Grusheski,
and Chris Tortorice cross-examined her.
- While testifying, the medical examiner asserted
that the district attorney should have ordered autopsies
on every victim before indicting Saenz.
- Chris Tortorice caught her in a number
of incredibly problematic mistakes
that made her testimony totally ineffective,
and she was a key witness for the defense.
- In final argument, I argued to the jury,
and I begged them,
"Don't get in a hurry.
"There's a lot of evidence here,
and if you'll look long enough, you'll find the truth."
- 48 hours later, the jury came back with a verdict.
- We just sat together all day long waiting
for the verdict to come in, and there's a moment
where you think, "Why is it taking so long?"
You can kind of feel the buzz around the courtroom,
and at this moment, you thought,
"Okay, this is it. We're fixing to find out."
- The first thing, the judge said,
"We the jury find the defendant,
Kimberly Saenz..."
[suspenseful music]
"Guilty of capital murder."
And I said, "Oh, thank you, God."
- You know, seeing her taken into handcuffs was gratifying.
Kim Saenz committed these really heinous,
violent acts,
and did so in a really wanton and callous way.
- They told me, said, "She done been convicted."
I said, "How long?"
Said, "I think she got life." I said, "Oh, Lord!"
And that's all I could say, you know?
I knew they were gonna hang her out to dry.
He knows up there,
so whatever is for her, Kim's gonna get it.
- You do find some justice has been served,
but then, at the same time,
I think the whole time, you just-- you know when it's over,
it doesn't bring your loved ones back,
it doesn't undo what she did,
and now how do we go on past this to heal?
- The final moments that my mother went through
had to be horrible,
because the bleach went straight to her heart,
and when you're having all those red blood cells burst,
and it's fire; it's almost like
being burned from within.
At that very moment,
I wanted to put bleach in Kim's veins,
make her feel what my mother felt.
I honestly wanted her to get the death penalty,
and I was upset when she didn't,
but, you know, life in prison without parole-- all
of her appeals have been denied.
She is there. She'll come out in a pine box.
- Prosecutors faced many challenges,
but in the end, were able to trailblaze scientific testing
and prove that Kim Saenz was a sadistic murderer.
With Saenz behind bars,
the Metcalfs and other victims' families
are now able to begin to heal from their horrific loss.
For more on "License to Kill," go to oxygen.com.