Ten murders, fears of dozens more – and an ‘Angel of Death’ suspect now living a secret life in the suburbs

The pale, bespectacled young male hospital nurse hovers close by as another shocked family on Ward 4-East mourns the sudden death of a beloved relative.

It’s the latest of dozens of mysterious patient fatalities plaguing the Truman Memorial Veterans Hospital in Columbia, Missouri, between May and August 1992.

None are expected to die when admitted for treatment and most are already preparing to return home.

Frantic hospital staff fear an ‘Angel of Death’ is lurking among them – and suspicion falls on 26-year-old nurse Richard Allen Williams, who is routinely on duty when the emergency code blue alarm sounds.

Despite being arrested and charged with ten murders years later, Williams was released after spending a year in jail when the charges were dropped. The homicide cases remain open and unsolved to this day.

A bombshell new seven-episode podcast called Witnessed: Night Shift seeks to shine a spotlight back on the chilling case that still haunts an entire community decades on.

And now DailyMail.com can reveal for the first time that Williams, 58, is today living in a sleepy Illinois suburb alongside neighbors who are oblivious to the accusations. 

It has also emerged that he went on to become a convicted felon following his release, after a brief stint as a mortician at a funeral home.

The unexplained deaths at Truman Memorial Veterans Hospital bear a chilling resemblance to Netflix’s The Good Nurse, which is based on Charles Cullen’s 16-year murder spree at medical centers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

The scandal is also eerily similar to the shocking case of British nurse Lucy Letby, who was found guilty of murdering seven babies in a neonatal unit last year. 

Yet in this case, no one has ever been held to account or convicted of a crime.

Rumors about the growing number of suspicious deaths at the VA hospital reached fever pitch in late 1992. 

One patient’s daughter described to DailyMail.com how she had been preparing to take her father Odas Lesley, 71, who suffered from emphysema, home from hospital in July of that year. Instead she found herself saying a painful and unexpected final farewell. 

‘He wouldn’t leave the room,’ Kathy Robbins, 73, of Blue Springs, Missouri, said of Williams. ‘He just stood there. It was very creepy. I felt uncomfortable with him in the room. He wouldn’t leave us alone so we could say goodbye to daddy’.

Former colleagues have since described Williams as ‘bland,’ ‘passive’ and ‘non-assertive.’ 

But after the unexpected death of a 75-year-old veteran, a doctor snapped: ‘Richard, why are you killing my patients?’

His remarks helped to spark an internal investigation by hospital leadership, with Williams declaring in an interview: ‘I didn’t become a nurse to mercy kill or determine when someone would die. I’ve been a nurse for seven years. I have never had anything like this happen.

‘This has been a blow to my ego. I just can’t believe that people think that I’ve been killing people. I’ve been trampled on by everyone,’ he added.

Williams claimed he was being set up and pointed the finger at another nurse, who was never considered a suspect.

At first, VA leaders failed to make police aware of the sudden jump in patient deaths.

The VA chief of police was demoted when he tried to investigate. Staff were told to keep quiet or lose their jobs.

Meanwhile, an analysis by Dr. Gordon Christensen – who was leading the investigation and piecing together the mystery – showed the chance of the suspicious deaths not being murder as one in a million. 

He believed a killer was likely working in the building but hospital leaders refused to listen. 

After Christensen analyzed the statistics, he concluded patients being watched by Williams during his night shift were ten times more likely to die than those being supervised by other nurses on the same ward.

But Williams was allowed to keep working while an FBI investigation was ongoing. 

An unnamed nurse who worked alongside him told the FBI: ‘It seems like there was always a crisis whenever I worked with Richard.

‘There were no normal shifts with him. And there were so many deaths. Way too many.

‘Actually I was worried I might get blamed for the patients dying. I was honestly relieved when I took a few days off and the deaths kept happening when I wasn’t on the ward.’

Williams eventually left his job under a cloud in early 1993. Despite this he was still given a letter of recommendation by the then hospital director that helped him to get another job at a nursing home 15 miles south of the VA.

It wasn’t long before suspicious deaths began happening there too.

Williams worked as director of nursing at Ashland Healthcare nursing home from July 1993 to July 1994. In that 12-month period about 30 residents died. In the 10 months after his dismissal, six patients died. 

The county medical examiner called the number of deaths ‘statistically significant’ but ruled out foul play. A second investigation was launched after details of the deaths at VA came to light but no charges were ever brought.

Prior to working at the VA, Williams had been employed at St John’s Health System in Springfield, Missouri, from June 1988 to May 1989. He was fired for falsifying patient records and failing to administer medication. 

In March 1993, authorities finally obtained permission to exhume the bodies of 13 of those individuals who died while under Williams’ supervision at the VA.

The investigation, involving state officials, the FBI and agents from the Department of Veterans Affairs, produced usable tissue samples from 10 of the exhumed bodies but lab tests failed to reveal a cause of death. 

The FBI had concluded that 11 of the 40 reported deaths on Williams’ watch were ‘highly’ suspicious and 22 were ‘moderately suspicious.’ 

An FBI report, obtained by DailyMail.com, details an interview with the nurse in March 1993, during which he declined to take a polygraph test.

When asked if he was responsible for the VA deaths, he responded ‘absolutely not’.

‘Williams advised that he got into the nursing profession to help and not to kill patients. He stated, ‘I know and the man upstairs knows that I did not kill any of those patients,’ the report continued.

He added that the situation had ‘completely destroyed his life’.

One of the veterans who died under Williams’ care was 66-year-old Elzie Havrum – a World War II veteran and Purple Heart recipient. He had emphysema and complained of a headache but was only expected to be at the VA overnight before going home.

When he died his family was in stunned disbelief.

In 1998 – six years after Havrum’s death – his widow, Helen, won a $450,000 civil negligence suit against the VA hospital. She died in 2018 aged 91.

In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey said a preponderance of the evidence caused her to believe that Williams was responsible for Havrum’s death – and that the hospital had enough reason to believe Williams was a danger to his patients but did nothing to stop him.

Judge Laughrey criticized the VA administrators for engaging in a cover-up over Havrum’s death on Williams’ watch.

The ruling was later upheld by a three-judge panel in 2000 after an appeal was filed.

Elzie’s son David Havrum, 72, and daughter-in-law Sydney, 74, described to DailyMail.com how they are still haunted by the case today. 

Yet despite the resounding victory in the Havrum case, the criminal investigation into the VA deaths stalled.

The case eventually took a leap forward in 2001 with the development of improved forensic techniques, allowing the tissue samples from the exhumed bodies to be properly tested.

The new testing led investigators to accuse Williams of injecting patients with the powerful muscle relaxant succinylcholine to halt their breathing. Nurses had access to the drug at the hospital.

Nine of the tested victims were men aged 58 or above and one was a 69-year-old woman. None had been prescribed the drug by doctors.

It takes just 60 seconds for succinylcholine to take effect and it is rapidly metabolized in the body making it virtually undetectable.

But with the newly developed testing, trace amounts of the chemical were found in the samples from the ten corpses, authorities said.

Death certificates for the ten bodies were changed from natural causes to homicide.

A grand jury subsequently indicted Williams, who was 36 at the time.

He was arrested in July 2002 while working at Panera Bread in St. Louis. He was formally charged with killing the 10 patients after investigators concluded they had a solid case and that he was the ‘common denominator’ in the deaths.

Williams pleaded not guilty. He was denied bail and spent 13 months in Boone County Jail awaiting trial, away from his now ex-wife and son. 

Prosecutors said they did not have a motive for the deaths but were confident they had the smoking gun to convict Williams and would be seeking the death penalty.

At the time, lead prosecutor Kevin Crane said the deaths met Missouri requirements for capital punishment, including that they were ‘outrageous or wantonly vile… in that they involved depravity of mind.’

In all, 41 patients at the VA had died in 1992 under Williams’ care.

Prosecutors prepared their case for trial but in a shocking turn of events it was sensationally upended.

Additional testing of the tissue samples had revealed that the original testing was faulty. The case was dropped a few weeks before trial when Williams’ attorney was able to show that a variant of succinylcholine can be found naturally in decomposing bodies.

Don Catlett, Williams’ attorney, claimed the charges had resulted from ‘junk science’ and political pressure in the high-profile, long-running case.

In a letter to prosecutors Dr. Kevin Ballard, who had performed tests on the bodies of some of Williams’ patients, said he believed that ‘no definitive conclusions can be drawn’ from the presence of a relative of the drug in the corpses.

‘After lengthy consultation with both scientific and legal experts I have tried, even up to this last moment, to identify a way to maintain this prosecution,’ Crane said at the time.

‘However, absent additional evidence, the legal standard for proving murder beyond a reasonable doubt cannot be met at this time.

‘Now, as it was between 1992 and 2002, adequate evidence to show these veterans did not die of natural causes is once again absent in this case.’

Williams was set free on August 7, 2003 and returned home.

Meanwhile, the families of his former patients continue to seek answers and justice for their loved ones.

‘It’s hard for people to believe any of it,’ said Helen Havrum. ‘It’s crazy but you have to get on with your life.

‘There will never be justice. I don’t think anything is going to be done.’

She blames the prosecutor Crane, now a judge in Boone County, for ‘letting the case slip through his fingers’.

Crane, 62, who is due to retire soon, told DailyMail.com: ‘I’m sorry for the family members that have gone through a lot.

‘I genuinely thought I was doing the right thing. When I determined that the basis of the case wasn’t there I had to dismiss it ethically.’

John Kurtz, Helen Havrum’s attorney, said he would like to see the case prosecuted again. 

‘The Havrum case was good enough to convince four judges,’ he claimed.

‘The case is so old and so forgotten that it hasn’t been on anyone’s radar for over 20 years. There hasn’t been any urgency.’ 

Kathy Robbins said she has not listened to the new podcast because her father’s death is still too painful 32 years on.

‘This has been going on forever,’ she said. ‘I just wish the government would do something but they probably never will.’ 

DailyMail.com can reveal that Williams is today living in a rented apartment in an Illinois suburb with his 65-year-old sister, where he has access to luxury facilities including a swimming pool, movie theatre and pickleball court. 

When approached by our reporter, his sister refused to comment. Williams did not appear to be at home.

Sources claimed that Williams, now 58, hasn’t worked in years. After his criminal trial collapsed he trained to be an accountant. He has also worked as a mortician at a funeral home in St. Louis and for Panera Bread restaurant.

DailyMail.com can also reveal that in 2009 Williams, then 43, was arrested for stealing over $51,000 in cash from a former employer, Ford Steel, and north of $10,000 from a St Louis-based insurance company, Todd Green International.

A Ford Steel senior manager, who wished to remain anonymous, said of Williams: ‘He ran into the bathroom to hide when he knew he was going to be arrested.’

He claimed Williams had previously suggested to his Ford Steel bosses that they take out a $100,000 insurance policy against theft by employees – which they agreed to do.

‘He was smart enough to get us the insurance,’ he recalled. ‘That episode was a sad part of my life.’

Williams later pled guilty to multiple counts of felony theft, according to court records.

He was given probation, ordered to pay restitution of $72,900 but received no jail time. His probation ended in August 2016.

Jake Adelstein, who is behind the podcast about the case, is the son of Eddie Adelstein, 88, the pathologist who initiated the internal hospital inquiry into the deaths at VA in the summer of 1992 and still works at the hospital today. 

Adelstein Jr also wrote the 2009 memoir Tokyo Vice that was the basis for the 2022 TV drama of the same name. 

He told DailyMail.com there was a ‘tide of indifference’ among senior management at the Columbia VA but some staff, like his father, stood up to battle ‘corruption and cowardice.’

‘But when over 70 lives are lost – with no reckoning – the question remains: Why? I hope this podcast ignites the curiosity of someone who might reopen this case’, he added.

Journalist Rudi Keller, 63, of the Missouri Independent, spent years covering the VA murders. 

He said: ‘I sat in the courtroom in 1998 when a federal judge said from the bench that she believed Williams murdered Elsie Havrum.

‘I became obsessed with this story. I was convinced by 1999 that Williams was guilty. 32 years after the VA deaths there is still no conclusion’.

He believes Williams is guilty, but says there is still ‘that one percent’ and ‘we’ll never really know’. 

Today, the case of the 40 suspicious deaths at the VA remains open.

In US law there is no statute of limitations for murder – meaning charges can still be brought against a suspect decades later.

Jeffrey Hoelscher, spokesperson for the Harry S. Truman Memorial Veterans’ Hospital, said: ‘We are committed to the veterans we serve, as well as their families and loved ones. 

‘We have and will continue to cooperate fully with the Boone County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office should they contact us with any new information or evidence or ask for assistance.’

DailyMail.com has contacted Williams for comment.