Nurse Who Wanted to Be Hero Guilty in Slaying of 4 Patients

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — A nurse was convicted Thursday of killing four hospital patients in a scheme to make them ill, revive them and be recognized as a hero.

Richard Angelo, 27, of Lindenhurst, sat hunched over and stared straight ahead during the reading of the verdict finding him guilty of murder in two deaths, manslaughter in one and criminally negligent homicide in the fourth.

Injections, with lethal doses of muscle relaxants, were given patients at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip on Long Island in 1987. The defense acknowledged that Angelo injected the patients but said he did not mean to kill them.

Angelo also was convicted of various degrees of assault in connection with the deaths and on three counts of assault in connection with injections he administered to one patient who survived. That patient, a 75-year-old man, described in court how he had fought for breath after a man had injected him.

He could be sent to prison for 50 years to life for the murders when he is sentenced on Jan. 17.

“What this guy did to all of these people is beyond words,” said a sobbing Kieran Greene, 24, of North Babylon, whose father, Anthony, was one of Angelo’s victims.

“Enjoy jail, Angelo, for the rest of your life,” said Greene, who entered the courthouse when he heard there was a verdict and hugged prosecutor John Collins.

Suffolk County officials exhumed 33 bodies of patients who died suspiciously during Angelo’s tenure at Good Samaritan. The medical examiner found traces of Pavulon in six of the bodies exhumed. He determined that Pavulon directly caused the death of four of the victims.

The prosecution linked Angelo to the Pavulon through Angelo’s admissions in videotaped and written statements and by a syringe laced with Pavulon found in his apartment before he was arrested.