November 21, 2025 • 58 mins
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Michelle Herndon seemed to have it all. She was nearing completion of her degree and had a bright future ahead of her. She was engaged to a wonderful man. She had a lot of plans for her future. The only negatives for Michelle were her migraine headaches, which were excruciating.
She had tried many medications and remedies, including alternative medications, without much success. Then she met Oliver O’Quinn, a new roommate of her best friend. Oliver was an ICU nurse at Shands Teaching Hospital, and he had a medication that could benefit Michelle: Propofol. This medication worked wonders for Michelle. The only problem was that Oliver was infatuated with Michelle, and when his affection was not reciprocated, it led to deadly consequences.
Join us at the quiet end for Murder by Injection, a discussion about the tragic death of Michelle Herndon.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-brewery--4126935/support.
Record your voicemail at tiegrabber.com for our feedback segment or send us an email to truecrimebrewery@tiegrabber.com
We love receiving your feedback and most of our case choices come from listener suggestions!
Michelle Herndon seemed to have it all. She was nearing completion of her degree and had a bright future ahead of her. She was engaged to a wonderful man. She had a lot of plans for her future. The only negatives for Michelle were her migraine headaches, which were excruciating.
She had tried many medications and remedies, including alternative medications, without much success. Then she met Oliver O’Quinn, a new roommate of her best friend. Oliver was an ICU nurse at Shands Teaching Hospital, and he had a medication that could benefit Michelle: Propofol. This medication worked wonders for Michelle. The only problem was that Oliver was infatuated with Michelle, and when his affection was not reciprocated, it led to deadly consequences.
Join us at the quiet end for Murder by Injection, a discussion about the tragic death of Michelle Herndon.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-brewery--4126935/support.
Record your voicemail at tiegrabber.com for our feedback segment or send us an email to truecrimebrewery@tiegrabber.com
We love receiving your feedback and most of our case choices come from listener suggestions!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
True Crime Brewery contains disturbing content related to real life crimes.
Medical information is opinion based on facts of a crime
and should not be interpreted as medical advice or treatment.
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Welcome to True Crime Brewery. TI grabbers, I'm Jill, and
I'm Dick. Michelle Herndon seemed to have it all. She
was nearing completing her degree and had a bright future
ahead of her. She was also engaged to a really
great guy. She had a lot of big plans for
her future. The only negative for Michelle was that she
(00:48):
had migraine headaches, which were really excruciating for her. She'd
tried many medications and remedies, including alternative medicine, without much success.
Then she met Oliver O'Quinn. He was a new roommate
of her best friend, and Oliver was an ICU nurse.
He worked at Shan's Teaching Hospital, and he said he
(01:11):
had a medication that could benefit Michelle. This medication was
propofal and it did work wonders for her. The only
problem was that Oliver was infatuated with Michelle, and when
his affection was not reciprocated, it led to deadly Consequences.
Join us at the Quiet End for a discussion of
(01:32):
the tragic death of Michelle Herndon, and Dick has brought
us a beer.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
I got a Florida beer. I'm amazed I haven't done
this before because the beer is highlighte IPA, brewed by
Cigar City Brewing in Tampa, Florida. So a couple of
sides here. Cigar City is one of the premier brewers
in Florida. I really like them. They make some world class,
wonderful beers. Highlight I think it was at least ten
(01:59):
years ago I first rank it and it blew me
away and it still does. This is just a perfect
example of an ipa. The beer is a reddish amber color,
tiny bit of haze to it. There's a medium sized
white head, a little bit of lacing, nice aroma, citrus
and floral. Very good taste, predominantly grapefruit, tiny bit of pine,
(02:22):
background of caramel. Just a world class, well brewed beer.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
It is delicious. I've had it many a time. All right,
you go ahead and open that up.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
The same old Quiet End.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
This is a story which we heard about a while back,
and we've been looking into it and we decided this month,
let's cover it just for our TI Grabber members.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
So here we are.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, so why don't you start us out?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Okay, So this goes back a little over fifteen years ago.
November seventh, two thousand and five, Peter Alcorn was at
the front door of one of the houses he rented
in Gainesville, Florida. He had done some recent repairs in
the house left behind some tools that he needed. So
the person renting the house was Michelle Herndon, and she
(03:21):
was a landlord's dream, a mature, studious, quiet student, and
a very responsible student twenty four years old, finishing up
her studies at the University of Florida. Besides being a student,
she worked as a personal trainer. She was a member
of the Friendship Baptist Church in her hometown of Live Oak, Florida.
(03:42):
As if that's not enough, she also worked part time
at the Jungle Friend's Primate Sanctuary, where she cared for
animals that were released from laboratory research.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
That's pretty cool thing.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
To do, isn't it. And then if there's any minutes
left in her day, she is an advocate for the homeless,
a regular blood donor, and a sponsor of a child
in Africa. Full plate here.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Huh so this is the kind of person in the
world we don't want to lose. We want more people
like this, which makes it even more of a shame.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Does so after knocking on the door for several minutes,
finally opened a crack and there's a young kid with
college age who answered the door. And he wouldn't let
Alcoorn in. He told him it wasn't a good time,
please come back later. Then he closed and locked the door.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
That's interesting.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
That didn't sit well.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
I would imagine it didn't you.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
He's there to get some tools. It's not the person.
He rented the apartment or the house to sure what's
going on.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
But that was it. No questioning took place at that point.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
No.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Well. The man who answered the door was Oliver O'Quinn,
a registered nurse who worked at the university's teaching hospital, Shans.
He'd been there to treat one of Michelle's migraine headaches.
When Michelle fell out. Oliver had been less than polite
to Peter Elkhorn. She called up Elkhorn and tried to
smooth things out because Michelle already knew that Oliver had
(05:09):
kind of an abrasive personality. She'd known him for a
little over a month, and she knew he was infatuated
with her. He actually called Michelle every day at least once.
Michelle saw Oliver as a friend and she had no
romantic interest in him. She was actually engaged to another
man named Jason Deering, but Oliver seemed like a fairly
(05:31):
nice guy, and he was helping her with her migraines,
which was really important to her. It was really a
difficult thing to deal with in her life.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Oh, then it was. It seems to me though, it
could have been made a little clearer to him that
this was like a business relationship, not a deep friendship
or anything.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Well, Dick, I'm going to go one further and say
Michelle made a very poor decision allowing him to give
her drugs. Well, yeah, she should have been going to
her doctor. And if her doctor wasn't taking care of it,
you find another doctor. It's completely illegal, of course for
him to be doing this. Not to mention how dangerous it.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Is, Yeah, well it's very dangerous.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Very I mean, that's what happened to Michael Jackson, Right,
Wasn't that propofile that was propofal. So it can certainly
kill you.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Yes it can.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
And it's not like it just numbed the pain. What
it did has made her unconscious, so she could sleep
it off exactly.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
And you mentioned if she wasn't getting the results from
her doctor, there should be another doctor. Well, this is
Shan's Teaching hospital is pretty famous. It's a very well
respected institution. And I'm not saying that because I trained there, Okay,
but I got a good post medical school education at
(06:45):
Shan's and there were some really top notch physicians there.
So I agree that it was probably a dangerous thing
that she was playing with.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
It was absolutely a dangerous thing, and if she didn't
realize that, Oliver should have.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Although Oliver struck me as a kind of guy who
probably wanted to be a doctor, maybe that's not exactly
the right way to put it, but he acts like
he knows more than he knows.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Oh yeah, we've all met nurses like that. I think
it's a tendency in some nurses and paramedics to be
that way. Yeah, just to be a little too gung
ho about this stuff. And with Oliver, I'm sure it
also had something to do with impressing a girl he
was attracted to. Oh, yeah, he wanted to be her savior.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Hadn't thought about that? Yeah? Absolutely, that would fit in
with what I've come to learn about Oliver.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Well, I mean, if he wants to be with her
and that's really the only thing he has going for him,
so sure he's going to use it. Yeah, even though
it's completely unethical, it's dangerous, it's illegal. You covered that, yes,
So on November eighth, in the throes of another migraine,
Michelle had called up Oliver, and as always, he was
(07:57):
more than happy to go out to her house to
give her a man medication for her migraine. So the
medication of choice was the propofol. It does have a
variety of uses, but mostly it's used as a sedative.
Propofol was discovered back in nineteen seventy seven and it
was approved for use in the United States in nineteen
eighty nine. It has been called milk of amnesia because
(08:19):
the IV prep has a milky appearance and it also
has a tendency to suppress memory recall. So it's mostly
for surgery.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Yeah, it's a medication as a adjunct in anesthesia, So
you give it IV.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
You can't just take it by mouth and it acts
very quickly within a minute or two. And wants to sleep.
She's just going to sleep and sleep and wake up
without a headache.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, And that's typical for virtually any migraine sufferer. If
you can manage to get to sleep, you're going to
wake up with the headache going.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah, but it is something that would interfere in your
life because you have to go to sleep. Oh yeah,
so you can't function.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
No, if this is the only medicine that can work
for her, so it requires attendance by a medical person,
intravenous administration of a drug, and then you're going to
sleep for five, six, seven, eight hours.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yes, And just as an aside, if you're on that
medication in the hospital, you're going to be on a
heart monitor. You're not just going to be left on
propofil to sleep. No, it's not safe. But then also
the cynic in me wonders if he liked putting her
out because he maybe took advantage of her sexually while
she was out of it. That would be easy enough
for him to do. Have you considered that.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Oh, I haven't, you have a cruder mind? Than I do.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
It's a dark side, but it's realistic, very realistic if
you think about it.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Yeah, because she's out, she's out.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
He has a real crush on her, which she's not
feeling that back for him. So if he's putting her unconscious,
is it really the right thing to assume he's being
a gentleman?
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Well, may or may not be. There's nothing that suggested
any sexual impropriety, but.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Who would know besides him?
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Well, true, although maybe if she had been she had
a sensation in her genital area when she woke up,
something didn't feel right.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Not necessarily, though, who knows what he could have done.
I know I'm not saying he had to have actually
raped her, but he certainly could have done things to
her without her.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Knowing, certainly and probably without her becoming aware.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Sure, that's what I'm saying. Yes, So, yeah, you're right,
there's no proof of that, but it's certainly something I
would consider when you consider his actions in this case.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
There's that dark mind coming through again.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Well, it's true crime. You have to look on the
dark side.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
And we've gone over this. But as many people know,
propofal isn't without side effects. For one thing, injecting it
hurts like how has a very sharp burning sensation. Then
you can get side effects of an irregular heartbeat, apnea
which means you're not breathing, seizures, and low blood pressure.
(11:09):
These are all not uncommon side effects. So you got
to be careful of the struck administration of propofil without
the involvement of a physician and the ability to monitor
the situation, that can be a dangerous, even foolhardy proposition.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
So I'm going to go another step further here as
well and say, even with a physician, if you're not
in the right environment. Because of course Michael Jackson had
his propofile administered by a physician and he died from it. Yeah,
because he was in his home. Well, there was no
there was no staff or equipment or things that would
be needed to resuscitate someone. And I think in his
(11:49):
case they didn't even know until he'd been dead for
a bit, right, So it's not just that you need
a physician. Of course you're right that that is the
only person who should give it, but but something that
needs to be done in the correct environment and under
the correct circumstances.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Definitely, So when he had given the Michelle that does
the propofol and saw that she was sound asleep. Oliver
cleaned up after himself, as he always did. He bagged
up the syringe in medication while left Michelle's house and
disposed of the bag of medical waste in a nearby
garbage can. Now that's not a cool thing either, This
(12:26):
is medical waste.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Well that's the least of his infractions though.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Really, yeah, I know, I'm just pointing that out.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Sure, sure, you're right. So a full two days went
by and Michelle's boyfriend had been calling her phone over
and over again and getting no answer, so he had
driven up from Miami just to check on her.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
A four hour drive.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Well, sure, I would hope you'd drive four hours for me.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
I'd drive eight hours for you.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
WHOA, that's commitment, I tell you. But in fact, nobody
had heard from Michelle for those past two days. Jason
and Michelle's mom, Belinda, were afraid something bad had happened
to Michelle, and they were both suspicious about this weird
guy who'd been treating her migraines. We know who that is.
That's Oliver, That's who it is. So Jason had called
(13:15):
her landlord Peter Elkhorn, and he came over to the
house with the master key. So this doesn't sound like
it's a good situation.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
It's not starting out so good, is it. No, nobody's
heard from her for a couple of days. It's a
parent that her car's there and they can hear her
dog barking in the house, but no Michelle.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
So I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves.
But where is Oliver over these two days? Do we know?
Is he going to work and doing the usual things? Yeap, okay,
he is, But he normally called Michelle every day? So
did he know something was wrong?
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Yeah, he intended to kill her.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Well, you don't have to give it all away.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
With this dose.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Okay, got it, But we'll get to that. Got it?
Got it?
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Yeah? See, you didn't want to get ahead of yourself
too much, and I did. I want ahead and ruined it.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
No, you steered me back to the correct location.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
I'm good, okay. So the first thing that the Gainesville
police officers saw when they entered Michelle's house was that
it was really neat. Nothing had been disturbed, so it
didn't look like there had been any struggle or anything
as they went down the hallway and entered the bedroom,
so where they found Michelle who was lying face down
on the bed, and she was quite dead. There was
(14:31):
no trauma to her body, so that, you know, along
with the house being so neat, it didn't look like
there had been a massive fight or anything, and it
didn't seem to be a robbery because as far as
they could tell, there wasn't anything missing. Maybe natural causes,
I know, be fare possible. Jump on me for a
twenty four year old healthy woman. That can happen.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
It can happen. Sure what kind of things could cause
that a natural death of a healthy person who just
goes to bed and doesn't wake up.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Well, the biggest thing would be a heart rhythm problem.
You get into rhythmia and you die from that, that'd
be the big thing. I suppose she could have had
an aneurysm or an avmil formation in her brain that
picked that time to go and that would cause the
sudden death. But yeah, there's not too many things that
(15:21):
are going to do that.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
No, pretty much unheard of, very rare, very so. Crime
scene investigator Mark Woodmansey was called to the crime scene.
He noticed the bathroom waste basket was empty, while other
containers in the house had trash in them. He told
his team to be on the lookout for a public
spag that may have been discarded in a dumpster. So
(15:44):
why was he looking for that?
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Well, he noticed that these public spags were used as liners,
and all the trash containers okay, yeah, and the bathroom
wind was empty, another one in the house was full,
another one was half full, but they all had public
plastic bags as liners. Okay, So that's why he told
him to look for a publics bag.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
So it didn't take long before they found that public's
bag in a dumpster about sixty yards from Michelle's house,
so not a huge effort to dispose of it where
it wouldn't be found, not at all. Inside the bag
there were envelopes with Michelle's name on them, medicine vials
for versad, atomidate, and propofol. There was also a bloody syringe.
(16:32):
So you're gonna have to go over those medications for me.
I'm a little rusty.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Well, they're all similar in that they're anesthetic agents used
to induce anesthesia or to as adjunct anesthesia, so that
they're all kind of similar things.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
So he was giving her more than just propifile.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
It seems, well, we don't know. I suppose for this
one time when he was intending to cause harm to
her have taken along some other drugs to do that,
But as far as we know, that was just a
proper fall in her body.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
So Michelle's mom, Belinda, didn't want to wait around to
hear from Jason, Michelle's fiance, so she drove from Live
Oak to Gainesville as quickly as she could on her own,
and when she arrived at Michelle's house, she was really
alarmed by the number of police that were there, and
also that there was yellow crime scene tape around the area.
(17:29):
That would be every mother's nightmare, wouldn't it. When she
was told that Michelle was dead, of course, that just
destroyed her. She collapsed to the ground. After she was
able to recover just a little bit to be able
to speak, she told the detectives, you better find the
man who did this, or her father will and then
this family will suffer another tragedy. So by that she's
(17:52):
meaning that Michelle's father would kill him and he would
end up in prison exactly. So she's not fucking around here.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
No, she's telling the police, you'd better take care of
this because my husband's going to go nuts.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
But how in the world did she know it wasn't
a natural death.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
She just assumed it wasn't. She just knows her daughter's dead.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yeah, yeah, but I wonder if they had told her
about the things they found. Probably not. No.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
So that same day, which was November tenth, wasn't a
good day for Oliver O'Quinn either. Not long after you
got to work to start his day, he got called
to the supervisor's office. And that's not a good sign,
is it.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Usually it's bad.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
You get to school and they say, Jill, report to
the principal's office. You know that's not going to be good.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Well, of course that never happened with me, but sure.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Yeah, no, it's just your sisters, right right, right. So
his supervisor told Oliver that he just didn't have the
necessary skills to be an ICU nurse and that his
resignation was expected. There was a second unmentioned reason for
asking Oliver to resign. Turns out, there was a long
running problem in the ICU with drugs going missing, and
(19:03):
guess who was strongly suspected of being responsible for that.
Good old Oliver. So the idea that had been floated
around was that if Oliver resigned, the hospital would not
have to investigate the theft of drugs. We've done enough
medical cases. That's not an uncommon thing.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Well, I'm hoping it's less common now than it used
to be. But you're right, Yeah, it's just passing the buck.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
We're going to get rid of this guy because he's
done such and such, but not ever tell the succeeding
hospital or office or practice or whatever what's going on
with this guy. Is exactly passing the buck. It certainly
is negligence.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Yes, I would think so.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Yeah, so theoretically Oliver resigned, Well he did resign, but
theoretically after his resignation he could get a job at
any other hospital because his nursing license hadn't been revoked
or anything.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
So to me, this is not online. The priests and
the Catholic Church, when they get caught being pedophiles or
abusing children in some way, they were often just moved
on to another parish.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Yeah, very analogous.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
That's just fresh in my mind because I just watched
that movie Doubt with Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Incredible movie. Amy Adams as well, pretty good movie. What
a loss that Philip Seymour Hoffman is, Huh, he was
just amazing. I'm off the topic, but it's a similar situation,
passing the buck along, ye and putting more people at risk.
(20:35):
So it's really a terrible thing to do. It's more
than just not taking responsibility for a situation. It's actually
putting lives at risk knowingly, right knowingly. So that to
me is stunning, and I would hope that there was
some kind of civil action against the hospital at some point.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
We don't know, so.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
I guess Oliver was surprised when he was asked to resign. Yeah,
not happy about it. Thought he was a good employee.
But he had to be stealing drugs. How else was
he treating Michelle's migraines. That's not something he could buy
and he didn't have prescription privileges.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
No, he was stealing drugs. Yes, they had a machine
at the time where you plugged in your employee ID number,
some code and you could pick your drug out of
the machine.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yeah. I think that's standard at all hospitals these days.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
So what they're going to end up doing is they're
going to take the vials that they found in the
dumpster and they can track them backwards. And they found
out that it was Oliver who had withdrawn oilers from
the Pixis machine, although it's not called Pixis whatever it's called.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Yeah, that's just one brand of them. I believe there
are several. Yeah, but still it's the whole idea of
just having him resign. Yeah, it's not like they didn't
have proof. If they'd worked at it, they could have
proven it and something at least got his license taken away.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
It would have been a very simple matter. And it
still could have been an.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Internal matter, Yes, it could have been.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
But they wanted the easy or easier way.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Out, which is surprising to me because Shans was, like
you said, a very high profile, well respected hospital.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
It was. But to me that could be another reason
for not doing it, because they don't want any blemishes
on their record.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Okay, that's some messed up logic, but I see what
you're saying that they could consider it that way because
after all, and unfortunately, these hospitals are businesses and they
are about making money.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
That's the goal. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
So he was still employed at another area hospital, one
that wasn't as prestigious as Shan's. This was a job
that Oliver didn't want to lose at Shans and it
was gone, so he was upset.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Yeah, the other hospital was as small er, not much
known hospital Chans. He could be a big man on campus.
At the other hospitals, he's just another fish.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
But I would think at that point he should have
been happy to have any job. Yeah, but he wasn't
the type of person to see it that way.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
So while Oliver's getting this news, the district Medical Examiner,
doctor Martha Burt, had some news for Mark Woodmansey. She
told him first that there didn't appear to be any
reason for this healthy twenty four year old to be dead,
So that's where we started with. But there was an
unexpected finding. She had a small needle mark on her
(23:41):
left arm. They didn't have any evidence of drug use.
There was no other needle marks, and there's no history
of drug use. The one that was there was quite
small and almost missed, and it wasn't in a spot
where someone might self.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Inject, So she doesn't have other needle marks. I guess
this wasn't being done on a daily basis. This was
more sporadic that he gave her this medication.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
It wasn't on a daily basis, sure, it was, I
think from studying his case. It's to doctor Burt's credit
that she noticed it. Oliver had used a pediatric butterfly needle,
like a twenty five gage.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
It's pretty tiny.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
So pretty tiny, doesn't leave much of a mark. Sure,
and if you don't have any hematoma or anything from it,
it can be very difficult, if not impossible, to notice.
But she noticed it, so that got them wondering, or
got woodman C wondering if someone had administered an injection
to Michelle.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Well, yeah, and she even wondered if it was maybe
a medical professional because it seemed to be done so neatly.
Plus who has access to these things?
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Right, they're starting to make progress almost immediately on the case.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Yes, absolutely, woodman.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
C extrapolated the information from doctor Bird and it got
him thinking that whoever had injected Michelle was also someone
that she knew and someone she trusted.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Well, duh, come on, she wasn't strapped down or anything.
It had to be someone she trusted, So that didn't
take a lot of college to figure that out.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
No, that part was less deductive reasoning than obvious stuff.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah, yeah, but.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
It sounded like she almost missed the punctural from the needle,
but she found it and that led to everything else.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
So Woodman c then asked doctor Bird about the medication
vials that had been found in the dumpster near Michelle's home,
and they were all vials that had contained pharmacy grade
medications and they had all come from the same place,
of course, Shann's Hospital. Further checking established the drugs had
been dispensed through omnis cell, which is the pixus, the
(26:00):
drug dispensing machine that they had at that hospital, and
from that point it was easy to read the lot
numbers on the vials and find out that all of
those vials had been dispensed to a nurse named Oliver O'Quinn.
So they got back to him very quickly. Wasn't a
mystery for long.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
No, So they've solved most of it already. They found
the bag of drugs and they traced it back or
they able to trace it back to Oliver taking them.
What they don't have is evidence that he injected anything
into Michelle. So that's the big thing they got to
work on.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
With all this done. That was the end of Woodman
Sea's involvement, and Detective Michael Douglas not that Michael Douglas.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Okay, I got it.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
I started reading about that and I'm thinking, oh, black
rain or whatever. Oh no, what else was he in?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Fatal attraction?
Speaker 3 (26:53):
Yeah? But where was he a cop?
Speaker 2 (26:55):
What's that one with Sharon Stone that you like?
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Basic, basic instant, yes, okay.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
But no, this is a regular Michael Douglas, good good,
and he's going to be the lead investigator in the case,
and he was dogged in his determination to solve this case.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
So they're right away saying homicide, no question.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah, yeah, I mean once they find the punctural, they're
thinking homicide. And maybe not absolutely no question, but almost
no question.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Well, I would just say that if she'd done it herself,
that the paraphernalia has still been there, because she would
have passed out with a syringe right there, if not
still in her hand.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Yeah. No, I mean there was a second party involved
in this, right, Yes.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
In any murder investigation, of course, the victim's significant other
is the prime suspect, the first one to rule out,
and Michelle's fiance, Jason Deering, was quickly ruled out because
he hadn't even been in the area. He was in Miami.
So Detective Douglas went to Miami to question you, Jason
and found out some things about Michelle. And Jason said
(28:04):
that Michelle had suffered from debilitating migraines, but she told
him she finally found someone who could help her. And
she'd even told him that this was the roommate of
Michelle's best friend, Jessica. So Jason said that Oliver had
quite a crush on Michelle, and of course it was
not reciprocated. And here's the thing. He might have overheard
(28:26):
Michelle calling him an annoying little man, and that could
have put him over the edge as far as his
ego was concerned.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, and as it turns out, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
So the next person on Detective Douglas's interview list was
Michelle's best friend, and that was Oliver's roommate, Jessica Seple.
She was interviewed at the police station because Douglas didn't
want to run into Oliver at her house, which makes sense.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Yeah, because he hasn't talked to him yet.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
No, and they don't want to tip him off, No,
absolutely not in his mind. Douguglas had already cleared Jessica
as a suspect, but he wanted to get Jessica's opinion
on Oliver and get some information from her. She confirmed
what Douglas already knew, that Oliver did have a crush
on Michelle that wasn't reciprocated. So Douglas asked Jessica how
(29:19):
Oliver seemed to be dealing with Michelle's death, and she
was unable to answer that question because Oliver hadn't been
at the house since the day before Michelle died. So
that's very suspicious as well, because this was a guy
who was in touch with Michelle daily pluss. He hadn't
(29:40):
been home with his roommate, hasn't been home, so he's
probably gone not quite almost all right, So what did
Douglas do next?
Speaker 3 (29:49):
Well, then he went over to Live Oak to interview
mom Belinda. She said that she and Michelle spoke pretty
much every day on the phone. The last time was
the day before Michelle was murdered. In that conversation, that
last conversation, Michelle had told her mother that Jason was
going to move from Miami to Gainesville. He was really
(30:09):
really happy about that be closer to her boyfriend slash fiance.
Belinda also told Douglas of Michelle's increasing frustration with Oliver,
how he called all the time and wanted to be
with her. So Belinda said, well, what if he did it?
That hadn't been mentioned before, but this was the time
when it's starting to be on people's minds that Oliver
(30:34):
was sufficiently weird enough and infatuated enough that he might
have done something to Michelle.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Well, certainly he's the prime suspect at this point, but
I think it could still be considered that it wasn't
on purpose, that it was an accidental overdose. Yeah, there's
no proof here that he had done it on purpose,
at least not up to this point.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
No, there will be though.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
Before he turned the case over to Detective Douglas, Woodman
c did one final thing. He made a request, and
that was to ask the lab to test syringe caps
that had been found in the trash in the back.
That was in the trash because Woodmen see recalled sat
nurses in the emergency room pulled the caps off syringes
(31:21):
with their teeth.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Oh that's really interesting that he thought of that.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
So I think it's an amazing thing because it turned
out that there was an unknown male DNA profile recovered
from the syringe caps, and it's going to turn out,
as I'm sure you know, to be Oliver's DNA.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Well, and also Michelle's DNA was found in one of
the syringes. There was a mixture of her blood and
propofile found in some tubing. So this all meant that
Michelle's death should be considered a homicide.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah, once they had these results, it's going to change
from being accidental or non contributing, but now it's a homicide.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Okay, but I still don't see why they think he
did it on purpose. It's a possibility, but I don't
see that being totally clear to me at this point. Sure,
his DNA's on the cap, but even if he gave
her the drugs, how do we know he wanted her
to die?
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Well, I guess what they're thinking is that you'd been
giving this drug to her for some time and no
one toward effects like death had occurred. Right, So yeah,
I guess they could have said, well, maybe it was
an accident.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Well, even if it was an accident, it was so
illegal and out of the realm of what would be
safe that I think it would qualify for negligent homicide
even if he hadn't meant for her to die, right,
because it was just a total disregard for human life
to be doing that thing. And it was difficult because
(32:53):
Detective Douglas couldn't track down Oliver right away. He wasn't
at the house he shared with Jessica, we know that,
and he wasn't answering his phone or calling anyone. So
Douglas went to Shan's and he found out that Oliver
was no longer an employee there. Remember, he'd been asked
to resign. His supervisor told Douglas that Oliver had been
(33:14):
asked to resign because he didn't have the necessary skills
to be an ICU nurse. When asked about the possibility
of Oliver stealing drugs, the supervisor did kind of admit
to that, right sort of.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
She just made this kind of oblique reference that there
had been some rumors to that effect, but nothing that
had been verified. So that's pretty much skating around that issue, huh.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
It seems like it. So Douglas then asked where he
could find Oliver, and they told him that he still
worked part time at the other hospital, National Coast Medical.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Yeah. So Douglas caught up with Oliver just as he
was entering the hospital and it was plain to him
that Oliver didn't want to talk to him. And when
they did speak briefly, he said that he and Michelle
were acquaintances, and Douglas knew that wasn't true. Then Oliver said,
I'm running late, got to get to work. He asked
(34:12):
Douglas if he could call him, so Douglas gave Oliver
his business card and kind of poked him in the
chest with his forefinger and said, don't let me down.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Well, I would think Oliver must be worried at this point,
you bet so. The next day was November twenty ninth,
and Oliver told his roommate Jessica that he was going
to go on a vacation, which was a little out
of the blue and strange.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Yes it was.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
He did give her rent money and told her he
had spoken to the detective.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Yeah. She asked him if he had talked to Douglas
and he said, oh, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Well, surely she has her own suspicions around Oliver.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
She does.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
He told her he'd be back in a couple of weeks.
But that wasn't true. He was actually fleeing. He had
bought himself a one way ticket to Ireland, which which
is where he was from, where his family was from.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Yeah. I don't know if he was from, but O'Quinn
is certainly an Irish surname, isn't it. I mean, how
else do you pick Ireland?
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Right, not that I'm running Ireland down. It's a lovely country.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Oh gorgeous, yes, But.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Of all the places he could go, he picked Ireland,
and as it turns out, that was a fortuitous thing.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
Yeah. Now, the same day that that happened, when Oliver's
getting ready to rabbit, doctor Bruce Goldberger, who was the
medical director of laboratories at Shan's, called doctor Bert. Remember
she's the pathologist that did the autopsy and stuff. He
told her the toxicology screen on Michelle was positive for propofall.
(35:44):
This is the first time Goldberger could remember that propofol
had been found in a dead body like this.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Yeah, that wasn't a medical death in a hospital, right, Yeah. Well,
doctor Burt gave this information to Detective Douglas and then
that's when he started to think, well, I need to
get more aggressive with Oliver. I can't just sit and
wait for him to come to me. No, so you
can really imagine that Douglas was not happy and very
surprised when he went to Oliver's home to interview him
(36:16):
and found out he'd gone to Ireland. His surprise turned
into frustration too when he started having difficulty getting Oliver
extradited back to the United States. The Irish courts moved
really slowly, and the attempts to speed things up could
result in a rejection of extradition. So so far, Douglas's
(36:37):
only victory was getting Oliver's application to join the Irish
Nurses organization block.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
Yeah. The diplomat that Douglas was dealing with told him
that the last eighteen extradition cases he had been involved
in with Ireland, none of them had been approved.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
But most of them were for less serious crimes.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
Well, of course, yeah, but he cautioned Douglas. He said,
you know, tread lightly here. You don't want to get
the Irish pissed off, because they'll deny extradition. Then you'll
never get to try him.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
And we remember from our other Irish cases that the
police is called the Garda, right, and they had been
pretty helpful as far as I could tell.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
Yeah, I mean they staked out his home and they
tailed him when he went out, hoping that he would
do something anything that they could arrest him for. And
that way, if he got arrested for even just a
minor crime, he could be extradited.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
So he wasn't really in hiding. If he had gone
under a different name or you know, not applied to
join the Irish Nurses organization, he wouldn't have been so
easy to find.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
But yeah, no, he was hiding in plain sight, that's
for sure.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
And I think his defense team kind of tried to
use that to say he wasn't really on the run, yeah,
which could seem somewhat valid.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Well it could, except in the face of all the
other evidence against him.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
Yes, So here's Douglas. He's just chewing nails because he
can't get this guy back to the United States, and
he's trying to think away as how am I going
to out fox him? And then he had this epiphany.
He decided if he could maybe get Oliver to know
that the Gainesville police knew where he was and that
(38:26):
they're close to arresting him. He's hoping that Oliver is
not familiar with the extradition rulings. You know, he's just
thinking if I can rattle his cage alotle, thinking maybe
I could get him to panic and go somewhere else
that would be more receptive to extradition.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Well, that doesn't seem likely to me.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
It sounds like a stretch. But I'm thinking Douglas is
getting desperate.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Well, I'm thinking that Oliver O'Quinn didn't have a ton
of money. No, he didn't, so he's not going to
be flying around the world.
Speaker 3 (38:59):
No, he was in Ireland and was going to stay there.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Yeah. It was pretty much stuck there and he couldn't
even work as a nurse to make good money.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Nope. So what Douglas did. He called up the Irish Times,
the newspaper, spoke to a reporter named Sean O'Driscoll, and
he was more than happy to help Douglas. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
In April of two thousand and six, Oliver read an
article about himself in the newspaper and he realized he
needed to get the hell out of Ireland. He decided
the best place for him at this point where the
extradition would be really difficult, maybe even impossible, would be Africa.
So Oliver didn't do actual research on the extradition policies
(39:40):
in different African countries. That was his first mistake.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
Yeah. I mean here he's decided, oh I can get
to Africa and nobody will extradite me from there. But
he didn't do any of the research or the homework
to see what was what.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Yeah, so he decided on Senegal in West Africa.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Yeah, and don't ask me how he decided on that,
but he just did.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Okay, And as he was boarding the plane, he didn't
notice that the GARDA some plane closes detectives where they
are talking on their cell phone.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Yeah, so they know where he's going, so they are
able to report that. So he gets to Senegal, he has,
as you suggested, he has virtually no money. So he's
going to have to contact his family because he doesn't
know anybody else who else is going to send him money.
So he's going to have to go to a US
embassy and send a telegram or home to get them
(40:39):
to wire money to him.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
So what's his family thinking at this point? They're thinking
he's innocent or they're just willing to protect him. Even
though they believe he's guilty.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
They're ready to help him out.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
So he did realize he needed to keep moving.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
Yeah, he crossed the border from Senegal into Mauritania and
he goes to the embassy there, stands in line with
other people with all their different requests and is getting
ready to beg for some money from his folks, and.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
His folks are in the US.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
In the US. He's having second thoughts about doing this
because he's thinking, I'm going to get caught, but he
doesn't know any other way to get the money that
he needs, so he decides to go through with it.
So he sees the US military police in the embassy.
He imagines anyway that they're watching him closely, and he's
(41:32):
getting more and more paranoid.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Well, sure, it's really a risky endeavor.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Yeah, it turned out to be very risky.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
So he got to the head of the line and
when he gave his passport to the embassy employee, he
started really feeling worried. Some warning bells went off in
his head. Yeah, he bolted from the line, fled the embassy,
and made it back to the room he'd been renting
in Senegal. He packed quickly, but when he left his building,
(42:01):
he saw two army jeeps headed toward him, so he
dropped his bag and he started running at that point,
but you know, he wasn't in great shape and it
was warm, so he got really hot and exhausted, and
they caught up with him. He was captured, yes, he was.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
So. Then the Senegalese police notified the Garda and the
Garter called Detective Douglas, who was just more than happy
when he got the news. The other thing that was
helpful for him was that the US, at least at
that time, I don't know if they still do, but
they had a very good relationship with Senegal, so the
(42:40):
extradition of Oliver should be easily accomplished, and it was.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
So he really didn't do his research there.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
No, Oliver wasn't as smart as he thought he was.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
So by August of two thousand and six, Oliver was
back in the US and he was incarcerated in the
Electionwa County jail. He had a cellmate, Thomas Roscher, and
a public defender Drew McGill. Any relation to Jimmy and
Chuck McGill. Yeah, okay, So Oliver Oliver really missed Dublin
(43:14):
and he wished he was back there. McGill didn't make
him feel any better. He told Oliver that Ireland often
refused to extradite suspects back to the US.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
Yeah, that's just what Oliver needs to hear. He reads
the newspaper articles that had been written about him and says,
I got to get out of Ireland because they're closing
in on me. Yeah, and if he had known, he
probably would have stayed put.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
So the thing with Ireland is that they do not
believe in the death penalty. And I believe Florida has
the death penalty. Aren't they one of the states that
uses it or has used it? Oh yeah, yeah. So
he thought he'd made a big mistake there, and he
would lament that fact when he was talking to his cellmate.
Oh boy, did I make a mistake.
Speaker 3 (43:59):
If I hadn't done that, I could still be sitting
in Dublin enjoying myself exactly. But he wasn't.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
So the cellmate, Roscher was a good listener, not because
he felt sorry for Oliver, had any empathy for him,
and certainly not to make Oliver feel any better about
the situation, but he wanted Oliver to tell him things everything,
preferably because knowledge was power for an inmate, and he
might be able to use that to get some kind
(44:27):
of deal with the DA. Absolutely, so it could be
a good bargaining chip for him.
Speaker 3 (44:32):
It's the name of the game, right, I mean, Jeral,
how snitches do we talk about or read about? Oh?
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Exactly. There's no honor among thieves now.
Speaker 3 (44:40):
And a lot of his conversations with Raucher, Oliver professed
how much he loved Michelle, and at least in his mind,
how she loved him back. But eventually he did find
out the truth, and what he told Raucher was that
he was at a party that Michelle happened to be attending. Also,
he overheard Michelle on the phone talking with her fiance Jason,
(45:04):
and he overheard her because he basically followed her around
at this party.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
He was obsesstrally.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
Yeah, So he saw her leave the room and he
followed her, and she was in another room talking to Jason,
and he heard her tell her fiance that she considered
Oliver an annoying little man. So and that's when he
told Rauscher, I decided that since she put me down
I would put her down. She was going to have
a long, peaceful sleep. So there you have it, a
(45:35):
confession of.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
Sorts if you believe the cellmate. Sure, because there was
no recording, no, no, But Rosser's testimony was a big
plus for the prosecution. Oliver went on trial for Michelle's
murder in May of two thousand and eight, and he
was a big part of that.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
He was.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Assistant State Attorney Tim Browning, in his closing statement at
the try said that Oliver used a drug to help
people sleep to make sure that Michelle never woke up,
and of course he did this without a physician's authorization.
I don't think that even needs to be said. But
he also made sure to mention that Michelle trusted Oliver,
(46:15):
so it was quite a betrayal.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
And then Oliver's attorney Miguil, didn't call any witnesses in
Oliver's defense, and Oliver himself certainly didn't take the stand.
McGill claimed the prosecution had relied on only circumstantial evidence
and they had absolutely no proof that Oliver had injected Michelle.
Well that's not entirely true.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
No, I think there's a lot of circumstantial evidence, plus
you have his DNA on the caps. My only issue
with the whole thing is his intention. His motive.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
Yeah, Well, and in that you have to believe what
Rauscher said Oliver.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
Told him Yeah, and that's I don't know, that's a
lot to base on one inmate. Did he get anything
in exchange for his testimony? That would be some thing
to know. No, he didn't.
Speaker 3 (47:02):
There was no quid pro quo.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
So that makes it a little more believable.
Speaker 3 (47:06):
Right, And we're not told the numbers in terms of
what concentration of propofol was found in our blood?
Speaker 2 (47:14):
Well, that was going to be my next question for you.
Was it like this huge overdose? Yeah, because that would
be significant. It was a huge overdose, okay, So it
wasn't just a little too much.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
No, okay, so it would be less likely to be
a medical error and got it intent.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
So that's that's pretty good evidence there. Yeah, Yeah, that's
some good forensics. I think.
Speaker 3 (47:39):
I chuckled at this a little bit. Miguil said in
his closing statement that if Oliver had left Shans because
his skills weren't sufficient, then how is he going to
be the person who injected Michelle? If he didn't have
sufficient skills. I liked that kind of circular reasoning.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Okay, but I would just being Devil's advocate, I'd say
Oliver could use that say, well, I wasn't skilled enough,
so I made a mistake, so that could work both ways. Yeah,
but I guess his attorney point. Yeah, I guess McGill
didn't pick up on that and use it though. Nope,
he should have called me, I'm always available for these things.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
Could help him out.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Yeah, yep.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
So the jury deliberated for just a little under three
hours and they came back with a guilty verdict. Then
victim statements, victim impact statements were heard, and after that
the judge sentenced Oliver to life in prison with no
chance of parole, and Oliver, when asked if he wanted
to make a statement, declined he really never opened his mouth.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Well, this to me is a really weird murder, really,
because usually if someone gets angry with someone who wants
to kill them, I think of them as doing something violent, impetuous.
Not this type of thing. This was planned, which all
still you know, makes it more evil. Yeah, but just
to think that out just because she criticized him, that's
(49:07):
pretty crazy. He was not stable. Well we know that,
so that's really crazy stuff and it's concerning. I'm really
still concerned that that hospital was going to pass him
off to other people. That's terrible, and that's just saying, well,
go somewhere else and kill somebody, because that certainly could
have happened.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
Yeah, no question.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
But when we were reading about that nurse Cullen, another
male nurse, he was actually killing patients correct, correct, So
when we were reading about him, the same thing happened.
He was just tossed from one hospital to another.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
Half a dozen hospitals.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
So we're all those hospitals held accountable, I wonder.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
Well, in their reflection after the verdict, the prosecution recognized
how Oliver had almost gotten away with this murder. What
if doctor Bert hadn't found the puncture we in her arm? Yeah,
well they'd still be able to find the profoifall in
her blood.
Speaker 3 (50:06):
Yeah, well they should have. But if there weren't any
of it wasn't any evidence, they might have ended up
saying a natural death.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
That to me is scary because this is a twenty
four year old. Yeah, and I think there should always
be an autopsy on a twenty four year old unless
they have some condition or an obvious death of course.
Speaker 3 (50:25):
Yeah, but I suppose having found a dead twenty four
year old and then finding this bag of drugs used
drugs in the trash, they could find out that she
had propofile in her system anyway, right, right?
Speaker 2 (50:41):
But do you think if the bag hadn't been found,
if he'd been more careful about disposing of it, that
they still would have figured this out? No? Really, I
do think they would have. So tell me why you
think they wouldn't have.
Speaker 3 (50:53):
Well, I'm going to go with that aspect, plus not
finding the puncture wound. Okay, Once you find the puncture
one recognize that she had been injected with something, then
it's an easier.
Speaker 2 (51:05):
Thing even without the bag. Even without the bag, I
agree with you there.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
Yes, but if they don't have the bag and they
don't have a puncture wound, yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
You don't think they'd test for propo fall because that's
not something they normally test for.
Speaker 3 (51:19):
It's not something they have to request it. Yeah, And well,
I wonder if the people knew, if Michelle's friends knew
that it was propafalish is getting I bet at.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
Least one of them did, yeah, or at least her fiance.
So I bet he would have been caught regardless of that.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
So maybe he would have gotten picked up that way,
I think so. Well, what if Woodman C hadn't asked
the syringe caps to be tested?
Speaker 2 (51:45):
Yeah, that was a really brilliant thing. I wouldn't have.
Speaker 3 (51:47):
Thought of that, because if they don't do that, they
don't get his DNA exactly. Yes, well that's another thing.
Or what if Woodman C hadn't thought, oh, this bathroom
from trash, it's empty, and the kitchen one and the
other one are full or half full. What if he
hadn't figured that out, and that they never looked for
(52:10):
the bag of trash.
Speaker 2 (52:11):
Yeah, and all these what ifs just point to the
fact that good old fashioned detective work is really at
the core of getting a conviction. Yeah, because these are
basically small things separately, but when you put them all together,
they did make a powerful case against Oliver.
Speaker 3 (52:29):
They certainly did. I had a couple other ones. What
if Douglas hadn't had the foresight to get the newspaper
in Ireland to mess around with Oliver that's what got.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
Him running, Yes, exactly, that's true.
Speaker 3 (52:44):
And the biggest thing that struck me as I was
thinking about this case. What if Oliver had never overheard
Michelle running him down.
Speaker 2 (52:53):
Well, yeah, I've thought about that.
Speaker 3 (52:55):
If he doesn't hear that, I think eventually things are
going to happen.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Anyway, That's what I'm thinking.
Speaker 3 (53:01):
Maybe not to that extent, but if he hadn't heard her,
he wouldn't hatch the plot to do her in.
Speaker 2 (53:09):
Yes, and her death is a tragedy, but she also
did make some bad decisions here, not putting her at fault.
Of course, she's the victim. It's a tragedy, no doubt
about it. But some decisions were made here that were
not smart. No, she was putting her life at risk,
even if he didn't want to kill her. This was
so damn risky. It's certainly terrifying to me to think
(53:32):
about it.
Speaker 3 (53:33):
But at the same time, imagine you're the migraine sufferer
and you finally found a medication that works for you.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
I know, I know, but really so happy. But you
need to go to your doctor for that, Yeah you do, Well,
you're a doctor. You should say yes, go to your doctor. Okay,
you got it, because this is so dangerous, but you know,
you think. She was young, She didn't have any medical education,
(54:00):
so what did she really know about this? She probably
didn't realize the seriousness of this.
Speaker 3 (54:05):
She might not even known what he was giving her.
He says, I have something. I'll help your headaches, just
one problem. It's an IV preparation and it hurts, but
it will help, and it does.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
But for fuck's sake, if someone's putting a drug into
your vein, you should know what it is.
Speaker 3 (54:23):
I mean, yeah, you should.
Speaker 2 (54:25):
You should. And she was young and didn't know, and
it's terrible for her. But I hope that anybody listening,
if anyone offers to eject you with propofol for any reason,
unless you're getting surgery in a hospital, say no.
Speaker 3 (54:39):
I'll say no, thanks.
Speaker 2 (54:40):
Say no thanks. Yeah, so this is a very unusual case.
Speaker 3 (54:46):
It sure is. Yeah, I'll bet they've not seen another
propafol poisoning in Florida.
Speaker 2 (54:51):
Well, I don't know, a lot of shit goes down
in Florida.
Speaker 3 (54:54):
That's a wacky state.
Speaker 2 (54:55):
They've probably seen alligators with propofol in Florida. Yeah, Okay.
So our sources for this case are a short book
called The Murder of Michelle Herndon, which was written by A.
Rod Cackley. So thanks to Rod for that information. There's
also a TV episode on the show Licensed to Kill,
(55:18):
season two, episode two about this case. Also, we looked
into the Gainesville dot com archives and we found information
from May twenty fourth, two thousand and eight and April nineteenth,
two thousand and six. So there's not a huge amount
of information on this case. I'm surprised it's not more
(55:39):
well known actually, because it is so unusual.
Speaker 3 (55:42):
It's unusual and fairly sensational, I think.
Speaker 2 (55:46):
Well, yes, with the running to another country and all that. Yeah,
certainly a lot going on there.
Speaker 3 (55:51):
Yeah, very interesting.
Speaker 2 (55:53):
Okay, So what do you have coming up for our
next bonus episode for our listeners next month.
Speaker 3 (55:59):
Well, I have several possibilities. I haven't chosen one yet
because I want to get a couple months ahead of
the game, okay, and I've got some good possibilities. When
is an Australian case?
Speaker 2 (56:11):
What's the Australian case.
Speaker 3 (56:13):
I'm not going to tell you just yet. I'm going
to surprise you, all right.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
Well, thank you everyone for listening, and of course thank
you for your support. We really appreciate that so much.
We do and I look forward to seeing you all
next time at the quiet end.
Speaker 3 (56:29):
We got to see it in your name.
Speaker 4 (56:31):
Come on down all right, Bye bye bye guys.
Speaker 5 (57:00):
Content conspector conferent contectors not the contectors to the contector.
(57:41):
Don't contact the contentment contact CONTO the contector and connectors
not content contact comport the contector, the actors confectors conspected
(58:04):
the
True Crime Brewery contains disturbing content related to real life crimes.
Medical information is opinion based on facts of a crime
and should not be interpreted as medical advice or treatment.
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Welcome to True Crime Brewery. TI grabbers, I'm Jill, and
I'm Dick. Michelle Herndon seemed to have it all. She
was nearing completing her degree and had a bright future
ahead of her. She was also engaged to a really
great guy. She had a lot of big plans for
her future. The only negative for Michelle was that she
(00:48):
had migraine headaches, which were really excruciating for her. She'd
tried many medications and remedies, including alternative medicine, without much success.
Then she met Oliver O'Quinn. He was a new roommate
of her best friend, and Oliver was an ICU nurse.
He worked at Shan's Teaching Hospital, and he said he
(01:11):
had a medication that could benefit Michelle. This medication was
propofal and it did work wonders for her. The only
problem was that Oliver was infatuated with Michelle, and when
his affection was not reciprocated, it led to deadly Consequences.
Join us at the Quiet End for a discussion of
(01:32):
the tragic death of Michelle Herndon, and Dick has brought
us a beer.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
I got a Florida beer. I'm amazed I haven't done
this before because the beer is highlighte IPA, brewed by
Cigar City Brewing in Tampa, Florida. So a couple of
sides here. Cigar City is one of the premier brewers
in Florida. I really like them. They make some world class,
wonderful beers. Highlight I think it was at least ten
(01:59):
years ago I first rank it and it blew me
away and it still does. This is just a perfect
example of an ipa. The beer is a reddish amber color,
tiny bit of haze to it. There's a medium sized
white head, a little bit of lacing, nice aroma, citrus
and floral. Very good taste, predominantly grapefruit, tiny bit of pine,
(02:22):
background of caramel. Just a world class, well brewed beer.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
It is delicious. I've had it many a time. All right,
you go ahead and open that up.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
The same old Quiet End.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
This is a story which we heard about a while back,
and we've been looking into it and we decided this month,
let's cover it just for our TI Grabber members.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
So here we are.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, so why don't you start us out?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Okay, So this goes back a little over fifteen years ago.
November seventh, two thousand and five, Peter Alcorn was at
the front door of one of the houses he rented
in Gainesville, Florida. He had done some recent repairs in
the house left behind some tools that he needed. So
the person renting the house was Michelle Herndon, and she
(03:21):
was a landlord's dream, a mature, studious, quiet student, and
a very responsible student twenty four years old, finishing up
her studies at the University of Florida. Besides being a student,
she worked as a personal trainer. She was a member
of the Friendship Baptist Church in her hometown of Live Oak, Florida.
(03:42):
As if that's not enough, she also worked part time
at the Jungle Friend's Primate Sanctuary, where she cared for
animals that were released from laboratory research.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
That's pretty cool thing.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
To do, isn't it. And then if there's any minutes
left in her day, she is an advocate for the homeless,
a regular blood donor, and a sponsor of a child
in Africa. Full plate here.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Huh so this is the kind of person in the
world we don't want to lose. We want more people
like this, which makes it even more of a shame.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Does so after knocking on the door for several minutes,
finally opened a crack and there's a young kid with
college age who answered the door. And he wouldn't let
Alcoorn in. He told him it wasn't a good time,
please come back later. Then he closed and locked the door.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
That's interesting.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
That didn't sit well.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
I would imagine it didn't you.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
He's there to get some tools. It's not the person.
He rented the apartment or the house to sure what's
going on.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
But that was it. No questioning took place at that point.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
No.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Well. The man who answered the door was Oliver O'Quinn,
a registered nurse who worked at the university's teaching hospital, Shans.
He'd been there to treat one of Michelle's migraine headaches.
When Michelle fell out. Oliver had been less than polite
to Peter Elkhorn. She called up Elkhorn and tried to
smooth things out because Michelle already knew that Oliver had
(05:09):
kind of an abrasive personality. She'd known him for a
little over a month, and she knew he was infatuated
with her. He actually called Michelle every day at least once.
Michelle saw Oliver as a friend and she had no
romantic interest in him. She was actually engaged to another
man named Jason Deering, but Oliver seemed like a fairly
(05:31):
nice guy, and he was helping her with her migraines,
which was really important to her. It was really a
difficult thing to deal with in her life.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Oh, then it was. It seems to me though, it
could have been made a little clearer to him that
this was like a business relationship, not a deep friendship
or anything.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Well, Dick, I'm going to go one further and say
Michelle made a very poor decision allowing him to give
her drugs. Well, yeah, she should have been going to
her doctor. And if her doctor wasn't taking care of it,
you find another doctor. It's completely illegal, of course for
him to be doing this. Not to mention how dangerous it.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Is, Yeah, well it's very dangerous.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Very I mean, that's what happened to Michael Jackson, Right,
Wasn't that propofile that was propofal. So it can certainly
kill you.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Yes it can.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
And it's not like it just numbed the pain. What
it did has made her unconscious, so she could sleep
it off exactly.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
And you mentioned if she wasn't getting the results from
her doctor, there should be another doctor. Well, this is
Shan's Teaching hospital is pretty famous. It's a very well
respected institution. And I'm not saying that because I trained there, Okay,
but I got a good post medical school education at
(06:45):
Shan's and there were some really top notch physicians there.
So I agree that it was probably a dangerous thing
that she was playing with.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
It was absolutely a dangerous thing, and if she didn't
realize that, Oliver should have.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Although Oliver struck me as a kind of guy who
probably wanted to be a doctor, maybe that's not exactly
the right way to put it, but he acts like
he knows more than he knows.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Oh yeah, we've all met nurses like that. I think
it's a tendency in some nurses and paramedics to be
that way. Yeah, just to be a little too gung
ho about this stuff. And with Oliver, I'm sure it
also had something to do with impressing a girl he
was attracted to. Oh, yeah, he wanted to be her savior.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Hadn't thought about that? Yeah? Absolutely, that would fit in
with what I've come to learn about Oliver.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Well, I mean, if he wants to be with her
and that's really the only thing he has going for him,
so sure he's going to use it. Yeah, even though
it's completely unethical, it's dangerous, it's illegal. You covered that, yes,
So on November eighth, in the throes of another migraine,
Michelle had called up Oliver, and as always, he was
(07:57):
more than happy to go out to her house to
give her a man medication for her migraine. So the
medication of choice was the propofol. It does have a
variety of uses, but mostly it's used as a sedative.
Propofol was discovered back in nineteen seventy seven and it
was approved for use in the United States in nineteen
eighty nine. It has been called milk of amnesia because
(08:19):
the IV prep has a milky appearance and it also
has a tendency to suppress memory recall. So it's mostly
for surgery.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Yeah, it's a medication as a adjunct in anesthesia, So
you give it IV.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
You can't just take it by mouth and it acts
very quickly within a minute or two. And wants to sleep.
She's just going to sleep and sleep and wake up
without a headache.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, And that's typical for virtually any migraine sufferer. If
you can manage to get to sleep, you're going to
wake up with the headache going.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah, but it is something that would interfere in your
life because you have to go to sleep. Oh yeah,
so you can't function.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
No, if this is the only medicine that can work
for her, so it requires attendance by a medical person,
intravenous administration of a drug, and then you're going to
sleep for five, six, seven, eight hours.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yes, And just as an aside, if you're on that
medication in the hospital, you're going to be on a
heart monitor. You're not just going to be left on
propofil to sleep. No, it's not safe. But then also
the cynic in me wonders if he liked putting her
out because he maybe took advantage of her sexually while
she was out of it. That would be easy enough
for him to do. Have you considered that.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Oh, I haven't, you have a cruder mind? Than I do.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
It's a dark side, but it's realistic, very realistic if
you think about it.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Yeah, because she's out, she's out.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
He has a real crush on her, which she's not
feeling that back for him. So if he's putting her unconscious,
is it really the right thing to assume he's being
a gentleman?
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Well, may or may not be. There's nothing that suggested
any sexual impropriety, but.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Who would know besides him?
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Well, true, although maybe if she had been she had
a sensation in her genital area when she woke up,
something didn't feel right.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Not necessarily, though, who knows what he could have done.
I know I'm not saying he had to have actually
raped her, but he certainly could have done things to
her without her.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Knowing, certainly and probably without her becoming aware.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Sure, that's what I'm saying. Yes, So, yeah, you're right,
there's no proof of that, but it's certainly something I
would consider when you consider his actions in this case.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
There's that dark mind coming through again.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Well, it's true crime. You have to look on the
dark side.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
And we've gone over this. But as many people know,
propofal isn't without side effects. For one thing, injecting it
hurts like how has a very sharp burning sensation. Then
you can get side effects of an irregular heartbeat, apnea
which means you're not breathing, seizures, and low blood pressure.
(11:09):
These are all not uncommon side effects. So you got
to be careful of the struck administration of propofil without
the involvement of a physician and the ability to monitor
the situation, that can be a dangerous, even foolhardy proposition.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
So I'm going to go another step further here as
well and say, even with a physician, if you're not
in the right environment. Because of course Michael Jackson had
his propofile administered by a physician and he died from it. Yeah,
because he was in his home. Well, there was no
there was no staff or equipment or things that would
be needed to resuscitate someone. And I think in his
(11:49):
case they didn't even know until he'd been dead for
a bit, right, So it's not just that you need
a physician. Of course you're right that that is the
only person who should give it, but but something that
needs to be done in the correct environment and under
the correct circumstances.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Definitely, So when he had given the Michelle that does
the propofol and saw that she was sound asleep. Oliver
cleaned up after himself, as he always did. He bagged
up the syringe in medication while left Michelle's house and
disposed of the bag of medical waste in a nearby
garbage can. Now that's not a cool thing either, This
(12:26):
is medical waste.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Well that's the least of his infractions though.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Really, yeah, I know, I'm just pointing that out.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Sure, sure, you're right. So a full two days went
by and Michelle's boyfriend had been calling her phone over
and over again and getting no answer, so he had
driven up from Miami just to check on her.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
A four hour drive.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Well, sure, I would hope you'd drive four hours for me.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
I'd drive eight hours for you.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
WHOA, that's commitment, I tell you. But in fact, nobody
had heard from Michelle for those past two days. Jason
and Michelle's mom, Belinda, were afraid something bad had happened
to Michelle, and they were both suspicious about this weird
guy who'd been treating her migraines. We know who that is.
That's Oliver, That's who it is. So Jason had called
(13:15):
her landlord Peter Elkhorn, and he came over to the
house with the master key. So this doesn't sound like
it's a good situation.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
It's not starting out so good, is it. No, nobody's
heard from her for a couple of days. It's a
parent that her car's there and they can hear her
dog barking in the house, but no Michelle.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
So I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves.
But where is Oliver over these two days? Do we know?
Is he going to work and doing the usual things? Yeap, okay,
he is, But he normally called Michelle every day? So
did he know something was wrong?
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Yeah, he intended to kill her.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Well, you don't have to give it all away.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
With this dose.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Okay, got it, But we'll get to that. Got it?
Got it?
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Yeah? See, you didn't want to get ahead of yourself
too much, and I did. I want ahead and ruined it.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
No, you steered me back to the correct location.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
I'm good, okay. So the first thing that the Gainesville
police officers saw when they entered Michelle's house was that
it was really neat. Nothing had been disturbed, so it
didn't look like there had been any struggle or anything
as they went down the hallway and entered the bedroom,
so where they found Michelle who was lying face down
on the bed, and she was quite dead. There was
(14:31):
no trauma to her body, so that, you know, along
with the house being so neat, it didn't look like
there had been a massive fight or anything, and it
didn't seem to be a robbery because as far as
they could tell, there wasn't anything missing. Maybe natural causes,
I know, be fare possible. Jump on me for a
twenty four year old healthy woman. That can happen.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
It can happen. Sure what kind of things could cause
that a natural death of a healthy person who just
goes to bed and doesn't wake up.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Well, the biggest thing would be a heart rhythm problem.
You get into rhythmia and you die from that, that'd
be the big thing. I suppose she could have had
an aneurysm or an avmil formation in her brain that
picked that time to go and that would cause the
sudden death. But yeah, there's not too many things that
(15:21):
are going to do that.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
No, pretty much unheard of, very rare, very so. Crime
scene investigator Mark Woodmansey was called to the crime scene.
He noticed the bathroom waste basket was empty, while other
containers in the house had trash in them. He told
his team to be on the lookout for a public
spag that may have been discarded in a dumpster. So
(15:44):
why was he looking for that?
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Well, he noticed that these public spags were used as liners,
and all the trash containers okay, yeah, and the bathroom
wind was empty, another one in the house was full,
another one was half full, but they all had public
plastic bags as liners. Okay, So that's why he told
him to look for a publics bag.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
So it didn't take long before they found that public's
bag in a dumpster about sixty yards from Michelle's house,
so not a huge effort to dispose of it where
it wouldn't be found, not at all. Inside the bag
there were envelopes with Michelle's name on them, medicine vials
for versad, atomidate, and propofol. There was also a bloody syringe.
(16:32):
So you're gonna have to go over those medications for me.
I'm a little rusty.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Well, they're all similar in that they're anesthetic agents used
to induce anesthesia or to as adjunct anesthesia, so that
they're all kind of similar things.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
So he was giving her more than just propifile.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
It seems, well, we don't know. I suppose for this
one time when he was intending to cause harm to
her have taken along some other drugs to do that,
But as far as we know, that was just a
proper fall in her body.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
So Michelle's mom, Belinda, didn't want to wait around to
hear from Jason, Michelle's fiance, so she drove from Live
Oak to Gainesville as quickly as she could on her own,
and when she arrived at Michelle's house, she was really
alarmed by the number of police that were there, and
also that there was yellow crime scene tape around the area.
(17:29):
That would be every mother's nightmare, wouldn't it. When she
was told that Michelle was dead, of course, that just
destroyed her. She collapsed to the ground. After she was
able to recover just a little bit to be able
to speak, she told the detectives, you better find the
man who did this, or her father will and then
this family will suffer another tragedy. So by that she's
(17:52):
meaning that Michelle's father would kill him and he would
end up in prison exactly. So she's not fucking around here.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
No, she's telling the police, you'd better take care of
this because my husband's going to go nuts.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
But how in the world did she know it wasn't
a natural death.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
She just assumed it wasn't. She just knows her daughter's dead.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yeah, yeah, but I wonder if they had told her
about the things they found. Probably not. No.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
So that same day, which was November tenth, wasn't a
good day for Oliver O'Quinn either. Not long after you
got to work to start his day, he got called
to the supervisor's office. And that's not a good sign,
is it.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Usually it's bad.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
You get to school and they say, Jill, report to
the principal's office. You know that's not going to be good.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Well, of course that never happened with me, but sure.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Yeah, no, it's just your sisters, right right, right. So
his supervisor told Oliver that he just didn't have the
necessary skills to be an ICU nurse and that his
resignation was expected. There was a second unmentioned reason for
asking Oliver to resign. Turns out, there was a long
running problem in the ICU with drugs going missing, and
(19:03):
guess who was strongly suspected of being responsible for that.
Good old Oliver. So the idea that had been floated
around was that if Oliver resigned, the hospital would not
have to investigate the theft of drugs. We've done enough
medical cases. That's not an uncommon thing.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Well, I'm hoping it's less common now than it used
to be. But you're right, Yeah, it's just passing the buck.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
We're going to get rid of this guy because he's
done such and such, but not ever tell the succeeding
hospital or office or practice or whatever what's going on
with this guy. Is exactly passing the buck. It certainly
is negligence.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Yes, I would think so.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Yeah, so theoretically Oliver resigned, Well he did resign, but
theoretically after his resignation he could get a job at
any other hospital because his nursing license hadn't been revoked
or anything.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
So to me, this is not online. The priests and
the Catholic Church, when they get caught being pedophiles or
abusing children in some way, they were often just moved
on to another parish.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Yeah, very analogous.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
That's just fresh in my mind because I just watched
that movie Doubt with Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Incredible movie. Amy Adams as well, pretty good movie. What
a loss that Philip Seymour Hoffman is, Huh, he was
just amazing. I'm off the topic, but it's a similar situation,
passing the buck along, ye and putting more people at risk.
(20:35):
So it's really a terrible thing to do. It's more
than just not taking responsibility for a situation. It's actually
putting lives at risk knowingly, right knowingly. So that to
me is stunning, and I would hope that there was
some kind of civil action against the hospital at some point.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
We don't know, so.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
I guess Oliver was surprised when he was asked to resign. Yeah,
not happy about it. Thought he was a good employee.
But he had to be stealing drugs. How else was
he treating Michelle's migraines. That's not something he could buy
and he didn't have prescription privileges.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
No, he was stealing drugs. Yes, they had a machine
at the time where you plugged in your employee ID number,
some code and you could pick your drug out of
the machine.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yeah. I think that's standard at all hospitals these days.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
So what they're going to end up doing is they're
going to take the vials that they found in the
dumpster and they can track them backwards. And they found
out that it was Oliver who had withdrawn oilers from
the Pixis machine, although it's not called Pixis whatever it's called.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Yeah, that's just one brand of them. I believe there
are several. Yeah, but still it's the whole idea of
just having him resign. Yeah, it's not like they didn't
have proof. If they'd worked at it, they could have
proven it and something at least got his license taken away.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
It would have been a very simple matter. And it
still could have been an.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Internal matter, Yes, it could have been.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
But they wanted the easy or easier way.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Out, which is surprising to me because Shans was, like
you said, a very high profile, well respected hospital.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
It was. But to me that could be another reason
for not doing it, because they don't want any blemishes
on their record.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Okay, that's some messed up logic, but I see what
you're saying that they could consider it that way because
after all, and unfortunately, these hospitals are businesses and they
are about making money.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
That's the goal. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
So he was still employed at another area hospital, one
that wasn't as prestigious as Shan's. This was a job
that Oliver didn't want to lose at Shans and it
was gone, so he was upset.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Yeah, the other hospital was as small er, not much
known hospital Chans. He could be a big man on campus.
At the other hospitals, he's just another fish.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
But I would think at that point he should have
been happy to have any job. Yeah, but he wasn't
the type of person to see it that way.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
So while Oliver's getting this news, the district Medical Examiner,
doctor Martha Burt, had some news for Mark Woodmansey. She
told him first that there didn't appear to be any
reason for this healthy twenty four year old to be dead,
So that's where we started with. But there was an
unexpected finding. She had a small needle mark on her
(23:41):
left arm. They didn't have any evidence of drug use.
There was no other needle marks, and there's no history
of drug use. The one that was there was quite
small and almost missed, and it wasn't in a spot
where someone might self.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Inject, So she doesn't have other needle marks. I guess
this wasn't being done on a daily basis. This was
more sporadic that he gave her this medication.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
It wasn't on a daily basis, sure, it was, I
think from studying his case. It's to doctor Burt's credit
that she noticed it. Oliver had used a pediatric butterfly needle,
like a twenty five gage.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
It's pretty tiny.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
So pretty tiny, doesn't leave much of a mark. Sure,
and if you don't have any hematoma or anything from it,
it can be very difficult, if not impossible, to notice.
But she noticed it, so that got them wondering, or
got woodman C wondering if someone had administered an injection
to Michelle.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Well, yeah, and she even wondered if it was maybe
a medical professional because it seemed to be done so neatly.
Plus who has access to these things?
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Right, they're starting to make progress almost immediately on the case.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Yes, absolutely, woodman.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
C extrapolated the information from doctor Bird and it got
him thinking that whoever had injected Michelle was also someone
that she knew and someone she trusted.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Well, duh, come on, she wasn't strapped down or anything.
It had to be someone she trusted, So that didn't
take a lot of college to figure that out.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
No, that part was less deductive reasoning than obvious stuff.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah, yeah, but.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
It sounded like she almost missed the punctural from the needle,
but she found it and that led to everything else.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
So Woodman c then asked doctor Bird about the medication
vials that had been found in the dumpster near Michelle's home,
and they were all vials that had contained pharmacy grade
medications and they had all come from the same place,
of course, Shann's Hospital. Further checking established the drugs had
been dispensed through omnis cell, which is the pixus, the
(26:00):
drug dispensing machine that they had at that hospital, and
from that point it was easy to read the lot
numbers on the vials and find out that all of
those vials had been dispensed to a nurse named Oliver O'Quinn.
So they got back to him very quickly. Wasn't a
mystery for long.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
No, So they've solved most of it already. They found
the bag of drugs and they traced it back or
they able to trace it back to Oliver taking them.
What they don't have is evidence that he injected anything
into Michelle. So that's the big thing they got to
work on.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
With all this done. That was the end of Woodman
Sea's involvement, and Detective Michael Douglas not that Michael Douglas.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Okay, I got it.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
I started reading about that and I'm thinking, oh, black
rain or whatever. Oh no, what else was he in?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Fatal attraction?
Speaker 3 (26:53):
Yeah? But where was he a cop?
Speaker 2 (26:55):
What's that one with Sharon Stone that you like?
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Basic, basic instant, yes, okay.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
But no, this is a regular Michael Douglas, good good,
and he's going to be the lead investigator in the case,
and he was dogged in his determination to solve this case.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
So they're right away saying homicide, no question.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah, yeah, I mean once they find the punctural, they're
thinking homicide. And maybe not absolutely no question, but almost
no question.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Well, I would just say that if she'd done it herself,
that the paraphernalia has still been there, because she would
have passed out with a syringe right there, if not
still in her hand.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Yeah. No, I mean there was a second party involved
in this, right, Yes.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
In any murder investigation, of course, the victim's significant other
is the prime suspect, the first one to rule out,
and Michelle's fiance, Jason Deering, was quickly ruled out because
he hadn't even been in the area. He was in Miami.
So Detective Douglas went to Miami to question you, Jason
and found out some things about Michelle. And Jason said
(28:04):
that Michelle had suffered from debilitating migraines, but she told
him she finally found someone who could help her. And
she'd even told him that this was the roommate of
Michelle's best friend, Jessica. So Jason said that Oliver had
quite a crush on Michelle, and of course it was
not reciprocated. And here's the thing. He might have overheard
(28:26):
Michelle calling him an annoying little man, and that could
have put him over the edge as far as his
ego was concerned.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, and as it turns out, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
So the next person on Detective Douglas's interview list was
Michelle's best friend, and that was Oliver's roommate, Jessica Seple.
She was interviewed at the police station because Douglas didn't
want to run into Oliver at her house, which makes sense.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Yeah, because he hasn't talked to him yet.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
No, and they don't want to tip him off, No,
absolutely not in his mind. Douguglas had already cleared Jessica
as a suspect, but he wanted to get Jessica's opinion
on Oliver and get some information from her. She confirmed
what Douglas already knew, that Oliver did have a crush
on Michelle that wasn't reciprocated. So Douglas asked Jessica how
(29:19):
Oliver seemed to be dealing with Michelle's death, and she
was unable to answer that question because Oliver hadn't been
at the house since the day before Michelle died. So
that's very suspicious as well, because this was a guy
who was in touch with Michelle daily pluss. He hadn't
(29:40):
been home with his roommate, hasn't been home, so he's
probably gone not quite almost all right, So what did
Douglas do next?
Speaker 3 (29:49):
Well, then he went over to Live Oak to interview
mom Belinda. She said that she and Michelle spoke pretty
much every day on the phone. The last time was
the day before Michelle was murdered. In that conversation, that
last conversation, Michelle had told her mother that Jason was
going to move from Miami to Gainesville. He was really
(30:09):
really happy about that be closer to her boyfriend slash fiance.
Belinda also told Douglas of Michelle's increasing frustration with Oliver,
how he called all the time and wanted to be
with her. So Belinda said, well, what if he did it?
That hadn't been mentioned before, but this was the time
when it's starting to be on people's minds that Oliver
(30:34):
was sufficiently weird enough and infatuated enough that he might
have done something to Michelle.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Well, certainly he's the prime suspect at this point, but
I think it could still be considered that it wasn't
on purpose, that it was an accidental overdose. Yeah, there's
no proof here that he had done it on purpose,
at least not up to this point.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
No, there will be though.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
Before he turned the case over to Detective Douglas, Woodman
c did one final thing. He made a request, and
that was to ask the lab to test syringe caps
that had been found in the trash in the back.
That was in the trash because Woodmen see recalled sat
nurses in the emergency room pulled the caps off syringes
(31:21):
with their teeth.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Oh that's really interesting that he thought of that.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
So I think it's an amazing thing because it turned
out that there was an unknown male DNA profile recovered
from the syringe caps, and it's going to turn out,
as I'm sure you know, to be Oliver's DNA.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Well, and also Michelle's DNA was found in one of
the syringes. There was a mixture of her blood and
propofile found in some tubing. So this all meant that
Michelle's death should be considered a homicide.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah, once they had these results, it's going to change
from being accidental or non contributing, but now it's a homicide.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Okay, but I still don't see why they think he
did it on purpose. It's a possibility, but I don't
see that being totally clear to me at this point. Sure,
his DNA's on the cap, but even if he gave
her the drugs, how do we know he wanted her
to die?
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Well, I guess what they're thinking is that you'd been
giving this drug to her for some time and no
one toward effects like death had occurred. Right, So yeah,
I guess they could have said, well, maybe it was
an accident.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Well, even if it was an accident, it was so
illegal and out of the realm of what would be
safe that I think it would qualify for negligent homicide
even if he hadn't meant for her to die, right,
because it was just a total disregard for human life
to be doing that thing. And it was difficult because
(32:53):
Detective Douglas couldn't track down Oliver right away. He wasn't
at the house he shared with Jessica, we know that,
and he wasn't answering his phone or calling anyone. So
Douglas went to Shan's and he found out that Oliver
was no longer an employee there. Remember, he'd been asked
to resign. His supervisor told Douglas that Oliver had been
(33:14):
asked to resign because he didn't have the necessary skills
to be an ICU nurse. When asked about the possibility
of Oliver stealing drugs, the supervisor did kind of admit
to that, right sort of.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
She just made this kind of oblique reference that there
had been some rumors to that effect, but nothing that
had been verified. So that's pretty much skating around that issue, huh.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
It seems like it. So Douglas then asked where he
could find Oliver, and they told him that he still
worked part time at the other hospital, National Coast Medical.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Yeah. So Douglas caught up with Oliver just as he
was entering the hospital and it was plain to him
that Oliver didn't want to talk to him. And when
they did speak briefly, he said that he and Michelle
were acquaintances, and Douglas knew that wasn't true. Then Oliver said,
I'm running late, got to get to work. He asked
(34:12):
Douglas if he could call him, so Douglas gave Oliver
his business card and kind of poked him in the
chest with his forefinger and said, don't let me down.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Well, I would think Oliver must be worried at this point,
you bet so. The next day was November twenty ninth,
and Oliver told his roommate Jessica that he was going
to go on a vacation, which was a little out
of the blue and strange.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Yes it was.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
He did give her rent money and told her he
had spoken to the detective.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Yeah. She asked him if he had talked to Douglas
and he said, oh, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Well, surely she has her own suspicions around Oliver.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
She does.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
He told her he'd be back in a couple of weeks.
But that wasn't true. He was actually fleeing. He had
bought himself a one way ticket to Ireland, which which
is where he was from, where his family was from.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Yeah. I don't know if he was from, but O'Quinn
is certainly an Irish surname, isn't it. I mean, how
else do you pick Ireland?
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Right, not that I'm running Ireland down. It's a lovely country.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Oh gorgeous, yes, But.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Of all the places he could go, he picked Ireland,
and as it turns out, that was a fortuitous thing.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
Yeah. Now, the same day that that happened, when Oliver's
getting ready to rabbit, doctor Bruce Goldberger, who was the
medical director of laboratories at Shan's, called doctor Bert. Remember
she's the pathologist that did the autopsy and stuff. He
told her the toxicology screen on Michelle was positive for propofall.
(35:44):
This is the first time Goldberger could remember that propofol
had been found in a dead body like this.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Yeah, that wasn't a medical death in a hospital, right, Yeah. Well,
doctor Burt gave this information to Detective Douglas and then
that's when he started to think, well, I need to
get more aggressive with Oliver. I can't just sit and
wait for him to come to me. No, so you
can really imagine that Douglas was not happy and very
surprised when he went to Oliver's home to interview him
(36:16):
and found out he'd gone to Ireland. His surprise turned
into frustration too when he started having difficulty getting Oliver
extradited back to the United States. The Irish courts moved
really slowly, and the attempts to speed things up could
result in a rejection of extradition. So so far, Douglas's
(36:37):
only victory was getting Oliver's application to join the Irish
Nurses organization block.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
Yeah. The diplomat that Douglas was dealing with told him
that the last eighteen extradition cases he had been involved
in with Ireland, none of them had been approved.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
But most of them were for less serious crimes.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
Well, of course, yeah, but he cautioned Douglas. He said,
you know, tread lightly here. You don't want to get
the Irish pissed off, because they'll deny extradition. Then you'll
never get to try him.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
And we remember from our other Irish cases that the
police is called the Garda, right, and they had been
pretty helpful as far as I could tell.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
Yeah, I mean they staked out his home and they
tailed him when he went out, hoping that he would
do something anything that they could arrest him for. And
that way, if he got arrested for even just a
minor crime, he could be extradited.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
So he wasn't really in hiding. If he had gone
under a different name or you know, not applied to
join the Irish Nurses organization, he wouldn't have been so
easy to find.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
But yeah, no, he was hiding in plain sight, that's
for sure.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
And I think his defense team kind of tried to
use that to say he wasn't really on the run, yeah,
which could seem somewhat valid.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Well it could, except in the face of all the
other evidence against him.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
Yes, So here's Douglas. He's just chewing nails because he
can't get this guy back to the United States, and
he's trying to think away as how am I going
to out fox him? And then he had this epiphany.
He decided if he could maybe get Oliver to know
that the Gainesville police knew where he was and that
(38:26):
they're close to arresting him. He's hoping that Oliver is
not familiar with the extradition rulings. You know, he's just
thinking if I can rattle his cage alotle, thinking maybe
I could get him to panic and go somewhere else
that would be more receptive to extradition.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Well, that doesn't seem likely to me.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
It sounds like a stretch. But I'm thinking Douglas is
getting desperate.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Well, I'm thinking that Oliver O'Quinn didn't have a ton
of money. No, he didn't, so he's not going to
be flying around the world.
Speaker 3 (38:59):
No, he was in Ireland and was going to stay there.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Yeah. It was pretty much stuck there and he couldn't
even work as a nurse to make good money.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Nope. So what Douglas did. He called up the Irish Times,
the newspaper, spoke to a reporter named Sean O'Driscoll, and
he was more than happy to help Douglas. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
In April of two thousand and six, Oliver read an
article about himself in the newspaper and he realized he
needed to get the hell out of Ireland. He decided
the best place for him at this point where the
extradition would be really difficult, maybe even impossible, would be Africa.
So Oliver didn't do actual research on the extradition policies
(39:40):
in different African countries. That was his first mistake.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
Yeah. I mean here he's decided, oh I can get
to Africa and nobody will extradite me from there. But
he didn't do any of the research or the homework
to see what was what.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Yeah, so he decided on Senegal in West Africa.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Yeah, and don't ask me how he decided on that,
but he just did.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Okay, And as he was boarding the plane, he didn't
notice that the GARDA some plane closes detectives where they
are talking on their cell phone.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Yeah, so they know where he's going, so they are
able to report that. So he gets to Senegal, he has,
as you suggested, he has virtually no money. So he's
going to have to contact his family because he doesn't
know anybody else who else is going to send him money.
So he's going to have to go to a US
embassy and send a telegram or home to get them
(40:39):
to wire money to him.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
So what's his family thinking at this point? They're thinking
he's innocent or they're just willing to protect him. Even
though they believe he's guilty.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
They're ready to help him out.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
So he did realize he needed to keep moving.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
Yeah, he crossed the border from Senegal into Mauritania and
he goes to the embassy there, stands in line with
other people with all their different requests and is getting
ready to beg for some money from his folks, and.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
His folks are in the US.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
In the US. He's having second thoughts about doing this
because he's thinking, I'm going to get caught, but he
doesn't know any other way to get the money that
he needs, so he decides to go through with it.
So he sees the US military police in the embassy.
He imagines anyway that they're watching him closely, and he's
(41:32):
getting more and more paranoid.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Well, sure, it's really a risky endeavor.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Yeah, it turned out to be very risky.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
So he got to the head of the line and
when he gave his passport to the embassy employee, he
started really feeling worried. Some warning bells went off in
his head. Yeah, he bolted from the line, fled the embassy,
and made it back to the room he'd been renting
in Senegal. He packed quickly, but when he left his building,
(42:01):
he saw two army jeeps headed toward him, so he
dropped his bag and he started running at that point,
but you know, he wasn't in great shape and it
was warm, so he got really hot and exhausted, and
they caught up with him. He was captured, yes, he was.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
So. Then the Senegalese police notified the Garda and the
Garter called Detective Douglas, who was just more than happy
when he got the news. The other thing that was
helpful for him was that the US, at least at
that time, I don't know if they still do, but
they had a very good relationship with Senegal, so the
(42:40):
extradition of Oliver should be easily accomplished, and it was.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
So he really didn't do his research there.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
No, Oliver wasn't as smart as he thought he was.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
So by August of two thousand and six, Oliver was
back in the US and he was incarcerated in the
Electionwa County jail. He had a cellmate, Thomas Roscher, and
a public defender Drew McGill. Any relation to Jimmy and
Chuck McGill. Yeah, okay, So Oliver Oliver really missed Dublin
(43:14):
and he wished he was back there. McGill didn't make
him feel any better. He told Oliver that Ireland often
refused to extradite suspects back to the US.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
Yeah, that's just what Oliver needs to hear. He reads
the newspaper articles that had been written about him and says,
I got to get out of Ireland because they're closing
in on me. Yeah, and if he had known, he
probably would have stayed put.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
So the thing with Ireland is that they do not
believe in the death penalty. And I believe Florida has
the death penalty. Aren't they one of the states that
uses it or has used it? Oh yeah, yeah. So
he thought he'd made a big mistake there, and he
would lament that fact when he was talking to his cellmate.
Oh boy, did I make a mistake.
Speaker 3 (43:59):
If I hadn't done that, I could still be sitting
in Dublin enjoying myself exactly. But he wasn't.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
So the cellmate, Roscher was a good listener, not because
he felt sorry for Oliver, had any empathy for him,
and certainly not to make Oliver feel any better about
the situation, but he wanted Oliver to tell him things everything,
preferably because knowledge was power for an inmate, and he
might be able to use that to get some kind
(44:27):
of deal with the DA. Absolutely, so it could be
a good bargaining chip for him.
Speaker 3 (44:32):
It's the name of the game, right, I mean, Jeral,
how snitches do we talk about or read about? Oh?
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Exactly. There's no honor among thieves now.
Speaker 3 (44:40):
And a lot of his conversations with Raucher, Oliver professed
how much he loved Michelle, and at least in his mind,
how she loved him back. But eventually he did find
out the truth, and what he told Raucher was that
he was at a party that Michelle happened to be attending. Also,
he overheard Michelle on the phone talking with her fiance Jason,
(45:04):
and he overheard her because he basically followed her around
at this party.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
He was obsesstrally.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
Yeah, So he saw her leave the room and he
followed her, and she was in another room talking to Jason,
and he heard her tell her fiance that she considered
Oliver an annoying little man. So and that's when he
told Rauscher, I decided that since she put me down
I would put her down. She was going to have
a long, peaceful sleep. So there you have it, a
(45:35):
confession of.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
Sorts if you believe the cellmate. Sure, because there was
no recording, no, no, But Rosser's testimony was a big
plus for the prosecution. Oliver went on trial for Michelle's
murder in May of two thousand and eight, and he
was a big part of that.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
He was.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Assistant State Attorney Tim Browning, in his closing statement at
the try said that Oliver used a drug to help
people sleep to make sure that Michelle never woke up,
and of course he did this without a physician's authorization.
I don't think that even needs to be said. But
he also made sure to mention that Michelle trusted Oliver,
(46:15):
so it was quite a betrayal.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
And then Oliver's attorney Miguil, didn't call any witnesses in
Oliver's defense, and Oliver himself certainly didn't take the stand.
McGill claimed the prosecution had relied on only circumstantial evidence
and they had absolutely no proof that Oliver had injected Michelle.
Well that's not entirely true.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
No, I think there's a lot of circumstantial evidence, plus
you have his DNA on the caps. My only issue
with the whole thing is his intention. His motive.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
Yeah, Well, and in that you have to believe what
Rauscher said Oliver.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
Told him Yeah, and that's I don't know, that's a
lot to base on one inmate. Did he get anything
in exchange for his testimony? That would be some thing
to know. No, he didn't.
Speaker 3 (47:02):
There was no quid pro quo.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
So that makes it a little more believable.
Speaker 3 (47:06):
Right, And we're not told the numbers in terms of
what concentration of propofol was found in our blood?
Speaker 2 (47:14):
Well, that was going to be my next question for you.
Was it like this huge overdose? Yeah, because that would
be significant. It was a huge overdose, okay, So it
wasn't just a little too much.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
No, okay, so it would be less likely to be
a medical error and got it intent.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
So that's that's pretty good evidence there. Yeah, Yeah, that's
some good forensics. I think.
Speaker 3 (47:39):
I chuckled at this a little bit. Miguil said in
his closing statement that if Oliver had left Shans because
his skills weren't sufficient, then how is he going to
be the person who injected Michelle? If he didn't have
sufficient skills. I liked that kind of circular reasoning.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Okay, but I would just being Devil's advocate, I'd say
Oliver could use that say, well, I wasn't skilled enough,
so I made a mistake, so that could work both ways. Yeah,
but I guess his attorney point. Yeah, I guess McGill
didn't pick up on that and use it though. Nope,
he should have called me, I'm always available for these things.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
Could help him out.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Yeah, yep.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
So the jury deliberated for just a little under three
hours and they came back with a guilty verdict. Then
victim statements, victim impact statements were heard, and after that
the judge sentenced Oliver to life in prison with no
chance of parole, and Oliver, when asked if he wanted
to make a statement, declined he really never opened his mouth.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Well, this to me is a really weird murder, really,
because usually if someone gets angry with someone who wants
to kill them, I think of them as doing something violent, impetuous.
Not this type of thing. This was planned, which all
still you know, makes it more evil. Yeah, but just
to think that out just because she criticized him, that's
(49:07):
pretty crazy. He was not stable. Well we know that,
so that's really crazy stuff and it's concerning. I'm really
still concerned that that hospital was going to pass him
off to other people. That's terrible, and that's just saying, well,
go somewhere else and kill somebody, because that certainly could
have happened.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
Yeah, no question.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
But when we were reading about that nurse Cullen, another
male nurse, he was actually killing patients correct, correct, So
when we were reading about him, the same thing happened.
He was just tossed from one hospital to another.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
Half a dozen hospitals.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
So we're all those hospitals held accountable, I wonder.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
Well, in their reflection after the verdict, the prosecution recognized
how Oliver had almost gotten away with this murder. What
if doctor Bert hadn't found the puncture we in her arm? Yeah,
well they'd still be able to find the profoifall in
her blood.
Speaker 3 (50:06):
Yeah, well they should have. But if there weren't any
of it wasn't any evidence, they might have ended up
saying a natural death.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
That to me is scary because this is a twenty
four year old. Yeah, and I think there should always
be an autopsy on a twenty four year old unless
they have some condition or an obvious death of course.
Speaker 3 (50:25):
Yeah, but I suppose having found a dead twenty four
year old and then finding this bag of drugs used
drugs in the trash, they could find out that she
had propofile in her system anyway, right, right?
Speaker 2 (50:41):
But do you think if the bag hadn't been found,
if he'd been more careful about disposing of it, that
they still would have figured this out? No? Really, I
do think they would have. So tell me why you
think they wouldn't have.
Speaker 3 (50:53):
Well, I'm going to go with that aspect, plus not
finding the puncture wound. Okay, Once you find the puncture
one recognize that she had been injected with something, then
it's an easier.
Speaker 2 (51:05):
Thing even without the bag. Even without the bag, I
agree with you there.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
Yes, but if they don't have the bag and they
don't have a puncture wound, yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
You don't think they'd test for propo fall because that's
not something they normally test for.
Speaker 3 (51:19):
It's not something they have to request it. Yeah, And well,
I wonder if the people knew, if Michelle's friends knew
that it was propafalish is getting I bet at.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
Least one of them did, yeah, or at least her fiance.
So I bet he would have been caught regardless of that.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
So maybe he would have gotten picked up that way,
I think so. Well, what if Woodman C hadn't asked
the syringe caps to be tested?
Speaker 2 (51:45):
Yeah, that was a really brilliant thing. I wouldn't have.
Speaker 3 (51:47):
Thought of that, because if they don't do that, they
don't get his DNA exactly. Yes, well that's another thing.
Or what if Woodman C hadn't thought, oh, this bathroom
from trash, it's empty, and the kitchen one and the
other one are full or half full. What if he
hadn't figured that out, and that they never looked for
(52:10):
the bag of trash.
Speaker 2 (52:11):
Yeah, and all these what ifs just point to the
fact that good old fashioned detective work is really at
the core of getting a conviction. Yeah, because these are
basically small things separately, but when you put them all together,
they did make a powerful case against Oliver.
Speaker 3 (52:29):
They certainly did. I had a couple other ones. What
if Douglas hadn't had the foresight to get the newspaper
in Ireland to mess around with Oliver that's what got.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
Him running, Yes, exactly, that's true.
Speaker 3 (52:44):
And the biggest thing that struck me as I was
thinking about this case. What if Oliver had never overheard
Michelle running him down.
Speaker 2 (52:53):
Well, yeah, I've thought about that.
Speaker 3 (52:55):
If he doesn't hear that, I think eventually things are
going to happen.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Anyway, That's what I'm thinking.
Speaker 3 (53:01):
Maybe not to that extent, but if he hadn't heard her,
he wouldn't hatch the plot to do her in.
Speaker 2 (53:09):
Yes, and her death is a tragedy, but she also
did make some bad decisions here, not putting her at fault.
Of course, she's the victim. It's a tragedy, no doubt
about it. But some decisions were made here that were
not smart. No, she was putting her life at risk,
even if he didn't want to kill her. This was
so damn risky. It's certainly terrifying to me to think
(53:32):
about it.
Speaker 3 (53:33):
But at the same time, imagine you're the migraine sufferer
and you finally found a medication that works for you.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
I know, I know, but really so happy. But you
need to go to your doctor for that, Yeah you do, Well,
you're a doctor. You should say yes, go to your doctor. Okay,
you got it, because this is so dangerous, but you know,
you think. She was young, She didn't have any medical education,
(54:00):
so what did she really know about this? She probably
didn't realize the seriousness of this.
Speaker 3 (54:05):
She might not even known what he was giving her.
He says, I have something. I'll help your headaches, just
one problem. It's an IV preparation and it hurts, but
it will help, and it does.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
But for fuck's sake, if someone's putting a drug into
your vein, you should know what it is.
Speaker 3 (54:23):
I mean, yeah, you should.
Speaker 2 (54:25):
You should. And she was young and didn't know, and
it's terrible for her. But I hope that anybody listening,
if anyone offers to eject you with propofol for any reason,
unless you're getting surgery in a hospital, say no.
Speaker 3 (54:39):
I'll say no, thanks.
Speaker 2 (54:40):
Say no thanks. Yeah, so this is a very unusual case.
Speaker 3 (54:46):
It sure is. Yeah, I'll bet they've not seen another
propafol poisoning in Florida.
Speaker 2 (54:51):
Well, I don't know, a lot of shit goes down
in Florida.
Speaker 3 (54:54):
That's a wacky state.
Speaker 2 (54:55):
They've probably seen alligators with propofol in Florida. Yeah, Okay.
So our sources for this case are a short book
called The Murder of Michelle Herndon, which was written by A.
Rod Cackley. So thanks to Rod for that information. There's
also a TV episode on the show Licensed to Kill,
(55:18):
season two, episode two about this case. Also, we looked
into the Gainesville dot com archives and we found information
from May twenty fourth, two thousand and eight and April nineteenth,
two thousand and six. So there's not a huge amount
of information on this case. I'm surprised it's not more
(55:39):
well known actually, because it is so unusual.
Speaker 3 (55:42):
It's unusual and fairly sensational, I think.
Speaker 2 (55:46):
Well, yes, with the running to another country and all that. Yeah,
certainly a lot going on there.
Speaker 3 (55:51):
Yeah, very interesting.
Speaker 2 (55:53):
Okay, So what do you have coming up for our
next bonus episode for our listeners next month.
Speaker 3 (55:59):
Well, I have several possibilities. I haven't chosen one yet
because I want to get a couple months ahead of
the game, okay, and I've got some good possibilities. When
is an Australian case?
Speaker 2 (56:11):
What's the Australian case.
Speaker 3 (56:13):
I'm not going to tell you just yet. I'm going
to surprise you, all right.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
Well, thank you everyone for listening, and of course thank
you for your support. We really appreciate that so much.
We do and I look forward to seeing you all
next time at the quiet end.
Speaker 3 (56:29):
We got to see it in your name.
Speaker 4 (56:31):
Come on down all right, Bye bye bye guys.
Speaker 5 (57:00):
Content conspector conferent contectors not the contectors to the contector.
(57:41):
Don't contact the contentment contact CONTO the contector and connectors
not content contact comport the contector, the actors confectors conspected
(58:04):
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