Serial Killer nurse accused of murdering four patients on trial, faces death penalty

A nurse and alleged serial killer accused of killing four patients by injecting air into their hearts will soon find out if he will be executed.

William George Davis, 31, is accused of injecting air into the arteries of four patients recovering from heart surgery at the Christus Trinity Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler, Texas, according to Associated Press. His trial in Texas on the accusations started this week.

Davis allegedly caused the deaths of John Lafferty, Ronald Clark, Christopher Greenway and Joseph Kalina, the AP reported.

Davis’s capital murder trial began on Sept. 28 with a not guilty plea, according to the AP.

Davis’s defense attorney told jurors his client was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, while a prosecutor called him a “serial killer” who found the perfect place to hide, the AP reported.

“No one expects this is going to happen to them — certainly not in a hospital,” Smith County District Jacob Putnam told jurors, according to the AP. “We’re going to ask you to find him guilty of capital murder because that’s what he did.”

Each of the four patients was in stable condition after their surgery until they all suffered stroke-like symptoms, the AP reported.

CT scans showed abnormal arterial spaces in the patients’ brains, and Davis was the only nurse on duty at the time, according to the AP.

“It turns out a hospital is the perfect place for a serial killer to hide,” Putnam said, according to the AP.

Defense attorney Phillip Hayes said that Davis was an innocent victim of circumstance and that strokes were not uncommon occurrences in intensive-care units, the AP reported.

Davis’s trial is expected to take four to six weeks to complete, according to the AP.