'Nobody Will Tell Me Anything': VA Victims' Families Left In Doubt

'Nobody Will Tell Me Anything’

VA Victims’ Families Left In Doubt

BY JOHN BARTON

News Staff Reporter

For Bernice Green the investigation of mysterious breathing failures and deaths at the Ann Arbor Veteran’s Administration Hospital has meant nine months of worry, waiting and wondering.

“It’s something that has been on my mind constantly,” Mrs. Green said in a recent telephone interview from her home in Parchment, near Kalamazoo. “I’m very, very confused. I keep waiting for some official word, but nobody will tell me anything.”

The official cloak of silence that has been draped around the most recent development in the puzzling case, the discovery of traces of a potentially lethal drug in the exhumed bodies of three of four suspected murder victims, has never been lifted for friends, relatives or widows.

The body of Mrs. Green’s husband, Joseph, a retired insurance salesman, was dug up from its coffin at Mt. Everest Cemetery in Kalamazoo on Oct. 2.

At the same time, FBI agents were unearthing three more bodies — John M. Herman, 74, of Manitou Beach; Roy Ogle, 57, of Ann Arbor; and James E. Oulds, 63, of Flint.

But, because the head of the federal probe, Asst. U.S. Atty. Richard L. Delonis, refuses to confirm or deny reports of the laboratory findings, it cannot be determined in which of the three suspected murder victims the drug — pancuronium bromide (Pavulon) — was found.

“I have been very anxious to know what the FBI autopsy found,” Mrs. Green said. “I remember once I asked if I would ever get a report, and all they said was ‘eventually.’ So all I can do is sit back and wait, and see what I should do.”

The relatives of the other men whose bodies were exhumed are still waiting, along with Mrs. Green, to learn the results of the post-mortem lab tests.

“I haven’t heard a thing from anybody,' said Wayne Herman whose father died July 30 after an unexpected breathing failure.

“All I know,” Herman, added, “is that back in October, the FBI came out and asked permission to disinter my father’s remains, and they said that if we didn’t give permission, they would go ahead and get a court order anyway. Since then the only people I’ve talked to have been reporters.”

An Ypsilanti lawyer, Vanzetti M. Hamilton, represents Wilma Ogle, of Ann Arbor.

Her husband, a farm worker, died Aug. 15 after a single unexplained arrest.

“No,” Hamilton said, “We have never been officially notified about the tests."

There also has been official silence for Sarah Oulds, of Flint. Her husband, a former coal miner, died Aug. 14.

“Nobody has told me anything,” Mrs. Oulds said, "so there’s nothing I can tell you about it. No one has said anything, I don't know anything and I can’t tell you anything.”

Delonis says there is a reason why none of the laboratory findings has been disclosed to relatives of the men whose bodies were exhumed or to news media.

‘Actually, there are a number of reasons why we are not discussing any of this particular phase of the investigation,” Delonis explained. “One of those reasons is that none of the things you are talking about has been brought before the grand jury.”

A grand jury has been hearing evidence in the VA Hospital case sinoe late last year. Although two women who were nurses in the Fuller Road facility’s third-floor intensive care unit, where many of the suspicious breathing and heart failures occurred, have been named by Delonis as suspects in the case, no indictments have been handed down.

“There are no immediate plans at this time to convene the grand jury,” Delonis said.

Delonis also said the 23-member grand jury no longer meets on a regular basis, but is recalled on a five-day notice from Delonis’ office.

The FBI was called to the VA Hospital Aug. 15, 1975, after the hospital recorded 51 suspicious breathing failures that struck 35 patients and resulted in the deaths of at least six men.

Authorities believe that someone deliberately injected helpless patients with fatal and near-fatal doses of pancuronium bromide, the drug found in the exhumed bodies.

Pancuronium bromide, known in the hospital by its trade name, Pavulon, is an extremely powerful, fastacting drug that relaxes skeletal and breathing muscles.

A patient given an injection of Pavulon could die within minutes if he were not connected to a mechanical breathing device.

And Joseph Green was the victim of what authorities believe was a Pavulon-indueed breathing failure.

“It was real strange the way he went,” Mrs. Green recalls. "The day before they found him not breathing in his room, we had talked to his doctor about a risky operation.

"So," she continued, “had he passed away during tne surgery, I wouldn’t have been surprised. But as it was, I was shocked.”

Mrs. Green feels that she and the families of the other men whose bodies were exhumed have the right to know the results of the federal laboratory tests.

“We have every right in the world to know what they found." she said. “I mean, when my husband died he was not in critical condition, his doctor didn't think he was in critical condition and no one expected him to die.

“We certainly should be told what happened in that hospital,” she added with a sigh, "but I guess the FBI and the government is never going to tell us anything until they are good and ready to do it. I try to understand their reasons, but somehow just doesn't seem fair.”

Bernice Green Of Parchment Has Waited 9 Months To Learn Results Of Autospy On Her Husband, Joseph