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Orville Lynn Majors: Indiana's 'Angel of Death' Nurse

Jun 6
3 min read

Updated: Jun 18

Orville Lynn Majors was a licensed practical nurse whose patients trusted him with their lives — and who became known, with grim accuracy, as the 'Angel of Death'. Convicted of murdering six patients with lethal injections at a small rural hospital in Indiana, he was statistically linked to many more deaths than he was ever charged with. His case is a textbook example of the healthcare serial killer, an offender who turns the everyday routines of medicine into a means of murder.

What makes it especially chilling is how visible the pattern was, in hindsight, and how long it took for that pattern to be treated as anything other than bad luck.

A likeable nurse

Majors was born on 24 April 1961 in Linton, Indiana, the son of a coal miner. By many accounts he was personable and well-liked, and he was reportedly drawn to nursing after caring for an ailing grandmother as a teenager. He became a licensed practical nurse and went to work at Vermillion County Hospital in Clinton, a small community in west-central Indiana, where he was, on the surface, a familiar and trusted member of the staff.

Portrait poster of O. Lynn Majors, stern nurse in beige scrubs in a dim hallway, with headlines about the Quiet Killer.

A hospital where death spiked

Beginning around 1993, the hospital's intensive care unit experienced an alarming surge in deaths. Where the ICU might previously have seen a few dozen deaths in a year, the toll climbed dramatically. Disturbingly, staff began to notice that patients seemed especially likely to die when one particular nurse was on duty — and some colleagues, half in dark humour and half in dread, began calling Majors the 'Angel of Death' long before anyone proved a thing.

The investigation

As the pattern became impossible to ignore, the hospital and Indiana authorities launched an investigation in 1995, and Majors was suspended from duty; his nursing licence was later suspended as well. A statistical review reportedly found that he had been present for a startling share of the unit's deaths over a roughly two-year period — by one analysis, around 130 of 147 deaths — and investigators exhumed bodies for examination during a lengthy and painstaking probe.

The evidence

Prosecutors alleged that Majors killed patients with injections of heart-stopping drugs, specifically epinephrine and potassium chloride. Investigators reported recovering vials of potassium chloride and syringes connected to a residence linked to him. A central pillar of the case was timing: Majors was repeatedly present, and often alone, when patients in his care suddenly died. Witnesses added damning testimony, including a relative who described seeing him inject something into a patient's IV line moments before death.

Trial and conviction

Majors was arrested in late 1997 and charged with multiple counts of murder. His trial in 1999 stretched over roughly five weeks and featured dozens of witnesses, including many physicians, and he maintained his innocence throughout. In October 1999 a jury convicted him of six murders, deadlocking on a seventh count, which was dismissed. The following month, a judge imposed a sentence of 360 years — sixty years for each murder — effectively ensuring he would never leave prison.

Appeals and death

Majors continued to contest his conviction, but his appeals failed, and the Indiana Supreme Court affirmed the verdict in 2002. He remained behind bars for the rest of his life, and on 24 September 2017 he died of apparently natural causes related to heart problems at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, at the age of fifty-six.

Although he was convicted of six killings, investigators long suspected the true toll was far higher, with well over a hundred suspicious deaths examined during the inquiry. The Majors case, like other 'angel of death' cases, underscores how dangerous it is when no one is watching closely in a medical setting, and how vital robust oversight, drug controls and the courage of colleagues are in stopping a trusted insider from killing the very people he is meant to protect.