50 Shades of Evil: Indiana

0:05 H a wall Street line, shackle change, Oh weesome, gird, it's calling my name. There is no mercy and it's been a tentery juice as the hill Stream game Rango three. I'm here, be by me to die inside these walls, inside the wild, hadn't went no girl as I'm.

1:31 Hey, everyone, welcome back to fifty Shades of Evil. I'm bringing you another episode today on Bloody and Gola podcast. I'm Jim Chapman, your host, And before I get into today's episode, if you don't mind, and you're enjoying this podcast, please share it wherever you're listening on social media. This is the easiest way for me and my company to build an audience, and it sure would help. It wouldn't call lost you anything, but if you're enjoying it, please do so. Rate us on Apple podcast or wherever you listen if you're joining the content that I'm bringing you with this podcast. Now let's get into today's episode, and today we're going to Indiana and I'm going to tell you about a nurse by the name of Orville Limb Majors. Now, Orville was convicted of killing six of his patients.

2:25 However, as bad as that is, and it's horrible. He suspected his killing as many as one hundred and thirty of his patients. So whatever the definition of true evil is, if evil had a face, it would look like Orville Majors. And today I'm going to tell you about his crimes, his conviction, and his sentencing. So let's get into it. And this one starts out in nineteen sixty one in Lenton, Indiana. That's where Orville was born to Orville Majors, Senior and Anna Majors. Now Lenton, it's a very small town at this time in history. As a matter of fact, even today, very small town. Only about five thousand people lived there.

3:07 It's a small coal mining community in the southwest area of the state of Indiana. Now, the family's roots were not in the state of Indiana, but rather in Kentucky, but his mom and dad would settle in Indiana prior to Orville's birth, and as a young boy, Orville would go by his middle name, which was Lynn. Now, neighbors would later describe him as a nice young man who mostly kept to himself, but did play well with other children. So while Orville was in his teens, he kind of got a bug that bit him, and that bug was the nursing bug. How did he get it? Well, he was the.

3:48 Primary caregiver to his grandmother. She lived in a mobile home behind the family's house. And that experience would spark a fire of sorts in Orville. Majors to become a nurse. So neighbors would even notice later on, and they would say this that Orville was very compassionate with both humans and animals. One particular neighbor would share a story where Orville actually performed mouth to mouth on a fish after the fish jumped out of its tank. I mean a little strange to me, but there you have it. Now, his family, they were hard working folks and they were the typical family with the typical family struggles financially.

4:32 His dad was a blue collar guy. He worked in the coal mine and somehow he made it work for Orville and his sisters and his mother. Now, in the nineteen eighties, prior to going to nursing school, Orville opens up a pet store. And this pet store was in a nearby community and it was called Fins and Feathers, and he sold aquariums there. He sold hamsters, fish, other small pets. I mean This thing wasn't PetSmart any stretch of the imagination, just a small community, family and pet store. His mother would help him run that store, as a matter of fact. So in nineteen eighty seven, after running that pet store, which was pretty successful, Orville decides he's ruady to start nursing school. And kind of I guess that was his dream, was to be a nurse. Now he was a little bit older. He was like twenty seven years old at this point. But he decides, hey, I'm gonna give nursing school a try, and he actually goes to nursing school in Nashville, Tennessee, to the Nashville School of Practical Nursing. He graduates from there in nineteen eighty nine and he returns to Indiana that same year and he starts working as an LPN for a hospital called Vermilion County Hospital, small hospital and it was only like fifty six beds. It was in Clinton, Indiana, which is probably about fifty miles from where he grew up.

6:04 And he held that position until nineteen ninety one. Then a school or a hospital rather in Tennessee they contact him and they offer him a little more money and he goes to work in Tennessee for that higher pay, but I guess he didn't like it. Whatever, he stayed there a couple of. Years and he returns at the age of thirty one back to Indiana. This is in nineteen ninety three. He also returns to that same exact hospital for Million County Hospital, and when he returns, he quickly earns some pretty good evaluations. He becomes one of the most popular nurses in the facility.

6:47 Coworkers would describe him as like a big teddy bear. He was a very likable guy, and he was always laughing, according to his co workers. Now big key to note here Vermilion County Hospital. Prior to Orville Majors returning to work there in nineteen ninety three, they averaged about four deaths annually. Now keep that in mind, as I said, the hospital small, just fifty eight total beds, and only four of those beds were ICU beds, which the ICU is where Orville worked, and these were primarily elderly people in the ICU. And while he got off to a fast start in March of nineteen ninety three, when he made his way back to Vermilion County Hospital, it would not be long after before his coworkers would notice a change in him, a very negative change. Orville Majors would start making off putting comments to other staff members about his patients, things like saying his elderly older patients should quote be gassed unquote. He would call the families of those older patients white trash, and his demeanor just would completely change, according to colleagues. Now, one of his friends at the hospital would notice that whenever Majors would get to work, off work, whatever, he would carry a bag

8:18 full of syringes. And it would be discovered later that Majors had developed a very serious meth addiction, which that would explain how irritable he would get with his patients. Irritability one of the key signs of meth withdrawal, and colleagues would notice his remarks getting worse over several months in nineteen ninety three, so he turns thirty two in the summer of that year, and slowly, over the remaining months of nineteen ninety three, the number of patients dying at that hospital would rise. And this brings me into January of nineteen ninety four, and I'm going to tell you about eighty nine year old Luella Hopkins. Now, she was admitted to Vermilion County Hospital that January for complications from pneumonia, which you're eighty nine years old, big risk when you get pneumonia. However, Luella, she seems to be recovering quickly. She gains weight, she gets stronger, and by January eighth of nineteen ninety four, she was due to be released. Now, the day of that release, around two thirty pm, Majors goes into her room and he's carrying a syringe and he tells Luella he's going to give her a shot, but he doesn't tell her why. He gives her the shot and he leaves. Majors then goes

9:49 to the nurses station and he reports there was a problem in Luella's room. Of the nurses rush into that room and they find the eighty nine year old gasping for air. Now, sadly, she suddenly has a heart attack and dies due to her inability to get oxygen. So her doctor was completely perplexed about this. She had appeared well enough to go home, yet she has a heart attack just prior to her release, and at this point, no one had any idea that Orville Majors had given her a shot, and due to her age of eighty nine years old, there was really no investigation. Everyone just assumed the heart attack was due to her age. So in the moss that followed, patients dying at Vermilion Hospital would climb at an absolutely alarming rate, so quick in fact, that even many nurses at the hospital would question.

10:51 Their own manners of care. They would think to themselves, is there something they may be doing to cause this? Now, one commonality with the deaths. That would become more apparent as time went on was the manner in which these people would die. They were alder and they would all die by having first respiratory failure followed by a heart attack. And it was a pattern in every death. Now, with everything I just told you, you would think the hospital would have picked up on that, but the simple truth is they didn't. And as the winner would move into spring, things would get worse. Now, all day the hospital itself could not figure out what was going on. Other nurses would start noticing some eerie consequences.

11:43 One thing they noticed was that every time there was a death of a patient, Ravil Majors was one of the nurses on dating. Now, while they would whisper about this fact, no one really believed Majors was killing people. And that brings me to April second of nineteen ninety four, and I'm going to tell you about seventy four year old Cecil Smith, who, like Luella Hawkins, was admitted for pneumonia related symptoms. Now he's placed in ICU and he's cared for. In a day after being emitted, Cecil speaks to his son on the phone and his son asked him, you know, Dad, how are you feeling? And Cecil said he felt like he was burning on the inside. Shortly thereafter, Cecil's blood pressure spikes and he dies.

12:39 Jim, did you see what happened in Texas today? Wait before you tell me that, let me tell you what happened in New York. It cannot be as crazy as the case I told you about yesterday in Louisiana. You know what, we should do a podcast about it, and with that we did. Crime War Weekly covers the crime news headlines that have dominated the week. We cover trending crimes from all over the country and even sprinkle in a few globally. Crime War Weekly is available now wherever you listen to your podcasts, simply by searching crime Wire Weekly or clicking the link in the description of this podcast. Yet again, no investigation. Death, just attributed to complications from pneumonia. And that brings me to eighty two year old Dorothea Hickson, who was admitted to the hospital for fluid build up and her lungs. Now.

13:36 In Dorothea's case, this was something she had suffered from in the past. She had a. History of it, so she's tributed in the ICU and her doctor he's feeling good about her treatment. She was stable and he considered her kind of on the other side of this illness. So on April twenty third of nineteen ninety four, just minutes into his shift, Orville Majors he walks into a room and at this point she's actually surrounded by several family members, and Majors injects Dorothea's IV. Now almost immediately she thought lines. Now, of course, his family is thinking WTF. But they trusted Orville. I mean, this is their nurse, and they felt like they knew this guy because he had been taking care of Dorothea for a good little while here in the hospital. So they saw him inject this stuff, but they didn't put two and two together. They just thought this was a big coincidence. Now elsewhere in the hospital, not so much.

14:42 Other nurses working this shift. They just couldn't make sense of it. Yet Again, even with all these whispers from coworkers, no investigation, and that same week, Majors celebrates his thirty third birthday. Now, at the end of nineteen ninety four. Death assessments come out, and they were absolutely unbelievable. In nineteen ninety three, when they had a spike in deaths after Major's employment, they had a total of thirty three, a good bit away from four. Right. Well, as bad as that was, the number that they got in nineteen ninety four would absolutely blow everyone's mind.

15:27 Get ready for this nineteen ninety four's death assessment one hundred and one deaths. And that brings me to nursing supervisor Dawn Steeric. Now, she really dove into this. She was a supervisor and it was kind of on her to figure out what the fuck is going on in this hospital and why is the fatality rate so high. So in March of nineteen ninety five, she starts really digging into this and Initially, her thoughts are well known. Maybe it's a nurse on one shift miscommunicating with a nurse on another shift and telling them inaccurate information, not intentionally, but just I don't know, making a mistake. And so she starts pulling time cards and comparing who's working.

16:18 When and that sort of thing, and. What she discovers is shocking. Listen to this stat of the one hundred and forty seven patience total that died between March of nineteen ninety three when Orville Majors started working there in March of nineteen ninety five, when this lady starts investigating it, Majors had been working during one hundred and thirty of these deaths, So she knew, which you're probably already realizing at this point in the story, the chances of that being a coincidence that high of a number of times when Majors was at work or pretty much zero. So the first thing she does is she calls her higher ups and she says, Houston, we got a freaking problem, And they in turn call the lawyers and they tell them Houston, we got a freaking problem.

17:15 And then she calls the state police, said detectives. They start working this case and Majors get suspended pending this investigation. Detectives discover all. The commonalities and all of these deaths that have already told you about, and the fact that Majors was there for like ninety percent of these deaths, and detectives approach him to interview him to get. His side of this story. But Majors he lawyers up, he refuses an interview and get this, how's this for common sense stupidity? Due to Hippo, the hospital refuses to release hospital records bite the detectives asking for them, So it takes subpoenas. When you're investigating a case involving a hospital, you have to subpoena. A judge then signs that and you can get those records.

18:14 But this increases the time on all that stuff happening, and not only that, it increases the time of making an arrest. Eventually, the public they learn that Orville is suspected of this and this is a small community, right, they go into absolute shock. Majors knew most of these people in Majors he goes on the defensive at this point in time, and he starts doing media all over the place, saying I had nothing to do with these people dying. They were all. Pretty much on their deathbed, and God did his will and had nothing to do with me. He even goes on the popular Phil Donahue show back then to plead his innocence. He claimed he was a scapegoat. Eventually, those records do get released. Now this whole time, throughout the entire investigation, Majors, he's still working at that bet store.

19:27 In the winter of nineteen fifty three, in a quiet, working class apartment across from a synagogue in Seagate, Brooklyn, a boy named Jeffrey Epstein took his first breath. He was the son of a city parks gardener and a homemaker, a freckled piano playing math prodigy who skipped grades, tutored classmates for pocket change, and dreamed of well health while riding his bike along the Coney Island boardwalk. But that boy would grow into one of the most powerful, most connected, and most controversial figures of the modern age. This is not a story that ends where most people think it begins.

20:17 This is the complete journey, every chapter, every detail, every unanswered question, from the tree lined streets of a gated Brooklyn enclave to the glittering boardrooms of Wall Street, from elite private schools to private islands, from handwritten black books filled with the world's most influential names, to federal courtrooms in a Manhattan jail cell that still fuels debate today. Come with me as I walk you through Jeffrey Epstein's childhood summers on the private Beach, through his accelerated high school years, through his early days at Cooper Union and NYU.

20:59 I will trace the mysterious financial empire he built with almost no formal credentials. You will listen to the voices of survivors as I examined the investigations, the sweetheart deals, the enablers, the protectors, and the power structures that allowed all of. It to happen. No speculation without evidence, no conspiracy without documentation, just the facts, the records, the testimonies, and the context that history demands.

21:40 Over the course of this series, I will release meticulously researched episodes that take you deeper than any headline ever could. Each one built on court. Documents, financial filings, classmate recollections, investigative reporting, in the first hand accounts that have marked over decades. This is the story of how ordinary ambition can twist into something extraordinary, and how power, once accumulated, can shield even the darkest secrets. So if you're here because you want the full picture, the boy, the man, the empire, the fall, and everything left in the ruins, you're in the right place. Welcome to exposed, investigates Jeffrey Epstein. So police eventually they get a search warn for Major's resonance.

22:51 And they make the most. Horrific discovery yet and evidence that would finally lead to his arrest. They found empty vials of two particular drugs, the first being potassium chloride and the second being fine f frew. That's all they needed. These two drugs alone would cause every symptom in every death that that hospital was dealing with. And on December twenty ninth, nineteen ninety seven, after a nearly three year and two million dollar investigation, Majors is arrested. Now Orville at this time is thirty six years old. But despite that, despite all this seven ence, he still maintains his innocence throughout the trial, still maintains his innocence. But after seventy nine witnesses in the end, Orval Majors is convicted in the murder of six patients, and he is sentenced to three hundred and sixty years in prison. Now, as I told you at the beginning of this one, he was suspected of killing at least one hundred and thirty patients.

24:12 But these particular cases, these six that he got convicted of and charged with, those had a ton of proof with them, so they were the easiest to get a conviction one. Orvil Majors was then sent to service sentence in Indiana State Prison, and I'm quite sure that he had a very rough time in prison. Let me tell you something about inmates, if he ain't learned it yet on Bloody and go Of podcast. They love their mothers because ninety nine percent of the time their mothers are the only ones in the world that will come see them in prison. And when they found out that this guy was killing elderly women, grandmothers, great grandmothers, that sort of thing, I promise you inmates wanted to get their hands on Orville Majors.

25:06 It was going to be no. Easy task, especially at that prison. And let me tell you a little bit about Indiana State Prison. It's also known as Indiana State Prison, Michigan City it's a maximum security only prison and it is only for adult male inmates. It's also one of the state's oldest prisons, and it houses all of the male death row. Inmates in Indiana. It's also where all the folks put to death are put to death inside of that particular prison. It was in it's old It was opening in eighteen sixty. Believe it or not. It's the oldest continuously operating prison in Indiana. And I did misspeak just a second ago. I said it was just maximum security. There are some other levels mixed in there in there as well, but as primarily maximum security.

26:01 It has about twenty eight hundred beds and at any given time you're looking at about twenty five hundred inmates inside of that prison. And if you're curious about some famous inmates that may have been in there or infamous, I should say, how about John Dillinger. He was housed there. He was a bank robber, very famous bank robber. Just giggle him if you hadn't heard of him. In nineteen thirty three, he was housed at that particular prison. One of the most infamous gangsters of all time. Bank robber was so not a fun place and I'm sure not a fun place for Orville Majors. But he wouldn't make it long there. He would actually die about twenty years after he got there, at the age of fifty six, and then a strange bit of poetic justice, he would die of a heart attack.

27:02 How about that. Now he will forever be known by the Moniker, the Angel of Death, that's what he's known as. And what a piece of shit Oorville Majors, and I firmly believe that he is responsible for probably every one of those one hundred and thirty murders he suspected of. Now you may wonder about Famillion County Hospital where all these deaths took place. Well, it would be shut down shortly after all of this came out, and then it would be reopened and renamed Union Hospital, and believe it or not, it still operates today.

27:43 So there you have it. What an evil son of a bitch that guy was. Thank you so much for listening. I can't tell y'all how much I appreciate it. I do commercial free early releases Patreon dot com, slash Bloody, and Golapie cast. Check that out. I'll be back next week with another fifty Shades of Evil episode. Not sure where I'm going yet, but I promise you it's gonna be another banger, so look for that. And these fifty Shades of Evil. I've had a couple of people ask me because they're a little bit shorter. Than what I usually do on Bloody and Gola podcast, and that's intentional. Some people like the thirty minute hitters, if you will, so these are all about thirty minutes in length. I hope you're enjoying them. Until next time for Bloody and Gola.

28:30 I'm Jim Chapman, much love. All the street line, shackle Change, it's calling my name, there is no mercy and this being a tentery jess as the Hillstream game Rango three.

29:16 I'm here, bef here to die inside these walls, inside the wild and when the girls I know it's aboody Anglebody, Angle, Do