List grows of possible homicide victims at VA hospital
Five patients who died suspiciously identified
When Archie D. Edgell, 85, died on March 26, 2018, while a patient in the Johnson Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Clarksburg, W.Va., his death “never felt right” to his son, Steve, said the family’s attorney.
“Steve said that the worst part of it was that his dad walked into the hospital by himself, and then four days later he dies. It didn’t make sense,” said Dino Colombo, the family’s Morgantown, W.Va.-based attorney.
So, when agents from the VA’s Office of Inspector General knocked on the door at Steve Edgell’s farmhouse in Barbour County — where his father lived with him before he was admitted to the Johnson VA — he had an immediate question for the agents.
“They killed my dad, didn’t they?” he asked them.
The death of Archie Edgell, an Army veteran, is now being investigated as a possible homicide.
His case is one of possibly 13 or 14 possible homicides that may have occurred between the summer of 2017 and June 18, 2018, when Johnson VA staff finally started to notice a pattern of deaths there with patients who had unexpected hypoglycemic events — very low blood sugar — prior to their deaths.
Autopsies conducted after three of the victims’ bodies were exhumed, including Mr. Edgell’s, showed that the veterans had been injected with insulin in four different locations on their bodies prior to their death.
The OIG and FBI have identified a “person of interest” in the case, a former VA employee who no longer works at the Johnson VA.
Mr. Edgell’s death is the fifth of those possible homicide victims to be identified. The other four cases known so far are:
• William Alfred “Sport” Holloway, 96, an Army veteran from Fairmont, W.Va., died April 8, 2018.
• Felix “Kirk” McDermott, 81, a Navy veteran, formerly of Ruffs
Dale, Westmoreland County, Pa., died
April 9, 2018.
• George Nelson Shaw, 82, an Air Force veteran from Wallace, W.Va., died April 10, 2018.
• John Hallman, 87, of West Virginia, a Navy veteran, died June 13, 2018.
Mr. Hallman’s death followed the same pattern as the other known victims: After being admitted to the hospital with what did not appear to be possible fatal health issues, within a day or two of care he suddenly had a hypoglycemic event, even though he had not been prescribed insulin.
But unlike Mr. Edgell’s family, his death, though painful for the family, did not raise suspicion by his family, said their attorney, Tony O’Dell.
“They trusted what they were told by the doctors” at the VA, said Mr. O’Dell, a Charleston, W.Va., attorney. “They were told [his death was caused by] natural causes, maybe something with his liver.”
“They were not told [at the time of his death] about the hypoglycemic event,” he said.
So when OIG agents showed up at the family’s door to tell them their father’s death was suspicious, “They were floored,” Mr. O’Dell said.
“They were so upset. It was just disbelief, unbelievable betrayal, because they trusted the VA to take care of him,” he said.
One of the other commonalities that has become apparent in all the known cases so far, attorneys say, is that all the victims were patients in the same unit — 3A — on the same floor — the third floor — of the VA, which was the same place the “person of interest” worked.
In addition, all of the victims whose bodies have been exhumed have had four similar injection sites: on the back of both arms and back of both legs.
Despite that, Mr. Edgell’s case has not yet been labeled a “homicide” on his death certificate, Mr. Colombo said, and is still considered “undetermined.”
The autopsy completed after Mr. Edgell’s body was exhumed concluded that the hypoglycemic event and the multiple injection sites on his body that tested positive for insulin were “strongly suspicious for unprescribed exogenous insulin administration during his hospitalization.”
Mr. Colombo said the final determination of his cause of death is waiting on some additional testing and perhaps because Mr. Edgell was a Type 2 diabetic who was taking pills to control his diabetes but not insulin when he was admitted to the VA.
“There’s absolutely no question that Mr. Edgell is one of those 10 or 11 [original cases] of gentlemen who were murdered at the VA,” he said, though no one has labeled the cases as murders as of yet.
Mr. Edgell served two years in the Army from 1953 to 1955, and was a street and water commissioner for the town of Salem, W.Va., for 20 years before suffering a heart attack and becoming disabled.
He was married to his wife, Frances, for 62 years, and she was by his side when he died last year, Mr. Colombo said.
She was at her son’s home when the OIG agents showed up last fall, too, so she knew there was an investigation into her husband’s death. But Mrs. Edgell died in April 2019.
“She never found out what happened to her husband,” Mr. Colombo said. “And her son says that she died of a broken heart.”