East Texas nurse goes to trial for accused

murder of patients
Blake Stoneburner
stoneburba@jacks.sfasu.edu (Sept. 29, 2021)

TYLER, Texas - The trial for a former East Texas nurse accused of killing patients began on
Tuesday September 28th in Tyler, Texas.

William Davis, 37, of Hallsville has been accused of injecting

air into the arterial lines of patients at a heart hospital in Tyler.

Davis was a registered nurse at the CHRISTUS Mother Frances

Hospital in Tyler and before that he was a registered nurse at
Peaches Heart Owen Hospital in Tyler as well. Davis was
arrested in April of 2018 after he had been accused of the
murder of four patients while he worked at both of these
hospitals.

The trial occurred at the 114th District Court at the Smith County Courthouse. As the trial went
underway Davis pleaded not guilty to his charges and the prosecutor, Smith County District
Attorney Jacob Putman, began their opening arguments. Putman stated “It turns out a hospital is
the perfect place for a serial killer to hide.”

The jury was shown some of the patients that were said to have undergone successful surgeries
only to suffer from complications and eventually death some time after. These patients were
John Lafferty, Ronald Clark, Christopher Greenaway and Joseph Kalina. Donna Thedford,
Christopher Greenaway’s widow, told the jury that her husband looked like he was in good
condition after the open-heart surgery. Early the next morning, she got a call from the hospital
saying that her husband’s condition had worsened and Christopher Greenaway died August 6,
2017.

Security footage was presented to the court and it showed Davis entering the room of the patient,
Joseph Kalina a few minutes before his health started to decline. On day five of the trial Lacy
Simpson, a nurse at the CHRISTUS Mother Frances Hospital, took the stand. She claimed that
on the night that Kalina’s health started to decline everything was normal and they were not
having any problems caring for any of the other patients. She also claimed Kalina was not one of
Davis’s patients and therefore had no reason to go into Kalina’s room if he was in good health.
On Monday Deb Chelette, of CHRISTUS testified on the stand about the footage that was
presented to the court a week before. She claims that she reviewed the footage over and over and
noticed that it looked like Davis had something in his hand when he entered Kalina’s room.
Sometime after he left, Kalina’s condition started to decline and Davis did not go into Kalina’s
room to help for about five minutes. “Five minutes can be somebody’s life,” Chelette said.

When the anesthesiologist, who was treating

Christopher Greenaway, took the stand they said that
Greenaway was healthy after the surgery. When
asked if the air could have entered Greenaway’s
brain during the surgery the anesthesiologist said
they never would have woken him up if they were
the case. The anesthesiologist stated that in their 37
years of experience they have never heard of this
much air in arterial spaces of the brain.

Davis has been in the Smith County Jail since his

arrest and has remained there with a bail totaling
$8.75 million. Since the arrest of William Davis there haven’t been any more cases of air
appearing in any of the patient's arterial lines. This trial is still ongoing and until it is over we
will not know the final outcome.
 Picture Sources
Picture 1
https://www.kltv.com/2021/09/28/trial-begins-former-east-texas-nurse-accused-killing-patients/

Picture 2
https://tylerpaper.com/news/local/christus-trinity-mother-frances-releases-statement-about-nurse-
charged-with-murder/article_bd2167dc-3d8d-11e8-a2e1-bf2c61bb7297.html