10/6/2023 0 Comments Angel fingerprint time clockHe’d been “sweating for a whole week” about why the hospital was keeping him away from work. THAT afternoon, Currie phoned the house in Tujunga where Saldivar had lived since he was a baby and where his parents, Mexican immigrants, still kept chickens out back. But how much longer could they do that? And the administrators wanted to question him, right away, if the police didn’t. At McKillop’s request, the hospital had used a ruse-a schedule change-to keep Saldivar off the job. Siverling was getting calls himself, from Glendale Adventist. “Nothing’s panning out,” McKillop said when the chief phoned him for an update. Grant had called the hospital to get rid of Efren. The cops settled on a theory: This wasn’t serial murder, but a love triangle. Besides, hospital officials had kept an eye on Saldivar after learning of the rumor and seen “nothing unusual.”īechthold told them, “I don’t think it’s happening.” He said Baker and Saldivar hated each other. That night, the two detectives also talked to John Bechthold, technical director of the hospital’s respiratory department, to whom Baker had originally passed along the “magic syringe” rumor. And what did policemen know about drugs like that, or respiratory therapy, or hospitals? He’d once glimpsed vials of morphine and succinylcholine chloride, a paralyzer, in Saldivar’s locker.Ĭurrie felt himself flush. Did he want to talk in the car? No, he said, “I’m a little claustrophobic.”īaker told them the “magic syringe” gossip was not the only thing that made him suspicious of Saldivar. Baker insisted they meet outside in the dark. Currie and Futia found her at the hospital, which overlooks the Ventura Freeway at the base of the Verdugo Mountains.Ī few nights later, they returned to see Bob Baker, the respiratory therapist who had reported the “magic syringe” rumor to a supervisor a year before. Administrators at Glendale Adventist had guessed she was Ursula Anderson, who often worked graveyard shifts with Saldivar. Next was Brossus’ “lady friend,” who supposedly knew the killer. “No disrespect,” he said, and shut the door. The whole business about patients being killed had been a misunderstanding, he said. They tracked him down at his father’s house. The hospital’s tipster had done time at Folsom and Corcoran state prisons. When he ran a background check on Grant Brossus, he found arrests going back 15 years for burglary, grand theft and transporting cocaine. Futia couldn’t understand why his colleagues seemed so excited. Next, they enlisted Investigator Tony Futia, who was 6 foot 3, bench-pressed 400 pounds and had a night law degree. The fellow went for it and said, “OK, I was there.”Ĭurrie finished testifying against a Brand Boulevard slasher and called from the courthouse. Currie once told a Pizza Hut robber it was “too bad” how those newfangled security cameras could see through a ski mask. Now his Glendale colleagues marveled at how he used the play-dumb demeanor of TV’s Columbo. Their marriage didn’t last, but Currie found a career when he bought a “how-to” book the day before a police civil service exam. He was from South Africa, where he had been a ranger at a game reserve, showing tourists lions and rhinos, until he followed one guest, a long-legged blond, to California. While other cops scrounged guard jobs on the side, McKillop started his own special events business, providing security, tents and red carpets for movie premieres.Ĭurrie, on the other hand, was a sad-eyed man of 40 who spoke haltingly in an accent that was hard to place. By the time he switched coasts and joined the Glendale Police Department, he was still an operator. Raised by a single mother in Queens, N.Y., he saved his Halloween candy as a kid so he could sell it. He wore his dark hair slicked back and had piercing eyes with an edge of impatience. McKillop, 36, carried himself with the swagger of a former basketball point guard used to controlling the action, or trying to. McKillop was his sergeant now, but he’d have to wait. He peeked down and saw that the call was from his former partner. A PAGER VIBRATED on the hip of Glendale’s top detective, Will Currie.
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