Bail Excessive, Nurses Claim

Bail Excessive, Nurses Claim

By John Barton
News Police Reporter

DETROIT - In a federal courtroom jammed with about 150 supporters, two Filipino nurses accused of murdering and poisoning patients at the Ann Arbor Veteran's Administration Hospital launched their battle here Monday to get out of jail.

But U.S. District Court Judge Philip Pratt delayed until Thursday afternoon a decision on whether Filipina B. Narcisco, 30, and Leonora Perez, 31, should remain behind bars to await trial on a 16-count indictment charging they conspired to kill five men and poison 10 others during a six-week period last July and August.

The defense attorney for the two former intensive care unit nurses at the Fuller Road hospital, Thomas C. O'Brien, of Ann Arbor, contends the bail set for his clients is unnecessary and excessive.

During the 90-minute bond hearing, O'Briend called to the witness stand six witnesses who testified they believed the two women would not flee if they were granted freedom.

Minutes before the bond hearing, Perez, formerly of Ann Arbor, appeared before U.S. Magistrate Cris E. Stith for arraignment on the indictment. 

Stith set bond on the 16-count charge at $500,000 cash, and, in effect, continued the action of a federal judge in Chicago before whom Perez appeared last Thursday after she was arrested by the FBI at Lakeside VA Hospital near her Evanston, Ill., home.

Narciso was arrested by the FBI about the same time at her rented home in Ypsilanti.

She appeared Thursday in Detroit before U.S. Magistrate Barbara K. Hackett who ordered her held without bond.

The Phillippine government has protested the bond action in both cases as excessive. The two women are citizens of the Phillippines, and most of the 150 spectators at Monday's hearing were Filipinos.

Since last Friday, Narciso and Perez have been held in the Washtenaw County Jail where their polite grace and charm are rapidly winning over the jail staff.

"Everybody here is absolutely in love with those two girls," said jail administrator Frank Donley Monday. "They just aren't the type of personalities our staff is normally accustomed to dealing with."

"For example," Donley said, "on their first night here, the matrons served the girls their first meals. When they returned later to pick up the dishes, they were surprised when they couldn't find them. The girls were washing them.

"Next," he added, "the girls asked for a sewing machine to repair or mend inmate uniforms."

"I'll tell you," added another worker at the jail, "it is really hard to figure those two were involved in anything like the government is charging them with. It just doesn't make sense to me."

The same theme was continued by O'Brien's witnesses during the bond hearing.

"P.I. (Narciso's nickname) is friendly and very outgoing," said her Ypsilanti landlord, Curtis A. Branham, of 936 W. Cross St., a Ford Motor Co. quality control supervisor. "She is a fine girl in every respect."

Branham also that Narciso was one of the "few persons in the world" he trusted to care for his 13-year-old son Todd, an only child.

"If P.I. were home tonight,"Branham responded to one of O'Brien's questions, "I would like very much for Todd to be able to go to the movies with her."

"Mrs. Perez is an excellent nurse who knew exactly what she was doing," testified Dr. Dana Kissner, a U-M Hospital intern specializing in internal medicine who worked at the VA Hospital last summer. "She was always very, very concerned that she was causing somebody pain. I never, every, saw her mistreat a patient."

"They both have very fine characters, fine senses of humor and are superior to excellent in their profession," said Betty Jacim, night nurse supervisor at the VA Hospital.

But perhaps the most vocal supporter of the nurses was Richard Collins, 58, of Dexter, a salty ex-boxer who said in the past five years he has spent over 30 months as a patient in the Ann Arbor VA Hospital and has undergone seven major operations.

"P.I." Collins testified, "is just about the finest nurse there at that hospital. If there is any better, well, I would like to know about it."

O'Brien asked Collins if he were in the hospital tonight would he "trust P.I. to treat him?"

"Absolutely," Collins nodded. "I have more confidence in that lady than my own wife in that kind of situation."

"Of course," Collins added with a smile after a loud chorus of spectator laughter had subsided,"I wouldn't say that if my wife were here.

Collins will also emerge as a key defense witness in the trial. He will be used in an effort to refute the videotaped testimony of a dying prosecution witness.

The prosecution witness, Richard Neely, 61, of Osceola, Ind., testified he saw Perez next to his bed when he experienced a breathing failure on July 30 while a patient in a fourth-floor ward.

Neely has said under hypnosis and in video taped testimony that he called several times for help as his breathing began to fail, but Perez ran from his room and ignored his cries.

Collins, on the other hand, has said he knew Neely in the hospital, and Neely gave him a different version of the events surrounding hi sudden breathing failure - that the last person near his bed was a bearded man.

The Neely testimony was preserved on video tape last April 22 during a secret session in South Bend, Ind., because prosecutors feared Neely may die of cancer before the case comes to trial. Neely is still alive.

The head of the federal probe of breathing failures and deaths at the hospital, Asst. U.S. Atty. Richard L. DeLonis, says the case could come to trial in August or September, and will last at least two months.

The 10-month investigation began last Aug. 15 following an abnormal number of breathing failures and deaths at the nine-floor hospital.

The government charges that Perez and Narciso, both of who were nurses in the ICU during the same shift when most of the suspicious breathing failures occurred, conspired to give patients fatal and near-fatal doses of a powerful muscle relaxing drug, pancuronium bromide (Pavulon).

But Narciso and Perez, who is pregnant with her second child and whose ready smile flashes with the glint of a gold inlaid front tooth, have insisted on their innocence.

Before Monday's hearing, O'Brien had charged in a motion that FBI agents violated his clients rights by threats and continued interrogation in an effort to pry a confession from them, despite the fact both had retained counsel.

Along with the motion, O'Brien asked Pratt to sign a judicial order forbidding the FBI to interrogate the women.

But the motion and the order were debated in Pratt's chambers and no action was taken on them in open court.

Delonis and his assistant in the case, Asst. U.S. Atty. Mitchell S. Cohen, heatedly denied O'Brien's allegations.

"But," Cohen said, "we do not intend to dignify those allegations by answering them in writing or commenting on them to the press. The order was withdrawn because it was ridiculous, and there is nothing more we can say about either action."

Oops!
  Somewhat chagrined, U.S. Marshal Jay Neuen uses a coathanger, left,  to break into his own car after he locked the keys inside while waiting at the Washtenaw County Jail Monday to pick up the two women suspected in the VA Hospital deaths. Jail Administrator Frank Donley watches. Above, Filipina B. Narciso (left) and Leonora Perez, chained together and in handcuffs, are ushered into a car by Neuen before being taken to Detroit for court hearings. (News photos by Cecil Lockard.)