Bernard Vernon-Lee Kean was a 52-year-old man who died at Community Hospital of the Valleys in Perris during an overnight intensive-care shift in early April 1981. Court records place his death at 5:07 a.m. after a series of seizures, respiratory failure and cardiac arrest that began about two hours after he arrived in the ICU with chest pain and alcohol intoxication. Doctors noted severe heart and liver disease and evidence that an acute myocardial infarction was a major factor in his collapse.

What drew investigators to treat Kean’s death as a homicide was a pattern: several other patients on the same night shifts suffered violent seizures followed by arrest. Kean’s tissues tested at very high concentrations of lidocaine, and prosecution experts testified that the electrocardiograph changes and toxicology were consistent with massive lidocaine overdoses administered shortly before death. The judge later found sufficient evidence that Kean had been killed by an overdose.

If anyone knew Kean, his condition at the hospital, or observed unusual activity in the Perris ICU that night, please share what was seen or known.