Michelle Herndon propofol poisoning by Oliver O'Quinn

Across the Forensic Files series, there's a clear distinction between the case information that's intentionally changed, and that which is misreported. In the Bag (s12e27) opened with four-year-old Johnny Huffman running over a mile to school after discovering his great-grandparents Jack and Linda Myers murdered ("melting" as he put it). "Johnny" was the deliberate pseudonym for Damian Huffman whose mother had been a teen when he was born. In other episodes such as the serial killings of Bobby Joe Long in The Common Thread (s02e01) or the shootings by Eddie Seda from Sign of the Zodiac (e08e25), the victim lists are too lengthy to cover entirely. Some unfortunate souls are omitted from the narrative for continuity and brevity.

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

But from time to time, the case researchers or the writers from Forensic Files simply misrepresent facts from a case. In this episode, it was stated that Oliver O'Quinn was 30 years old when he murdered student Michelle Herndon. But other sources indicate that O'Quinn was 27 when he injected Herndon with propofol. It's possible this error occurred due to the time to took to bring Oliver O'Quinn to justice. He was extradited from Senegal in 2006 and it took nearly two years to bring him to trial. When he was found guilty in May 2008, he was three months shy of his 30th birthday.

Dateline NBC episode of Michelle Herndon and Oliver O'Quinn case

For each episode, I try to cross-reference other series that have covered the same case. I'm often able to find one or more, with the exception of the more obscure. Occasionally, I find more episodes from other series than I bargain for, as in Stephen Hricko's murder by his wife Kimberly. I found clear references to an episode of Dateline NBC featuring this case. There's an extensive article from 2008 by Hoda Kotb called "Obsession", and its the transcript of the episode. But try as I might, I could not find the true episode name nor season/episode number. IMDb.com lists nearly 1300 episodes for Dateline NBC, and its data can be unreliable.

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

I have reason to believe it might have aired in 2008 or 2009. Or perhaps in 2018. I also suspect the episode's title might be "Deadly Obsession". The Michelle Herndon case was not the Dateline NBC episode's only topic, but it was featured first in the two-hour format. Most of this information is garnered from minute-by-minute clips from archive.org. Anyone who digs up and shared the details gets a gold star!

Related to the alterations and omissions discussed above, the Dateline NBC episode indicates a few too. Some were simple, like Michelle's boyfriend may not have been named Jason Doyle, but rather Jason Dearing. Another minor one was Detective Michael Douglas telling Hoda that Michelle's home contained no alcohol, but Forensic Files discussed a half-empty beer bottle found at the scene – it even mentioned testing the contents for foreign substances. The most shocking revelation from the Dateline NBC episode had to do with Michelle's friend and Forensic Files interviewee Jessica Seipel. I had to replay the clip to make sure I'd heard it right, but it seems Oliver O'Quinn had been Jessica's roommate. One thing the Dateline episode include though: The graphic photo of Michelle's lower extremities taken while she still lay on the bed as she was found. This shot earned this episode my "Graphic content" call-out (above).

Migraine headaches – Michelle's Achilles' heel

Michelle Herndon earned her living as a fitness instructor at Gainesville Health & Fitness while finishing school at the University of Florida. Photos showed vitamins on top of her fridge, and its contents were described to include "milk, water, yogurt, [and] fruit." When Michelle's body was first discovered on November 10, 2005, there was no apparent cause of death. Investigators couldn't initially explain how a young woman, so seemingly healthy, had simply died. It seemed the only malady that Michelle did suffer from was migraine headaches.

I'm not sure if the medical literature documents someone actually dying from a migraine headache. But from what I hear about the agony suffered by those who get them, perhaps death seems like a viable alternative. Detective Douglas quips people who suffer from migraines "would go to the ends of the Earth to get some relief from the pain." It was this desperation that allowed a trusting Michelle to surrender her arm to Oliver O'Quinn for an injection that might ease her symptoms. But she wasn't aware that O'Quinn had already put his own maniacal plan into action and procured the propofol.

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

Migraine headaches were at the root of a similar case of poisoning. In the episode Letter Perfect (s8e26), Michael Hunter was the migraine sufferer. But in Hunter's case, he didn't request an injection from his "Oliver O'Quinn" – his roommate and ex-partner, Joseph Mannino. Instead, a jilted Mannino injected Hunter with lidocaine, and he later claimed it'd been at Hunter's request. But his story was the dosage had accidentally been too high. Unlike Oliver O'Quinn's 2008 trial, the jury back in 1994 believed Joseph Mannino's tale, and he was sentenced to only seven years for involuntary manslaughter.

Compared to the lack of clinical information about the use of intravenous lidocaine for migraine headaches, propofol has been studied for this very application. It's been indicated as a "second-line" treatment of migraine headaches in an emergency room setting, administered by EM practitioners in a location that allows for appropriate monitoring. O'Quinn's version of this protocol was severely lacking. The Surgical ICU Nurse might have had some experience with anesthetic medication, including propofol. But he was still utterly unqualified to inject Michelle with such a dangerous drug.

What had pushed O'Quinn over the edge, according to his chat with a fellow inmate, was hearing Michelle's assessment of him as an "annoying little man". This was something Michelle obviously never intended Oliver to hear. It's wise to live by the rule: "Don't say something about a person that you wouldn't tell them directly."

Oliver O'Quinn's master plan and its flaws

In some cases, I might think, "Gee, that was an oversight," or, "Probably should have considered that." But in O'Quinn's case, I only have, "What the heck was he thinking?!" Oliver O'Quinn was a smart guy (at least by his own assessment), so I'm left to wonder how he imagined the events after Michelle's murder would play out. I imagine his best case scenario would include examiners not finding the needle mark on Michelle's arm. He did use a butterfly IV needle – a smaller gauge than a typical intravenous injection. Perhaps if the body had been found sooner (or later?), this injection site might've been harder to find?

But Michelle had many friends, a family, classes, a job, and even a boyfriend – though Jason lived 400 miles away in Miami. O'Quinn had to have foreseen someone would discover Michelle Herndon's body soon after her demise. Perhaps Oliver hoped there'd be no post mortem examination at all, but this seems like wishful thinking since there'd be no obvious cause of death. He couldn't have believed investigators would consider her death a suicide – there was no supporting evidence. Nor were their signs of an intruder, another more likely scenario than the ambiguity O'Quinn left at the scene.

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

Whether out of overconfidence or laziness, Oliver O'Quinn's biggest blunder seemed to be how he handed the trash. The butterfly needle, tubing, and empty vials of propofol were all simply discarded in a plastic Publix bag and left only 60 feet away, next to the premise's outdoor trashcans. At least one empty prescription vial was visible through the trash can liner. It's surprising that so little effort was made to conceal the evidence of his murder.

Oliver's DNA was ultimately found on the needle cap, but what if he had actually succeeded in getting rid of the evidence found in the trash? The injection site would've still been located, and O'Quinn would've still become a suspect. Toxicology might've still identified propofol, but only if they thought to screen for it. And it's possible investigators could've found that O'Quinn had procured two vials from the automated dispensing cabinet at his work and not accounted for their use. There'd still have been a decent but circumstantial case against O'Quinn, but not the smoking gun of the DNA and the traceable National Drug and Lot numbers.

When stealing deadly drugs from your work at a hospital, wouldn't it make more sense to use any other employee's number than your own? Again, it seems no forethought was used when putting his scheme together. And why two entire vials? With his training as an anesthesia nurse, O'Quinn should have known (or could have easily looked up) the deadly dosage for his victim. I read that Michelle Herndon ultimately received approximately four times a lethal dose of propofol.

Curious about the transition to using Automated Dispensing Machines (ADM) to access drugs in hospitals, I found this article in the National Library of Medicine. The 2009 paper titled "Do Automated Dispensing Machines Improve Patient Safety?" extensively reviews the pros and cons of this technology.

Oliver O'Quinn goes on the run

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

O'Quinn could feel the heat rising as detectives closed in for an arrest. Before November 2005 was out, Oliver told family members that he was going over to Ireland for a vacation. So when detectives showed up with a warrant for first-degree murder, Oliver O'Quinn was not home. In fact, he'd never return home again.

Investigators soon learned of O'Quinn's flight to Ireland. Even though the U.S. and Ireland share a bilateral extradition treaty, it takes a good deal of time and effort to get a murder suspect returned to the United States. As police began the extradition process, they also thought to make life for the 27-year-old fugitive difficult. They appealed to the Irish media and got The Irish Times to run the story of O'Quinn's crimes three separate times.

Feeling the heat, Oliver O'Quinn left Ireland for the west coast of Africa. But he didn't initially fly to Senegal – he first landed in Mauritania. He visited the embassy where he hoped to pick up a money order, but authorities in the African country had already been alerted to O'Quinn's potential visit. Oliver fled Mauritania, and when he arrived in neighboring Senegal, he was immediately taken into custody and handed over to the United States.

Questions about Michelle Herndon's murder case

As with most cases, I'm curious about the details – some of them significant, but often not. For example: Michelle was 24 years old and a senior at the University of Florida. What caused the delay in Michelle obtaining a four-year degree after high school? Had she done additional volunteer work before college? Did she take classes a bit slower since it seemed she might've been working to pay her way through?

Our episode suggested that once the medical examiner found the injection site on Michelle's arm, she suggested investigators widen their search of the crime scene. But I don't feel Marc Woodmansee needed this advice. His experience likely led him to search outside Michelle's house and among the trashcans. Similarly, Woodmansee suggested DNA analysts swab the cap of the needle, having seen technicians habitually remove this with their teeth. But I feel experienced analysts would certainly have included this among the areas where they looked for the perpetrator's DNA.

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

Inside Michelle's house, it's believed O'Quinn tucked his victim's arm underneath her body in an attempt to hide the injection location. This left the victim's body in a suspiciously odd position for any type of natural death. Is it possible this arm position made the injection site more noticeable though? Perhaps O'Quinn's handiwork might've had a better chance of going unnoticed if he'd just left her arm alone.

Finally, I'm curious about the time span between the date when Oliver used his employee number to procure the propofol from his hospital's dispensing machine and November 8, the day Michelle was murdered. Had he stolen the drugs merely hours or days prior, or had his plan been set in motion weeks beforehand?

Where is Oliver O'Quinn now in 2024?

Detectives received their tip that O'Quinn was no longer in Ireland on June 6, 2006. By early July, U.S. Marshals had transported Oliver from Senegal to New York. In late-May 2008, Oliver O'Quinn was found guilty of the first-degree murder of Michelle Herndon, and he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. The jury took only three hours to decide on the unanimous verdict. O'Quinn is currently incarcerated at the Everglades Correctional Institution in Miami, Florida.