BODY EXHUMED IN HOSPITAL PROBE; AUTOPSIES EXPECTED TO TAKE MONTHS IN EUTHANASIA INVESTIGATION.

Byline: Lee Condon Daily News Staff Writer

The Glendale Police Department on Friday exhumed the first of 20 bodies in its investigation of the ``Angel of Death'' mercy killings case.

``We disinterred the first body this morning. The autopsy is going on,'' said Sgt. Rick Young of the Glendale Police Department.

Young declined to identify the cemetery where the body was exhumed.

On Wednesday police secured a court order to exhume the bodies of people identified at potential victims of Efren Saldivar, a former Glendale Adventist Medical Center respiratory therapist who confessed last year to administering drugs to kill 50 or so terminally ill patients at the hospital.

Saldivar soon recanted his confession, saying he made the story up. To date no charges have been filed against him. But local police have since undertaken an intense investigation to separate fact from fiction.

They are exhuming the bodies to test for traces of two different muscle-paralyzing drugs that Saldivar told police he used to hasten the deaths of patients.

Young said the plan is to exhume about one body per week. In most cases the bodies will be returned to graves in the same day they are removed. The exhumations will take place at cemeteries throughout Southern California, although the majority are within Los Angeles County.

Families were notified of the exhumations on Tuesday by police. Young said none of the family members asked to be present at the exhumations. In keeping with the tight secrecy that has marked the investigation, Young declined to identify the body exhumed Friday.

With just one body being exhumed a week, it will be months before this stage of the investigation is complete. Young said that regardless of whether traces of the drugs are found in the body exhumed Friday, police will likely not ask for charges to be filed until after autopsies have been performed on all of the bodies.

``We anticipate it will be six to nine months before we have any results,'' Young said.

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PHOTO Efren Saldivar

Suspected in hospital deaths