ROSENFELD, Brian Kevin

Brian Kevin Rosenfeld was a medical serial killer. Rosenfeld, like many killers in the medical field, got away with his murders for so long, because no one reported his bad behaviour. When he was fired, the reasons weren’t passed on.

Nurse’s aide Martha Jacqueline Russell saw Rosenfeld inject something into the feeding tube of Henry H. Schrader. Rosenfeld said he was just sedating the man. A few hours later, when Russell was tending to Schrader, Rosenfeld walked into the room, looked at Schrader’s eyes, and laughed. “How about that, nice and glassy,” he said. By 5:30 that evening, Schrader was dead. She reported it to the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services. They called police. Rosenfeld told police Russell was out to get him, and that was that. The police closed the investigation.

On July 28, 1990, after murdering Muriel Watts with a massive dose of drugs, Rosenfeld began acting strangely. He began to prepare the woman’s body for the funeral home. This was not his job, and might have helped him conceal his crime.

Right before Watts’s murder, Rosenfeld had been convicted of stealing Demerol from a terminal patient. If the nursing home had fired him, Watts would not have been murdered.

Eventually, police spread the investigation to previous nursing homes he had worked at. But many of the possible victims had been cremated rather than buried. The police were not able to charge him with more.

The Brian Kevin Rosenfeld murders timeline

  • 1981

    Brian Kevin Rosenfeld is charged with practicing nursing without a license.
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  • 1985 - 1990

    During these years, Rosenfeld worked at about 20 different nursing homes. He was dismissed from 14 of them. Some homes later cited patient abuse. This includes the bending of fingers back until the patient screamed, shoving food down their throat until they gagged, and pulling then snapping back catheter tubes.
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  • July 16, 1987

    Hazel DeRemer dies after being given a lethal injection of Thioridazine. The 81-year-old was a resident of Sunshine Village, Pinellas Park, Pinellas County, Florida. She had been a Lance corporal (LCpl) with the US Marine Corp.
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  • March, 1990

    Rosenfeld pleads guilty to stealing Demerol from a terminally ill patient. Demerol is an opioid similar to morphine, and is very addictive.
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  • May 5, 1990

    Alphonse Silva, 76, dies after being given a lethal injection of Thioridazine. He lived at Rosedale Manor, Pinellas County.
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  • July 28, 1990

    Muriel Watts is murdered at Rosedale Manor. She was also given a lethal injection of Thioridazine. Two nurses reported that the comatose woman received a very large dose of a brown liquid down her feeding tube just before she died. Rosenfeld was the one who did it.
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  • August 23, 1990

    Rosenfeld is charged with the murder of Watts.
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  • September 6, 1990

    Rosenfeld is indicted for the Watts murder.
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  • March 18, 1992

    Rosenfeld is indicted in the deaths of DeRemer and Silva.
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  • April 9, 1992

    Rosenfeld pleaded guilty to all 3 murders. Rosenfeld is sentenced to life with no chance of parole for 25 years. As of December, 2019, he was still in prison.
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A little more about Rosenfeld can be found in 50 American Serial Killers You’ve Probably Never Heard Of Volume 5, by Robert Keller (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016).

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