Oliver O’Quinn and the Propofol Murder of Michelle Herndon

Oliver O’Quinn is the former Florida registered nurse convicted in 2008 of murdering 24-year-old University of Florida student Michelle Herndon by injecting her with a lethal dose of propofol he had stolen from the hospital where he worked. He was obsessively infatuated with her, killed her in her Gainesville home in November 2005, fled the country, and was captured in Senegal after an international manhunt. He is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole.¹

Who Michelle Herndon Was

Michelle Ann Herndon was 24 and close to graduating from the University of Florida. She worked full-time as a personal trainer at Gainesville Health & Fitness and planned to join the Peace Corps.² She had been dating Jason Dearing for four years, and the two had recently agreed to move toward a long-term commitment; Dearing testified that Herndon considered it a pre-engagement stage and that he intended to move closer to Gainesville.³

She knew O’Quinn because he shared a house with one of her close friends, Jessica Seipel.¹ Herndon suffered from chronic migraines, and O’Quinn offered to help relieve her pain, using that opening to insert himself into her life.² To her, he was a casual acquaintance.

The Obsession Behind the Killing

To O’Quinn, Herndon was something else entirely. Gainesville Police Detective Michael Douglas found that O’Quinn had called her 43 times in the 30 days before her death and followed her around “like a little puppy dog.” He borrowed other people’s dogs so he could bump into her at the dog park. At one gathering, he moved his chair to follow when she changed seats. He hid the interactions from his roommate Seipel, referring to Herndon only as his “new friend” without naming her.³

Herndon told her mother that O’Quinn was “calling constantly” and “dropping by unexpectedly,” and that the behavior “creeps me out.”³ When she shared that her relationship with Dearing was becoming serious, prosecutors said, O’Quinn grew angry and jealous.⁴ The motive prosecutors put to the jury came through his own jailhouse words, relayed by a cellmate: “Because she put him down, he was going to put her down.”⁵

How the Murder Was Carried Out

O’Quinn worked as a registered nurse in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit at Shands Hospital, affiliated with the University of Florida.⁶⁵

On the evening of November 8, 2005, O’Quinn went to Herndon’s Gainesville home, and she let him in.¹ The amount of propofol later found in her body was four times a normal dose.² The prosecution’s expert anesthesiologist testified that the drug would have rendered her unconscious within a minute, and that it was impossible for her to have injected herself, discarded the materials outside, and returned to where her body was found.⁶

After the injection, O’Quinn cleaned up. He put two propofol vials, syringes, and a broken vial of promethazine into a plastic bag and dropped it in a trash can about 62 feet from her back door.⁶ November 9 was his last day at Shands.

How Investigators Linked Him to the Death

Herndon’s body was discovered on November 10, 2005, after Dearing drove up from Miami when he could not reach her and found her car, dog, and phone at the home but no sign of her. He called her mother, Belinda, at 3:30 a.m.³ Authorities first thought the death was natural. A post-mortem examination then found a tiny puncture wound on the inside of her left elbow, and toxicology identified propofol.⁷

The break in the case came from the discarded bag. Forensic testing matched blood inside a syringe to Herndon and DNA on a needle cap to O’Quinn. Lot numbers on the recovered vials traced to Shands, and pharmacy records confirmed O’Quinn’s withdrawals, including on the day of the murder.⁵

The International Manhunt

O’Quinn had already left the country. He resigned from Shands the day after Herndon’s death and flew to Ireland on November 29, 2005, moving into a Dublin hostel and trying to find nursing work.³ When he tried to register with the Irish Nurses Organisation, the organization alerted Detective Douglas. Irish police located and watched him for about a month, but Douglas was told by the U.S. Department of Justice that its previous 18 extradition requests to Ireland had all been rejected.⁸

Douglas and Belinda Herndon decided to push. They released case details to the Irish press, hoping publicity would drive O’Quinn to a country with a more cooperative extradition relationship.³ It worked. He turned up in Mauritania. On June 21, 2006, U.S. Embassy officials there spotted him trying to collect a money wire; his passport triggered a U.S. Marshals warrant alert, and he fled on foot across the border into Senegal. After a weeklong manhunt run by the U.S. Marshals Service and the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service, Senegalese authorities apprehended him and turned him over without difficulty. He was flown back to the United States in July 2006, processed through New York, and delivered to Gainesville.⁹

Herndon had wanted to visit Senegal for Peace Corps work.³

Trial, Conviction, and Sentence

O’Quinn’s first-degree murder trial began on May 20, 2008, in Gainesville. Assistant State Attorney James Colaw prosecuted; public defender Drew McGill represented O’Quinn.¹⁰

The state built its case on forensic matches to the discarded syringe and needle cap, hospital pharmacy records for the stolen drugs, phone records of O’Quinn’s constant calls, and witness testimony. Jessica Seipel testified that O’Quinn had falsely claimed to be an Air Force captain and a paratrooper who had jumped into Afghanistan after September 11.⁶ Jail cellmate Thomas Rauscher testified that O’Quinn had confessed to sedating Herndon because she had rejected him.⁵

Family testimony was contentious. O’Quinn’s father, Beecher O’Quinn, had initially told Detective Douglas that his son admitted a “girlfriend” had died of a drug overdose, a detail not yet public. At trial he recanted under oath. O’Quinn’s half-sister, Leslie Coulter, contradicted him, testifying that Beecher had told her about the overdose admission and had told her “don’t tell them anything,” to which she said she replied, “I always tell the truth.”³

O’Quinn did not testify.¹⁰ The jury convicted him of first-degree murder on May 23, 2008. Judge Peter Seig sentenced him to life without parole the same day, telling him, “In this case, you executed Michelle Herndon, and tonight I know I will sleep soundly.” O’Quinn showed no emotion and made no statement.¹

His direct appeal was affirmed without a written opinion by the Florida First District Court of Appeal in September 2009. A state post-conviction motion raising 14 grounds was denied and affirmed on appeal in 2014, and a federal habeas petition raising 19 grounds was recommended for denial by a magistrate judge in April 2017.⁶

The Civil Case Against Shands

Herndon’s parents, Richard and Belinda Herndon, sued Shands Teaching Hospital and Clinics, Inc. for wrongful death. They alleged the hospital failed to run a competent background check that would have revealed O’Quinn’s history of stealing controlled substances, and that after employees reported he was taking drugs from the hospital depository, Shands held a performance conference with him and allowed him to resign with two weeks’ notice, during which he kept full access to the drug supply.¹¹

The trial court dismissed the complaint on the ground that the hospital owed no legal duty to Herndon. On November 30, 2009, the First District Court of Appeal reversed, holding that the Herndons had alleged enough to establish a duty of care and that “the death of Michelle Herndon was a foreseeable consequence of [the hospital’s] failure to use reasonable care in the hiring and supervision of O’Quinn.” The case was sent back for further proceedings.¹¹ The available record does not indicate whether the case reached a trial verdict or a settlement after remand.

Where Oliver O’Quinn Is Now

The Florida Department of Health revoked O’Quinn’s registered nurse license, which had been issued on July 11, 2005.¹² He is serving his life sentence at Zephyrhills Correctional Institution in Florida as of September 2025, having previously been held at Walton Correctional Institution in DeFuniak Springs.¹³

1
Gainesville Sun. Ex-Shands Nurse O’Quinn Gets Life Without Parole
2
Gainesville Sun. A UF Murder Mystery
3
NBC News. Dateline NBC
4
Valdosta Daily Times. Herndon’s Killer Convicted
5
Oxygen. Oliver O’Quinn Guilty of Propofol Murder of Michelle Herndon
6
GovInfo. O’Quinn v. Jones, Case No. 1:15-cv-00021
7
Valdosta Daily Times. Trial Begins in Death of Michelle Herndon
8
Irish Times. Nurse Wanted for Murder in US Now Living in Dublin
9
Gainesville Sun. Suspect in Death of UF Student in Area Jail
10
Gainesville Sun. Prosecution Rests in Student’s Death
11
FindLaw. Herndon v. Shands Teaching Hospital, No. 1D09-0437
12
Florida Department of Health. License Verification – Oliver Travis O’Quinn
13
Forensic Files Now. Oliver O’Quinn – Nursing a Grudge