Who are Cheri Landry and Lori Budo?
Lori Budo and Cheri Landry were nurses in the surgical intensive care unit at Memorial Medical Center when Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing floods happened. After the bodies were found, autopsies were performed and morphine was immediately found in nine of the bodies. Budo, Landry and Dr. Anna Pou were all arrested in July 2006 and charged with four counts of second-degree murder for allegedly giving four LifeCare patients morphine and another drug that killed them. Based on the book that gave the show its name, written by Sheri Fink, police thought Budo and Landry were working with Pou.
Landry was working at a local hospital when she was arrested. Budo was at home with her husband and two teenagers when she was arrested. Nurses who had worked with Budo and Landry set up a benevolent fund to help them with money. Budo and Landry received monthly allowances and other monetary gifts to help pay their bills, buy food, and clothes. At the same time, the families of three of the four patients who died sued the two nurses. Budo and Landry eventually received subpoenas to appear before the grand jury without a lawyer in exchange for not being charged.
The Louisiana Supreme Court denied Budo and Landry’s appeal of their subpoenas. This meant that they had to testify before the special grand jury in exchange for immunity in the case. According to the source, Landry testified that she “had injected up to four LifeCare patients on the seventh floor and two patients on the second floor” without knowing their medical conditions. She also said that she thought they were all going to “die” and that she thought they had orders not to try to save them.
According to the show’s source, Budo said in court that she didn’t know how sick the patients on the seventh floor were or if they had DNR orders, but that they appeared to be dying. She also said, “I put morphine and midazolam in two of them.”
Who knows what happened to Lori Budo and Cheri Landry?
Lori Budo and Cheri Landry both worked as nurses even after they were granted immunity. Sheri Fink’s source code states that Budo and Landry joined the hospital as nurses when the Ochsner Health System acquired Memorial Medical Center and changed its name to Ochsner Baptist Medical Center. In 2012, Fink went to the hospital and wrote in her book that she remembered seeing the happy faces of Budo and Landry on a bulletin board in the staff room.
Budo wrote a book in 2010 called Katrina Through Our Eyes: Stories from Inside Baptist Hospital. It is based on the experiences of Memorial Hospital intensive care unit staff and their families following Hurricane Katrina. Except for theirs, almost all the names of the employees in the book are fictitious. Since then, Budo has chosen to stay out of the public eye. Fink attempted to speak to Budo several times while she was writing the show’s source, but Budo, through her attorney, turned her down. Budo and Landry have both decided to keep their personal lives private.