Related Research Articles
Harold Frederick Shipman, known to acquaintances as Fred Shipman, was an English general practitioner and serial killer. He is considered to be one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history, with an estimated 250 victims. On 31 January 2000, Shipman was found guilty of murdering fifteen patients under his care. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a whole life order. Shipman hanged himself in his cell at HM Prison Wakefield, West Yorkshire, on 13 January 2004, aged 57.
Charles Edmund Cullen is an American serial killer. Cullen, a nurse, murdered dozens—possibly hundreds—of patients during a 16-year career spanning several New Jersey medical centers until being arrested in 2003. He confessed to committing as many as 40 murders at least 29 of which have been confirmed; though interviews with police, psychiatrists and journalists suggest he committed many more.
Kristen Heather Gilbert is an American serial killer and former nurse who was convicted of four murders and two attempted murders of patients admitted to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) in Northampton, Massachusetts. She induced cardiac arrest in patients by injecting their intravenous therapy bags with massive doses of epinephrine, commonly known as adrenaline, which is an untraceable heart stimulant. She would then respond to the coded emergency, often resuscitating the patients herself. Prosecutors said Gilbert was on duty for about half of the 350 deaths that occurred at the hospital from when she started working there in 1989, and that the odds of this merely being a coincidence was 1 in 100 million. However, her only confirmed victims were Stanley Jagodowski, Henry Hudon, Kenneth Cutting, and Edward Skwira.
Gwendolyn Gail Graham and Catherine May Wood are American serial killers convicted of killing five elderly women in Walker, Michigan, a suburb of Grand Rapids, in 1987. They committed their crimes in the Alpine Manor nursing home, where they both worked as nurse's aides.
Genene Anne Jones is an American serial killer, responsible for the deaths of up to 60 infants and children in her care as a licensed vocational nurse during the 1970s and 1980s. In 1984, Jones was convicted of murder and injury to a child. She had used injections of digoxin, heparin, and later succinylcholine to induce medical crises in her patients, causing numerous deaths. The exact number of victims remains unknown; hospital officials allegedly misplaced and then destroyed records of Jones' activities, to prevent further litigation after Jones' first conviction.
Beverley Gail Allitt is an English serial killer who was convicted of murdering four infants, attempting to murder three others, and causing grievous bodily harm to a further six at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincolnshire between February and April 1991. She committed the murders as a State Enrolled Nurse on the hospital's children's ward.
An angel of mercy or angel of death is a type of criminal offender who is usually employed as a medical practitioner or a caregiver and intentionally harms or kills people under their care. The angel of mercy is often in a position of power and may decide the victim would be better off if they no longer suffered from whatever severe illness is plaguing them. This person then uses their knowledge to kill the victim. In some cases, as time goes on, this behavior escalates to encompass the healthy and the easily treated.
Robert George Clements was a physician and a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons from Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Roland E. Clark was an American medical doctor, suspected of being a serial killer. He was convicted of two counts of manslaughter and died in prison.
Carroll Cook was an attorney and judge for the Superior Court in San Francisco. He was best known for the national attention drawn to some of his rulings in famous cases, several of which were upheld by the United States Supreme Court.
Colin Campbell Norris is a Scottish serial killer and former nurse who murdered four elderly patients and attempted to murder another in two hospitals in Leeds, England in 2002. Norris, who self-admittedly disliked elderly patients and had previously stolen hospital drugs, was the only person on duty when all the five patients inexplicably fell into sudden hypoglycaemic comas, despite the non-diabetic women only being in minor injury wards with merely broken hips. Suspicions were raised when Norris predicted that healthy Ethel Hall would die at 5:15 am one night, which is when she fell into a catastrophic arrest, and tests revealed that she had been injected with an extremely high level of man-made insulin. Insulin was missing from the hospital fridge and Norris had last accessed it, only half an hour before Hall fell unconscious. Subsequent investigations would find that the unnatural hypoglycaemic attacks followed him when he was transferred to a second hospital, and hospital records revealed that only he could not be eliminated as a suspect. Detectives believed that Norris was responsible for up to six other suspicious deaths where only he was always present, but a lack of post mortem evidence and other factors meant that investigators and the Crown Prosecution Service could not pursue convictions for these deaths. The murder inquiry was led by Chris Gregg and the investigation was praised for its thoroughness.
Jessie Gordon, formerly McTavish, is a Scottish retired nurse who was convicted in 1974 of murdering a patient with insulin, and of administering a variety of substances with intent to cause harm. The conviction was overturned on appeal in 1976. She was dubbed the "Angel of Death" by the press.
Orville Lynn Majors was a licensed practical nurse and serial killer who was convicted of murdering his patients in Clinton, Indiana. Though he was tried for only seven murders and convicted of six, he was believed to have caused additional deaths between 1993 and 1995, when he was employed by the hospital at which the deaths occurred and for which he was investigated. It was reported that he murdered patients who he claimed were demanding, whiny, or disproportionately adding to his work load.
Maxim Vladimirovich Petrov is a Russian serial killer, convicted for the killing of 11 people in St Petersburg between 1999 and 2000. Petrov, nicknamed Doctor Death by the Russian media, was a practicing doctor who targeted patients from a local health center, killing them by lethal injection at their homes then robbing them.
The Shipman Inquiry was the report produced by a British governmental investigation into the activities of general practitioner and serial killer Harold Shipman. Shipman was arrested in September 1998 and the inquiry commenced shortly after he was found guilty of 15 murders in January 2000. It released its findings in various stages, with its sixth and final report being released on 27 January 2005 – by which time Shipman had died by suicide in prison. It was chaired by Dame Janet Smith DBE.
Edson Isidoro Guimarães is a Brazilian nursing assistant and convicted serial killer. He confessed to five murders of which he was convicted of four, but is suspected of committing up to 131 in total. He claimed that he chose patients whose conditions were irreversible and who were in pain.
Elizabeth Tracy Mae "Bethe" Wettlaufer is a convicted Canadian serial killer and former registered nurse who confessed to murdering eight senior citizens and attempting to murder six others in southwestern Ontario between 2007 and 2016. With a total of 14 victims either killed or injured by her actions, she is described as one of the worst serial killers in Canadian history.
Niels Högel is a German serial killer and former nurse who was sentenced to life imprisonment, initially for the murders of six patients, and later convicted of a total of eighty-five murders. Estimates of Högel's alleged victim count have increased since his first conviction; as of 2020, he was believed to have claimed 300 victims over fifteen years, making him the most prolific serial killer in the history of peacetime Germany.
Anthony Joyner is an American serial killer and rapist who raped and murdered at least six elderly women at a nursing home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from January to July 1983, but is suspected in 18 total deaths that occurred there. Tried and convicted only for his confirmed murders, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
References
- 1 2 3 Norgesglasset (March 2003). "Nesset-saken ryster Norge". Nessetsaka (in Norwegian). nrk.no. Retrieved 2012-08-08.
- ↑ "Mass murder guilt ruled". Spokane Chronicle. 11 March 1983. Retrieved 12 August 2011.
- ↑ "22 elderly patients killed by nursing home manager". Glasgow Herald. 12 March 1983. Retrieved 12 August 2011.
- ↑ Herbert G Kinnell (2000-12-23). "Serial homicide by doctors: Shipman in perspective" (PDF). British Medical Journal . 321 (7276): 1594–1597. doi:10.1136/bmj.321.7276.1594. PMC 1119267 . PMID 11124192.
- ↑ "Slayer of 22 sentenced". Spokane Chronicle. 19 March 1983. Retrieved 12 August 2011.
- ↑ "Historiens verste seriemordere" (in Norwegian). Retrieved 12 August 2011.