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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.
Aktion T4 was a campaign of mass murder by involuntary euthanasia in Nazi Germany. The term was first used in post-war trials against doctors who had been involved in the killings. The name T4 is an abbreviation of Tiergartenstraße 4, a street address of the Chancellery department set up in early 1940, in the Berlin borough of Tiergarten, which recruited and paid personnel associated with Aktion T4. Certain German physicians were authorised to select patients "deemed incurably sick, after most critical medical examination" and then administer to them a "mercy death". In October 1939, Adolf Hitler signed a "euthanasia note", backdated to 1 September 1939, which authorised his physician Karl Brandt and Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler to begin the killing.
The Doctors' Trial was the first of 12 trials for war crimes of high-ranking German officials and industrialists that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone in Nuremberg, Germany, after the end of World War II. These trials were held before US military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The trials are collectively known as the "subsequent Nuremberg trials", formally the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).
John Bodkin Adams was a British general practitioner, convicted fraudster, and suspected serial killer. Between 1946 and 1956, 163 of his patients died while in comas, which was deemed to be worthy of investigation. In addition, 132 out of 310 patients had left Adams money or items in their wills.
Voluntary euthanasia is the ending of a person's life at their request in order to relieve them of suffering. Voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) have been the focus of intense debate in recent years.
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. Researchers who are intimately involved in the case believe Cullen may have murdered as many as 400 people. However, most murders cannot be confirmed due to lack of records.
Am Spiegelgrund was a children's clinic in Vienna during World War II, where 789 patients were murdered under child euthanasia in Nazi Germany. Between 1940 and 1945, the clinic operated as part of the psychiatric hospital Am Steinhof later known as the Otto Wagner Clinic within the Baumgartner Medical Center located in Penzing, the 14th district of Vienna.
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.
Michael Joseph Swango is an American serial killer and licensed physician who is estimated to have been involved in as many as 60 fatal poisonings of patients and colleagues, although he admitted to only causing four deaths. He was sentenced in 2000 to three consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole and is serving his sentence at ADX Florence at his own request.
Edith Alice Morrell was a resident of Eastbourne, East Sussex, England, and patient of Dr John Bodkin Adams. Although Adams was acquitted in 1957 of her murder, the question of Adams' role in Morrell's death excited considerable interest at the time and continues to do so. This is partly because of negative pre-trial publicity which remains in the public record, partly because of the several dramatic incidents in the trial and partly as Adams declined to give evidence in his own defence. The trial featured in headlines around the world and was described at the time as "one of the greatest murder trials of all time" and "murder trial of the century". It was also described by the trial judge as unique because "the act of murder" had "to be proved by expert evidence." The trial also established the legal doctrine of double effect, where a doctor giving treatment with the aim of relieving pain may, as an unintentional result, shorten life.
Colin Campbell Norris is a Scottish serial killer and former nurse convicted for the murder of four elderly patients and attempted to murder another in two hospitals in Leeds, England in 2002.
Donald Harvey was an American serial killer who claimed to have murdered 87 people, though official estimates are between 37 and 57 victims. He was able to do this during his time as a hospital orderly. His spree took place between 1970 and 1987.
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.
Leonard John Henry Arthur was a British doctor tried in the 1981 case of R v Arthur, for the attempted murder of John Pearson, a newborn child with Down's syndrome. He was acquitted.
John David Moor was a British general practitioner who was prosecuted in 1999 for the euthanasia of a patient. He was found not guilty but admitted in a press interview to having helped up to 300 people to die. He was the first doctor in Britain to be tried solely for the mercy killing of a patient.
Thomas Lodwig was an English doctor, accused of murdering a patient with terminal cancer in 1990. He was acquitted after the prosecution offered no evidence at his trial.
The Euthanasia trials were legal proceedings against the main perpetrators and accomplices involved in the "euthanasia" murders of the Nazi era in Germany.
Crimes That Shook Britain is a television series first aired in 2008 on Crime & Investigation UK, focusing on uncovering the truth behind crimes that shocked the nation. Some episodes were also rebroadcast in random episode order from 2014 to 2019, on Channel 5 originally under the title Britain's Worst Crimes.
Richard Gladwell McGown, also known as Dr. Death, is a Scottish-Zimbabwean former anaesthetist, murderer and suspected serial killer. He was found guilty of murdering two children from 1986 to 1992 by injecting large amounts of morphine into their bodies, but is suspected of murdering at least three others as well. He was found guilty of culpable homicide and sentenced to a year in prison, after which he was released and returned to the UK.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Stuart, Julia (10 April 2005). "This doctor answered the prayer of a patient desperate to die". The Independent. Archived from the original on 24 September 2008. Retrieved 8 July 2008.
- 1 2 3 "Euthanasia: An overview". BBC. 12 May 1999. Retrieved 8 July 2008.