Nurse Beverley Gail Allitt..."the Angel of Death"

"Beverley Gail Allitt (born 4 October 1968) is an English serial killer who was convicted of murdering four children, attempting to murder three other children, and causing grievous bodily harm to a further six children. The crimes were committed over a period of 59 days between February and April 1991 in the children's ward at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincolnshire, where Allitt was employed as a State Enrolled Nurse. She administered large doses of insulin to at least two victims and a large air bubble was found in the body of another, but police were unable to establish how all the attacks were carried out. In May 1993, at Nottingham Crown Court, she received 13 life sentences for the crimes...She is detained at Rampton Secure Hospital in Nottinghamshire.

 

Victims

• Liam Taylor (seven weeks old) – was admitted to the ward for a chest infection and was murdered on 21 February 1991.
• Timothy Hardwick (eleven years old) – a boy with cerebral palsy who was admitted to the ward after having an epileptic seizure. He was murdered on 5 March 1991.
• Kayley Desmond (then one year old) – admitted to the ward for a chest infection. Allitt attempted to murder her on 8 March 1991 but the child was resuscitated and transferred to another hospital, where she recovered.
• Paul Crampton (then five months old) – admitted to the ward for a chest infection on 20 March 1991. Allitt attempted to murder him with an insulin overdose on three occasions the day before he was transferred to another hospital, where he recovered.
• Bradley Gibson (then five years old) – admitted to the ward for pneumonia. He suffered two cardiac arrests on 21 March 1991, due to Allitt's administering insulin overdoses, before he was transferred to another hospital, where he recovered.
• Yik Hung Chan (also known as Henry, then two years old) – admitted to the ward following a fall on 21 March 1991. He suffered an oxygen desaturation attack before he was transferred to another hospital, where he recovered.
• Becky Phillips (two months old) – admitted to the ward for gastroenteritis on 1 April 1991. She was administered an insulin overdose by Allitt and died at home two days later.
• Katie Phillips (then two months old) – Becky's twin was admitted to the ward as a precaution following the death of her sister. She had to be resuscitated twice after unexplained apnoeic episodes (which were later found to be caused by insulin and potassium overdoses). Following the second time that she stopped breathing, she was transferred to another hospital but, by this time, had suffered permanent brain damage, partial paralysis and partial blindness due to oxygen deprivation...
• Claire Peck (fifteen months old) – admitted to the ward following an asthma attack on 22 April 1991. After being put on a ventilator, she was left alone in Allitt's care for a short interval during which time she went into cardiac arrest. She was resuscitated but died after a second episode of cardiac arrest, again following a period when she was left alone with Allitt.

Allitt had attacked thirteen children, four fatally, over a 59 day period before she was brought up on charges for her crimes. It was only following the death of Claire Peck that medical staff became suspicious of the number of cardiac arrests on the children's ward and police were called in. It was found that Allitt was the only nurse on duty for all the attacks on the children and she also had access to the drugs."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverley_Allitt

"Beverley Gail Allitt (born 4 October 1968, Corby Glen, Lincolnshire, England), dubbed by the media the Angel of Death...Her method of murder was to inject the child with potassium chloride (to cause cardiac arrest), or with insulin (to induce lethal hypoglycemia).

...As a child, Beverley wore bandages and casts over wounds that she would not allow to be examined. She suffered from a volatile temperament, and became aggressive toward others. She had gall bladder pain, headaches, urinary infections, uncontrolled vomiting, blurred vision, appendicitis, back trouble, and ulcers. Beverley persuaded a doctor to remove a healthy appendix then failed to heal because she kept plucking at the surgical scar. "

http://krazykillers.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/beverley-allitt-alittle-loony/

 

Nurse Arnfinn Nesset...

"Arnfinn Nesset (born October 25, 1936) is a Norwegian former nurse, nursing home manager and convicted serial killer. His crimes include the murders of at least 22 people, as well as attempted murder, document forgery and embezzlement. He may have murdered up to 138 people. In 1983 he was convicted of poisoning 22 patients and sentenced to 21 years in prison. He served 12 years and 10 years supervision, and is thought to be living under an assumed name.

 

...Born in Trøndelag in 1936 out of wedlock, Nesset was raised by his mother and remained with her throughout his upbringing and adulthood, living at her childhood home. His father was absent from his life and he never established contact with him. He was educated as a registered nurse and by 1977 he was hired as a head nurse at a larger nursing home in Orkdal municipality.

 

^...During the summer and autumn of 1981, a series of suspicious deaths was uncovered at the nursing home in Orkdal, Sør-Trøndelag where Nesset was working as manager... Arnfinn Nesset initially confessed to the murders of 27 patients who he claimed to have killed by injecting them with suxamethonium chloride, a muscle relaxing drug."

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnfinn_Nesset

"Dr. Death"...

"Harold Fredrick Shipman (14 January 1946 – 13 January 2004) was a British doctor and one of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history by proven murders with up to 250 murders being ascribed to him.
On 31 January 2000, a jury found Shipman guilty of 15 murders. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and the judge recommended that he never be released.
 
Harold Frederick Shipman was born in Bestwood council estate in Nottingham, England...His working class parents were devout Methodists.Shipman was particularly close to his mother, who died of lung cancer when he was 17....
 
Shipman studied medicine at Leeds School of Medicine and graduated in 1970. He started work at Pontefract General Infirmary in Pontefract, West Riding of Yorkshire, and in 1974 took his first position as a general practitioner (GP) at the Abraham Ormerod Medical Centre in Todmorden, West Yorkshire. In 1975 he was caught forging prescriptions of pethidine for his own use. He was fined £600, and briefly attended a drug rehabilitation clinic in York. He became a GP at the Donneybrook Medical Centre in Hyde, Greater Manchester, in 1977.
Shipman continued working as a GP in Hyde throughout the 1980s and founded his own surgery at 21 Market Street in 1993, becoming a respected member of the community. In 1983, he was interviewed on the Granada television documentary World in Action on how the mentally ill should be treated in the community.
  
^...The Shipman Inquiry into Shipman's activities submitted in July 2002 concluded that he had killed at least 215 of his patients between 1975 and 1998, during which time he practised in Todmorden, West Yorkshire (1974–1975), and Hyde, Greater Manchester (1977–1998)... Most of his victims were elderly women in good health.
 
 ...The General Medical Council charged six doctors who signed cremation forms for Shipman's victims with misconduct, claiming they should have noticed the pattern between Shipman's home visits and his patients' deaths. All these doctors were found not guilty....

...In October 2005, a similar hearing was held against two doctors who worked at Tameside General Hospital in 1994, who failed to detect that Shipman had deliberately administered a "grossly excessive" dose of morphine.
 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Shipman

"The official report speculated that the doctor was "addicted to killing" much like he was addicted to painkillers around the time the murders started...Shipman "simply enjoyed viewing the process of dying and enjoyed feeling the control over life and death."

... Even more incredible was that his murders of so many people did not arouse suspicion for decades...

...the system failed tragically when Shipman, after being convicted of drug abuse in 1975, was allowed to obtain enormous quantities of painkilling drugs. For example, in the name of a dying patient, Dr. Shipman obtained enough of the painkiller diamorphine to kill 360 people..."

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/notorious/shipman/killing_27.html

Anneliese Michel...

"Anneliese Michel (21 September 1952 – 1 July 1976) was a German Catholic woman who was said to be possessed by demons ...

Michel was born on 21 September 1952 in Leiblfing, Bavaria, West Germany to a strict Catholic family. When she was sixteen, she suffered a severe convulsion and was diagnosed as having epilepsy. Soon, she began hallucinating while praying. In 1973, she suffered from depression and began to hear voices telling her that she was “damned” and would "rot in hell".
...

Her treatment in an unnamed psychiatric hospital did not improve Michel’s health. Moreover, her depression began to deepen. She grew increasingly frustrated with medical intervention as it did not help. Long-term medical treatment proved unsuccessful; her condition, including her depression, worsened with time.
...
In June 1970, Michel suffered a third seizure at the psychiatric hospital where she had been staying and was prescribed anti-convulsants for the first time. ... She also continued talking about what she called “devil faces”, seen at various times of the day. Michel became convinced that conventional medicine was of no help."

<sup>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anneliese_Michel

"</sup>Anneliese Michel (Leiblfing, 21 de setembro de 1952 — Klingenberg am Main, 1 de julho de 1976) foi uma jovem alemã de família católica que acreditava ter sido possuída por uma legião de demônios,
...
Anneliese experimentou graves distúrbios psiquiátricos a partir dos 16 anos de idade até sua morte, aos 23 anos, sendo seu quadro clínico composto desde desnutrição secundária à doença mental. Depois de vários anos de tratamento psiquiátrico ineficaz, ela se recusou ao tratamento médico e solicitou um exorcismo...

...
 Quando tinha dezesseis anos, Anneliese sofreu uma grave convulsão e foi diagnosticada com epilepsia.^[ Logo, ela também começou a alucinar enquanto rezava. Em 1973, ela sofria de depressão e começou a ouvir vozes dizendo que diziam que ela estava "condenada" e que iria "apodrecer no inferno".^"

http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anneliese_Michel

"Neuropathological research at the "Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fuer Psychiatrie" (German Institute for Psychiatric Research) in Munich (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute). Scientific utilization of children's organs from the "Kinderfachabteilungen" (Children's Special Departments) at Bavarian State Hospitals.
...
During National Socialism, the politically motivated interest in psychiatric genetic research lead to the founding of research departments specialized in pathological-anatomical brain research, the two Kaiser Wilhelm-Institutes (KWI) in Berlin and Munich. The latter was indirectly provided with brain material by Bavarian State Hospitals, to three of which "Kinderfachabteilungen" (Special Pediatric Units) were affiliated. ... these departments systematically contributed to neuropathological research and that slide preparations from victims of child "euthanasia" were used in scientific publications after 1945."

http://www.unboundmedicine.com/medline/citation/16887759/Neuropathological_research_at_the_%22Deutsche_Forschungsanstalt_fuer_Psychiatrie%22__German_Institute_for_Psychiatric_Research__in_Munich__Kaiser_Wilhelm_Institute___Scientific_utilization_of_children's_organs_from_the_%22Kinderfachabteilungen%22__Children's_Special_Departments__at_Bavarian_State_Hospitals_

Dr. John Bodkin Adams...

"John Bodkin Adams (21 January 1899 – 4 July 1983) was a British general practitioner, convicted fraudster and suspected serial killer. Between 1946 and 1956, more than 160 of his patients died in suspicious circumstances. Of these, 132 left him money or items in their wills. He was tried and acquitted for the murder of one patient in 1957.

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 at the time as "unique" because, in the words of the judge, "the act of murder" had "to be proved by expert evidence.

...Adams was found guilty in a subsequent trial of 13 offences of prescription fraud, lying on cremation forms, obstructing a police search and failing to keep a dangerous drugs register. He was removed from the Medical Register in 1957 and reinstated in 1961 after two failed applications...

...In 1921, surgeon Arthur Rendle Short offered him a position as assistant houseman at Bristol Royal Infirmary...

...Adams arrived in Eastbourne, Sussex, in 1922...

...In 1941 he gained a diploma in anaesthetics and worked in a local hospital one day a week, where he acquired a reputation as a bungler. He would fall asleep during operations, eat cakes, count money, and even mix up the anaesthetic gas tubes, leading to patients waking up or turning blue.

...Adams's career was very successful, and by 1956 "he was probably the wealthiest GP in England". He attended some of the most famous and influential people in the region, including MP and Olympic medal winner Lord Burghley, society painter Oswald Birley, Admiral Robert Prendergast, industrialist Sir Alexander Maguire, the 10th Duke of Devonshire, Eastbourne's Chief Constable Richard Walker and a host of businessmen.

...Convinced of the seriousness of the accusations, Macrae dropped his opposition to doctors talking to the police. In the end two Eastbourne doctors gave evidence to the police."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bodkin_Adams

Nurse Catherine Wilson...

Catherine Wilson (1822 - 20 October 1862) was a British woman who was hanged for one murder, but was generally thought at the time to have committed six others. She worked as a nurse and poisoned her victims after encouraging them to leave her money in their wills. She was described privately by the sentencing judge as "the greatest criminal that ever lived."...

...Wilson worked as a nurse first in Spalding, Lincolnshire, and then moving to Kirkby, Cumbria.

...In 1862 Wilson worked as a live-in nurse...The drink she had given to Carnell turned out to contain sulphuric acid - enough to kill 50 people.^..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Wilson

"Nurse" Waddingham...

"Dorothea Nancy Waddingham (1899 - 16 April 1936) was a nursing home matron and convicted murderer in the United Kingdom.
 
...Dorothea Waddingham is usually referred to as "Nurse" Waddingham, because the two murders she was accused and convicted of were committed in a nursing home she ran near Nottingham in England. In actuality she had no right to the title nurse. Born on a farm near Nottingham, the only medical training she may have been able to get was as a ward-maid at an infirmary near Burton-on-Trent...

...she served two prison terms, for fraud and for theft...

...The result was that Waddingham was convicted of using morphine to poison Mrs. Baguley and Ada. The purported motive behind the murders was to gain the Baguleys' estate. It was also revealed that Waddingham claimed that Dr. Mansfield gave her surplus morphine tablets for Ada Baguley, which that doctor denied..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothea_Waddingham