Monstrous Medical Serial Killers E-Book

Nick Haugen

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 118

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Serial killers in the medical world tap into primal fears because we are at our most vulnerable in hospital and must put our faith in the kindness and professionalism of doctors and nurses. This book will provide chilling case studies of a number of killers who used their medical skills to murder that you most definitely wouldn't want to encounter if you were ill!

Leseprobe

Monstrous Medical Serial Killers

Nick Haugen© Copyright 2023 Nick Haugen

ContentsJohn Bodkin AdamsBeverly AllittRichard Angelo Burke & HareLudivine ChambetGeorge ChapmanJohn ChristieRobert George ClementsThomas Neill CreamCharles Edmund CullenAmelia DyerChristine FallingTimea FaludiBertha GiffordAmy Archer-GilliganGwendolyn Graham & Cathy WoodDana Sue GrayAnna Marie HahnDonald HarveyLinda HazzardH. H. HolmesMiyuki IshikawaVickie Dawn JacksonGenene JonesLainz Angels of DeathThe London BurkersMarquise de BrinvilliersDorothy MatajkeMarianne NölleDagmar OverbyeWilliam PalmerEdward William PritchardSarah Jane RobinsonKimberly Clark SaenzFelícitas Sánchez Aguillón Antoinette ScieriHarold ShipmanMichael SwangoJane ToppanElizabeth Wettlaufer Graham YoungLila Gladys YoungJOHN BODKINS ADAMS Dr John Bodkin Adams was born in 1899 in Randalstown, Country Antrim. Whether or not he was serial killer is still open to question. He was suspected of murdering over a hundred of his patients for financial gain but was acquitted of the one charge of murder he did face. It could be that Adams was simply an advocate of assisted dying. It could also be though that he was the forerunner to Harold Shipman. The real truth was never really established. Adams was a doctor in the town of Eastbourne and had many elderly patients. It transpired that around 132 of these patients changed their will to include Adams before they died. That seems more than a little suspicious doesn't it? Why would anyone change their will near the end of their life and leave money and valuables to their doctor? Wouldn't you want the money to go to your relatives instead? John Bodkin Adams attracted suspicion in Eastbourne because two of his deceased patients even left him a Rolls-Royce in their will. There were certainly alarms about Adams. One family complained that their relative got worse because Adams kept injecting her with morphine. There were also accounts of how he was the wealthiest doctor in England and living a lavish lifestyle. Where was he getting all this money from? Adams was even accused of killing one patient with an overdose of sleeping pills. He was naturally named in the will of this patient once they had expired. When a woman named Amy Ware died in his care, Adams said he was not a beneficiary in her will EVEN though he was. Why did he lie about this? Annabelle Kilgour died in 1950 after Adams gave her extra strong sedatives. In her will she left him £200 and a clock. Julia Bradnum, a patient of Adams, died in 1952 at the age of 85. Adams persuaded Bradnum to sell her house before she died and she left him £600 in her will. Hilda Neil Miller, who was 85, died in 1952 while being treated by Adams. A relative of Hilda said she saw Adams rifling through Hilda's valuables and pocketing them after she died. Adams then quickly arranged the burial himself. There were countless suspicious incidents like this relating to Dr John Bodkin Adams. The whispers and gossip surrounding Adams got so intense that the police began investigating the wills of his patients and arrested him. They focussed in particular on the death of Edith Alice Morrell. Morrell was a patient of Adams who died from a cocktail of heroin and morphine given to her by the doctor. Adams was left some money and a Rolls Royce as a result of her death. Dr John Bodkin Adams, thanks to a rather shrewd QC, was cleared of charges of murder. What saved him was that the nurses looking after Morrell had been forced to concede they kept detailed notes on her treatment. The nurses suspected Adams of foul play but nothing in their notes proved it. The prosecution also failed to find any fellow doctors willing to argue that this was a clear case of murder. One strange thing that also went in favour of Dr John Bodkin Adams was the fact that he also managed to avoid having to give any evidence himself. He wasn't questioned in court. After the trial, Adams was struck off the medical register for forging prescriptions. Amazingly though he was reinstated as a GP in 1961. Would you want to be treated by a doctor suspected of killing over a hundred of his patients? Adams later became President (and Honorary Medical Officer) of the British Clay Pigeon Shooting Association. He died in 1983. Though friends believed he was innocent the media and public always thought Adams was guilty. BEVERLY ALLITTBritain doesn't seem to have suffered as many 'Angel of Death' medical killers as other places but one such tragic case was Beverly Allitt. Beverly Allitt was a nurse who killed four infants and children and tried to kill many more. She is a deeply disturbed and dangerous woman. Alliitt was born in Lincolnshire in 1968. She was pretty odd from a young age and would fake illness to get attention. She famously had a healthy healthy appendix removed for no reason - such was her ability to pretend she was poorly or suffering from something. Allitt trained to be a nurse as a young woman and despite her poor attendance record, an incident where she was suspected of smearing excrement on a wall, and failing her nursing exams, she managed to secure a position at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital in Lincolnshire in 1991. Allitt's first victim was seven-week-old Liam Taylor. She was caring for Liam when he began suffering from breathing problems. He eventually ended up on life support with brain damage and his parents had to give their consent to turn the machine off. The alarm monitors had not sounded when Liam stopped breathing but although this was (in hindsight) suspicious at the time no foul play was suspected. Two weeks later 11-year- old Timothy Hardwick died in Allitt's care when his heart stopped. Timothy suffered from cerebral palsy and his death was felt to have been a consequence of his epilepsy. The next victim was one-year-old Kayley Desmond. Kayley was making good progress after being admitted to the hospital with a chest infection but she went into cardiac arrest while Allitt was looking after her. The staff noticed a puncture mark near Kaley's armpit indicative of an injection but - once again - no foul play was suspected. Allitt continued to prey on children in the hospital. Five year-old Paul Crampton suffered from insulin shock while in the care of Allitt. He was sent to another hospital and thankfully managed to survive. Amazingly, Allitt was the nurse who looked after him during the journey. She still wasn't suspected of anything. A day later five-year-old Bradley Gibson went into cardiac arrest at the hospital but was saved. On two occasions he was found to have dangerously high levels on insulin and his main nurse was (of course) Beverley Allitt. That same day two-year-old Yik Hung Chan nearly died in the hospital after his oxygen levels dropped alarmingly. On the 1st of April, two-month-old Becky Phillips died in the hospital from convulsions. Becky had only been admitted for a stomach virus. Her sister was admitted for tests but stopped breathing while at the hospital. By now the authorities should have deduced that foul play was involved in all these strange and tragic incidents. About three weeks later 15 month old Claire Peck was treated at the hospital for asthma and suffered a cardiac arrest while on a ventilator. Clare was brought into a stable condition but tragically died of another cardiac arrest shortly after. The nurse looking after her was Beverley Allitt. Traces of Lignocaine were found in Clare's system after tests. This is a drug for heart problems but it is never prescribed for children. This naturally raised all manner of alarm bells in the hospital. The investigation deduced that a common denominator in the incidents was that the children had dangerously high levels of insulin. It was no coincidence that Allitt had reported the key to the insulin cabinet was missing. There were also missing nursing logs - which was obviously suspicious. The other common denominator in this case was Beverley Alitt. The hospital soon realised that she had been looking after all the children who died or nearly died. Allitt had attacked thirteen children over a 59 day period and killed four of them. She was sentenced to 13 concurrent terms of life imprisonment in 1993 and sent to Rampton Secure Hospital. Allitt was deemed to be suffering from Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy. Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSBP) is a mental health problem in which a caregiver makes up or causes an illness or injury in a person under his or her care. RICHARD ANGELORichard Angelo was born in Long Island in 1962. He was a model boy scout and a good student by all accounts. As a young man entered a two-year nursing program at Farmingdale State College and then worked at a number of medical facilities. Angelo became known as a nurse who was good during a crisis. Angelo even volunteered as an EMT with the fire department in his spare time. However, as his colleagues were soon to discover, it was usually Angelo who created the crisis in the first place. In 1987 he was accused of poisoning a patient at then Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Islip, Long Island by injecting Pavulon through his I.V. The elderly patient immediately became ill as a consequence. Angelo had the been the night supervisor in a special unit full of vulnerable and elderly patients. This was a recipe for disaster to say the least because it gave him free access to a unit full of patients who had come to trust him - which turned out to be a big mistake. What had rumbled Angelo was the fact that one of the patients he had injected with a dangerous and paralysing cocktail of drugs had managed to press the assistance button before he succumbed to the effects of the drugs and this had made a nurse rush to the scene. The nurse decided to take a urine sample from the patient for tests. The tests were positive for the drugs Pavulon and Anectine - both of which were then found in Angelo's locker and house. Angelo was arrested and the full catalogue of his wicked medical activities soon came to light. A number of dead patients were exhumed after Angelo confessed that this wasn't the first time he had done something like this. Angelo is believed to have poisoned over 30 patients - which resulted in at least ten deaths. Angelo said that his motivation was that he liked to play the 'hero' and bring a patient to the point of death and then save them. "I wanted to create a situation where I would cause the patient to have some respiratory distress or some problem, and through my intervention or suggested intervention or whatever, come out looking like I knew what I was doing. I had no confidence in myself. I felt very inadequate." A number of medical killers have this psychology. They like to play God with the lives of their patients and become addicted to the power they wield over life and death. Angelo was initially well respected by his colleagues at the hospital because of his calmness and apparent dedication. However, the unusually high number of patient emergencies during his shift eventually began to attract suspicion. In December 1989, Angelo was found guilty on two counts of murder, one count of manslaughter, and one count of criminally negligent homicide. Sadly, it is believed he may have killed more patients than his official tally indicates. On January 25, 1990, he was sentenced to 50-years-to-life in prison. Angelo was only 27 years-old at the time of his sentencing. Angelo's defence team had claimed in court that he suffered from a form of multiple personality disorder and didn't really know what he was doing. However this defence obviously proved futile in the end. The court was convinced that Angelo knew exactly what he was doing when he poisoned those patients. BURKE & HARE William Burke and William Hare were two men from the north of Ireland who became infamous for their macabre activities in Edinburgh in 1827 and 1828. These two men became close friends when they moved to Scotland to work on a canal. Burke abandoned his family when he left Ireland and lived in Scotland with his mistress Helen McDougal. Hare lived very close by and ran a boarding house with Margaret Laird. Hare and Laird were not officially married but most people presumed they were man and wife. At the end of 1827, one of the residents of the boarding house died of old age and Burke and Hare came up with a ghoulish way to recoup the money the old man owed in rent. They took the body to Edinburgh University where anatomy lecturer Professor Robert Knox was more than happy to take it off their hands. At the time there were strict laws about using corpses for medical research and training. Medical schools and universities could only use the corpses of prisoners, street orphans, or suicides in such research. As a consequence of this there was a shortage of cadavers for medical students and professionals to train and teach with. Professor Robert Knox paid Burke and Hare seven pounds for the corpse of the boarding resident and the two men quickly deduced they might have stumbled across a lucrative - if grim - new business idea. Early in the new year, another resident of the boarding began to show signs of illness and Burke and Hare took great interest because they anticipated having another corpse to sell to Knox. They weren't willing to wait and decided to hasten the poorly man's departure from this mortal coil by suffocating him. They chose this method of murder because it left the corpse undamaged. A corpse with no injuries was more highly prized by medical schools and universities. After selling the corpse of this second man to the university, Burke and Hare were rather frustrated by the good health of other residents in the boarding house. They decided to take matters into their own hands and began luring people to the boarding house so that they could kill them and sell the body. The greed and ruthlessness of these men was apparent when they killed an elderly woman and her blind grandson. It is believed that Burke and Hare killed around sixteen people in all although the true figure is felt by most to have probably been higher than this. They received between seven and ten pounds for the corpses they sold to the university. The two men got so greedy and desperate for corpses in the end they even killed a relative of Burke's mistress Helen McDougal. Street prostitutes were among their victims because these were easy targets and not always likely to be missed by anyone or even reported as missing. Problems arose for this wicked duo though when medical students at the university began to recognise some of the corpses they were using in their training and studies. These included a few prostitutes and also a children's entertainer named James Wilson. By this stage there was also friction between Burke and Hare. Burke began to suspect that Hare was not sharing the money fairly and maybe even killing people alone for extra profits. As a consequence of this he started taking in lodgers of his own to kill!