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This revised edition published by Clan Destine Press in 2019
PO Box 121, Bittern Victoria 3918 Australia
Copyright © Emily Webb
Originally published by The Five Mile Press in 2015.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including internet search engines and retailers, electronic or mechanical, photocopying (except under the statuary exceptions
provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-In-Publication data: Webb, Emily
ANGELS OF DEATH
ISBN: 978-0-6485567-3-2 (paperback)
978-0-6485567-4-9 (eBook)
Cover Design © Willsin Rowe
Design & Typesetting: Clan Destine Press
Contents
Elizabeth Wettlaufer – A Twisted Mind
Charles Cullen – Satan’s Son
Megan Haines – Callous Killer
Roger Dean – Nursing Home Killer
Gwendolyn Graham & Catherine Wood – The Murder Game
Orville Lynn Majors – Death Angel of Indiana
Genene Jones – Death in Texas
Lainz Death Angels – A Hospital Killing Team
Ahmad Alami – Horror on the Children’s Ward
Kristen Gilbert – Cold-hearted Killer
Michael Swango – Poison Doctor
Sonya Caleffi – Italy’s Angel of Death
Stephan Letter – Germany’s Killer Nurse
Christine Malèvre – Madonna of Euthanasia or Angel of Death?
Timea Faludi – Hungary’s Black Angel
Roger Andermatt – The Deathkeeper of Lucerne
Arnfinn Nesset – Norway’s only Serial Killer
Beverley Allitt – Angel of Death
Efren Saldivar – Killer on the Night Shift
Vickie Dawn Jackson – The Unassuming Killer
Robert Diaz – The Lidocaine Killer
Dr John Bodkin Adams – The Luck of the Irish
Kimberly Saenz – The Bleach Killer
Donald Harvey – The Sweet Child
Harold Shipman – Dr Death
Introduction
This is an updated edition of Angels of Death, first published in 2015. Sadly, in the four short years since then, there have been many more cases around the world of healthcare workers killing their patients. Two of those cases – a Canadian nurse who’s one of that country’s most prolific serial killers, and an Australian nurse who killed two of her patients because they had made complaints about her – are featured in this edition.
It’s hard to imagine that anyone in the healthcare industry could have murder on their mind. But even as I was putting the final touches on this new edition, ex-nurse Niels Högel was convicted of 85 murders in Germany. Högel was already in jail for murder, and attempted murder, but his latest trial, which ended in June 2019, was an attempt to find out just how many people he’d murdered and to bring some answers to families of the suspected victims.
Högel stalked the rooms of the hospitals he worked, injecting his patients with drugs meant for heart conditions, just so he could revive them and be a hero. He was known as ‘Resuscitation Rambo’.
It’s feared that between 2000 and 2005, Högel murdered hundreds of people, aged from 34 to 96. He is now the most prolific serial killer in post-war Germany.
While writing Angels of Death, I noticed that the pattern of offending with medical serial killers is often alarmingly uniform. Many of these evil angels worked nightshifts where they were unsupervised, they had personal problems and mental health issues, and there were always red flags that meant they could have been stopped. These flags were typically disciplinary issues that were not shared as they moved from job to job; things like drug addiction, criminal convictions, or clouds over their professional practice.
In many of the cases in this book, the murders could have been prevented had there been more rigorous checks and balances in place at every level, from the hospital right up to state legislation.
Before researching this book, I had not realised just how many healthcare professionals had been found guilty of murder.
Frankly, it is disturbing and only partly because these are only the ones we know about. It could be argued that healthcare serial killing is the easiest type of murder to commit and get away with – for years or, possibly forever.
Serial killer nurses and doctors do not have to go looking for their victims, they literally have wards of captive and trusting victims from which to choose.
Serial murder by healthcare professionals is particularly heinous because, by the very nature of their jobs, they are automatically given an enormous amount of trust. But instead of using their skills and training to save lives and comfort people, they use their positions to violate the vulnerabilities of their victims.
It is an unforgivable betrayal of trust.
Emily Webb
Melbourne, Australia 2019
Elizabeth Wettlaufer
- A Twisted Mind -
Every patient I ever picked had some dementia and that was part of what became my criteria. If they had dementia, they couldn’t report or if they reported, they wouldn’t have been believed…
– Elizabeth Wettlaufer, Ontario, Canada 2018
These are the words of Canadian registered nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer who pleaded guilty in 2016 to murdering eight and attempting to murder six more of her patients.
At the time of writing, Wettlaufer is Canada’s most prolific serial killer. Her crimes only came to light when she confessed to killing her patients and her extensive interviews with investigators and medical professionals have provided a rare, invaluable opportunity for so much insight into the mind of not only a killer, but a healthcare serial killer.
Wettlaufer’s crimes prompted the Canadian Government to establish The Public Inquiry into the Safety and Security of Residents in the Long-Term Care Homes System (short-named The Long-Term Care Homes Public Inquiry) that started in 2018.
The