The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes (11 page)

The County Prosecutor described Harvey as a pathological killer who had “. . . a compulsion to kill like some of us have . . . a compulsion for cold beer”. A chart displayed in the court room listed the names of Harvey’s victims and detailed the manner of their deaths. This death list showed that his modus operandi ranged from poisoning with arsenic put in pies and puddings to asphyxiation using plastic bags and wet towels.

Evidence that he had attempted to kill others who were not hospital patients supported the idea that he was a compulsive murderer. Some of his colleagues said he was not trusted by them and there was evidence that he was fascinated by Satanism. Family members of some of his victims were not impressed by Harvey’s demeanour in court, especially when he appeared to be joking with his advisers.

The “Angel of Death” who had plea-bargained his way out of a death sentence was given four life sentences for murdering twenty-five people. Harvey will be eligible for parole when he is ninety-five years old. His admission that he had killed fifty people would make him one of America’s most prolific serial killers, overtaking the infamous Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy.

By Lethal Injection

In Germany, Stephan Letter, a twenty-seven-year-old hospital worker, was dubbed “The Nurse of Death” by the German press.

Letter’s activities came to light after staff at the hospital where he worked in Sonthofen, Bavaria, noticed that drugs had been going missing. He had started work in the internal diseases ward in 2003 and during a period of a year and a half there had been several deaths of elderly patients. It was noticed that many of the deaths of patients who were not seriously ill coincided with times when Letter was on ward duty. When he was questioned, he admitted killing the patients. A search of his apartment turned up a supply of drugs sufficient to kill several people.

This prompted an intense investigation with concerns over the deaths of seventy patients. Forty-two bodies were exhumed for post-mortem examination. Among them were six women aged between seventy and eighty-nine and four men aged between sixty and sixty-eight. They had died from lethal injections administered by Letter because he claimed he could not stand by and see them in pain.

He was tried for murder in November 2006. Letter repeated that he had killed them out of compassion but admitted he did not know how many. The prosecution said, “He killed as if it were an assembly line.” He had known some of his victims only a few hours before snuffing their lives out. His activities went unnoticed for so long because deaths among a population of elderly patients were not unexpected. His defence lawyer suggested that he had been given too much responsibility at too young an age. The judge said Letter was of above-average intelligence. He showed no emotion as he was convicted of killing twenty-eight patients with lethal injections and entered the records as Germany’s worst serial killer. The “Nurse of Death” was sentenced to life imprisonment with a ruling that he would have to serve at least fifteen years. In an ironic rider, the court ruled that he would never be allowed to work again as a nurse.

“Dr” Death

The German Odd Fellows’ Home in the Bronx, New York, provided care for up to eighty elderly people. Over a period
of four months, between August 1914 and January 1915, seventeen residents died. The authorities expressed concern but no action was taken. The attrition rate might have continued but for an extraordinary confession.

Frederick Mors, an Austrian from the Tyrol, clad in lederhosen and sporting an Alpine hat complete with feather, presented himself at the Criminal Courts building in New York and asked to speak to an attorney. With the aid of a German interpreter, Mors announced that he was responsible for eight of the deaths at the old people’s home. He explained that he worked there as a nursing assistant.

Mors had arrived in the USA from Liverpool on the
Aquitania
on 26 June 1914. He originated from Vienna where he had worked as a forester. Once in New York he began looking for work and found a job as a porter at the German Odd Fellows’ Home. Having advanced to nursing orderly, he came under the influence of the Home’s superintendent who enlisted Mors’ help in disposing of troublesome patients.

Mors enjoyed his work but became concerned that poisoning with opium, morphine and arsenic left traces in the body. In consequence, he perfected a technique of administering death with chloroform. First he anaesthetized his victim using drops of chloroform on a pad clamped over the nose. Then he poured chloroform into the mouth producing fatal poisoning which could not be detected. When an undertaker observed burn marks around the mouth of one of the victims, he made up some plausible explanation and realized he needed to refine his method. He did this by greasing his victim’s faces with Vaseline to prevent burns.

Mors had free rein at the Odd Fellows’ Home with access to drugs and no supervision of his activities. Enquiries about his background in Vienna elicited the information that he was so fascinated by death that he had changed his name to Mors, a corruption of the Latin word for death. Following his interrogation by police, Mors was sent for psychiatric examination.

To the suggestion that he was imbalanced, if not insane, he told detectives where to find his supply of chloroform which he
kept hidden. Asked why he killed the people he was supposed to be caring for, he said he brought death to them to relieve their suffering. In April 1915, Mors was declared insane by a lunacy commission and sent to Matteawan State Prison for the Criminally Insane.

Mad or not, Frederick Mors, a man obsessed with death, contrived to escape from prison in the 1920s. He was clever enough to avoid recapture and was never heard of again.

Strychnos Toxifera

Dr Carlo Nigrisoli came from a family of distinguished medical men. He lived in Bologna, Italy, with his wife Ombretta and three children where he had a successful practice. When he met Iris Azzali, he fell for her charms and began to lead a double life. His lover became pregnant and he arranged an abortion for her. But at this point, Mrs Nigrisoli realized that her husband’s attention was increasingly being diverted. She suspected another woman had entered the picture and was understandably distraught.

Family friends became aware of Ombretta Nigrisoli’s concerns and one of them, a physician, discussed the lady’s nervous condition with Nigrisoli. They agreed she should receive treatment in the form of injections given by the doctor friend. Then, for convenience, and knowing nothing about Nigrisoli’s dalliance with Iris, the doctor friend agreed that Carlo should administer the treatment to his wife.

With Nigrisoli spending more time away from home, Ombretta’s worries increased to the point where she became a burden. On 14 March 1963, late at night, Nigrisoli summoned help saying that his wife had suffered a heart attack. Ombretta died without regaining consciousness. Her husband said that he had given her a stimulant by injection but she had failed to respond. He then pressed his fellow doctors to register Ombretta’s death as caused by coronary thrombosis.

They declined to meet his wishes explaining that they were insufficiently aware of the facts leading up to his wife’s death. At this point, Nigrisoli produced a pistol, declaring that unless
his wishes were met, he would kill himself.

The attending physicians calmed him down and he ended up being questioned by the police. When officers discovered that Nigrisoli had been giving his wife injections, their suspicions were immediately aroused. A post-mortem was carried out on Ombretta and the results showed that she had died from the administration of curare.

Curare, the legendary and notorious poison used by South American Indians for hunting and vanquishing their enemies is extracted from tree bark. When it enters the blood stream it causes paralysis of the motor and respiratory muscle. It has a use in modern surgical practice as a relaxant prior to surgery.

Nigrisoli was charged with murder. His trial began on 1 October 1964, although he did not appear in person. He gave his testimony from his cell that was relayed to the court room. He proclaimed his innocence. The prosecution said he had given his wife a fatal dose of curare and callously waited for it to take effect. Evidence was given describing how Ombretta had found a bottle of curare in the bathroom and feared it might be intended for her. A friend advised her to go to the police. The next day she was dead.

Dr Nigrisoli, Italy’s first convicted curare poisoner, was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Forecasting Death

Colin Norris was a staff nurse at Leeds General Infirmary in the UK who had the knack of forecasting when a patient would die. When Ethel Hall, an eighty-six-year-old patient recovering from a hip operation went into a coma at 5.10 a.m. on 20 November 2002 and died shortly afterwards, Norris’ uncanny accuracy over the old lady’s demise alerted a doctor who took a blood sample. It was found that Ethel Hall had abnormally high levels of insulin in her body.

Following this incident, other deaths of elderly patients were investigated. It was discovered that Doris Ludlam, Bridget Bourke and Irene Crooker had all died within a six-month period in similar circumstances. All three were recovering
from hip operations and were not terminally ill. They went into a coma and expired. The common feature was that they died when Colin Norris was on duty.

During his nursing training Norris had expressed the opinion that he did not like the idea of looking after geriatrics. Once he started work as a nurse he made clear his dislike of changing the soiled bed linen of elderly patients and other duties, which he found menial and distasteful. He was also arrogant and disrespectful.

Norris was tried for murder at Newcastle Crown Court in February 2008. He was charged with killing three patients at Leeds General Infirmary and one at St James’ Hospital. There was an additional charge of attempted murder. The deaths occurred between June and December 2002.

In the course of an investigation that lasted three years, West Yorkshire police considered seventy deaths that had occurred at Leeds General Hospital. They eventually narrowed down their list of suspicious deaths to eighteen. Some of the bodies had been cremated, thereby ruling out further consideration.

During their enquiries, detectives learned a great deal about Nurse Norris and his attitude to patients under his care. A view was expressed that had he not been found out, many patients’ lives would have been at risk. Comparisons with British mass-murderer Dr Harold Shipman (
see pages 44, 45
) were inevitable. Some of the most damning character assessments voiced at the trial came from hospital patients. One recalled, “he was very nasty – he didn’t like us old women.” Colleagues also testified to Norris’ attitude when on duty. On one occasion he remarked that whenever he was on night duty someone died and it was his luck to have to do all the paperwork.

Norris had shown no remorse and simply denied the charges. Much of the evidence against him was circumstantial and the judge, Mr Justice Griffith Williams, expressed his puzzlement over the motive for the murders. The jury found Norris guilty of committing four murders and one attempted murder. Sentencing him to life imprisonment, the judge said it was clear that he regarded geriatric nursing as a waste of time
and, “. . . only you know why that dislike was so much that you decided to kill.”

Student Of Surgery

A woman’s body was washed up at Godinot Bay in Trinidad in April 1954. She was white, blonde and aged between twenty-five and thirty-five. The body had been wrapped in a sack that also contained a medallion and a charm bracelet. The post-mortem examination confirmed death by strangulation and it was evident that the jugular vein had been opened to drain off the blood and that the internal organs had been removed.

While the pathologist was conducting his post-mortem, another doctor turned up asking to borrow some medical books. He took a keen interest in what was going on and behaved suspiciously. The police decided to question him. He was Dr Dalip Singh, a medical practitioner in Port of Spain who was married to a lady of German origin, Inge, a professional optician with a successful practice.

Dr Singh told detectives that he last saw Inge on 6 April when she walked out on him. He said that she was subject to depression and had done this before. He heard that a body had been washed up on the coast and decided to take a look, hence his appearance at the post-mortem. The identity of the corpse was confirmed and the medallion and bracelet belonged to Inge.

Singh had drawn suspicion to himself by his actions but the evidence against him was circumstantial. At about this time, the police received an anonymous communication stating, “I sorry for Dr Singh he is not guilty.” The message was written on notepaper of a type used by the doctor.

When detectives interviewed Dr Singh’s houseboy he threw some interesting light on the doctor’s behaviour. Singh met Inge at the airport on 6 April and they returned home together. During the evening, there was a heated argument and the doctor went out in his car, returning alone in the small hours. Inge did not turn up for breakfast.

Dr Singh was tried for murdering his wife and evidence was put forward depicting him as an intensely jealous personality. He believed Inge was having an affair and had tried to hire a private detective three weeks before she went missing, with a view to tracking her movements. It also came out in court that at the beginning of April, he had borrowed a book on surgery. The inference was that he swotted up on the procedures involved in eviscerating a body with the intention that it would not float when put into the sea.

Unfortunately for Dr Singh, on this occasion, despite his best efforts the sea gave up its dead. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. His execution took place on 28 June 1955.

Prescription For Murder

Paul and Margaret Vickers had been married seventeen years. Forty-seven-year-old Dr Vickers was an orthopaedic consultant at Gateshead Hospital on Tyneside in the UK. He was successful professionally and had aspirations to enter the political world. His wife was a shy person, prey to illness, and was being treated for schizophrenia.