Arnfinn Nesset was born in 1936 and by 1977 was the manager of the Orkdal Valley Nursing Home in Sor-Trondelag in central Norway.
Between 1977 and 1980 elderly residents died after being injected with Curacit, a curare derivative used as a surgical muscle relaxant, which paralyses the diaphragm. The deaths of nursing home residents were not investigated, and it came out only because a local journalist asked why Nesset had ordered so much of a drug that had no use in a geriatric home.
He was arrested in January 1981 and confessed to twenty-seven killings, saying he had a compulsion he could not explain, and then retracted the confession before trial and pleaded not guilty.
He was convicted in March 1983 of twenty-two murders and of forgery and embezzlement, and sentenced to twenty-one years, the maximum available under Norwegian law, plus ten years of preventive detention. He was released in 2004 and lives under another name.
The conviction has been questioned in Norway since. The forensic evidence for Curacit in exhumed bodies was contested at the time, several deaths were of patients who had been expected to die, and the retracted confession was the centre of the case. It has not been reopened.