For some serial killers, working in a hospital is the perfect cover for their murderous ways. Since so many people already die in hospitals, many doctor serial killers use their patients as victims through one another undetectable method of murder. Due to their power, position and cover, some killer doctors have racked up hundreds of victims.
Herman Webster Mudgett, better known under the name of Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, was one of the first documented serial killers in the modern sense of the term. In Chicago, at the time of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, Holmes opened a hotel which he had designed and built for himself specifically with murder in mind, and which was the location of many of his murders.
While he confessed to 27 murders, of which nine were confirmed, his actual body count could be up to 200. Besides being a serial killer, H. H. Holmes was also a successful con artist and bigamist.
In 1882, Holmes entered the University of Michigan’s Department of Medicine and Surgery and graduated in June 1884, after passing his examinations. While enrolled, he stole cadavers from the laboratory, disfigured the bodies, and claimed that the victims were killed accidentally, in order to collect insurance money from policies he took out on each deceased person.
Harold Frederick Shipman was a British doctor and one of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history. On January 31, 2000, a jury found Shipman guilty of 15 murders. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and the judge recommended that he never be released.
About 80% of his victims were women. His youngest victim was a 41-year-old man. Much of Britain’s legal structure concerning health care and medicine was reviewed and modified as a result of Shipman’s crimes.
He is the only British doctor who has been found guilty of murdering his patients. Shipman died on January 13, 2004, the day before his 58th birthday, after hanging himself in his cell at Wakefield Prison.
Shipman studied medicine at Leeds School of Medicine and graduated in 1970. He started work at Pontefract General Infirmary in Pontefract, West Reading of Yorkshire, and in 1974 to his first position as a general practitioner at the Abraham Omerod Medical Centre in Todmorden, West Yorkshire.
Shipman continued working as a general practitioner in Hyde throughout the 1980s and founded his own surgery at 21 Market Street in 1993, becoming a respected member of the community.
Joseph Michael Swango is an American serial killer and former licensed physician. It is estimated that Swango has been involved in as many as 60 fatal poisonings of patients and colleagues, though he only admitted to causing four deaths.
He was sentenced to three consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole, and is serving that sentence at the ADX Florence Supermax Prison in Florence, Colorado.
Swango attended Quincy College, graduating summa cum laude and being awarded the American Chemical Society Award. Following his graduation from Quincy, Swango went to medical school at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine.
Swango displayed troubling behavior during his time at SIU. Despite a very poor evaluation in his dean’s list at SIU, Swango got a surgical internship at Ohio State University Medical Center, in 1983, to be followed by a residency in neurosurgery.
His work had been so slovenly that he was not hired as a resident physician after his internship ended in June. In July, 1984, Swango returned to Quincy and began working as an emergency medical technician.
In 1991, Swango legally changed his name to Daniel J. Adams and tried to apply for a residency program at Ohio Valley Medical Center in Wheeling, West Virginia. In July 1992, he began working at Sanford USD Medical Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
In both cases, he forged several legal documents that he used to reestablish himself as a physician and respected member of society. With non-patients such as his coworkers at the emergency medical service, he used poisons, usually arsenic, slipping them into foods and beverages.
With patients, he sometimes used poisons as well, but usually he administered an overdose of whichever drug the patient had been prescribed, or wrote unnecessary prescriptions for dangerous drugs.
Marcel Andre’ Henri Felix Petiot was a French doctor and serial killer. He was convicted of multiple murders after the discovery of the remains of 23 people in his home in Paris during World War II. He is suspected of the murder of around 60 victims during his life, although the true number remains unknown.
After the war, Petiot entered the accelerated education program intended for war veterans, completed medical school in 8 months, and became an intern at the mental hospital in Evreux. He received his medical degree in December 1921, and moved to Villeneuve-sur-Yonne.
He gained a reputation for dubious medical practices, such as supplying narcotics, performing then illegal abortions, and theft. In Paris, Petiot attracted patients with fake credentials and built an impressive reputation for his practice.
However, there were rumors of illegal abortions and excessive prescriptions of addictive remedies. In 1936, he was appointed medecin d’etat-civil, with authority to write death certificates.
Linda Burfield Hazzard was an American quack doctor noted for her promotion of fasting as a treatment. She was imprisoned by the state of Washington for a number of deaths resulting from this at a sanitarium she operated there in the early 20th century. She was born in 1867 in Carver County, Minnesota, and died during a fast in 1938.
Despite her lack of a medical degree, she was licensed to practice medicine in Washington. She created a “sanitarium, “ Wilderness Heights, in Olalla, Washington, where patients fasted for days, weeks or months on a diet of small amounts of tomato and asparagus juice and occasionally a small teaspoon of orange juice.
While some patients survived and publicly sang her praises, more than 40 patients died under her care. Hazzard claimed that they all died of undisclosed or hitherto undiagnosed, serious organic illnesses such as cancer or cirrhosis of the liver.
Her opponents claimed they all died of starvation. She assured people that her method was a panacea for all manner of ills, because she was able to rid the body of toxins that caused imbalances in the body. Linda Burfield Hazzard died in 1938 while attempting a fasting cure on herself.
John Bodkin Adams was an Irish general practitioner, convicted fraudster and suspected serial killer. Between 1946 and 1956, more than 150 of his patients died in suspicious circumstances. Of these, 132 left him money or items in their wills.
Adams was found guilty of 13 offenses of prescription fraud, lying on cremation forms, obstructing a police search and failing to keep a dangerous drugs register. Adams’ career was very successful and by 1956 “he was probably the wealthiest general practitioner in England .” He was removed from the Medical Register in 1957.
He attended to some of the most famous and influential people in the region. After years of rumors, and Adams having been mentioned in at least 132 wills of his patients, police received an anonymous call about a death. Of the 310 death certificates examined, 163 were dead to be suspicious.
Josef Mengele was a German Shutzstaffel officer and physician in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. Mengele was a notorious member of the team of doctors responsible for the selection of victims to be killed in the gas chambers and for performing deadly human experiments on prisoners.
Mengele left Auschwitz on January 17, 1945. After the war, he fled to South America, where he evaded capture for the rest of his life. Mengele received doctorates in anthropology and medicine from Munich University and began a career as a researcher. He was initially assigned as a battalion medical officer at the start of World War II.
He transferred to the concentration camp service in early 1943, and was assigned to Auschwitz. There he saw the opportunity to conduct genetic research on human subjects. His subsequent experiments, focusing primarily on twins, had no regard for the health or safety of the victims.
Mengele drowned while swimming off the Brazilian coast in 1979 and was buried under a false name. His remains were disinterred and positively identified by forensic examination in 1985.
Robert George Clements was a physician and a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is suspected of the murder of his fourth wife, who died of morphine poisoning. His first three wives also predeceased him, raising suspicions that he murdered them as well.
His first three brides were described, respectively, as victims of “sleeping sickness” and “endocarditis, “ with Clements signing the death certificates in each case. Clements committed suicide by an overdose of morphine before he was caught by the police and therefore never stood trial.
Dr. Thomas Neill Cream, also known as the “Lambeth Poisoner,” was a Scottish-Canadian serial killer, who claimed his first proven victims in the United States and the rest in England, and possibly others in Canada and Scotland.
Cream attended McGill University in Montreal and graduated with an MDCM degree in 1876, and then he went for post-graduate training at St. Thomas’ Hospital and Medical School, London. Cream later obtained additional qualifications as a physician and surgeon in Edinburgh in 1878.
He then returned to Canada to practice in London, Ontario. After being accused of murder and blackmail he fled to the United States. Cream established a medical practice in Chicago, offering legal abortions to prostitutes.
The motivations for the series of poisonings he committed has never been settled. It has generally been assumed that Cream was a sadist who enjoyed the thought of the agonies of his victims. He was executed after his attempts to frame others for his crimes brought him to the attention of London police.
Cream was hanged on the gallows at New gate Prison. His body was buried in an unmarked grave within the prison walls.
Maxim Vladimirovich Petrov is a Russian doctor and serial killer. The Russian media nicknamed him “Doctor Killer” and “Doctor Death. “
Petrov committed 47 robberies between 1997 and 2000. He would visit a patient in their home, unannounced, and usually in the morning when relatives would be at work. He anaesthetized them and while they were unconscious stole their possessions, even taking rings and earrings from the victims bodies.
The first few victims did not die, waking up later after he left. The first murder took place on February 2, 1999 during his thirtieth robbery. He was interrupted when the daughter of an anaesthesized patient returned home while he was stealing possessions.
He stabbed her with a screwdriver and then strangled the patient with a stocking. After this, his modis operandi changed; he began to inject his victims with a lethal mix of a variety of different drugs, so that the police would think that the killer had little medical knowledge.
He then set fires to their homes to destroy any evidence. Various possessions were later found in his flat. He is currently serving a life sentence for killing 12 patients.
Hu Wanlin was thought to be one of the world’s most prolific medical serial killers. He was arrested for killing 146 people.
Hu Wanlin only completed primary education. He was imprisoned for homicide in the 1980s as well as swindling, and abducting and trafficking in women. While in prison in 1993, he opened a medical practice.
He was acquitted on a retrial in 1997. On release he continued practicing medicine illegally in the northern Shanxi Province and northwestern and Shanxi Province where he allegedly started two hospitals. This continued until February 1998, when he was banned by local authorities.
Hu then went to Henan in June 1998. Hu’s treatments were thought to have resulted in the death of at least 146 people. Hu became well-known, having his medical practice and “medical miracles “ described by a well-known Chinese novelist, Ke Yunlu.
It seems his malpractice continued for many years due to bribes paid to officials. Hu was arrested on January 18, 1999 in Shangqiu, aged 50, on suspicion of causing nearly 150 deaths. He was convicted of practicing medicine without a license on October 1, 2000, receiving 15 years imprisonment.
Kermit Barron Gosnell is an American former physician who was convicted of murdering three infants who were born alive during attempted abortion procedures.
Gosnell graduated from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, with a bachelor’s degree. Gosnell received his Medical Degree at the Jefferson Medical School in 1966. It has been reported that he spent four decades practicing medicine among the poor.
He opened the Mantua Halfway House, a rehab clinic for drug addicts in the impoverished Mantua neighborhood of West Philadelphia near where he grew up, and a teen aid program. He became an early proponent of abortion rights in the 1960s and 1970s and, in 1972, he returned from a stint in New York City to open up an abortion clinic on Lancaster Avenue in Mantua.
In 2011, he was reported to be well-known in Philadelphia for providing abortions to poor minority and immigrant women. Dr. Gosnell was also associated with clinics in Delaware and Louisiana. Gosnell’s license to practice was suspended on February 22, 2010.
He was arrested on January 19, 2011, and charged with eight counts of murder. Prosecutors alleged that he killed seven babies born alive by severing their spinal cords with scissors, and that he was also responsible for the death in 2009, of a 41-year-old refugee from Bhutan who died in his care. The seven other murder charges are all of first -degree murder, related to the babies.
Miyuki Ishikawa was a Japanese midwife and serial killer who is believed to have murdered many infants with the aid of several accomplices throughout the 1940s. It is estimated that her victims numbered between 85 to 169, however, the general estimate is 103.
When she was finally apprehended, the Tokyo High Court’s four year sentence she received was remarkably light considering that Miyuki’s actions resulted in a death toll so high that it remains unrivaled by any other serial killer in Japan.
Miyuki graduated from the University of Tokyo. She worked as a hospital director in the Kotobuki maternity hospital and was an experienced midwife. In the 1840s, there were many babies in her maternity hospital, and Miyuki found herself facing what she perceived to be something of a quandary.
The parents of many of these infants were poor and unable to raise their children properly without financial struggle, and she herself was unable to help the infants because of a lack of social and charitable services.
In order to solve this dilemma, Miyuki chose to neglect numerous infants, many of whom died as a direct result of this abuse. Later she also attempted to garner payment for these murders. She and her husband solicited large sums of money from the parents claiming that it would be a lot less than the actual expense of raising these children. The authorities viewed her homicides as a crime of omission.
Donald Harvey is an American serial killer who claims to have murdered 87 people. The official estimates of the number of people he murdered range anywhere from at least 37 to 57 deaths. Harvey claimed he started out killing to “ease the pain” of patients.
As he progressed in his murders, he began to enjoy it more and more and became a self-professed “Angel of Death.” Harvey is currently serving twenty eight life sentences at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio.
Dating as far back as the age of eighteen, Donald Harvey worked on and around the medical profession, beginning his career as an orderly at the Marymount Hospital in London, Kentucky. He later confessed that during the ten -month period he worked at this hospital, he killed at least a dozen patients.
Harvey is insistent that he killed purely out of a sense of empathy for the sufferings of those who were terminally ill. He has also admitted that many of the killings he committed were due to anger at the victim.
He used numerous methods to kill, such as arsenic, cyanide, insulin, suffocation, miscellaneous poisons, morphine, turning off ventilators, administration of fluid tainted with hepatitis B and/or HIV, insertion of a coat hanger into a catheter causing an abnormal puncture and subsequent peritonitis.
The majority of Harvey’s crimes took place at the Marymount Hospital in London, Kentucky, the Cincinnati V.A. Medical Hospital, and Cincinnati’s Drake Memorial Hospital. The true extent of his crimes may never be known since so many were undetected for so long.
Jane Toppan was an American serial killer. She confessed to 31 murders in 1901. She began her poisoning spree in earnest in 1985 by killing her landlords. In 1899, she killed her foster sister, Elizabeth with a dose of strychnine.
In 1885, Toppan began training to be a nurse at Cambridge Hospital. During her residency, she used her patients as guinea pigs in experiments with morphine and atropine. She would alter their prescribed dosages to see what it did to their nervous systems.
Toppan would administer a drug mixture to patients she chose as her victims, lie in bed with them, and hold them close to her as they died. She was recommended for the prestigious Massachusetts General Hospital in 1889. There she claimed several more victims before being fired the following year.
She began a career as a private nurse and flourished despite complaints of petty theft. On June 23, in the Barnstable County Courthouse, she was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed for life in the Taunton Insane Hospital. She remained at Taunton for the rest of her life.
These individuals were trusted by their patients to make them better, but instead they ended their lives while assuming it was for the best. Practicing in a field that deals with human lives seems to be a perfect cover for those who have no regard for the loss of those lives, and no one would suspect them of the latter. My advice to those not too comfortable with their diagnosis or treatment --- get a second opinion it just may save your life.
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