NCJ Number
216807
Journal
Journal of Forensic Sciences Volume: 51 Issue: 6 Dated: November 2006 Pages: 1362-1371
Date Published
November 2006
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This examination of cases of serial murder by healthcare professionals addresses case characteristics, motives, toxicology, legal outcomes, intervention, and prevention.
Abstract
The descriptions of the 90 cases studied (all involved prosecutions in the 1970s to 2006) pertain to geographic location, the defendant's profession, gender/ethnicity, the healthcare setting, victim characteristics, and methods of murder and assault. Although insufficient information was available for a systematic analysis of the motives behind the murders, the literature review, case studies, and confessions of a few of the killers provided some knowledge about motives. Some of the motives were the excitement of attempting to revive patients injected by the killer with respiratory paralyzing agents, sadistic satisfaction from killing certain types of patients, and kickbacks from funeral parlors and organ-transplant markets. Regarding legal outcomes, successful prosecutions were characterized by an array of supporting evidence, including confessions, positive toxicology results, eyewitness accounts, and evidence from the defendants' homes. The latter might include vials of the suspected killing agent, needles, and syringes. Recommendations regarding intervention and prevention pertain to the routine collection of epidemiological, toxicological, and psychological data about patient deaths; and the achievement of a balance between protecting employee rights and ensuring patient safety. Further, current practices that allow licensed practitioners to have easy access to uncontrolled, otherwise therapeutic medications should be examined, and there should be procedural safeguards that track injectable dosing. 6 figures, 6 tables, and 32 references