The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes (10 page)

The dead girl’s sister gave evidence at his trial and described some of the doctor’s practices. Deschamps did not testify and was found guilty of murder. He appealed against the verdict and won a second trial, which began in March 1890.

Deschamps had mustered a more effective defence for the second trial and claimed there was no premeditation involved in Juliette’s death. As before, the dead girl’s sister gave evidence and reiterated that she had seen Juliette and the doctor naked together in bed many times. She had sworn not to tell her father. The jury verdict, again, was guilty as charged.

Questions were now raised about Deschamps’ sanity. Certainly his behaviour as a prisoner was eccentric, if not mad. Nevertheless, he was sentenced to death, his execution being set for 18 January 1891. But a commission of doctors obtained a stay of execution on the grounds that he was insane. Application was made for a reduction in his sentence which, in due course, was rejected.

Meanwhile, Deschamps acted up in his prison cell by talking to the moon. Following further procedural delays, a new date was set for execution. This too was overtaken by events with yet another reprieve. Rumours began to gain currency about sinister forces at work to save the mad doctor. Finally, on 12 May 1892, loudly proclaiming his innocence, Dr Deschamps was hanged, three years after Juliette’s untimely end.

Playing Doctor

When twelve patients died in Californian hospitals in the US in the space of several weeks, suspicions were aroused.

Between 29 March and 25 April 1981, the small, thirty-six bed community hospital at Perris near Riverside experienced the deaths of eleven patients, male and female, aged between fifty-two and ninety-five. The cause of death appeared to be
a mystery and it was some time before the unusually high number of possible suspicious deaths was reported.

A curious feature of the deaths was that they tended to occur at the same times of day in the critical care unit – at 1.00 a.m., 4.00 a.m. and 7.00 a.m. Autopsies revealed the presence in some patients of large amounts of lidocaine, a powerful medication used to stabilize the heart rhythm. One similar death was also reported at a nearby hospital in Banning. An initial theory was that the supplies of the drug kept in the hospital had become contaminated, but enquiries showed this was unlikely.

At this point, investigators began to examine the roles played by hospital staff and their attention fell on a forty-two-year-old male nurse, Robert Diaz. He worked on the critical care unit and was on duty at the times when fatalities occurred. He was questioned and his home in Apple Valley was searched. Supplies of lidocaine and a syringe were found there. Diaz said he had been concerned about the high death rate and had questioned whether the supplies of lidocaine were contaminated.

Diaz was arrested on 23 November 1981 after an investigation that had taken over six months, and charged with twelve counts of murder. He responded by filing a lawsuit against his employers for violation of his civil rights.

He was sent for trial in November 1983 before Judge John J. Barnard sitting without a jury. Colleagues testified that Diaz liked “playing doctor” during medical emergencies. Nurses said he had been seen going from room to room in the hospital “like a butterfly” giving injections that were not authorized. Diaz denied this, saying he only administered injections to save life and then strictly within hospital protocols.

Diaz came from a large family and was brought up in Gary, Indiana. He joined the US Marines when he was aged eighteen but deserted and subsequently enrolled for nursing studies. Fellow students commented that he liked to be introduced as “Doctor Diaz”. Nursing colleagues recalled that he sometimes predicted the time when an apparently stable patient would die and was often proved right.

He spent six days on the witness stand giving his account, strongly denying the allegations made against him. He said that if on occasions he appeared to act like a doctor, it was because physicians on duty failed their patients. On 30 March 1984, Judge Barnard delivered a guilty verdict on all twelve murder charges. “Special circumstances” applied to the verdict, which meant, under Californian law, multiple pre-meditated murder, and carried the possibility of a death penalty.

Two weeks after the verdict was announced Diaz was sentenced to death in the gas chamber at San Quentin Prison. He was allowed to give an interview on local radio when he condemned the hospital in which he had worked and said there was a cover-up of patient death rates. He described the place as “a slaughterhouse”.

Commenting on Diaz’s character, a psychologist who spoke to him was of the opinion that he was unable to accept authority or responsibility. As to his motive, the prosecution’s stated view was that he killed for “amusement and entertainment”.

Brink Of Death

Over a nine-week period around Christmas 2003, in the Accident and Emergency department at Horton Hospital in Banbury, Oxfordshire in the UK, eighteen patients suffered a respiratory collapse, two of whom died.

Hospital doctors were alarmed at the crises affecting patients not admitted with life-threatening conditions. Investigations showed that a common factor in all these cases was that they had been dealt with by Benjamin Geen. Police were called in and suspicions voiced. Geen was arrested when he arrived for duty and was found to be carrying a syringe in his pocket. Analysis of residues in the syringe showed the presence of two drugs used in operating theatres: vecuronium, a muscle relaxant, and midazolam, a sedative.

Records showed that sixty-two-year-old Anthony Bateman, believed to be suffering with cancer, was admitted in December 2003. A saline drip was set up by Geen. The patient declined rapidly and his breathing failed. Efforts to resuscitate him were
hampered by his generally poor health and he died. Over the next few weeks, there were numerous crises in A&E involving the resuscitation of patients with respiratory collapses. David Onley, aged seventy-five, had health problems and died following breathing difficulties on 21 January 2004.

Enquiries concluded that some of these patients had received muscle relaxants not prescribed by doctors and probably administered via saline drips. Geen was charged with murder and committed for trial at Oxford Crown Court in April 2006. The prosecution described the evidence against him as overwhelming, although circumstantial. The hypodermic syringe found on him when he was arrested was referred to as a “smoking gun”. Traces of unprescribed drugs were found in the urine of a patient who survived; the same drugs that Geen had in the syringe.

The police called Geen a self-centred narcissist who abused his position of trust. Hospital staff regarded him warily as he did not always follow instructions. He appeared elated when an emergency situation arose and remarked to a colleague, “There is always a resuscitation when I’m on duty.”

The suggestion was that Geen secretly administered drugs that had the effect of bringing patients to the brink of death. Then he would gain satisfaction from observing the emergency efforts needed to save them. The run of emergencies at Horton Hospital was a rare sequence of events and the common denominator was that Benjamin Geen was on duty at the time. He claimed to be innocent.

The jury found him guilty of two murders and of inflicting grievous bodily harm on fifteen others. On 10 May 2006 Mr Justine Crane passed down seventeen life sentences and told Geen he would spend at least thirty years in prison.

A Friend In The Woods

Josephine Burnaby lived in Providence, Rhode Island, in the US. She was the estranged wife of a wealthy clothing store owner. Her doctor, Thomas Thatcher Graves, treated her for minor ailments and when Mr Burnaby died, the doctor persuaded his widow to give him power of attorney.

The late Mr Burnaby had left his wife a small annuity, which Graves thought was somewhat miserly. He advised Mrs Burnaby to contest the will and, after due process, the will was reversed. This gave Dr Graves access to a considerable sum of money and he proceeded to milk the widow’s account.

He also wanted Mrs Burnaby out of the way so, in his capacity as her doctor, he advised her to go on long visits to California for health reasons. On returning from one of these trips at the end of 1892, Mrs Burnaby decided to break the journey by staying with a friend in Denver, Colorado.

When she arrived, her friend told her there was a parcel waiting for her which had been sent through the postal service. Opening the package, Mrs Burnaby found a bottle of whisky with a note attached. The handwritten note bore the message, “Wish you a Happy New Year. Please accept this fine old whisky from your friend in the woods.”

The two women decided to drink some of the whisky which they described as “vile stuff”. Within a few days, both were dead. Mrs Burnaby’s daughter arranged for a private autopsy to be carried out and poisoning was confirmed as the cause of death. The contents of the whisky bottle were believed to have disguised the poison.

Mrs Burnaby had voiced concerns about the way Dr Graves was managing her affairs and suspicions began to form about his true intentions. Certainly, he had attempted to profit from her wealth. The newspapers began to hint at the doctor’s involvement, although he strongly denied the allegations. In any case, there was no evidence to link him with sending the bottle of whisky. Meanwhile, his patients rallied round in support.

Despite the lack of firm evidence of guilt, Dr Graves was charged with murder and put on trial. The prosecution case was faltering until a surprise witness appeared. Joseph M. Breslyn testified that he had been approached by Dr Graves in November 1890 at Boston Railway Station who asked him a favour. Explaining that he was unable to write a note to accompany a gift, he asked the young man to write a message at his dictation. Thus was the provenance of the note sent
to Mrs Burnaby established and the identity of the sender revealed.

Dr Graves was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. He appealed and was granted a retrial but in April 1893 he committed suicide in his prison cell using poison that he had smuggled in.

Murder By Omission

In the US, Joan Robinson was the adopted daughter of a Texas oil tycoon and made a name for herself as a horsewoman. She married Dr John Hill, a rising star in the field of plastic surgery, and the couple lived in style at River Oaks, Houston.

By the late 1960s, the marriage began to break up and, in March 1969, Joan Hill became sick and was taken to hospital by her husband after he had treated her at home for four days. She died on 19 March and following a hurried post-mortem, the body was prepared for burial before cause of death had been properly established. The contention at the time was that she had died of a liver infection.

Joan Hill’s father, Ash Robinson, refused to accept the account given of his daughter’s death and began openly to accuse Dr Hill of allowing her to die. These allegations triggered a lawsuit for slander and when Hill remarried three months later, speculation was renewed.

In November, Joan Hill’s body was exhumed and a second post-mortem was carried out. Doctors examining the brain, preserved from the first autopsy, concluded that meningitis was a factor to be taken into account. It was pointed out, though, that there was no such indication in the brain stem, giving rise to the suggestion that the brain was not that of Mrs Hill.

Three grand juries considered the case before an indictment was brought against Dr Hill. The decision was based on a provision in Texas law whereby a case could be brought under the heading of murder by omission.

Dr Hill was tried for murder in 1971 when his second wife, whom he had divorced, gave evidence against him. She alleged
that he had tried to kill her by deliberately crashing their car in which she was a passenger, against the side of a concrete bridge. The car was extensively damaged but Hill’s wife, though shocked, was uninjured. In a sensational development she said that he tried to inject her with procaine hydrochloride while she sat in the wrecked car. She fended him off but, had he succeeded, she might well have died with every appearance of being fatally traumatized by shock.

A mistrial resulted, but further accusations continued to be revealed in the press. Dr Hill was alleged to have kept bacterial culture dishes in the bathroom and to have injected his first wife with a concoction made from “every form of human excretion”, including pus taken from a boil.

Before a second trial could be held, Hill was overtaken by a dramatic turn of events when he was shot dead by a hired gunman who, in his turn, was killed by a police officer. There were suspicions that Joan Hill’s father had paid for a hired killer to eliminate his son-in-law. Allegations of various kinds continued to rumble around like distant thunder, including a suggestion that Dr Hill was alive and well, living in Mexico.

Mercy Killer

In the US, thirty-five-year-old Donald Harvey’s killing spree ended in 1987 when an alert doctor at Drake Memorial Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio, smelled arsenic in the room where a patient had died and suspected Harvey of foul play. He was arrested in April and admitted killing twenty-five patients to “put them out of their misery”.

Harvey grew up in rural Kentucky where he dropped out of school. While his teachers remembered him as a pleasant, outgoing youth, psychiatrists who examined him recorded that he had been abused as a child. In an interview, Harvey denied he had killed out of pleasure or, as had been suggested, due to repressed homosexuality. Armed with notes to aid his memory, he recounted the time, place and method of many of the deaths for which he was responsible. He used cyanide and arsenic and introduced air into intravenous tubes. In two
cases he used a petroleum-based cleaning product as a poison. He said that although many believed in mercy killing, few had the nerve to carry it out. He was not concerned about being discovered.

Harvey’s lawyer negotiated a plea bargain whereby he would escape the death penalty if he made a full confession of his murderous activities. A grand jury spent six weeks considering the evidence against him. This included a three-month investigation into deaths at Drake Memorial Hospital carried out by a local television station which first drew attention to the especially high number of deaths on the ward where Harvey worked.