by Odell, Robin
In due course, Swango was charged with three counts of murder related to the deaths at Northport, New York State. He was suspected of killing as many as thirty-two other patients. At his trial in New York, he admitted to killing a sixty-year-old man. “I did this,” he said, “by administering a toxic substance which I knew was likely to cause death. I knew it was wrong.”
Swango’s favourite film was Silence of the Lambs and he was also apparently influenced by a number of books about murder. He made notes on one of them in which he recorded of the central character that, “He could look himself in the mirror and tell himself that he was one of the most powerful and dangerous men in the world. He could feel that he was a god in disguise.”
Prosecutors described Swango as a person who killed for thrills; “He used his skills to search for victims and take their lives.” During his professional career as a doctor, sixty of his patients died. He was obsessed with poison and detectives searching his apartment found a virtual laboratory stocked with poisonous compounds.
Dr Swango was found guilty of murder and given three life sentences to run consecutively. His philosophy was perhaps summed-up by one of the quotations found in his notebook which read. “I love it. Sweet, husky, close smell of an indoor homicide.” A press headline accurately captured the nature of the man with the title, “Doctor Death”.
Sister Knows Best
“You ’re looking terrible, let me give you a tonic . . . Sister knows best.” These were some of the last words heard by many of Nurse Toppan’s patients.
Jane Toppan was a child adopted by a family in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the US, whom she impressed with her religious and scholarly diligence. After being jilted and surviving a suicide attempt, she took up nursing. In 1882 she enrolled for training and again impressed her tutors with her eagerness to learn. It was noted, though, that she had a particular fascination with post-mortem work.
Her early promise remained unfulfilled when she was dismissed from one of her early jobs following the unexpected deaths of two patients. After she was turned down for a position at a hospital because she was unqualified, she decided to pursue a different path by providing nursing care to people in their own homes.
At the age of twenty-six, Toppan had established a reputation among many New England families as a dedicated, caring nurse. She lost patients in the course of her work but, as she moved from job to job, no one was keeping count. In 1901 she arrived at the Davis home in Cataumet and four members of the family died from strange illnesses.
When the husband of one of the family members returned home after a long sea trip to an empty house, he demanded an explanation and wanted his wife’s body exhumed. The result was that she had died of morphine poisoning. This perplexed the family doctor because when he examined the woman there was no pin-pointing of the pupils of the eyes which is indicative of morphine poisoning.
Suspicion began to grow around “Nurse” Toppan with first a trickle and then a flood of allegations about her activities. Throughout Massachusetts graves were opened up of persons who had perished while she was caring for them. “I wouldn’t kill a chicken” was her response to suggestions that she had murdered many of her patients.
Enquiries eventually led detectives to a pharmacist who had regularly supplied Toppan with morphine on doctors’ prescriptions. It was shown that the signatures on the forms were forged. Taken in to custody, Toppan made a confession naming thirty-one of her victims. “Oh, I killed so many of them,” she said. Her cunning method was to counteract the telltale pin-pointing of the pupils caused by morphine by adding atropine which had the opposite effect. By this means she was able to kill using morphine without being detected and doctors had no difficulty issuing death certificates.
With the angel of the sick room at their bedside, her patients absorbed ever-increasing doses of her deadly mixture. They suffered painful breathing and convulsions and died, while “Nurse” Toppan moved on to her next assignment.
“Everybody trusted me,” she said, “It was so easy. I felt strange when I watched them die . . . it was the only pleasure I had . . . I had to do it.” She was tried for murder in June 1902 and a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity was entered on her behalf. She reacted strongly to this, declaring in court. “I understand right from wrong! That proves I am sane.”
Jane Toppan was sent to Taunton State Asylum for the Criminally Insane where she died, aged eighty-four, in 1938.
Love Pills
In April 1955 police investigations of a murder in Minneapolis in the US led them to the office of Dr Arnold Axilrod. Twenty-one-year-old Mary Moonen had been strangled and her body left lying by the roadside in a fashionable part of the city. Postmortem examination revealed that she had recently had sexual intercourse and was three months pregnant.
When enquiries showed that the dead woman had visited Dr Axilrod on the day before her death, detectives decided to question the dentist. They discovered that he was in the habit of administering a pill to his female patients, which in some cases, incapacitated them for several hours. One patient said that she had taken a pill and alleged that the dentist had made suggestive comments to her.
Further evidence of the dentist’s practice came from Mary Moonen’s doctor who said that she had told him that Axilrod had assaulted her in his surgery and that he was the father of her child. As the investigation progressed, several women came forward relating how they had been given pills by the dentist and been knocked out for as much as five or six hours.
Axilrod was arrested and questioned about Mary Moonen. He flatly denied that he had sexually assaulted her while she was under the influence of drugs administered by him. He could not recall what happened on the night of the murder because he had experienced a black-out. He admitted, though, that she had discussed her pregnant condition with him and they had argued.
Dr Axilrod was put on trial for murder in September 1955. The case of the dentist and his “love pills” made popular reading in the newspapers. The prosecution case was that he took advantage of his female patients by first drugging and then sexually molesting them. When he was arrested and questioned about Mary Moonen, it was alleged that he confessed saying, “I guess I did it, no one else was there.” This was later denied.
Axilrod maintained that he had never had sexual relations with Mary Moonen and that he had not murdered her. He was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five to twenty years’ imprisonment.
Acid Doctor
Thirty-six-year-old Dr Geza de Kaplany was a Hungarian who had emigrated to the USA and worked as an anaesthetist at a hospital in San José, California. In July 1962 he married a fellow Hungarian immigrant, twenty-five-year-old Hajna Piller, a former model, and they moved into a new apartment.
Loud music coming from the de Kaplany apartment disturbed the neighbours on the morning of 28 August. Partly concealed by the music were eerie wailing noises. The police were called because of the disturbance and their knock on the door was answered by Dr Kaplany in his underclothes. A search of the apartment revealed the source of the distressed sounds, which the loud music was intended to disguise.
The bedroom was virtually a torture chamber. The naked body of Hajna corroded with acid burns lay on the bed. She was rushed to hospital suffering third-degree burns from which she died just over a month later. The bedclothes had been reduced to rags and there was a large hole in the mattress where the acid had burned through. There was a case containing bottles of hydrochloric, sulphuric and nitric acid and rubber gloves. A chilling message written on a prescription form was an instruction to Hajna not to shout out if she wanted to live.
Dr de Kaplany was arrested and charged with murder. It appeared that he had tortured his wife for about an hour before being interrupted. He had made small incisions all over her body and then poured acid into them.
At his trial for murder in January 1963 he made a joint plea of “not guilty” and “not guilty by reason of insanity”. He was calm at first saying that
he never intended to kill his wife, he only wanted to disfigure her so that she would not be attractive to other men. When the prosecution showed photographs of the acid-wrecked body of Hajna, his composure broke and he became hysterical shouting, “I am a doctor. I loved her. If I did this – and I must have done this – then I’m guilty.”
The defence argued that de Kaplany suffered from multiple personality syndrome, moving between caring and cruel modes of behaviour depending on external stimuli. The idea was that when he heard rumours of his wife’s possible infidelity, he flipped and reacted in a cruel and irrational way.
The jury returned a guilty verdict on 1 March 1963 and “The Acid Doctor”, as he had become known, was sentenced to life imprisonment. He served thirteen years of his sentence and was granted parole in 1976. In a curious footnote to the case of Dr Kaplany, it seems that he was released early to enable him work as a doctor in a Taiwan hospital. Later reports noted that he had settled in Germany.
Personal Magnetism
Dr Etienne Deschamps was a French-born dentist who established a practice in the US in the 1880s. Not only did he pull teeth but he also practised magnetic physiology, which often involved administering small doses of chloroform.
Deschamps had fought in the Crimean War and been wounded. He developed a liking for politics but gave that up for dentistry and discovered the wonders of magnetic physiology. He began to explore the occult and convinced himself that magnetism had great curative properties. He decided to exploit his skills in the New World and rented rooms in New Orleans.
Although the doctor built up a successful practice, based as much on his magnetic consultancy as his dentistry, he had many patients though few friends. But in 1888 he made the acquaintance of Jules Deitsch, a fellow Frenchman, who first consulted him as a patient and then became an ardent disciple of all things magnetic.
Deitsch, a widower, had two daughters, one of whom was twelve-year-old Juliette. She was just the medium Deschamps was looking for to aid him with his magnetic and hypnotic powers. He had already confided in Deitsch that he had a scheme based on his treatments which would make him rich and which he was prepared to share.
Deitsch was impressed by his friend’s intellect and generosity and readily fell in with his plans. These included the assistance of young Juliette. She and her younger sister became regular visitors to the doctor’s rooms and little by little he groomed Juliette for the role he had in mind.
On 30 January 1889, Deitsch’s youngest daughter appeared to be distressed when she came home. Asked where her sister was, she told her father that Juliette was asleep in the doctor’s house. Deitsch immediately went to Deschamps’s rooms but could not get a response. In a state of some concern, he fetched the police who entered the room. Lying naked on the bed was Juliette next to the doctor, also unclothed.
Juliette it appeared was not asleep but dead and the doctor had several wounds in his chest, which were self-inflicted. Enquiries established that Deschamps had used chloroform to render Juliette unconscious but had overdone the dosage. The dead girl’s sister said that she had often seen Juliette and the doctor lying naked together. A post-mortem examination revealed that Juliette had been sexually assaulted over a long period.
Deschamps recovered from his injuries and made several statements. He claimed that Juliette’s death was an accident that had occurred when he was hypnotizing her. He stated that the use of chloroform to assist the process was an accepted practice and that he was simply a scientist.
He attempted to hang himself in his custody cell but was saved by prison guards. A trial date was set for 29 April and the doctor again tried to circumvent justice with an attempt on his own life but was unsuccessful.
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 intervi
ew 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.