FULL TEXT: WUPPERTAL, West Germany -- A nurse called “The Angel of
Death” in one court document admitted at her trial Thursday she gave eight
elderly patients lethal injections to put them out of their misery and
accidentally killed a ninth.
Michaela Roeder, 30, told a senior magistrate's court in the
western German town of Wuppertal she killed eight of her patients because they
had no chance of recovering, but she acknowledged only one actually asked to be
killed.
She also said that in one case she accidentally killed a patient
with the wrong injection.
Roeder is accused of killing 17 patients at the Wuppertal hospital
between 1984 and 1986. Fourteen of her alleged victims were over 70, and the
other three were over 53.
She is accused of giving the patients injections containing a
heart-paralyzing drug and another drug that reduces blood pressure levels.
At the trial's opening last week, State Prosecutor Karl-Hermann
Majorewsky said Roeder had killed 'to assert and satisfy her own feeling of
superiority' as “master over life and death.”
Roeder was arrested in March 1986 and appeared at lengthy
preliminary proceedings that came under sharp criticism from the press,
including Der Spiegel, which described them as “raving and degrading.”
The weekly took exception to a court document that referred to
Roeder as “The Angel of Death” and suggested she may have had sexual relations
with her female superiors.
[“Nurse says she killed nine patients,” UPI, Jan. 19, 1989]
***
FULL TEXT: BONN, West Germany (AP) _ A nurse's colleagues jokingly
called her "Angel of Death" because elderly patients kept dying
during her shift. Now, she is going on trial, charged with killing 17 patients
in a two-year period.
Michaela Roeder admits giving the fatal doses to six of the
patients, and says she did it to spare them pain. But prosecutor Karl Hermann
Majorowsky alleges she did it just as a "demonstration of her power."
"The accused posed as a mistress over life and death. We are
dealing here with cold-blooded murder out of base motives," a Jan. 9 issue
of Der Spiegel magazine quoted Majorowsky as saying.
Ms. Roeder's murder trial begins Tuesday in district court in
Wuppertal, about 37 miles north of Bonn. She faces a possible sentence of life
in prison if convicted.
The accusations against Ms. Roeder, 30, have absorbed the West
German press, who have called the alleged killings "nearly the perfect
murder" because they went almost unnoticed by police.
On a tip from a hospital employee, authorities had the bodies of
28 deceased former patients of the intensive care unit at St. Petrus Hospital
in Wuppertal exhumed.
According to court records, the examinations showed that 17 of the
patients had received a "fatal dose" of drugs that can severely
affect blood pressure or the heart.
Ms. Roeder is accused of issuing the fatal injections between
February 1984 and February 1986 while working in the St. Petrus intensive care
section.
After Ms. Roeder's arrest in March 1986, she admitted to law
officials that she gave fatal injections to six patients because she wanted to
spare them suffering from their ailments. Majorowsky says in court papers there
are "no clues that these patients would have died."
Most of the 17 patients were elderly and had been brought to the
intensive care section after operations for ailments ranging from appendicitis
to cancer, according to news reports. The oldest victim was 94, according to
the reports.
The official cause of death for the 17 patients was heart or
circulatory failure, the reports said.
Ms. Roeder began working at the hospital in 1978 and was jokingly
dubbed the "Angel of Death" by her colleagues when elderly patients
under her care started dying, according to Der Spiegel.
"They didn't call Michaela Roeder the 'Angel of Death'
because they suspected foul play," the magazine wrote. "The little
joke in this name was meant to help console her over her bad luck and these
unfortunate coincidences."
The magazine said Majorowsky is expected to have difficulty
proving murder against Ms. Roeder.
"The weak point of the charge is the motive brought against
the defendant. Killing in order to demonstrate power, to feel that she was a
mistress over life or death?" the magazine asked rhetorically.
Der Spiegel said the trial will likely investigate whether Ms.
Roeder may have been unable to withstand the stress and demands of working in
an intensive care unit. More than 40 witnesses and medical experts are expected
to testify.
If there is insufficient evidence for premeditated murder, Ms.
Roeder could be found guilty of manslaughter, which carries a minimum sentence
of five years in prison.
[Terrence Petty, “Nurse Goes On Trial For Allegedly Giving Fatal
Medicine Doses,” Associated Press, Jan. 9, 1989]
***
FULL
TEXT: Wupertal, West Germany — A West German nurse dubbed "the angel of
death" was sentenced to 11 years in prison today for killing patients with
lethal injections to end their suffering.
Michaela
Roeder, 31, was found guilty of six counts of manslaughter and one each of
attempted manslaughter and mercy killing.
The
prosecution had demanded a life sentence and the court's decision that
compassion was Roeder's motive angered some members of the public in the
courtroom.
Unsuspecting
colleagues called Roeder "the angel of death" because of the number
of people who died while she was on duty.
“'Angel
of Death' Nurse Gets 11 Years,” Los Angeles Times (Ca.), Sep. 11, 1989]
***
CHRONOLOGY
1978
– Ms. Roeder, who began working at the hospital. intensive care unit at St.
Petrus Hospital in Wuppertal-Barmen.
Feb.
6, 1984 – Feb. 5, 1986 – murders.
Mar.
14, 1986 – arrested
Sep.
11, 1986 – found guilty of six counts of manslaughter and one each of attempted
manslaughter and mercy killing.
Drug
used: Catapresan
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