Timea Faludi (Faludi Tímea), a
nurse at Gyula Nviro Hospital in Budapest, when she was arrested for murdering
dozens of terminally ill patients for “mercy,” as she later claimed.
She had joined the staff in 1994 and earned the nickname
“Black Angel” because of her choice of clothing. Euthanasia is illegal in
Hungary. After arrest she admitted to police that, between May 2000 through
February 2001, she had killed at least 40 patients, by injecting them intravenously
with overdoses of pain killers. At the hospital nurses were not permitted to
perform intravenous injections. She later retracted her confession and at trial
admitted killing eight patients but claimed she was merely trying to relieve
the patients’ suffering.
Other staff members noticed that deaths had been coinciding
with Faludi’s shifts; and when a colleague observed her giving an injection to
a patient she was reported to the police. At the trial the court psychiatrist
testified that the nurse possessed a "well-developed ability to empathise,
while internally she felt she was God". The judge when giving the
verdict stated that “she alternately put herself in the place of the doctor or
in that of the patient and took decisions instead of them." Faludi joined
the hospital staff in 1994. On December
2, 2002 she was sentenced to 9 years in prison.
***
May 2000 – Feb. 2001 – dates of murders. Gyala Nviro Hospital, Budapest.
May 2000 – Feb. 2001 – dates of murders. Gyala Nviro Hospital, Budapest.
Feb. 19, 2001 – arrested.
Dec. 2, 2002 – Sentenced, in final augmented judgment,
to 11 years in prison.
Jun. 2009 – Released from prison for exemplary behavior.
***
[1021-1/14/21]
***
