Medical professionals are supposed to be caregivers and, in some fields, often lifesavers. However, a number of medical professionals have used their positions as health providers to harm and kill patients.
While malpractice is one thing, these doctors, surgeons and nurses all took pre-mediated steps to kill numerous others.
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Some secretly killed on the job and some wreaked havoc both inside and outside medical facilities.
Scroll through to see some of the medical field’s most notorious murders.
H.H. Holmes
H.H. Holmes is one of America’s most notorious serial killers.
As his crimes allegedly began, he was attending University of Michigan’s Department of Medicine and Surgery, where his eventually graduated and became a pharmacist.
While we was a pharmacist, a boy was rumored to be poisoned by Holmes via medication.
But Holmes life as a serial murderer truly formed when he outfitted a hotel he built in what was virtually a “death house.” He rigged the site up with various booby traps and gas chambers in order to kill unsuspecting victims. Before his execution, he had confessed to 27 murders, but the real number has been disputed as being both higher and lower.
Jane Toppan / Genene Jones
Jane Toppan
Toppan operated in the late 1800s just like Holmes, but she was a much different kind of killer.
She was a beloved nurse who started poisoning patients she believed were dying soon.
She caught in 1901, given the nickname “Jolly Jane” and spent the rest of her days in an insane asylum.
Genene Jones
Called the “Angel of Death,” nurse Genene Jones was accused of killing up to 60 kids through overdoses back in the late ’70s to early ’80s.
She was convicted for two of the crimes and given massive sentences, but will be eligible for release in 2018. However, she has recently been charged with two more murders from her spree, so may never be released.
Donald Harvey
Donald Harvey also earned the “Angel of Death” during his killing spree.
Harvey was a nurse who confessed to 87 murders from 1970 and 1987. Many of them were terminally ill, but he also killed friends and lovers.
He was given four life sentences based off convictions for 25 of his killings. The death penalty was on the table but later avoided.
However, he died shortly after his conviction after being beaten to death inside his jail cell.
Ilya Zelendinov
Not only is this Russian doctor’s crime frightening, it was caught on video.
In late 2015, Ilya Zelendinov got into an altercation with a patient in his care, drug him around the room and punched him out cold. It turns out, the patient received a brain hemorrhage from that punch and died.
The shocking footage went viral on YouTube and was plastered all over Russian media.
Zelendinov was fired and eventually charged for the attack and was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Charles Cullen / Henry Bello
Charles Cullen
Charles Cullen is believed to be the most prolific serial murder in U.S. history. He confessed to 40 murders over 16 years, but there are believed to be more that Cullen could not remember.
His typical method of choice was administering overdoses.
He pleaded guilty to 29 murders and 3 attempted murders and was handed down 11 life sentences, which is currently serving.
Henry Bello
Henry Bello went on a rampage on July 1, killing one woman and wounding six others before ending his own life.
Bello was described as a “disgruntled former employee” of Bronx-Lebanon Hospital. He returned to the facility with dark intentions and started shooting people in the building randomly.
Kristen Gilbert / Michael Swango
Kristen Gilbert
This former nurse was found guilty of causing four patients deaths and attempting to kill many more.
She would add the heart stimulant epinephrine to IV bags to induce cardiac arrest. She’d then tend to the cardiac arrest, but four victims did not survive.
Michael Swango
Michael Swango has been linked to 35 suspicious death during his time as a medical professional.
Swango would either give patients lethal doses of prescriptions or poison them with arsenic. He also wrote about his crime in a notebook and confessed to enjoying the murders.
Kimberly Clark Saenz / Elizabeth Wettlaufer
Kimberly Clark Saenz
Kimberly Clark Saenz was a dialysis nurse before she was caught murdering patients.
Saenz would add bleach into patients’ dialysis treatments. She killed five and injured five more before being charged and sentenced to life in prison.
Elizabeth Wettlaufer
Nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer intentionally killed eight patients with lethal insulin overdoses.
She admitted in court that she caused “tremendous pain and suffering and death” and acted remorseful, but the judge told her she “was not an angel of mercy; she was the shadow of death” as she was sentenced to life in prison.
