In Search of the ‘Angels of Death’: Conceptualising the Contemporary Nurse Healthcare Serial Killer

Abstract

Focusing specifically upon nurses who commit serial murder within a hospital setting, this paper aims to establish insights into this particular subcategory of healthcare serial killer. In addition, the paper aims to test the usefulness of an existing checklist of behaviours among this group of serial murderers. Drawing upon existing lists of healthcare serial killers produced by other scholars as well as legal records and an online news archive, we identified and researched healthcare serial killer nurses, collating socio demographic and criminological data and applying the aforementioned checklist to each case. Our findings suggest that to date, the label ‘healthcare serial killer’ has been applied in too loose a manner, making the understanding of this phenomenon problematic. In further refining the definition and identifying the socio‐demographic and criminological characteristics of the victims, perpetrators and crimes, we have developed more specific and therefore useful insights for practitioners and identified a potentially useful checklist which, with revisions, could contribute towards preventative strategies and interventions. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Serial murder in medical clinics and care homes

“…1 gibt einen Überblick. Weltweit sind 57 Tötungsserien dokumentiert: 19 weitere in Europa, 18 in den USA und Südamerika, 4 in Japan, 3 in Australien und 1 in Kanada 4 5 6 7 8 9 .…”

“…Table 1 provides an overview. Worldwide, 57 similar serial murders have been documented: 19 in Europe, 18 in the USA and South America, 4 in Japan, 3 in Australia, and 1 in Canada 4 5 6 7 8 9 .…”

“The Fact She Has Anorexia Fits in Perfectly”: Beverley Allitt, Self-Starvation, and Media Narratives of Criminal Femininity

“…She was found guilty of the attempted murder of three other children and of causing grievous bodily harm to six more. Referred to in the media coverage as the "Angel of Death" (a term not unique to Allitt), she secured a place in British popular history as one of the country's most prolific women serial killers (Yardley and Wilson, 2016). In the press coverage of her trial, it was widely reported that Allitt's actions resulted from Munchausen's Syndrome By Proxy (MSBP) -a "psychological disorder" in which the carer seeks attention by inducing illness in their child or charge (Polledri, 1996: 551).…”

“…Although Allitt was sometimes constructed as simply an appalling one-off (a "monster" beyond the boundaries of social intelligibility) (Morrissey, 2003: 25), it is the relationship between Allitt, gender, and everyday constructions of anorexia that is of interest here, particularly in terms of how her image contributed to cultural discourses on self-starvation and femininity at the time. In addition, despite her notoriety in the British context, there is surprisingly little scholarship on Allitt, and she largely appears as a reference in research on the healthcare serial killer (Yardley and Wilson, 2016), or as a brief case study in works on gender and murder (D'Cruze, Walkate and Pegg, 2006;Seale, 2010). In focusing on how Allitt's identity as an (eating) disordered woman was mediated and how this intersected with popular and legal discourses on her crimes, this article also contributes to feminist scholarship on the cultural construction of women's criminality, especially in terms of the narrative of the "damaged personality" and how this is offered as an explanatory framework for women who kill (Seal, 2010: 50).…”

“…The horror evoked by Allitt's crimes was clearly compounded by her professional role, with nursing historically naturalising discourses of feminine nurturance, caring and servitude (D'Cruze, Walkate and Pegg, 2006;Hallam, 2000). The term "Angel of Death" is clearly gendered (Yardley and Wilson, 2016), with the word "angel" emanating from Victorian ideological associations between nursing and femininity (see Hallam, 2000). Although the original Victorian image of nursing had discursive links to middle-class femininity, the relationship between nursing and class identity had expanded since this time (Hallam, 2000).…”