Here, we will take a look into the minds of some twisted individuals. I've only selected a few to talk about, but I feel they were some of the worst in their category. The people in this essay were noted as Angels of Death during their times in the free world. You'll be learning about Beverley Allitt, Genene Jones, Kristen Gilbert, and the killing team Lainz Angels of Death. The term Angel of Death was given to nurses who took it upon themselves to decide the fate of their patients. Using various methods, these nurses would cause their clients health to take a turn for the worst, giving them deliberate overdoses on medication, causing respiratory failure and death. Some of the Angels of Death would sometimes try to resuscitate their victims to be thought of as heroes. In their attempts, many lives were lost.
In Nurse Beverly Allitt Documentary on Youtube, uploaded by Female Killers, we find out that Beverley Allitt is currently being held at Rampton Secure Hospital with thirteen life sentences for her crimes. “Her victims were the most vulnerable – children she was entrusted to care for in her duties as an enrolled nurse. But hiding behind the caring guise of her profession, Allitt did the unthinkable and harmed the youngsters in her care, time and time again. Four children died, and several others almost lost their lives and were left permanently physically and intellectually disabled after Allitt injected them with insulin (Webb, Angel of Death).”
The hospital that she was trying to gain employment with was struggling with staff shortage. They reluctantly offered her the position she applied for, placing her in Children’s Ward 4, where she took her first victim only two days in, as stayed in her Biography on Biography.com. She had first attempted to kill Liam Taylor, but the resuscitation team saved him. The seven-week-old was placed in her direct one on one care after that. He was placed on life support after suffering another relapse, where his mother and father made the difficult decision to pull the plug (Webb, Angel of Death). Her reign of terror lasted a total of 59 days, from February to April of 1991 (Nurse Beverly Allitt Documentary). During that period, she took the lives of four children including Liam, attempted to murder another three, and severely harming six more.
She was eventually arrested after the 10-month-old twin sister of deceased victim Becky Phillips, Katie Phillips, had insulin and potassium overdoses and had to be resuscitated twice. (Webb, Angels of Death). Allitt killed and harmed those that had no way of defending themselves. She is a monster. A doctor that was assigned to the task of evaluating Beverley Allitt stated that she was likely never going to be fit for release, as she is a danger to all (Nurse Beverly Allitt Documentary). “A notable aspect of the Beverley Allitt case was that despite initially being criminally convicted of Murder contrary to English common law, since 1993 she has remained within Rampton secure hospital (A Psycho-Legal Analysis and Criminal Trajectory of Female Child Serial Killer Beverley Allitt)”
Now we look at Genene Jones, another Angel of Death, who earned her title after about killing 60 infants and children. She has had a 99-year sentence, for the murder of 15-month-old Chelsea McClellan, along with a 60-year sentence, for the death of Rolando Santos, she is serving at the same time. She had been giving the okay for release in 2018, but was then charged for the murder of another child to prevent her from leaving prison (Genene Jones Documentary).
An interesting habit of Genene was that she would insist on taking the babies that died on her watch to the morgue, cuddling them while telling them goodbye as she did. Her shift, which was 3pm to 11pm, was jokingly called the death-shift among colleagues. This was due to the noticeable increase in deaths while Genene was around. Infants would go into cardiac arrest, respiratory failure, and need to be resuscitated (Webb, Angels of Death). She would inject her patients with Succinylcholine. A drug that causes paralysis and respiratory failure, targeting the skeletal muscles, which includes the ones that help with one’s breathing (Genene Jones Documentary).
Let’s look at Kristen Gilbert, who was odd from her early childhood. “Those closest to her saw her as a pathological liar, violent, and manipulative. Gilbert, born Strickland, has been convicted of four murders. All of her victims were patients at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Northampton, Massachusetts (Kristen Gilbert: Angel of Death).” She would fatally dose her chosen victims with epinephrine, more commonly known as adrenaline. This would cause heart attacks and death. The staff she worked with noticed that some of the vials of the epinephrine were gone, but the pattern’s appearance didn’t stop the deaths from taking place until the time she left the hospital (Webb, Angels of Death).
There was an investigation in 1996 that could link her to the crimes, which is her reason for quitting before they could apprehend her. She then checked herself into the psychiatric hospitals seven times (Kristen Gilbert: Angel of Death) “Dr. William Boutelle, a psychiatrist who served as chief of staff at the Northampton VAMC, has theorized that she created emergency medical crisis situations to display her proficiency as a nurse (Kristen Gilbert: Angel of Death).” This was the reason that many Angels of Death chose as their motivation. If one saw another saving a life, the person saving the life was doing the right thing and could be trusted to do it again if the need arose.
Last, but not least, we have the Lainz Angels of Death. Maria Gruber, Irene Leidolf, Stephanija Meyer, and Waltraud Wagner are from Australia and worked for the Geriatriezentrum am Wienerwald in Lainz, Viena. Their active killing timeline spans from 1983 to 1989, and they have all been released from prison as of 2008 (Lainz Angels of Death Documentary). The first of them to commit a murder was Wagner, who was 23 years of age at the time. She used morphine to cause an overdose in her patient and liked the feeling of being able to choose whether someone lived or died. (Webb, Angels of Death) She went on to team up with the other girls, eventually creating one of the most efficient undercover female serial killing teams to date.
The Lainz Angels of Death would come up with creative ways to off their patients, downing them in their beds, one holding the patient’s nose while the other forced water into their open mouth. This was easy to get away with at the time, as the older clients had fluid in their lungs already and it could mask the water (Lainz Angels of Death Documentary). Days after their arrest in April of 1989, the women confessed to over 50 murders (Webb, Angels of Death).
We’ve looked at some of what I think are the most brutal and cold-hearted killers Earth has to offer. They took the lives of those that were unable to fight back, those that needed their help, and those that saw them as their guardians. The victims saw them as angels up until they revealed their true nature, sometimes not even realizing before it was too late. These are the Angels of Death.
