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"He's no Dr. Kevorkian."
Flavio Silveira, the administrator of Salgado Filho
This story is set in Rio De
Janeiro. As it is a very recent case all of the following
info is taken rom newspaper articles. So it is a fair
assumtion that this is not the full story. As I get new
information, I will be updating this page. So let us get to
the story.
For two years, officials at Rio's Salgado Filho Hospital
could not understand the high death rate in the hospital's
emergency intensive care unit. I bet you can already figure
out what's been going on.
The hospital recently said it found the answer to its
discrepancy: longtime nurse's aide Edson Guimaraes, a
purported serial killer for cash who may have murdered as
many as 116 patients in his ward since January (this year)
alone. And if that hasn't got your attention then I don't
know what will.
Guimaraes, 42, a quiet black eyed man dubbed the incredibly
original, "angel of death," initially confessed to five
murders, saying he had ended the patients' lives to ease
their suffering.
He also admitted to racing to notify the city's highly
competitive funeral homes of the deaths, in hopes of earning
a $60 tip if he was the first to report the death and the
family signed a contract with the funeral home. A motive?
"At the hospital, the personnel from autopsy usually win a
commission from the funeral homes when they make a
referral," the seven year employee of the hospital told Veja,
a Brazilian newsmagazine. "I decided to seek out the funeral
homes and do the same."
A skeptical Flavio Silveira, the administrator of Salgado
Filho, said, "this guy said he wanted to abbreviate
suffering and also make some money on the side, because
everybody gets some money on the side."
In Brazil, as in most countries, euthanasia remains a crime,
even when carried out by a doctor at a patient's request. So
even if they were 'mercy killings' he is still breaking the
law.
Prosecutors say that Guimaraes' victims were mostly
unconscious or comatose patients, whom he killed by lethal
injection or by removing oxygen masks.
The most damning evidence against Guimaraes was provided by
a cleaning lady. In late April she says that she first
spotted the gray haired aide drawing a syringe of deadly
potassium chloride from the supply room, slipping it into
his pocket and then strolling into the intensive care unit.
While Guimaraes made his rounds, the woman reported, he
quietly pressed the needle into the IV drip bag of one of
the unit's half dozen patients and hit the plunger. Moments
later the patient was dead. What I want to know is why
didn't she stop him, if she knew what was going on?
Once alerted by the cleaning lady, administrators as a test
transferred Guimaraes to an outpatient unit on his next
shift. The death rate in intensive care fell to zero. When
Guimaraes returned three days later, on May 4, four patients
died, even as police waited in a nearby office to make an
arrest. This will probably count against him.
Following Guimaraes' arrest a check of hospital records has
revealed that the unit's death rate more than doubled during
Guimaraes' 12 hour shifts, from an average of just under two
deaths to four or more, Silveira said.
Following his confession Guimaraes' lawyer decided on an
insanity defense, but recently the tactic was changed.
"I've been
a nurse 20 years and I wouldn't commit this negligence
before God."
Guimaraes has retracted his
confession and now insists that, "I didn't kill anyone. I
didn't want to kill anyone." He has also said that he only
confessed because police threatened to beat him. He also
insisted that while he had directed relatives of dead
patients to the funeral home of a friend, he had never
received any payment for it.
Following these statements Marcelo Monteiro, a member of the
prosecution team, which has charged Guimaraes with only four
murders, said that, "I'm completely convinced he's a
murderer. The proof will demonstrate he's responsible for
what happened." "I'm convinced the only truths he told today
were his name, date of birth and address."
Proving Guimaraes is a serial killer may be difficult. You
see, death by an overdose of potassium chloride, which stops
the heart, is what Brazilians call a "white death,"
something that leaves no identifying anatomical or chemical
signature during a routine autopsy.
Autopsies on the last two patients thought to be his victims
show red stains on their hearts and lungs characteristic of
asphyxia, but such marks could occur after the failure of an
oxygen mask, for instance.
So until we get a lot more autopsy reports it is going to be
very difficult to prove anything in this case. All we do
know is that since Guimaraes was taken off the wing it has
led to a halving of deaths, which is pretty strong evidence
that maybe he was doing something fishy with the patients.
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