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Five international cases of nurses suspected in patient deaths

Last Updated Oct 25, 2016 at 1:40 pm MDT

An Ontario nurse was charged Tuesday with the first-degree murder of eight long-term care home residents who died between 2007 and 2014.

Investigators say 49-year-old Elizabeth Tracey Mae Wettlaufer of Woodstock, Ont., allegedly administered a drug to each of her victims which led to their deaths.

Here are some other cases of nurses suspected in patient deaths:

— DANIELA POGGIALI: The Italian nurse was arrested in 2014 on suspicion of killing several terminally ill patients who were under her care. Prosecutors accused her of administering massive doses of potassium chloride to the patients. Her case gained global notoriety after it was reported that she allegedly took “selfies” with dead patients.

— NIELS H: The German nurse was convicted in 2015 of killing two patients with overdoses of heart medication. During his trial, he had said he intentionally brought about cardiac crises in some 90 patients because he enjoyed the feeling of being able to resuscitate them. He was only convicted of two killings but he suggested more patients had died. He later told investigators he had also killed patients at a different hospital where he had worked.

— CHRISTINA HANSEN: The Danish nurse was given a life sentence in June after being found guilty of the murder of three patients and attempting to kill a fourth at a hospital in southern Denmark. A Danish court said Hansen deliberately gave overdoses of morphine and strong sedatives to three elderly patients in 2012 and 2015. A similar cocktail was found in a fourth patient who survived. In its ruling, the court said it was proven that Hansen “knew the patients would die of her acts.” She has denied any wrongdoing.

— CHARLES CULLEN: The American former registered nurse was arrested in 2003 on suspicion he murdered several patients at Somerset Medical Center in New Jersey. Cullen pleaded guilty to killing 29 patients with drug overdoses at nursing homes and hospitals in Pennsylvania and New Jersey in one of the worst murder sprees ever discovered in the U.S. health care system. He was sentenced to 18 life terms. He claimed to have killed 40 patients over a 16-year nursing career, and has said he killed out of mercy.

— ROBERT DIAZ: The coronary-care nurse was convicted of killing 12 elderly patients with lethal doses of a heart drug in March and April of 1981. He was convicted of murdering 11 patients at the Community Hospital of the Valleys in Perris, Calif., and one patient at San Gorgonio Pass Memorial Hospital in Banning, Calif.