Trainee nurse killed two patients for thrills

· Defendant had access to A&E department drugs
· Sentence deferred on man who played with lives
Wednesday April 19, 2006
A nurse who got his thrills from taking patients to the brink of death by injecting them with potentially lethal drugs was found guilty of two counts of murder yesterday.
Benjamin Geen, 25, endangered the lives of patients who had been admitted to the accident and emergency department of Horton hospital in Banbury, Oxfordshire, by giving them drugs which stopped their breathing. Although all were very ill, most were resuscitated in circumstances Geen was said to find exciting.
But David Onley, 75, and Anthony Bateman, 65, died within a fortnight of each other in January 2004, and the jury at Oxford crown court yesterday found Geen guilty of their murder, as well as 15 counts of causing grievous bodily harm to other patients. He was acquitted of one further count of GBH.
Michael Austin Smith, QC, prosecuting, told the jury that Geen must have known that the consequences of his thrill-seeking could be fatal, but that playing with patients' lives was a "price he was willing to pay in order to satisfy his perverse needs".
Geen's case parallels that of Beverley Allitt, the paediatric nurse who killed four children in her care with drug overdoses and injured nine others between 1991 and 1993. Allitt, who worked at Grantham and Kesteven hospital in Lincolnshire, was diagnosed with a mental disorder and is now in Rampton secure hospital.
Detective Superintendent Andy Taylor, of Thames Valley police's major crime unit, said Geen "abused [his] position of trust. We may never know what motivated him to select and poison his victims but it is clear that he wanted to be the centre of attention and in order to fuel this desire, brought some of his patients to the brink of death and coldly murdered two of them."
The judge, Mr Justice Crane, said he would postpone sentencing until he had received a psychological report.
"Although it's clear what the usual sentence has got to be [an obligatory life sentence for murder], I think I want to get a report. "I must say I'm inclined with the motive that the prosecution put forward [that Geen enjoyed the excitement of sending his victims to the brink of death]. These are such unusual offences, and the motive is such a strange one and not in any sense entirely normal, I think I should not sentence until I have got a full picture."
The patients, some of whom were very ill or elderly, had been through a difficult time, he said. "When someone is admitted to hospital there is an expectation that they will receive the treatment, care and nursing that will help them get through their illness.
"In the vast majority of cases we receive it and are rightly proud of our healthcare professionals."
Geen, although a trainee, had access to a range of drugs for use in the hospital's accident and emergency department. Between December 2003 and February 2004, he used a variety, including insulin, sedatives and muscle relaxants, on his victims.
Doctors were bewildered by the high rate of respiratory arrests in the department - there would be normally be one to two a year. They were also happening in patients who would not be expected to have breathing difficulties.
When an alcoholic was admitted with stomach pains and ended up in intensive care, they realised that something was seriously wrong. The man, Timothy Stubbs, had traces of two drugs in his urine - the sedative midazolam and the muscle relaxant vecuronium - which had not been prescribed for him.
Over one weekend in February 2004, medical staff reviewed the case notes of patients whose respiratory arrests they could not explain. They reduced the cases under review to 18, and common to all of them was trainee casualty nurse Geen. The police were called and Geen was arrested when he arrived at work the following morning. In his pocket was a syringe of vecuronium.
Thames Valley police said the investigation was long and painstaking, at one point involving 40 officers. Each case was allocated to a separate team of officers, which meant hospital staff faced repeated interviews. "From a very early stage we recognised the potential size of the case and the difficulty we were going to face investigating it," said Detective Superintendent Taylor.
"Initially, we took the primary findings of the hospital and started to work on those. At the same time, the hospital had the task of going back over a period of time and researching admissions to A&E over the relevant period." Mr Taylor said Geen had not obstructed the inquiry. "The hypothesis emerged as a result of the inquiry that, in an effort to promote himself, he deliberately administered these drugs. It was narcissism of the worst form." Mr Taylor did not think Geen would have stopped if he had not been arrested.
"He was arriving for a night duty with a loaded syringe," he said. "He was becoming more brazen. Had the hospital not alerted us and done what they had done I am convinced he would have carried on."
The victims
A drip was put in place - and he stopped breathing
Anthony Bateman, 66, was already "very unwell", suffering from asthma, arthritis and a heart condition when he was admitted on January 6 for a suspected cancer. Doctors said he was conscious but after Geen had took a blood sample and set up a saline drip he stopped breathing. Experts said Mr Bateman's arrest was "highly unlikely" to have been caused by his underlying illnesses and his life would have been prolonged by resuscitation. They concluded he had been given a muscle relaxant, probably through his drip.
David Onley, 75, was seriously ill when he was admitted on January 21. He had a heart condition, was diabetic and due to a triple bypass operation three weeks earlier, had a wound that was thought to be infected. Geen came on duty at 7am and Mr Onley was handed over to his care. By 8.30am Mr Onley had stopped breathing. By 9.50am he was awake and talking to staff. At lunchtime he suffered a heart attack and was revived but then just before 4pm he suffered another and his organs failed. He died the following day. Experts said Mr Onley had stopped breathing because he was given a muscle relaxant.
The 15 other patients against whom Geen committed grievous bodily harm were David Long, 53, David Nelson, 77, Robert Robinson, 51, Hilda Wigram, 89, Walter Coates, 61, John Moncur Thorburn, 73, Sheila Gray-Snook, 73, Jonathan Feltham, 22, Harold Boss, 66, Noreen Brooks, 55, Arthur Marlow, 79, Grace Fox, 88, Esther Jordan, 79, Herline Probert, 67, and Timothy Stubbs, 42.