Understanding a Health Care Killer

Thursday, 27 October 2016 10:47

An expert on criminology and serial killers gives us glimpse into the mindset of a health care killer.

WOODSTOCK - If convicted Elizabeth Tracy Mae Wettlaufer will become the first known Health Care killer from Canada.

In the United States they have 41 documented cases of health care workers killing their patients starting with Donald Harvey who was known as the Angel of Death. Dr. Michael Artnfield is a former police officer and professor at Western University criminology who wrote the best selling book Murder City which looks at serial killers in the London area.

Artnfield tells Heart FM health care killers are usually a lot different than other serial killers.

"The biggest difference between health care killers and other serial killers is the absence of a motivation that is rooted is some sort of distorted sexual attachment, that is usually accompanied by sadistic fantasy's or behaviours. On the contrary their focus is actually to alleviate suffering, at least early on. What we see is because the vast majority of conventional serial killers (which are rare I should also stress statistically speaking) because most are male with that sexual component, we see health care killers split roughly 50/50 between male and females. Regardless of gender with health care killers they usually suffer from distorted thinking and there is some degree of fantasy development but one rooted more in a narcissistic personality disorder. They have delusions of being a hero or a saviour and they take it upon themselves to select patients who they feel are suffering and effectively assign themselves the role of god to see who lives or who dies. Early on in the murders we have seen historically with the 41 convicted Health Care Killers in the United States, it starts of with a distorted delusion, what we call a Mother Thersea complex."

He says the killing usually starts out of compassion and it continues out of a compulsion. Artnfield says he believes their may be more cases in Canada, however the problem is it is usually a very difficult crime to prove.

"The data that I am relying on and those who study this phenomenon globally are relying on are almost exclusively from the United States where since 1971 they have identified 41 separate serial health care killers. We do not have a known or documented health care killer in Canada, which I am very sceptical of, I mean never mind the population difference between the US and Canada and the fact that the US has a significantly higher major crime index and homicide rate, I mean from 41 in the United States to 0 in Canada it borders on the statistically improbable, it is more likely they have gone undetected and really they have gotten away with it. Absent of them being caught red handed or a very thorough and expensive and time consuming medical and historical investigation undertaken, they are very difficult to prove."

Artnfield has another book coming out in March 2017 and it will look at the Wettlaufer case.