BELGIUM
National Post (Canada)
Araminta Wordsworth | June 11, 2014
Police in Belgium have charged a Roman Catholic deacon in the deaths of at least 40 patients during a 20-year killing spree, allegedly to put them out of their misery.
Ivo Poppe, 57, worked as a nurse and chaplain at the Hôpital du Sacré Coeur in Menin, west of Brussels, from 1980 to 2002, when he was ordained a deacon — one step below becoming a priest.
But prosecutors believe the killings continued up to 2011 as he went on visiting the hospital in his role of a part-time pastoral assistant.
The married father of three kept records of his victims, whom he killed by smothering with a pillow or administering a lethal dose of insulin. The list apparently included several family members, the Antwerp Gazette reported.
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