“Killer” coronavirus nurse case closed, no evidence found

The public prosecution department has closed the investigation into a nurse who claimed to have killed at least 20 coronavirus patients because he was concerned about their suffering.

Investigators have not found “enough evidence” against the man, Theodoor V, who worked as a specialist lung nurse at the Wilhelmina Ziekenhuis in Assen during the pandemic, the department said in a statement on Friday. 

“During the investigation, no concrete facts or situations were found which could confirm the nurse’s own comments about his actions during the coronavirus pandemic,” the department said. “A ruling can never be made purely based on someone’s own statements.”

V was released from custody last June after court legal experts said the evidence against him was not strong enough to keep him in jail pending a potential trial. 

V commented on killing patients in different conversations with other care providers, one of whom alerted the hospital authorities which triggered the investigation.

He reportedly made the comments to staff while he was being treated in a regional mental health clinic in Drenthe. He said he had killed the patients, none of whom he was able to describe, by turning of their ventilators and giving them high doses of morphine.

The public prosecutor said the investigators had heard witnesses in and outside the hospital, searched records and questioned the nurse himself, who denied the charges in two interviews.

“The police and the public prosecution department recognise that this investigation had a major impact on relatives,” the statement said.

“That uncertainty has not been removed for some of them, but we would emphasise that there is no evidence the nurse committed criminal offences in any of the deaths which were investigated.”