X-Message-Number: 11704
Date: Sat, 08 May 1999 18:40:16 -0400
From: Jan Coetzee <>
Subject: One more thing to worry about

Rio de Janeiro - Police suspect a Rio nurse killed up to 132 patients in
the
past four months to collect commissions offered by local funeral
homes, the Brazilian media reported on Saturday.
<P>
Edson Izidoro Guimaraes, who the Rio press has dubbed "the
Angel of Death," admits killing "five or six" but denies cashing in
on any of those deaths.
<P>
Guimaraes says he only wanted to ease patients suffering from
AIDS and other serious maladies by taking away oxygen masks or
giving lethal injections at Salgado Filho Hospital in Rio's Meier
district.
<P>
"I don't regret what I did," the 42-year-old trauma ward nurse
told TV Globo on Saturday. "I did it to those in irreversible comas
and whose families were suffering."
<P>
But police are investigating several Rio funeral homes after
Guimaraes told reporters that he received between dlrs 60 ( 100
reals) and $606 (1 000 reals) in commission in exchange for
information on each death certificate. Such information gives
morticians a head start in contacting the victim's family about
funeral arrangements.
<P>
Guimaraes also conceded that he needed to supplement his
monthly income of $333 (550 reals) to pay off debts of $3 000 (5,000
reals).
<P>
"He may have began doing it to earn money and then just lost
control," said Josias Quintal, Rio's secretary for public security.
<P>
Yet the owner of a funeral home cited by Guimaraes vehemently
denied any link. "We have no agreement with any hospital," Manoel
de Souza, the owner of the Novo Mundo funeral home told the O
Estado news agency on Saturday.
<P>
City health authorities became suspicious after the hospital's
trauma ward registered an unusually high number of deaths since
Janaury: 225 patients.
<P>
When a janitor reported Guimaraes giving an injection to a
patient who immediately died, four detectives were sent to pose as
patients. They soon discovered that 132 patients had died during
Guimaraes' 36 prior shifts, or 3.6 deaths per day. They arrested
him on Friday.
<P>
In Brazil, the crime of euthanasia is punishable by six to 20
years in prison. Guimaraes said that he had never heard of the
term. - Sapa-AP
</font></p>

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