There was uproar in Denmark yesterday after a nursing home employee charged with the murder of 22 elderly people was freed pending further investigation. The 32-year-old woman, accused of murdering 15 women and seven men with lethal doses of tranquillisers, was arrested on Monday and released from custody by a court the next day. Politicians condemned the decision.
Police "did their job very badly after a six-month inquiry," said Ms Lise Helweg, of the Copenhagen municipal health committee. "We have our work cut out trying to calm elderly people and their families and convincing them that this appears to be a case of a sick woman."
Mr Kurt Jensen, chief of the Copenhagen police unit, announced an appeal against the decision to release the accused woman, saying he was "convinced she killed 22 people or perhaps more".
The victims, aged from 65 to 97, were killed between August 1994 and March this year at a nursing home in a working-class area of Copenhagen.
Police said they were given small but repeated doses of the tranquilliser Ketogan in place of their prescribed medicines, in what they described as acts of "active euthanasia".
Another employee alerted police when she became concerned by an upsurge in the death rate after the assistant was hired. Staff called the floor where she worked the "corridor of death."
The nursing assistant has been charged with "contributing actively to the deaths of 22 elderly people through the desire for profit and out of pity". She is also charged with diverting or stealing 629,000 kroner (£63,585) from bank accounts held by her alleged victims.
She denied the charges in court on Tuesday, and her lawyer said she was a "scapegoat." However, she reportedly made entries in her diary such as "(the name of a victim) has decided to die. That's why he has no longer been given medicines."