Back in April, this blog featured two posts analyzing the disturbing and distorted coverage of an investigation of suspicious deaths at a nursing home in Woodstock, IL. The analysis can be accessed here (part 1) and here (part 2).
The story in brief: After a long investigation into suspicious deaths at a nursing home in Woodstock, IL, two women were charged with multiple crimes. Marty Himebaugh was charged with multiple counts of criminal neglect and single counts of obtaining morphine by fraud and unlawful distribution of a controlled substance. Penny Whitlock, Himebaugh’s supervisor, was charged with multiple count of neglect and two counts of obstruction justice. No homicide charges of any kind were laid against either woman.
Now that we’re in NY, we’re a little out of the loop when it comes to Illinois news. Thanks to Dick Sobsey at the ICAD blog, we now have more information – from a report issued by the IL Department of Public Health.
Here is one item lifted from the Chicago Tribune article on the report that is used as the basis for Dick Sobsey’s comments on the case:
The Department of Public Health report also refers to a 56-year-old man with Down syndrome who died in April 2006 and quotes a nurse telling a co-worker: “Those people aren’t meant to live that long. They are meant to die in their teens and I’m going to help him along.” (editor’s note – until reading this, we had no idea that one of the alleged victims was someone with Down syndrome.)
This comment, along with others in the report, leads Sobsey to assert – if the statements can be verified – that charges of murder or attempted murder should have been laid against Himebaugh.
Read his comments in their entirety at the ICAD blog.
In April, the posts here focussed on the language used in coverage – specifically the use of the term “mercy killings” used in press coverage to describe the alleged murders (which aren’t actually alleged at all in the criminal charges).
The Chicago Tribune was the only member of the media to abstain from use of the term. The Sun-Times was a repeat offender, but has dropped the term now that this report is out.
Charles Keeshan, of the Chicago Daily Herald, OTOH, seems reluctant to give up on the term, as indicated the lead sentence of his story published on September 24th:
A series of suspicious deaths at a McHenry County nursing home in 2006 may not have been mercy killings, but instead the work of a nurse overdosing patients she found troublesome or believed had lived long enough, according to state investigatory report. (Emphasis added.)
May not have been “mercy killings”????!!!!!
In fact, there was never any evidence that these were “mercy killings” at all – just a term that reporters seem to jump to when the suspected victims of murder are old, ill or disabled. And the report gives powerful evidence that this had nothing at all to do with mercy.
Here’s a flash – as reported earlier in this blog, researchers have studied the psyches and motives of nurses and other professionals who engage in multiple killings in medical settings – and it’s never about “compassion” or “mercy.”
Try reading, for example, “Angels of mercy: The dark side” in USA Today.
Or check out the recent research conducted by John Field – which I wrote about in an earlier entry here.
What those two sources will tell you is that serial killers in a medical settings are like serial killers elsewhere – cold, selfish people who aren’t thinking of anyone but themselves and their own twisted needs when they commit these crimes. –Stephen Drake