Brazil Investigates Doctor For 300 Deaths

Doctor 300 deaths: Brazilian authorities are accusing a doctor for seven deaths, but suspect that 300 others might have also been killed.
Brazil Investigates Doctor For 300 Deaths
Jack Phillips
3/27/2013
Updated:
7/18/2015

SAO PAULO—A Brazilian doctor is suspected of killing at least seven terminally ill patients in a hospital, but the country’s Health Ministry says she might be responsible for 300 other deaths.

Virginia Helena Soares de Souza, a 56-year-old widow, and seven others are suspected of injecting the patients with “drug cocktails” and of tampering with their respirators, according to the ministry. The press officer declined to be identified because she was not authorized to comment on the case.  

Souza was arrested in Curitiba last month but released on bail a week ago pending the outcome of the investigation.

The press officer says the Health Ministry is reviewing the medical records of 300 other patients that were under de Souza’s care. She did not provide details and did not say if they had died.

A Health Ministry investigator told Reuters that de Souza might have been responsible for the deaths hundreds more.

The news agency reported that she wanted to free up hospital beds for other patients, according to wiretaps of her phone conversations released to Brazilian media.

“I want to clear the intensive care unit. It’s making me itch,” she said in one, according to Reuters. “Unfortunately, our mission is to be go-betweens on the springboard to the next life,” she added.

Dr. Mario Lobato, who heads the Health Ministry investigation into the deaths, said that “we already have more than 20 cases established, and there are nearly 300 more that we are looking into.”

Elias Mattar Assad, a lawyer for de Souza, said his client was not guilty of the murders.

“We will soon prove that everything that happened in that ICU was justified by medical procedure,” he told the Guardian.

If the deaths are confirmed, it would make her the world’s most notorious serial killer. Harold Shipman, of the United Kingdom, was convicted for the deaths of 15 patients, but is suspected of killing 260 others.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

Jack Phillips is a breaking news reporter with 15 years experience who started as a local New York City reporter. Having joined The Epoch Times' news team in 2009, Jack was born and raised near Modesto in California's Central Valley. Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/jackphillips5
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