She is best known as the famous notorious British serial killer. Her crimes horrified and sickened many British families. I first heard about Beverly Allitt when I was watching TruTV. The show had a feature on Allitt and her crimes, this instantaneously caught my attention. The fact that a nurse would intentionally harm children seemed immensely ironic and riveting to me. In my eyes, a nurse was someone who cared and showed concern for a patient. Not someone who intentionally caused anguish and trauma upon innocent children.
Coming into this topic, I didn’t know much about the scandalous nurse. I scarcely knew about her history and background. I had heard that Allitt was mentally sick and had suffered some obstacles during her childhood. I also knew that her main way of killing was through over doses of insulin, and that she worked at a ward for infants. The speculations that Allitt suffered from an odd mental illness always intrigued me.
I’ve always had many questions about Allitt and her murders. Like, why the children were killed and why they were so young? Children would’ve been easy targets for Allitt. Since most children are smaller than most adults, it would be easier for an adult to over power a child. Also, young children are innocent and might not realize what is happening in there surroundings. This leads me to my next question, how many children were killed and how were they killed? From my small knowledge of Allits history, I thought that she had killed five children. I also knew, that her main way of killing was through large amounts of potassium or insulin. Allit’s murder weapons were easily accessible to her. I’ve always wondered if Allitt really had a mental disorder, or if she was faking it for sympathy. I t...
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...lthy appendix; she then plucked at her surgical scar, causing it not to heal correctly. Allitt had been in the hospital for numerous reasons. She complained of “gall bladder pain, headaches, urinary infections, uncontrolled vomiting, blurred vision, minor injuries, appendicitis, back trouble, and ulcers”(Ramsland 2). When she was hospitalized in 1991, Allitt puzzled nurses when she “tampered with the thermometer to produce [perplexing] readings, and [also] punctured her right breast to inject herself with water” (Ramsland 2). While working at the ward, Allitt was known for doing weird things. She was suspected of “smearing feces on the walls and putting it into the refrigerator for others to find” When Beverly was convicted of her murders; she cut herself with paperclips, and burned herself with hot water. She was later placed in a mental ward for her own safety.
On the night of August 31st 1986, Angelique Lavallee a battered 21 year-old woman in an unstable common law relationship was charged with murder. She shot her spouse, Kevin Rust in the back of the head while he was leaving the bedroom. Angelique was in fear for her life after being taunted with the gun and was threaten to be killed. Hence, she felt that she had to kill him or be killed by him. The psychiatrist Dr. Shane, did an assessment and concluded that she was being terrorized by her partner. Dr. Shane concluded that Angelique was physically, sexually, emotionally and verbally abused. As a result, in the psychiatrist’s opinion, the killing was a final desperate act by a woman who seriously believed she would be killed that night. This in turn identify her as a
In Ken Kesey’s novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, he engages the reader with Nurse Ratched’s obsession with power, especially against McMurphy. When Nurse Ratched faces multiple altercations with McMurphy, she believes that her significant power is in jeopardy. This commences a battle for power in the ward between these characters. One assumes that the Nurses’ meticulous tendency in the ward is for the benefit of the patients. However, this is simply not the case. The manipulative nurse is unfamiliar with losing control of the ward. Moreover, she is rabid when it comes to sharing her power with anyone, especially McMurphy. Nurse Ratched is overly ambitious when it comes to being in charge, leaving the reader with a poor impression of
Patty Hearst was a normal 19 year old girl, living in an apartment with her fiance and attending university in Berkeley, California, until one day her life, and the lives of everyone around her changed forever. On the evening of February 4, 1974, some members of the left-wing radical group called the Symbionese Liberation Army barged into Hearst’s home armed with guns, and beat up her fiance before kidnapping Hearst and bringing her to their house where she was kept blindfolded in a closet for 59 days. While locked in the closet, Patty Hearst was verbally and sexually abused and she was denied the use of even a toilet or toothbrush if she didn’t tell them that she agreed with the group’s ideas and beliefs. It is believed that while being locked in the closet like this, Patty was being brainwashed by the SLA and that she may have even developed Stockholm Syndrome, a condition in which a person who was kidnapped starts to empathise with their captor, and even starts defending them. This is how the Symbionese Liberation Army convinced Patty Hearst to join their group. They released an audio tape to the public in which Patty Hearst said she was changing her name to Tania and that she had decided to join the SLA. She then helped the SLA rob a bank and steal an ammunition belt from a sports store. After this, she started travelling around the country with two members of the SLA named John and Emily Harris, to try avoid being captured by the police. During this time, the police found a house where some members of the SLA were hiding out. Attempts to make the SLA members surrender ended up in a massive gunfight, ultimately ending up in the deaths of 6 SLA members. The FBI eventually found and arrested Patty Hearst on September 18, 1975. T...
Westley Allan Dodd was a serial child molester before he became a serial killer. As a teenager he often babysat and would molest the children he watched as they slept. He also worked as a summer camp counselor and would molest children at the camp. He was often arrested on charges of molesting kids as a young man, but nothing was done by the court system except make him see a counselor. In 1981 Dodd attempted to kidnap two little girls. Also, in 1981 Dodd joined the Navy, but was quickly discharged after he was found to have preyed on children living on the base that Dodd was stationed on. Dodd was also once arrested for attempting to lure two boys to a hotel in attempt to molest them. After all of these arrests, Dodd never really faced
As the narrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Chief Bromden, a paranoid half- Native American Indian man, has managed to go unnoticed for ten years by pretending to be deaf and dumb as a patient at an Oregon mental asylum. While he towers at six feet seven inches tall, he has fear and paranoia that stem from what he refers to as The Combine: an assemblage whose goal is to force society into a conformist mold that fits civilization to its benefit. Nurse Ratched, a manipulative and impassive former army nurse, dominates the ward full of men, who are either deemed as Acute (curable), or Chronic (incurable). A new, criminally “insane” patient named Randle McMurphy, who was transferred from the Pendleton Work Farm, eventually despoils the institution’s mechanical and monotonous schedule through his gambling, womanizing, and rollicking behavior. McMurphy’s dereliction of Nurse Ratched’s rules not only provides entertainment for Bromden and the other patients, but also acts as an impetus for their own reb...
The Zodiac Killer is one of the most popular murders. The fact that made him so infamous was that The Zodiac Killer was never identified. The mysterious killer was never caught and jailed for his crimes. The FBI have looked for the killer for decades, but still, even to this day, could not find him. The whole mystery of the killer and the name of the killer has made him popular across the United States. The Zodiac Killer was a mysterious killer, and he had a very unique way of going about the murders.
Bell grew up in a nightmare. Her mother, Betty McCrickett was a mentally, unstable alcoholic and prostitute. According to Gitta Sereny in her book, Cries Unheard: The Story of Mary Bell, Betty would force Bell to take part in prostitution. Others say Betty had tried killing Mary making it seem like an accident. There were suspicions that Betty suffered from Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, which could explain why she acted the way she did with her daughter. Due to the bad home environment, it could have possibly affected Bell’s personality. At school, she had an unpredictable and violent behavior. Even though she was violent, nobody did anything to stop it from continuing and it eventually got out of proportion. May of 1968, Bell strangled a four-year-old. This was ruled an accident and no act was taken. Later, Bell and her friend Norma Joyce Bell broke into a nursery and vandalised it, but police considered it a prank. July of 1968, both Mary Bell and Norma Bell strangled a three-year-old. Eventually both deaths were linked and both girls were charged with two counts of
Chained beaten with rods, lashed into obedience.” She had also witness sexual abuse, starvation, and prisoners left naked and cold. After witnessing all this cruelty towards the criminals she went around Europe and America establishing her own mental hospitals and had actually agreed to teaching Sunday school in jails. Eventually she successfully stated her case to queen Victoria and the pope.
While McMurphy tries to bring about equality between the patients and head nurse, she holds onto her self-proclaimed right to exact power over her charges because of her money, education, and, ultimately, sanity. The patients represent the working-class by providing Ratched, the manufacturer, with the “products” from which she profits—their deranged minds. The patients can even be viewed as products themselves after shock therapy treatments and lobotomies leave them without personality. The negative effects of the hospital’s organizational structure are numerous. The men feel worthless, abused, and manipulated, much like the proletariat who endured horrendous working conditions and rarely saw the fruits of their labor during the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom and United States in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century (“Industrial Revolution” 630).
Jeffrey Dahmer was one of the country’s most notorious serial killers who committed the rape, murder, and dismemberment of 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. He used creativity of brutality, unique disposed of bodies, and had a detailed process of choosing his victims.
As Dr. Spivey tries to discuss his theory she puts an end to it because she is focused on trying to find dirt on each patient. Nurse Ratched uses the Therapeutic Community as a scapegoat to find ways to torture and manipulate the patients. In the meeting she asks the patients if they have done anything that they kept secret, which leads to them opening up and confessing many secrets. After each confession it was clear that she was pleased because she kept saying “Yes, yes, yes.”
When viewed from a strictly medical, psychological aspect, Andrea Yates medical history indicates that after the birth of her first child, she began to suffer from various forms of depression and suicide attempts. If one only examines the paper trail and doesn’t think beyond what the medical history does or does not indicate, then perhaps, Andrea would be innocent by reason of mental insanity as the 2006 acquittal suggest. However, when viewed form a legal aspect there are several inconstancies that challenge if this former nurse was insane or if she in fact premeditated the murder of her children as well as her acquittal.
She controlled every movement and every person’s actions and thoughts. She made the doctors so miserable when they did not follow her instructions, that they begged to be transferred out if. “I'm disappointed in you. Even if one hadn't read his history all one should need to do is pay attention to his behavior on the ward to realize how absurd the suggestion is. This man is not only very very sick, but I believe he is definitely a Potential Assaultive” (). This quote from the book illustrated how Nurse Ratched controlled her ward. She manipulated people into siding with her regardless of whether it was the right decision. This was malpractice by Nurse Ratched because she did not allow the doctor, who was trained to diagnose patients, to do his job properly. Instead, she manipulated the doctor to diagnose the patients incorrectly in order to benefit her interests rather than those of the
The Zodiac is a chart of signs, based on the day of one’s birth corresponds with a horoscope. The Zodiac is also the name of a serial killer, whose identity continues to baffle law enforcement. There have been many books and movies made about this particular serial killer, but what are the facts? What is real and what is drummed up Hollywood drama?