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.
The novel is narrated by the main character, Chief Bromden, who reveals the two faces of Nurse Ratched, in the opening pages of the novel. He continues sweeping the floor while the nurse assaults three black aides for gossiping in the hallway. Chief chooses to describe the nurse abstractly: “her painted smile twists, stretches to an open snarl, and she blows up bigger and bigger...by the time the patients get there...all they see is the head nurse, smiling and calm and cold as usual” (5). Nurse Ratched runs the psychiatric ward with precision and harsh discipline. When Randle McMurphy arrives to escape time in jail, he immediately sizes the Big Nurse up as manipulative, controlling, and power-hungry. The portrayal that he expresses to the patient's leaves a lasting impact on them: “The flock gets sight of a spot of blood on some chicken and all go to peckin’ at it, see, till they rip the chicken to shreds, blood and bones and feathers” (57). McMurphy finds it appalling that the patients are too blindsided to see Nurse Ratched’s conniving scheme, which is to take charge of the patients’ lives. The only person who understands Nurse Ratched’s game is McMurphy, and this motivates him to rebel against the
I think that she is both alloplastic adaptation and autoplastic adaptation. First, alloplastic because she committed crime to change her environment as she was living in the woods and streets she may have encounter many crimes and she just did the same. Secondly, I think she also experienced autoplastic adaption because as she committed a crime it was stressful and to deal with it she committed another crime after another. Also, I believe that a well being person would not committed crime to feel better unless they were mentally ill as I believe she was. I think that sociopath and neuroticism for personality trait should be applied to this case. Sociopath is defined as cruel and without thought or feelings for victims. The characteristics are poverty or inability to imagine how others feel and think. All this is Wourons live because when she was thrown out her grandparents home she did not had any money and she killed and perhaps the victims were not trying to hurt her but the inability to think as a well being human could not permitted her. Neuroticism is of typical people who are irrational, shy, moody, and emotional which Wourons did in her life and during her trial. As a child she did not have friends and had sexual relations with her brother which I find that irrational and perhaps that is why
She had an uneventful life until 1887, when she began to train as a nurse at the Cambridge Hospital in Boston. At first, when she liked a patient, she interfered only in small ways to insure they remained with her, but soon she began experimenting on patients with morphine and atropine. During her stay at Cambridge she is thought to have killed over a dozen patients. One noteworthy patient is a Mrs. Amelia Phinney, she is one of the only survivors of Jane Toppen’s poisonings. Amelia claimed that after her operation Jane gave her an unpleasant tasting drug that was supposedly to help with her discomfort. As she was falling asleep Amelia realized that Jane had crept i...
Her first murder was a electric shop owner named Richard Mallory. He picked her up along Interstate 75 in Florida. She shot him three times with a 22 pistol. Then dumped his body in a junkyard. Her second murder was David Spears. He was shot 6 times in the torso. Charles Carskaddon was her third murder. He was shot 13 times in the stomach and chest. Her fourth killing was Troy Burress, a salesman. He was shot 2 times in the torso. Charles "Dick" Humphreys was her fifth murder! Unlike the other victims he was fully clothed. Her sixth murder was Walter Jeno Antonio a 62 year old trucker, was shot 4 times. The seventh victim's body was never found. Most of the victims were shot in the drivers seat or outside the car/truck. Then she took there body's to a nearby wooded area. After she
The Boston Strangler was probably the most notorious criminal that Boston, Massachusetts has ever known. But who was the Boston Strangler? Was he Albert DeSalvo, the person who confessed and went to jail for these crimes? Is he someone that took his secret to the grave and let an innocent man take the blame for his crime? Or is he still walking the streets of Boston, or even the streets of another city?
According to PBS, Bly impersonated “a mad person, and came back from Blackwell’s Island ten days later with stories of cruel beatings, ice cold baths, and meals that included rancid butter.” This means that Bly went undercover, jeopardizing her life to help others. The Biography.com editors explain, “One of Bly’s earliest assignments at the paper was to author a piece detailing the experiences endured by patients… she pretended to be a mental patient in order to be committed to the facility, where she lived from ten days.” The describe her life while in the mental asylum. From the grueling conditions to the horrendous food, she risked it all for the greater good. In her book, Ten Days in a Mad-House, Bly explains the various ways in which she was harmed (Bartle and Ockerldoom). These include: spoiled food and rough living conditions. “She endured filthy conditions, rotten food and physical abuse from doctors and nurses,”(Fritz). Although, through all this, Bly persevered until she was able to help the mentally ill. This is just one way in which Nellie Bly showed she was an
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...
Nurse Ratched uses her voice throughout the novel to intimidate the patients. She is the antagonist of the novel. The patients obsequiously follow Ratched’s command, until McMurphy comes along. They all fear that she will send them for shock therapy if they don’t obey her. Nurse Ratched is the most daunting persona of the novel, due in large part to the use of her voice.
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
Subsequently to that, in the same year the following to Hinman’ murder in which Atkins participated , the assassination of Sharon Tate who was pregnant, Steven Parent, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, and Abigail Folger took place. According to the forensic evidence the crime was describe as brutal (Wikipedia). During Atkins declaration she confesses to be the killer of Tate during her statement. “She stated that she had stabbed Tate because she was ‘sick of listening to her, pleading and begging, begging and pleading’” (Wikipedia). During trail the audience saw a lack of remorse about the crime committed by her and the Mason Family. During one her declaration she confesses t...
Annie Chapman, known to her friends as “Dark Annie';, was a 47 year old homeless prostitute. Suffering from depression and alcoholism, she did crochet work and sold flowers. Eventually she turned to prostitution despite her plain features, missing teeth and plump figure. She was found murdered on Saturday, September 8, 1888. Hey throat was cut and she had been very mutilated. Her abdomen had been cut open and the intestines had been removed and placed on her shoulder. The contents of the pelvis including her female organs and the bladder had been removed. No trace of these parts was found. The incisions were cleanly cut, the work obviously of an expert who had knowledge of anatomy and physiology
Much is unknown about the Zodiac killer, but given what is known about serial killers in general, this man was probably born between 1938 and 1943. That would make his age between 25 and 30 years old at the time of his first murder in Vallejo, California, in 1968. Also, that age estimate works with witness statements and it's supported by Zodiac's references to his victims in younger terms in his letters of 1969. Zodiac wasn't an attractive character from what we know. He may have had to wear glasses throughout his youth and his facial features weren't all that pleasing. So overall he may have been unpopular as a young boy and spent a good deal of time alone. It seems as though rejection is a big issue for Zodiac. No one knows anything about the Zodiac's parents but it wouldn't be ridiculous to say that there was domestic violence, broken relationships with parents or guardians, and maybe even a physical or sexual abuse in the household. Considering the adult outcome, Zodiac would have turned out to be an angry, withdrawn, loner, whose adolescence just could have been filled with fantasies and irrationality.
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.
The nurse-patient relationship is one that is built on a mutual trust and respect that fosters hope and assists in a harmonious healing process. A nurse has the professional duty to the patient to provide physical, emotional, and spiritual care to avoid injury. Any negligence in rendering care to the patient is direct disregard and results in malpractice. This is the crux of the problem with Nurse Ratched. In One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Nurse Ratched is guilty of malpractice due to the cruel medical treatments she practiced, mental anguish inflicted by her on the patients, as well as the undue authority she had in the hospital that she consistently misused.
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?