Belgian ‘deacon of death’ killed while stressed by house renovation: media

Poppe has been dubbed the “Deacon of Death” by Belgian media. © BELGA/AFP/File / KURT DESPLENTER

Belgian ‘deacon of death’ killed while stressed by house renovation: media

Brussels, Belgium, Jan 23 – A Belgian former nurse and Roman Catholic deacon killed several patients because he was stressed out by personal difficulties including renovations on his house, investigators told his trial Tuesday.

Ivo Poppe, 61, who has been dubbed the “Deacon of Death” by Belgian media, confessed on the first day of his trial to killing up to 20 people.

Poppe either gave his victims at a clinic in Menin, near the French border, the tranquiliser valium or injected air into their veins to cause a fatal embolism.

“Between 10 and 20 — 20 maximum. That’s approximate but it’s around that number,” Poppe told the court in the scenic northern town of Bruges under initial questioning by the judge on Monday, according to transcripts in Belgian newspapers.

“I wanted to end their suffering, these people weren’t really living any more.”

The married father-of-three expressed regret for the way he carried out the killings, saying: “If it was now, I would call a palliative care team.”

But investigators said he had given a different explanation for his behaviour when asked about the year 1993, when several of the murders are believed to have taken place.

“At the time he was particularly stressed after an operation on his wife, his sister’s divorce, renovations on his house and his training to become a deacon,” one of the two investigators was quoted as saying by Belga news agency, without naming them.

The investigators probed a total of 65 suspicious deaths but “we don’t have any idea of the number” of his victims, the investigator added.

– Elderly victims –

Most of the victims were elderly people suffering from physical or psychological ailments at the clinic. Poppe worked there in the 1980s and 1990s but continued to act as a pastoral visitor until 2011 after he was ordained as a deacon.

But Poppe told investigators his victims also included his own mother, his step-father and two uncles.

He was first arrested in 2014 after authorities were told that he had confided in his psychiatrist that he had “euthanised dozens of people”.

The bearded, bespectacled Poppe, who appeared in court wearing a chunky cardigan and open-necked shirt, explained the context of his comments to the psychiatrist, whom he consulted on the advice of his wife.

“I wanted someone to help me with my nightmares, I really needed therapy. That’s why I talked about dozens of cases, it was deliberately exaggerated,” Poppe told the court on Monday.

The trial is scheduled to last two weeks. Poppe faces life in jail if convicted.

Belgium legalised euthanasia for adults in 2002 — after the period when most of Poppe’s alleged killings took place — although it has to be carried out under strictly controlled conditions.

In 2014 it extended the right to children so long as they are conscious and capable of making rational decisions.

Source: Capital FM KENYA