ABSTRACT
Much of the killing committed by medical murderers is a covert operation, as discussed in Chapter 5, thus necessitating either eyewitnesses or other evidence. In many cases of abuse or medical murder, coworkers acting as whistle-blowers have aided investigations. As Kent and Walsh (2004) noted, “When withheld care, smothering or disconnected equipment is involved, it is impossible to establish an element of proof without witnesses. Few crime laboratories can run the variety of tests necessary to screen for all those potentially toxic substances that are readily available to healthcare workers. Without informants or whistle-blowers, successful prosecutions can be highly expensive and very di®cult to obtain.”
