Nursing Home Murders: Case Reminiscent of ‘Deacon of Death’

Ivo Poppe killed his mother, his father-in-law and two great-uncles, and a patient in the Sint-Joris Hospital in Menen. Poppe was 22 when he performed his first illegal euthanasia on his 79-year-old uncle Maurice. As a nurse in training, he choked his uncle with a pillow. He later made other interventions by injecting air into the veins.

“Relieve Their Suffering”

The facts came to light when the accused himself told a psychiatrist at the end of 2013 that he had actively euthanized dozens of people. The court in Kortrijk launched an investigation, after which Ivo Poppe ended up in jail in May 2014 on suspicion of a whole series of murders, about twenty between 1978 and 2011. He always claimed that he wanted to put those people out of their misery.

Ivo Poppe was sentenced to 27 years in prison at his assize trial. There could be no question of euthanasia, the jury ruled. “It is clear that the man felt powerful because of those actions. They are motivated by a sense of power, not by the thought of releasing someone from unbearable suffering. This is especially evident in the way he killed the victims,” ​​he said at the time.

Today Ivo Poppe is still in prison.