True Crime with Kendall Rae - The Disturbing Case Of Rogue Nurse Ben Geen

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

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$60,000 price is for a thousand square foot to bedroom to Bath Barn, D'Ochelle to be built on purchase-slotted Buck Ridge, an equal-housing opportunity. Hey guys and welcome back to my channel. So for today's video, we are going to be talking about a very interesting case. This was requested by you guys. It came into my request inbox and when I started looking into it, I was really shook because in my personal experience, nurses are some of the most wonderful people on the planet, the ones that I have experienced. A lot of you know that I have struggled with my health in the last couple of years, and

this year I was diagnosed with reactivated Epstein Bar virus or chronic mono, and I've been getting weekly treatments for that, so I see nurses every week, and I trust them so much the nurses I see. I wish they were my friends in real life. And since I've had such positive experiences with nurses myself, it's really weird to me hearing about a case like this, about a rogue nurse or a doctor, there are many out there

and how they have harmed or killed the people that they are supposed to be caring for. And like I said, there are many other cases like this, many nurses, many doctors. So give this video a thumbs up if you want to see me cover more of those cases because I find all this really interesting. But today we're going to be talking about Ben Gehn. So it all started in December of 2003 and went to February of 2004 at a hospital in England. And I'm not going to be able to pronounce the name of this. So, where's Eleanor Neal when you need her?

But this all happened at the Horton General Hospital in Bambury, which is in Oxfordshire, England. During this three-month period, the hospital had several patients who were non-critical go into respiratory failure and almost die. And these people had no previous signs of breathing problems. This was a very unexplained and unusual thing that was happening and the hospital staff was trying to make sense of how it could be happening

to multiple people. And not only that, it was all happening in one department, the accident and emergency department. Now, when the hospital first realized this was going on, no one had died yet, but they noticed that something was going on and that a lot of people were coming close to death and being resuscitated. So, they decided to start an internal investigation. And as soon as they did that, it just continued.

And in a matter of weeks, dozens of patients were going into unexplained respiratory arrest. Doctors and nurses in the department were absolutely baffled. Patients were coming in for really normal things like, you know, stitches or a stomach issue, and then suddenly they couldn't breathe. Also, a lot of patients that were recovering from surgery is trying to get better. We're suddenly declining in the middle of their recovery. And the nurses and doctors working there could not figure out what was going on, but no one had ever seen anything like this and they knew there had to be more. So it wasn't long until they started blaming each other. So pretty much as soon as the hospital started their investigation, they realized that there was a nurse named Ben Gein, who happened to be working with

all of the patients who had sudden respiratory arrest. Ben was born in 1980 and he grew up in Bambore. And then had also been in the military. He had been the lieutenant in the territorial army. And then was definitely a thrill seeker. He loved working out where the combat was going on. He loved his time working in the army. His parents said that he always liked challenges, that he liked to figure things out.

And he seemed to work good under pressure and enjoy being under pressure. He's also very smart, and he needed a lot to keep him entertained and keep his interest. And he actually started as a care assistant, but in late 2003, he was working as a trainee casualty nurse at Horton General Hospital. And most of the time, Ben was working with non-critical patients, and he definitely saw this job as kind of boring, especially compared to working in combat. Ben felt like he needed the adrenaline rush of saving lives, and he also wanted to be it came to medicine. But his colleagues all said that he seemed to put on an act about how much he actually knew. He had the confidence to seem like he knew more than he did, especially in critical situations. People around him said that he always was there to jump on more critical cases, was always willing to help,

and he was also obsessed with being at the hospital. He would pick up as many shifts as he could, and he seemed to always be there when the most serious situations went down. As soon as someone wasn't able to breathe, this weird look of joy would come across his face. A few colleagues even started calling him Ben Litt after Beverly Litt, who was an English nurse

who murdered four children, tried to murder three more, and then seriously harmed another six. Bev had 13 victims in total, and the staff was actually starting to think that maybe Ben was trying to beat her record. Some colleagues thought it was so obvious that they even confronted Ben about it,

but he would always have an excuse. He would assure them that he was just eager to help, that he just happened to be there when things went wrong, and that he just thrived working on critical cases because he loved what he did and loved saving lives. He's just passionate about his job. Some of the other nurses immediately brought up hero syndrome, which is a well-known thing among the medical community. Some people thrive a little too much on feeling like they are saving the day, and some people will go as far as to create emergency situations so that they can be the hero.

Do these types of people maybe crave that adrenaline rush, that saving someone comes with, or is it all about the praise that you would get for saving somebody? And to Ben, it was exciting not only to save someone, but also to nearly kill them. It's kind of a two-in-one for him. So clearly, Ben was administering drugs to nearly kill them. It's kind of a two-in-one for him. So clearly Ben was administering drugs to cause respiratory arrest, and I will go over some of the specific cases in a minute.

But there are several drugs that can have this effect on a patient when they're administered into high of the dose or just incorrectly. This includes insulin, muscle relaxants, and sedatives. So at this point, all these weird cases are happening, but no one has died yet. Ben has saved everybody. A lot of people are already starting to point fingers at Ben, but a lot of the hospital staff is defending Ben at this point. A lot of other nurses said he was a dedicated nurse

who loved his patients and would never harm them. And of course, they pointed out that he had saved so many people. Plus, they said patients really liked Ben out that he had saved so many people. Plus they said patients really liked Ben, that he was very charismatic with them, got along with people well. The nurses said people just felt comfortable with Ben, that they felt like they could trust him. One of those patients, for example, was Harold Boss, who's a 65 year old man who came in with a case of emphysema. This is a chronic lung disease that causes severe breathing problems,

and so he came in short of breath, struggling to breathe, but, you know, not on the verge of death or anything like that. He had talked to his physician and his physician had sent him over to the hospital for some tests. At the time, Ben was the nurse attending, so of course, he jumped right into this one. So, Harold had a really bad cough going on and it just kept getting worse, and he was really having trouble getting air. And anyone with medical training would know that this person needs artificial respiration immediately. Apparently this is a pretty common thing with emphysema patients. It's a pretty routine way to handle this type of patient. So Ben started working on him and within minutes of him treating Harold, Harold just collapsed

and could not breathe at all. Luckily they were able to quickly resuscitate him and save his life so they could send him home and they did, but after he left, hospital staff was really confused because this did not make any sense. He came in for something so routine, he was doing really well and then within minutes he almost died. And of course, they're already suss of Ben, so the fact that he was the one working on him just was very concerning to a lot of the nurses.

Soon after that, another patient named David Long came in. He was a 53-year-old and pretty good health. But of course, in just a few minutes with Ben, he stopped breathing suddenly. Then there was David Nelson, a 77-year-old patient with pretty good health for his age, stopped breathing within a few minutes of being in the care of Ben King. So clearly, there's a pattern here. So with David Nelson, they decided to test his blood to see if they could figure out what exactly had happened. This time, they uncovered traces of a sedative called medazelam in his system, which had not been prescribed to him. Then there was

also Robert Robinson. He was a 51-year-old man who came into the hospital because he had taken a bunch of painkillers and drank a bottle of gin. Obviously, he was in pretty rough shape from that, but after a few minutes of being with Ben, he stopped breathing completely. Later, they interviewed him about this experience, and he said that it was really weird. He remembers being in the hospital and he remembers talking to Ben and that it was hard to describe exactly what Ben had done, but he was just relieved that it was over. And all these people were lucky enough to survive Ben. One of the most credible witnesses is Hurleyne Probert. She's a 67-year-old retired nurse who had worked at the same hospital.

She came into the hospital one day with a dislocated shoulder. No other medical complaints, no other issues. At one point, the doctor left her alone, so Ben came in to see if he could help. And she told him that she was in a ton of pain and asked when the doctor would be coming back. And that's when Ben noticed that she was prescribed morphine for her pain by the doctor, so he offered to administer it for her. Now of course, when you are using an IV to administer drugs, this can be very dangerous

because you are injecting something directly into someone's bloodstream and it can affect them very quickly. So all her lean remembers is Ben saying, I'm going to flush out your drip, and then within seconds she was unconscious. Just like the other patients, she went into respiratory rest and doctors all ran in and some of them served yelling at Ben immediately, demanding to know what had happened. Because how did this keep happening to so many patients? But Ben was able to blame it on the pain medication that it was respiratory rest due to the morphine. After this, another 22-year-old patient came in, completely healthy, suddenly went into respiratory arrest. Again, it was saved by

Ben in the nick of time. So obviously there's a pattern here. Other people in the hospital are catching on and starting to freak out. Even Ben is starting to joke around to colleagues about how he must be jinxed. Then there is a patient named John Thornburn who Benreated, he was in his 60s and he didn't have any serious issues going on, but after he was treated by Ben, he fell into a coma. He was in the coma for six days, but never fully recovered,

and he died in 2009. Another patient that Ben killed was named Anthony Bateman. He was a 67 year old man from Bambury. He came into the hospital for something pretty routine. It's not disclosed what exactly he went in for, but suddenly he had respiratory failure and died. And that was on June 6, 2004. The next patient to die was David Onley, who was a 77 year old diabetic with a serious heart condition. He came into the hospital on June 21, 2004, was put on an insulin drip, which is very standard procedure for people with diabetes, and he did fine on that

for hours with the night shift nurse, and she noted that he was completely fine when she handed him off to the day shift nurse, who of course was Ben Geen. Ben took over, gave Dave some medication, and within 35 minutes he was in full respiratory arrest. Members of the medical staff were able to revive him long enough for him to kind of explain what had happened, but unfortunately he did pass away. Immediately some of the nurses thought that Dave had been given medazzle him. Now this is normally used to calm patients down. It's a sedative, but Dave was not showing any signs that he needed to calm down. He was completely cool, relaxed, and of course before Ben gave him his medication, he had no signs of breathing problems.

Muscle relaxants can be extremely dangerous when given incorrectly. They slow down your respiratory rate a little, but if you're given too much, they slow down a lot, and this can cause respiratory arrest. So a lot of the hospital staff were very suspicious of Ben at this point. I mean, he always seems to be there when someone can't breathe and he knows exactly what to do to fix it. And he seems to be enjoying it. I mean, he gets that weird look on his face, they're definitely starting to put the pieces

together. But there was not much they can do because they didn't have proof. That is until Timothy Stubbs came in. Timothy Stubbs was admitted to the hospital with stomach pain and was sent to the intensive care unit. When his urine was tested, he had multiple drugs in his system that he had not been prescribed. And of course, they saw a sedative in there, and it was medazolim, exactly what some of the nurses thought Ben was giving his patients.

They also had discovered that Timothy Stubb had Verconium in his system as well. When they discovered that Timothy Stubb's had this medication in his system, they immediately called a meeting for over 30 staff members to come together and look at the case. So they sat down and tried to explore every possible scenario for how a patient could have ended up with these two medications just in their system and they couldn't come up with anything. Other than someone purposely did this. So they obviously brought this up with the head of the hospital and this is when they clamped down on Ben. At this point they noted 15 patients who had recovered from sudden respiratory rest while being

treated by Ben and there were also two patients who had not recovered. So 17 people total, and this is just so far. And now that they had proved that one patient had been purposely given incorrect medication, they were able to involve the police. So the official investigation began on February 6th of 2004. It involved 40 officers who spent every waking moment in that hospital, talking to other staff, talking to patients, trying to see if they could get an idea

of who Ben really was. Is he the guy that's gonna be secretly trying to kill people for thrill? Now, when the investigation first started, Ben had no idea. And anyone who had gone to the police or to the hospital staff was keeping it quiet. And he actually stayed that weekend in the hospital flat

attached to the building with his girlfriend. So since the detectives couldn't understand exactly what had happened since they're not doctors, they had to work very closely with the medical staff to try to get an idea of what was going on. The police went through everybody's records that worked in that hospital. And they only came to one conclusion

about who could have done this and it was Ben Geen. So only a few days later on February 9th, 2004, police decided to make the move. It was Monday morning, Ben and his girlfriend were leaving their flat, heading off to work, and Ben just casually reached us down in his pocket. And he realizes that he accidentally had a syringe from the day before from the hospital, which is a big no-no. He told his girlfriend, she said it wasn't a big deal, just don't worry about it,

but Ben was very nervous about having this on hand. But she told him it was no big deal, and he could just drop it off in one of those syringe bins at the hospital. You guys don't know I'm talking about that you put hazardous syringes in, but as they're walking up to the hospital, Ben notices that police are waiting at the doors looking at him.

So Ben decides to empty the syringe into his pocket. Genius. So Ben was arrested right there, and of course they searched his pockets, they found the syringe, it was empty, and when they asked him why he had it and what it was, he refused to say what was in it, but he said that he had it for personal use. After they tested it, though, they found out that it was a vekyronium that was in the syringe in his jacket. Now technically, Ben had not broken any rules by bringing the syringe home because he did

live on the medical campus. Plus, it wasn't that unusual, of course, for medical staff to accidentally bring things home in their pockets. It does happen. But Ben panicking so much when he saw the police and emptying the syringe, made them think that he was just on edge in general because of what he was doing. At this point, the police were sure

that they had the right guy. They had so many witnesses, so many people in the hospital said that this was going on. He was formally accused of two murders and inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent on 16 patients and Ben denied all of it. And during clushing, Ben told the police that he found a lot of medical cases boring, most of the ones that he worked on, and he found more critical cases to be more interesting.

And as they talked with him, it really seemed like it was coming down to critical patients equal higher chance of death. Of course, Ben tried to make his money excuses as he could, and he used the tactic of trying to confuse them with Medical jargon try to talk about their level But because they had so much of the medical staff working with them He was not able to pull that off at all and Ben said that it was just by chance that all of these strange Circumstances were happening during his shifts just in the last couple of months He tried to say that you know, he was taking on more shifts than any other nurse,

so he was just there all the time, so his chances were higher of coming across critical cases. Ben's defense team tried to make the argument that the investigation had only lasted a weekend before he was arrested, but it made sense because there was proof, and, you know, you have to take swift action in a medical case like this. They tried to make the argument that the police didn't even have time to consider any other options, any other suspects. But there was not much that they could say at the end of the day because statistically it did not make sense for Ben to have that many cases of respiratory arrest all in a row

in a three month period while he happens to be working, it did not make sense. But of course, this would still be hard for them to prove. When you're in pain, you're more willing to consent to any type of medication, right? Patients develop a close trusting relationship with their nurse. You assume that anything they're going to give you is going to help you. So he was attacking his victims when they're at their most vulnerable. So finally, Ben Geen was tried at the Oxford Crown Court. And basically, it was argued that Ben purposely caused respiratory issues for several of his patients killing two of them. They argued that Ben enjoyed to almost kill people and enjoyed bringing them back. And there were plenty of cases to look at, plenty of evidence here. So this was not hard for the jury,

even though the defense did try to argue that Ben was this dedicated nurse who just loved his job and he shouldn't be punished. The jury did not buy that at all. And on April 18th, 2006, the jury found Ben guilty of the two murder charges and intentionally inflicting grievous bodily harm to 15 patients. On May 9th, 2006, Ben, who was 25 years old at the time, was given 17 life sentences

with the recommendation of at least 30 years in prison before being considered for possible parole. And in court, Ben still claims that he's innocent and vows to appeal his conviction. His lawyer tried to argue that there was a major miscarriage of justice. In 2009, he hired a whole new legal team to work on his conviction. His lawyer tried to argue that there was a major miscarriage of justice. In 2009, he hired a whole new legal team to work on his case, and lawyers and volunteers from the London Innocence Project actually reviewed this case. And this is pretty interesting, guys. The founder and chair Mark McDonald saw the evidence against Ben, and he said that it was circumstantial and manipulated to fit the theory of the investigators. The defense

team called in Professor Jane Hutin, who's a medical statistician, and she said that there was an unusual pattern of illness with Ben's patients. But she said that statistical modeling wasn't used to establish this pattern so the evidence was of no value. Dr. Mark Heath, who was a highly respected anesthesiologist, said that the muscle relaxants that Ben supposedly had used in seven of the cases wouldn't have caused the patients to just collapse. He explained that the muscle relaxants would cause patients to be paralyzed while fully conscious, not make them pass out. And they also argued that one of the patients that the hospital had accused Ben of killing

Mr. Onley actually had a history of alcohol abuse and that that caused his death. But the appeal was rejected in November of 2009. It was not enough strong evidence to prove Ben was innocent. But in February of 2010, they tried again. And they actually took the case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which is an independent organization that investigates suspected miscarriages in court proceedings. But after they looked at Ben's case, they declined to take it. So I think that tells you a lot. But what's really interesting is the London Innocence Project stood by Ben and they actually started a public campaign

in defense of Ben. But as of now, when I'm recording this, Ben is still behind bars and he will likely be there until at least 2035. And this case is fairly controversial. Some people think the evidence around Ben is just circumstantial and that it's not possible to prove 100% that he did it. Others think that it's pretty obvious

and the fact that most of the medical staff was so sure that he was up to something says a lot. A lot of people believe in nurses and tuition. Some of these nurses were calling this out in the beginning. Now, Ben's family stands by him to this day. They think that he was wrongly convicted. They think that he is victim of a witch hunt by the public and by the hospital.

And they basically think that things had gone wrong at the hospital several times and then you'd escape goat and they blamed it all on Ben. And just before Ben's trial, everything was blowing up with Dr. Death, which let me know if you guys want a video on that in the future But that's a big case. But if you're familiar with that, it's another doctor who murdered a lot of people and Ben's family believes that Ben's case was kind of Tarnish by Dr. Deaths. This is his sister Haley and she's now a lawyer who says that we won't stop until we get justice for Ben

But then on the other hand, the family members of the victims of Ben are very upset by everything, obviously, and hoping that he remains behind bars. They do not see him as innocent. They think that their family members were murdered while on the hospital, and so of course, they wanna make sure that they get the justice that they deserve. That is gonna be it for me today, guys.

Thank you for joining me for another episode. And make sure you follow the show on Spotify and Apple Podcast. It really does help me out. If you want to watch the video version of this show, you can find it on my YouTube channel, which will be linked, or you can just search Kendall Ray. I will be back with another episode soon, but until then, stay safe out there.

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