Читать книгу Angels of Death - Emily Webb - Страница 8

Judith “Charli” Darragh says her life fell apart after her mother Marie was murdered by a person who was meant to care for her.

Marie Darragh was 82 and living at St Andrews Aged Care in Ballina, New South Wales. Mrs Darragh had several health issues, however Charli said her mum was cognitively sharp and despite needing assistance with personal care and moving around, was a positive, cheerful woman.

On the night of 9 May 2014, Charli said her mother was in good spirits because her beloved Brisbane Broncos Rugby League team had won.

‘Mumma was an avid Broncos supporter, whoever they played I would back the other team and whichever one of us backed the losing team would have to buy the other a $2 scratchie card,’ Charli said in an email to the author.

Ringing her mother that night Charli told Marie she loved her “to the moon and back”, as she always ended their calls.

That was the last time.

Sometime overnight Marie fell into a coma and was unresponsive when staff found her the next morning.

Another woman, Isabella Spencer, was also found in a coma on the morning of 10 May 2014. Isabella had come to St Andrews after having a stroke that affected her mobility. She’d lived in Melbourne most of her life but was moved to Ballina, which was closer to family, including her brother Don Spencer.

She’d only lived at the facility for three months when she was murdered.

Registered nurse Megan Haines was on the shift from 9 to 10 May 2014 and was the only staff member on at St Andrews. This is not an unusual practice for aged care facilities. As a registered nurse (RN), she was responsible for the oversight and care of the elderly residents.

Haines was born in South Africa in 1967 and moved to Australia in 2000. Haines grew up mixed race amid the political regime of Apartheid. Her mother was white and her father was Indian and she felt her race caused her to be the victim of bullying at school and at home, saying her mother treated her two white siblings better than her.

A registered nurse in her birth country, Haines gained her registration as a nurse in Victoria in 2001 with the then Nurses Board of Victoria. Since 1 July 2010 nurses, as well as other health professionals, must be registered with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA). AHPRA is also responsible for the handling of complaints made against practitioners and ensures that the health field is regulated across the country. During the early 2000s she worked as a nurse in several facilities around Melbourne’s Eastern suburbs, including Caulfield, Box Hill and Ringwood.

Haines had not been working at St Andrews for long, just weeks, when she committed the double murder of Isabella and Marie.

‘I use to ring (Marie) every morning and she told me a new nurse had started Nite (sic) shift and she didn’t like her one bit,’ Charli wrote in an email to the author dated 2 August 2018.

‘Mum was a very good judge of character,’ Charli said.

‘At lunch the next day a few of the residents were talking amongst themselves after lunchtime of how mean this new nurse was, very ruff (sic) handling, pushing and shoving them to and from the toilet to their beds etc. calling them useless etc.’

On the night the women died, Haines, as the sole RN on shift, was the only one with access to the secure rooms where medication, including insulin, were stored. Her personalised swipe card enabled her to enter some of the rooms. The system had been damaged in a lightning strike so the records of who entered weren’t recorded. So it couldn’t be established immediately whose swipe card had been used but it could only have been a certain group of employees (registered nurses) who could gain entry, including Haines – and she was the only RN on shift that night.

When confronted with these facts, Haines claimed she didn’t know the pin code to one of the rooms that held medication and she had to ask some other staff who knew it, therefore trying to cast some doubt on the suspicions about her actions that night.

However it was later discovered in a stocktake that insulin ampoules found in a bin at the facility, which belonged to a male resident of the nursing home (the particular mix of insulin was only used for him), had been taken from the medication room by Haines. She’d slipped them into her pocket to use as her silent murder weapon.

As for motive, the night before the murders, the Director of Care at St Andrews, Wendy Turner spoke to Haines about complaints that had been made against her by three residents. They were serious and Ms Turner outlined the nature of these complaints. Ms Turner revealed the names of two of the women who’d made the complaints to Haines -– Marie Darragh and Marjorie Patterson.

According to court records Turner told Haines the complaints breached the terms of her employment and her professional practice standards. Haines was facing disciplinary action and was invited to a meeting the following week and Ms Turner told Haines she shouldn’t approach Marie or Marjorie to discuss the complaints, or enter either of their rooms to give them treatment unless she was accompanied by another staff member.

Marie had complained of an incident where she’d asked Haines for some medicated cream to be applied to her vagina and the nurse told her to cover up as she looked “disgusting”.

Another resident, Marjorie Patterson, 88, said that Haines handled her roughly when she was assisting Patterson back to bed after using the bathroom. Marjorie said that Haines’s handling of her caused her to injure her ankle, however Wendy Turner couldn’t see any signs of injury.

The last complaint was made by Isabella Spencer, (whose name was not revealed to Haines by Ms Turner), who’d asked for assistance to go to the toilet and Haines refused, dismissively telling her to just ‘piss in her (continence) pad’.

On the night of the murders Haines, trying not to arouse any suspicions, told a care worker not to bother checking on Isabella Spencer as she was asleep. This was no doubt to ensure that the morning staff would find her victim dead and assume she’d fallen ill overnight.

Most nurses will go through their whole careers and never have a serious complaint made against them. Haines’s career in Australia was under a cloud with several complaints in 2005, 2007 and 2008 that now, with hindsight, were ominous. She worked in various hospitals including Box Hill Hospital and Maroondah Hospital, part of Eastern Health in Melbourne. At both these hospitals Haines was the subject of complaints – one for failing to provide care for a patient and another about concerns that she’d threatened to access patient information.

In the case of the 2007 complaint at Box Hill Hospital the nurses’ board found she’d engaged in unprofessional conduct. The Maroondah Hospital complaint, also in 2007, about Haines’s threat via text messages to delve into patient’s records, took until the end of 2011 to come to a conclusion and she was found guilty of professional misconduct.

Further complaints followed that Haines had physically assaulted a patient at a medical facility in Caulfield.

In a precursor to what happened to the women at St Andrews in Ballina, Haines was suspected of intentionally drugging two women, on separate occasions, with insulin. There was also suspicion that Haines did so she could steal jewellery from patients, who would be unlikely to rouse.

Police investigated, even searching Haines’s home but did not find any of the jewellery she was alleged to have stolen. They did find some marijuana and Haines was charged with drug possession.

After the conclusion of the Maroondah Hospital investigation Haines was not stopped from nursing but told she would have to provide satisfactory employer reports every three months to the relevant regulatory authority (by this time, AHPRA). Haines had let her registration lapse while the investigation was underway and had to apply again to be allowed to practice as an RN.

With high suspicions about the incident at Ballina, police secured a warrant to monitor Haines’s phone calls and text messages for a period of time, starting two days after the two women died.

Between 12 May and 7 July detectives listened to 475 separate phone calls and reviewed 640 text messages.

‘Yesterday I went to the library, I went to the doctor; I came home and there’s like 10 coppers waiting to search my unit,’ Ms Haines told a man on the phone in a conversation that was played in court.

‘They didn’t find what they came for so they just took random crap,’ she continued.

‘What’s this in association with?,’ the man asked.

‘Apparently the patients were actually given wrong medication but they are looking for things that are like high schedule, Valium, Diazepam all these things.’

The man replied, ‘How were they given wrong medication?’

‘I don’t know. If he did tell me the whole story, which I don’t think so, I was in shock by then, holding my head. I can’t remember,’ Haines said.

It was actually her ex-partner who helped detectives build the murder case against Haines.

The couple got together in 2008 and back then Haines had revealed in a conversation with him of her knowledge of how you could commit the “perfect murder”.

Richard told her ‘There is no such thing as a perfect murder. It’s impossible’.

Haines replied: ‘Yes there is’.

In an interview with the Channel 7 program Sunday Night, the ex-partner revealed: ‘She said, “Easy, just inject them with insulin”. And I said, “Why? Why insulin” and she said “because when the body dies, it keeps assimilating the insulin and leaves no trace”.’

This conversation took place while the couple was watching a popular procedural crime show on television.

In a video police interview of surviving victim Marjorie Patterson, submitted as evidence, a detective asks her: ‘what do you remember of that night? What do you recall?’.

Ms Patterson replied: ‘I remember…whatever her name is…I can’t remember that…whoever she was came in and flashed a torch in me (sic) face and said “I’ve been told if you can’t sleep I have to give you Panadol”.’

She continued: ‘I said “don’t you give me those flat white ones that they use here ‘cos I can’t swallow them”. So she (Haines) flashed her torch into the bowl and said “there you are, they’re green and white ones”. And they were’.

Ms Patterson told the detective she was asleep ‘until she (Haines) flashed the light in my face’ when the nurse came into her room and spoke to her about the Panadol.

The detective asked: ‘Do you often get woken up to be given Panadol?’. ‘Never before,’ Ms Patterson replied.

Haines was arrested in the seaside hamlet of Seaspray, Victoria on 7 July 2014 and taken to New South Wales. She’d moved to the small coastal town days after she’d resigned from the Ballina nursing home, amid a cloud of complaints and suspicion.

Representing herself at her first hearing at Sydney’s Central Local Court, Haines applied for bail, saying she needed to be with her two children who ‘aren’t used to being separated from me’. Bail was denied with the police prosecutor, Vanessa Robichaux, telling the court that there was a high risk that Haines would try to flee back to South Africa with her children and had been trying to get the return of the family’s South African passports.

Her children, one in their teens and the other aged under 10 were placed in the care of the state in Victoria after her arrest in Seaspray.

Haines also has an adult daughter, and the younger two children now live with a former partner of Haines and reportedly have no contact with their mother.

As reported by AAP (9 July 2014) the Magistrate Les Mabbutt refused bail, stating Haines was an unacceptable risk of failing to turn up at further court dates and that she posed a danger to the community.

Her case was adjourned to Lismore Local Court, in New South Wales, however in October 2016 the trial had to be moved to Sydney. It was found that one of the jury members for the Lismore-based trial had a grandmother living at the St Andrews facility in Ballina. The judge dismissed this jury and then, with the next jury panelled, there was found to be connections with either the victims, their families or with witnesses called for the trial.

There were 15 applications from the jury panel in waiting to be discharged and the judge granted 12 of those for the reasons that they were:

‘...almost entirely associated with members of the jury panel knowing one or other of the witnesses, being a patient or attending the practice of one or other of the general practitioners who are to be called to give evidence, and working for or with a business conducted by the family of one of the deceased…’(R V Haines (No.2) [2016] NSWSC 1825).

The trial began in Sydney on 17 October 2016 and went for two-and-a-half weeks. The jury took four hours to find Haines guilty of two counts of murder. On 15 December Justice Garling sentenced her to 36 years, with a minimum of 27 years. Haines will be first eligible for parole in 2041.

In his sentencing remarks Justice Garling said her crimes were ‘...motivated by the offender’s selfish desire to avoid the inconvenience and consequences of the investigation into complaints made about her…’.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that in an affidavit submitted to the court, Haines said inmates at Silverwater Prison, where she was held, taunted her with the name “granny killer” and that she was in fear for her safety.

Victim Isabella Spencer’s brother Don told media outside the court after the sentencing: ‘I knew I’d lose a sister sooner or later but not under those circumstances’.

Meanwhile Charli Darragh honours her mother Marie’s memory by campaigning for better staff to patient ratios in aged care and security measures including CCTV in facilities to try to stop rogue nurses like Megan Haines from harming the vulnerable.

In Australia The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety started in October 2018, with the final report due in April 2020.