The Crime Web: Arnfinn Nesset

Arnfinn Nesset

To look at Arnfinn you would not pick him as a savage killer. A balding, mild mannered nursing home administrator, Arnfinn is believed to have slaughtered up to 138 patients over a 20-year nursing career. In 1977 Arnfinn became the director of the Orkdale Valley Nursing Home. As he took his post, an unusual number of patients started dying.

No one suspected anything until 1981 when an employee noticed the purchase of a large amount of curacit, a derivative of the poisonous curare used as a muscle relaxant.

Police brought Arnfinn, the man in charge of purchasing the curacit, in for questioning. First he claimed he bought the drug to kill a pack of wild dogs around the nursing home. Then, inexplicably, he started confessing to killing 27 patients. At one point he exclaimed "I've killed so many I'm unable to remember them all." In 1983 the lethal administrator was convicted of 22 murders. He was handed a 21-year sentence, the maximum allowed by Norwegian law. Last we heard from him, Arfinn is back on the streets.

Norway's all-time record-holding killer was exposed in 1981 as a result

of journalistic curiosity. The Orkdal Valley Nursing Home was opened

during 1977, and its patients soon experienced a high rate of mortality.

Considering their ages, this was not especially unusual; in early 1981,

however, local journalists received a tip that hospital manager Arnfinn

Nesset had ordered large quantities of curacit, a derivative of curare,

the same poison used by South American Indians on the tips of their

hunting arrows. Under questioning, Nesset first claimed he purchased the

poison for use on a dog, later confessing to the murders of twenty-seven

patients between May 1977 and November 1980.

At forty-six, Nesset had already cinched the Scandinavian record for

mass murder, but he was not finished talking, yet. "I've killed so many

I'm unable to remember them all," he told authorities, prompting police

to request lists of patients who died in three institutions where Nesset

had worked since 1962. In all, detectives were left with a list of

sixty-two possible victims, but autopsies were useless, since curacit

becomes increasingly difficult to trace with passage of time.

 
Nesset offered a variety of motives for the murders mercy killing,

schizophrenia, simple morbid pleasure in the act itself - which led

defense attorneys to suggest that he was mentally unbalanced. Four

psychiatrists examined the balding, bespectacled killer, each

pronouncing him sane and fit for trial. Before his day in court, the

suspect proved his sanity by suddenly recanting his confessions, leaving

prosecutors in a quandry. He was finally charged with killing only 25 of

the established Orkdal Valley victims; five counts of forgery and

embezzlement were added, based upon the killer's misappropriation of

some $1,800 from his victims.

Nesset pleaded innocent on all counts when his trial opened in October

1982. Five months later, on March 11, 1983, jurors convicted him on 22

counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, plus five counts of

forgery and embezzlement. Nesset was acquitted on the three remaining

murder charges, but it scarcely mattered. Judges were unmoved by the

defense plea that Nesset considered himself a "demigod," holding the

power of life and death over his elderly patients. Upon conviction, he

drew the maximum sentence possible under Norwegian law: 21 years in

prison, with a possibility of ten more years preventive detention.

Bibliography: News articles from time of the trial

Written by Korey Sifuentes

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Original Written: January 30, 2002

Updated: January 30, 2002

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