Spanish retirement home guard gets 127-year sentence for murders

Agence France-Presse

June 21, 2013

A security guard at a Spanish retirement home was sentenced to 127 years in prison Friday for killing 11 elderly residents, three of whom he forced to drink bleach.

Joan Vila Dilme, dubbed "the angel of death," was found guilty of the crimes on June 12 by a unanimous jury decision at a court hearing in the northeastern town of Girona in Spain's northeastern Catalonia region.

The court on Friday sentenced Dilme to 127 years behind bars but specified that under Spanish law he can serve a maximum of 40 years in jail.

The 47-year-old defendant, employed at the La Caritat home in Olot in Catalonia, was arrested in October 2010 after the death of an 85-year-old woman in a local hospital.

He later confessed to her murder, saying he had made her drink bleach, along with the killings of two other elderly people, which he said were carried out in order to "end their suffering."

Eight other murders, committed between August 2009 and October 2010, later came to light, with the victims given overdoses of insulin or various fatal pharmaceutical cocktails in a case that has stirred high emotions in the country.

Prosecutors had asked for a 194-year jail term.

The defense lawyer said his client suffered mental problems but the jury found no extenuating circumstances.

Spain's 'angel of death' found guilty in 11 nursing home killings

By Anne Sewell - DigitalJournal.com

June 12, 2013

Girona - Joan Vila Dilme, a security guard at a Spanish retirement home, has been found guilty of the killing of eleven elderly residents, which, according to him, was to "end their suffering." Prosecutors are looking at a 194-year sentence for his crimes.

Dilme, 45, worked at the La Caritat home in Olot in the Catalunya region of Spain. He was arrested in October 2010 after the death of an 85-year-old woman in a local hospital.

He later confessed to her murder, saying that he forced her to drink bleach, and also confessed to the killings of two other elderly people. However, these were not isolated incidents, as he was found to have killed a total of eleven elderly residents of the home.

According to Skynews he forced three of the elderly residents to drink bleach, but with the eight other murders, which occurred between August 2009 and October 2010, Dilme gave the victims overdoses of insulin or other fatal pharmaceutical cocktails to "end their suffering."

Dubbed "the angel of death," Dilme was found guilty by a unanimous jury decision at a court hearing in Girona, Spain.

According to Dilme's defense lawyer, his client suffered mental problems. However, the jury found no extenuating circumstances.

The case has stirred high emotions in the country and prosecutors are seeking a 194-year jail term. Sentencing will take place later.

Olot care-home killer found guilty of 11 murders

A jury in Girona on Tuesday handed down 11 guilty verdicts against a former worker at a residential care home who was charged with murdering elderly patients by forcing them to drink toxic substances such as bleach.

Joan Vila, who is known as the “porter of Olot,” was not only aware of what he was doing but had also carefully covered up the murders of his 11 victims, prosecutor Enrique Barata told jurors. The crimes have become known as the worst serial killing spree in Spain in recent decades.

The 47-year-old Vila, who at first faked that he was suffering from mental illness, confessed to the killings. At the beginning of his 15-day trial, Olot explained that he killed the patients “to ease their sufferings.”

But last Friday he said: “I just want to say that I am sorry for what I did and for allowing it to come to this extreme; I don’t want to say anything else.”

Vila worked for five years at the La Caritat convalescent home in Olot, Girona, where he committed his crimes. Investigators only became suspicious when an 85-year-old woman, Paquita Gironès, was transferred to hospital in agony after Vila had given her an acid substance to drink.

According to his co-workers, Vila and the woman hated each other.

Prosecutors are asking for a 194-year sentence for Vila, while his defense lawyers, who argued their client was mentally ill, have asked for a 20-year probationary period.

Olot care-home killer is “a woman trapped in a man’s body”

By Antia Castedo and Rebeca Carranco - Elpais.com

June 5, 2013

When police arrested Joan Vila Dilmé in 2010, he broke down as he confessed to killing 11 elderly residents at a care home in Olot, Girona province. What subsequently emerged was a macabre case of sustained abuse that surprised those who knew Vila. Many of them have given evidence in the trial of the “Porter of Olot” three years later.

What residents of the small town did not know about Vila is what defense lawyers plan to use in their case: “He feels like a woman trapped in a man’s body,” said psychologists Miguel Soria and Lluis Borrás after Vila revealed his homosexuality and admitted to “wearing my mother’s heels and clothes around the house when I was young.” Vila also said he suffers from manic depression and has been examined by psychiatrists while in custody.

On the day of his arrest, October 18, Vila admitted killing Paquita Gironés, 85, by forcing her to drink a descaling agent in her room at La Caritat nursing home. She was his final victim: the day before his arrest, María Dolors Costa went to visit her aunt and found her “left cheek black and burned; her eyes wide, black and burned,” she told the court on Monday. When a doctor asked if she wanted her aunt sedated, she replied: “morphine.”

“I shook his hand and thanked him. It was as though I was thanking him for what he had done,” Costa said. The majority of the victims’ families recall how Vila, 47, had been gentle and caring with his charges and consoled their families.

Vila told police that he had killed his first eight victims with either overdoses of insulin or a lethal cocktail of psychotropic drugs. The final three suffered agonizing deaths after they were forced to drink bleach or other corrosive fluids. However, it was not until Gironés was taken to Sant Jaume hospital in Girona that suspicions were aroused. “It looked like there had been a fight,” said Doctor Josefina Felisart, who examined her, finding burns on her chest and face. The doctor did not sign off the death as resulting from natural causes.

But the resident doctor at La Caritat, María Elena Trasserras, certified that seven of Vila’s victims had died from natural causes, as in the case of Montserrat Canalias, 96. “I didn’t have a car to get there,” Trasserras testified on Wednesday to explain why the body was not examined. She recorded “multi-organ failure” in her report. Vila confessed three months after her death that he had administered a lethal dose of barbiturates.

Trasserras, who has not been charged with a crime, said the process for certifying deaths at La Caritat was simply to check for vital signs and revise their medical records. “A young person dying suddenly might be surprising but in the elderly it is expected,” she told the court. Not even in the case of 80-year-old Carmen Vilanova, her sister-in-law’s grandmother, who had an apparent thrombosis on her inner thigh, did the doctor investigate further. “Natural causes,” was again noted on Vilanova’s records.

Vilanova’s husband, Vila’s next-door neighbor, also appeared this week as a witness. “He killed her,” he said. “Carme didn’t want to die. It’s a crime as far as I’m concerned.” The trial continues.

Care home worker admits to murdering 11 patients using bleach and drugs 'to end their suffering'

DailyMail.co.uk

December 1, 2010

A worker at a care home in northern Spain has admitted to killing 11 residents over a period of 14 months – eight more than had originally been thought.

Joan Vila was arrested in October when he said that he had killed three of the residents ' to end their suffering' – but confessed to murdering eight more in court yesterday.

The 45-year-old said that he used bleach to poison the victims, or gave them an overdose of insulin or drugs at the La Caritat home in the town of Olot.

Mr Vila’s confession came 10 days after a judge ordered the eight bodies exhumed as part of an investigation into suspicious deaths at the home.

The police were only alerted last month when doctors reported finding burns to the mouth and throat of an 85-year-old woman, who died.

The worker then confessed he had murdered the woman and two other patients by forcing them to drink bleach.

And yesterday Mr Vila told a judge he had killed another six with a mix of drugs and two from an overdose of insulin, local paper Efe reported.

The newspaper El Periodico quoted Mr Vila's lawyer, Carles Monguilod, as saying that the first killing was carried out in August 2009, another later that year and the other nine this year.

Mr Vila, who worked weekends at the home, is currently being held in the psychiatric ward of a prison.

Mr Monguilod said his client acted out of ‘compassion... because they were suffering and he wanted to give them some peace’.

Most of the patients were said to have been suffering terminal illnesses, including Alzheimer's, and had fevers or were disorientated.