Death by insulin

Learn Something New Every Day – (Lecture 11) Forensic Toxicology

A British nurse killed his pregnant wife by overdosing her on insulin and then putting her in the bath.

He had bragged to colleagues for years that insulin overdose would be the perfect way to commit murder because it is so quickly cleared from the body by metabolism. So he dosed her up and then (allegedly) put her in the bath unconscious where she subsequently drowned. But he made a series of mistakes including throwing her sweat-drenched pyjamas into the laundry hamper for investigators to find (the sweat subsequently tested SKY HIGH for insulin). He also injected her on the buttocks (which bruise easily and made the injection marks easier to find) and then put her in the bath. Had he left her in bed, the bruising from dying on her back (and therefore lying on her buttocks) might have disguised the injection marks.

But the big oops was that he seems to have completely forgotten that a dead body doesn’t metabolise, so all that insulin was preserved in her body like a time capsule instead of being purged into non-existence.

Dumbass. 

Double-murdering dumbass.

‘Trails of Evidence: How Forensic Science Works” is a The Great Courses DVD lecture series