Angels of Death. Emily Webb
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.
Roger Dean
- Nursing Home Killer -
I’m Roger. I’m one of the nurses and just, there was a fire and I just quickly just did what I can, get everyone out and the smoke is just overwhelming. But, you know, we got a lot of people out, so that’s the main thing.
These were the words of registered nurse Roger Dean, 35, to a television reporter soon after a fire ripped through the Quakers Hill Nursing Home in Sydney in the early hours of 18 November 2011.
The images of shocked, elderly residents – their faces smudged with ash – were distressing. The residents lay on ambulance stretchers, scared, wide eyes peering from behind oxygen masks and the layers of blankets that covered their fragile bodies.
Nurse Dean, who had only worked at the nursing home for two months, sat in a wheelchair as paramedics treated him with oxygen. Photos taken by the media throng showed Dean looking blankly at the scene from his wheelchair, his face obscured by an oxygen mask.
Dean had been a registered nurse since 1997 and had a decade of experience working within health facilities managed by