Carroll Edward "Eddie" Cole (May 9, 1938 – December 6, 1985) was an American serial killer who was executed in Nevada in 1985 for killing two women by strangulation. He was also convicted of murdering three other women in Texas and is believed to have murdered up to thirty other people between 1947 and 1980.
Colin Campbell Norris (born 12 February 1976) is a Scottish serial killer and former nurse convicted for the murder of four elderly patients and attempted to murder another in two hospitals in Leeds, England in 2002.
Norris, who self-admittedly disliked elderly patients and had previously stolen hospital drugs, was the only person on duty when all the five patients inexplicably fell into sudden hypoglycaemic comas, despite the non-diabetic women only being in minor injury wards with merely broken hips. Suspicions were raised when Norris predicted that healthy Ethel Hall would die at 5:15 am one night, which is when she fell into a catastrophic arrest, and tests revealed that she had been injected with an extremely high level of man-made insulin. Insulin was missing from the hospital fridge and Norris had last accessed it, only half an hour before Hall fell unconscious.
Subsequent investigations would find that the unnatural hypoglycaemic attacks followed him when he was transferred to a second hospital, and hospital records revealed that only he could not be eliminated as a suspect. Detectives believed that Norris was responsible for up to six other suspicious deaths where only he was always present, but a lack of post mortem evidence and other factors meant that investigators and the Crown Prosecution Service could not pursue convictions for these deaths. The murder inquiry was led by Chris Gregg and the investigation was praised for its thoroughness.
Doubts were later raised about his conviction by, among others, Professor Vincent Marks, an expert on insulin poisoning, who concluded from his own studies that there was a 1 in 10 chance that each patient's arrest could have happened naturally. However, others have pointed out that C-peptides are produced in hypoglycaemic attacks caused by insulin produced naturally in the body, and these were not detected in any of the blood tests of the victims, indicating that the insulin had been introduced to their bodies externally and artificially. Norris lost an appeal against his conviction in 2009. In February 2021 the Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the case back to the Court of Appeal.
Norris is believed to have been inspired by Jessie McTavish, a fellow Scottish nurse who was convicted of murdering a patient with insulin in 1974 before having her conviction quashed in 1975. The incident had happened at Ruchill Hospital in Glasgow, less than a mile from where Norris grew up. Shortly before he qualified as a nurse he had learned about McTavish.
Gary Lee Sampson (September 29, 1959 – December 21, 2021) was an American bank robber and later spree killer who killed three people and was sentenced to death by a federal jury in Massachusetts.
During three days in 2001, Sampson killed three strangers – retiree Philip McCloskey in Marshfield, Massachusetts, college student Jonathan Rizzo in Abington, Massachusetts, and Robert Whitney in Meredith, New Hampshire. He also attempted to kill a fourth victim and stranger, William Gregory, in Plymouth, Vermont. Sampson killed McCloskey and Rizzo after they picked him up hitch-hiking, stabbing them to death. Shortly after that he strangled Whitney. Sampson pleaded guilty to the three killings on September 9, 2003, and was sentenced to death on December 23, 2003, by a federal jury in Massachusetts. He received the death penalty for the two Massachusetts killings, and a life sentence for the New Hampshire case.After Sampson pleaded guilty, a federal jury decided whether he should be sentenced to death or life in prison. The defense introduced mental health experts to testify that Sampson had dyslexia as a child, had bipolar disorder, and "suffered from a significant mental impairment" during the killings. A psychiatrist called by the government testified that Sampson did not have any mitigating mental impairment; he was intelligent but violent and deeply antisocial, with antisocial personality disorder. The jury of 12 unanimously returned a sentence of death.
In 2011, Sampson's death sentence was thrown out due to juror misconduct, and he was scheduled for a second sentencing trial on September 16, 2015. He was again sentenced to death on January 9, 2017. He died in 2021 at the age of 62, presumably from end stage liver disease.
Edgar Herbert Smith Jr. (1934 – 2017) was an American convicted murderer sentenced to death for his 1957 killing of 15-year-old Victoria Ann Zielinski in Ramsey, New Jersey. On death row, Smith began corresponding with conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr., and gradually persuaded Buckley that he was innocent. With the help of an elite legal team retained by Buckley, Smith litigated his conviction through multiple court hearings and wrote a book proclaiming his innocence. In 1971, a federal judge vacated Smith's conviction and ordered a retrial. Smith then took a plea deal to time-served, resulting in his 1971 release. Five years later, Smith abducted and tried to kill another woman in San Diego, California. The victim survived and testified against him in court. During that proceeding Smith admitted killing Zielinski in 1957. He was sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2017 at age 83.