A British doctor has pleaded guilty to unsuccessfully trying to kill his mother’s partner with a fake COVID-19 vaccine, donning an audacious disguise and forging medical documents in the process.
Kwan, 53, admitted in a U.K. courtroom Monday he tried to kill Patrick O’Hara with a toxin that caused a “rare and life-threatening flesh-eating disease.” The attack happened at the victim’s Newcastle home on Jan. 22 and was following an inheritance dispute.
According to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), Kwan’s elaborate scheme started in November of last year, when he forged a letter to his victim, claiming that O’Hara’s age qualified him for an at-home visit from a nurse at the address he shared with Kwan’s mother.
“This was followed up by another letter, stating that a vaccine appointment with a member of a home nursing team had been made for him. The home nursing team was itself a work of fiction, created by Kwan to facilitate his scheme,” the CPS wrote in a press release.
When time for the vaccine appointment came, Kwan showed up in a disguise — a thick, dark wig placed over his own shorn hair, with a poker-straight fake moustache and beard to match.
Thomas Kwan in his elborate disguise.
Northumbria Police / Facebook
Prosecutor Peter Makepeace, reports Reuters, had told jurors on the first day of the trial, last Thursday: “Sometimes, occasionally perhaps, the truth really is stranger than fiction.”
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He said Kwan was concerned about his mother’s will, which provided that her house would be inherited by O’Hara if he was still alive when his mother died.
“Mr. Kwan used his encyclopedic knowledge of, and research into, poisons to carry out his plan,” Makepeace said.
“That plan was to disguise himself as a community nurse, attend Mr. O’Hara’s address, the home he shared with the defendant’s mother, and inject him with a dangerous poison under the pretext of administering a Covid booster injection.”
Makepeace said Kwan also used a vehicle with fake licence plates and disguised himself with head-to-toe protective clothing, tinted glasses and a surgical mask to visit the home in Newcastle.
“As I suspect, would any of us, Mr. O’Hara fell for it hook, line and sinker,” the prosecutor said.
The following day, O’Hara began to fall ill, experiencing pain and blistering in his arm that prompted him to go to hospital. It was there he was diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis and doctors cut away part of his arm. He spent several weeks recovering in intensive care.
The toxin Kwan injected into O’Hara is still not known, although prosecutors suspect it was a pesticide.
Christopher Atkinson of the CPS said Kwan had refused to identify the poison, “allowing the victim’s health to further deteriorate.”
“While the attempt on his victim’s life was thankfully unsuccessful, the effects were still catastrophic,” he said.
Within two days of the offence, Kwan was arrested. Police say they found a “poisoner’s handbook” and book on guidance for murder investigations downloaded onto his computer.
Kwan will face sentencing in the future.
— with files from Reuters and The Associated Press
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