Katariina Meri-Tuulia Pantila (born Katariina Hyttinen, first marriage Katariina Lönnqvist, divorced during the trial of poisonings. Second marriage in prison Katariina Pantila.) Born 1981 - died March 8, 2010) was a Finnish murderer and nurse.

Activities

In March 2007 Pantila, a nurse, gave a baby an injection of insulin at a family gathering. A few days later she murdered a mentally disabled patient she was caring for. She was apprehended, put on trial and convicted of the murder of the patient and the attempted murder of the baby.

In March 2010 Pantila was found dead in her prison cell.

Finland's 'angel of death' nurse found dead

She was found guilty of murdering a mentally disabled patient and attempting to murder a healthy eight-month-old baby with insulin

Dalje.com

March 9, 2010

HELSINKI (AFP) - A Finnish nurse dubbed "the angel of death" for murdering a mentally disabled patient and attempting to murder a baby with insulin was found dead in her jail cell, police said Tuesday.

"She has perished there," an officer with the police in Turku, on the west coast of Finland, told AFP, confirming that Katariina Pantila, 28, died after resuscitation efforts in her cell at a Turku jail Monday.

Last week, an appeals court upheld a life sentence for Pantila, formerly known as Katariina Loennqvist, for the murder of a 79-year-old, bed-ridden woman by injecting her with insulin at a rehabilitation centre in 2007.

She was also found guilty of trying to kill a healthy, eight-month-old baby with a potentially lethal dose of insulin at a family gathering only days before the murder.

Police were investigating the cause of Pantila's death, they said in a statement.

Nurse gets life sentence in insulin murder case

Hs.fi

May 20, 2009

Tampere District Court imposed a life sentence on a nurse from the city of Nokia who had been found guilty of murder and attempted murder in the insulin poisoning death of a patient.

The nurse, 27-year-old Meri-Tuulia Lönnqvist, is to appeal the case, said her lawyer Pertti Patrikainen immediately after the decision, suggesting that there was room for reasonable doubt.

The Tampere unit of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) is also investigating another case in which Lönnqvist is implicated in a death by morphine overdose. A final assessment by a forensic pathologist is still to come, but the matter could move forward already this month.

Already six months ago the court found that Lönnqvist had committed the acts that she was accused of, but it was not until now that the court ruled that murder and attempted murder were involved.

The attempted murder was that of an eight-month boy - the son of a relative.

In the murder, the victim was an elderly developmentally disabled woman at the Ylinen rehabilitation centre where the defendant was working.

The court found that the defendant had acted with firm determination in both cases.

The poisoning of the baby took place in 2007. The fact that a defenceless child was involved was taken as an aggravating circumstance.

The murder, which took place about a week later, was executed according to a meticulous plan.

The defendant was also found to be of sound mind in a psychiatric examination.

Police: examination of exhumed body strengthens murder case against nurse

Deadly levels of morphine found in remains of 91-year-old

Hs.fi

November 20, 2007

Police suspect that a 26-year-old nurse, who has been held on suspicion of killing two mentally handicapped residents of the Ylinen rehabilitation centre in Ylöjärvi with overdoses of insulin last summer, might also have been behind the death of a 91-year-old woman at the Health Centre in the city of Nokia.

Medical examiners found deadly levels of morphine in the woman's exhumed body.

Police say that the suspect was involved in care for the woman in the last stages of her life.

The death of the 91-year-old woman is one of the cases re-examined after suspicions were raised over deaths that had occurred under the watch of the suspected nurse. Five bodies were disinterred in September, and the investigations into the causes of death are still underway.

Police began to investigate the activities of the nurse after a young child who is a relative of hers suffered insulin poisoning at a summer cottage in Kuru. This led police to look more closely at the deaths of a 54-year-old man and a 79-year-old woman, who were mentally handicapped. The nurse, who was working at the Ylinen rehabilitation centre in Ylöjärvi, is suspected of killing them with overdoses of insulin.

She is also under suspicion of trying to kill a 72-year mentally handicapped man in Ylinen.

Police say that the deaths in Ylöjärvi and Nokia had no connection with the insulin-induced death of a 21-year-old woman with cerebral palsy who died at the Lehtimäki Institute in South Ostrobothnia in July. Two women who worked at the institute are suspected in the Lehtimäki case.

Analysis of the other bodies unearthed in Nokia revealed other substances as well, and Paavo Tuominen of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) says that so far, the 91-year-old woman is the only one in which it is clear that the deceased had a lethal dose.

The morphine content in the blood of the 91-year-old was nearly four milligrams per litre. In her final days she was administered some morphine for pain, but the normal therapeutic dose for a pain patient is less than one thirtieth of the amount detected in the analysis.

Erkki Vuori, a professor of forensic chemistry, notes that what constitutes a lethal dose of morphine depends on the patient and the conditions; just one milligramme per litre of blood would induce an exceptional toxic state.

Insulin was found in all of the exhumed bodies, even though only one of deceased had suffered from diabetes. It is not easy to determine if the insulin was injected, or if it was naturally occurring.

Samples have been sent to a German doping laboratory with the purpose of ascertaining if it is possible to distinguish between the two types of insulin. The laboratory has experience in this, but it remains uncertain if samples from the deceased can yield reliable results.

"It is a laboratory for the living", Tuominen points out.

The nurse herself has denied any connection with the deaths. Tuominen says that the investigation has not yielded any sensible motive.