GP who tried to murder mother's partner with fake Covid jab while dressed as nurse jailed for 31 years
6 November 2024, 11:26 | Updated: 6 November 2024, 12:14
A GP who dressed as nurse as he tried to murder his mother's partner with fake Covid vaccine, that turned out to be a flesh eating toxin, has been jailed for 31 years.
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Appearing at Newcastle Crown Court, Thomas Kwan, 53, had initially denied attempted murder, but changed his plea after he heard the prosecution open the case against him.
Speaking on Wednesday, the judge has described the GP's plot as "audacious".
Police initially thought the married father-of-one used the chemical weapon ricin to try to kill Patrick O'Hara, 72, at his mother's home in St Thomas Street, Newcastle, on January 22.
However, an expert later believed that a pesticide was the more likely substance.
Sentencing Dr Thomas Kwan at Newcastle Crown Court, Mrs Justice Lambert said: "It was an audacious plan to murder a man in plain sight and you very nearly succeeded in your objective."
Kwan sparked a major emergency services operation when police found lethal chemicals stored in the detached garage at his home in Ingleby Barwick, Teesside.
The Sunderland-based GP had already pleaded guilty to administering a noxious substance, claiming he meant to cause no more than mild pain.
Mrs Justice Lambert told the defendant: "You were certainly obsessed by money and more particularly, the money to which you considered yourself entitled.
"No doubt you tried to kill Mr O'Hara for financial gain."
The judge said there might well have been "bad blood" between Kwan and his mother, going back to his childhood, adding: "Whatever the deep-rooted cause, by 2024 and well before, your resentment and bitterness towards your mother and Mr O'Hara was all to do with money and your belief you were not being given money which you thought you were entitled to."
The judge explained how Kwan had become estranged from his mother, with the pair having fallen out over money.
The Crown's case centred around Kwan attempting to kill his mother's partner of more than 20 years, with the 72-year-old developing a rare flesh-eating disease as a result of the jab in his arm.
Kwan had offered to make a home visit to administer the booster jab, which prosecutor Peter Makepeace KC said was a "pretext" to inject Mr O'Hara with a dangerous poison.
During the visit, he wore a disguise comprised of a long coat, flat cap, surgical gloves, medical mask and tinted glasses, carrying out a 'medical exam' lasting 45-minutes.
The Hong Kong-born doctor had developed an "encyclopaedic knowledge" of poisons, the court heard, and he studied how to get away with murder, police discovered from analysis of his home computers.
Opening the case in court, Peter Makepeace KC, prosecuting, said: "Mr Thomas Kwan, the defendant in the case, was in January of this year a respected and experienced medical doctor in general practice with a GP's surgery based in Sunderland."
From November 2023 at the latest, and probably long before then, he devised an intricate plan to kill his mother's long-term partner, a man called Patrick O'Hara.
"On any view, that man had done absolutely nothing to offend Mr Kwan in any way whatsoever.
"He was, however, a potential impediment to Mr Kwan inheriting his mother's estate upon her death."Mr Kwan used his encyclopaedic knowledge of, and research into, poisons to carry out his plan.
"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."
The fake nurse's movements were traced using CCTV and police were able to identify Kwan as a suspect.
Searches of his home in the executive estate where he lived revealed an array of chemicals such as arsenic and liquid mercury as well as castor beans which can be used to make the chemical weapon ricin.
Police found a recipe for ricin on his computer but Ministry of Defence poisons expert Professor Steven Emmett, although still not sure which poison was used, thought iodomethane which is commonly used in pesticides, was more likely.
