There are three reasons that might lead to the classification of Richard Angelo, also called the Angel of Death, as a serial killer. First, he was found guilty of murdering 25 people, women and men within a period only a month, from September to October, 1987 (Flowers and Flowers, 2004). Secondly, Angelo used similar tactics to murder his victims; he would inject his patients with Anectine and Pavulon and cause them to be deprived of breath that turned out to be fatal. Lastly, Angelo could also be classified as a serial killer for the fact that he was able to act in the shadows for a period enough to allow him to kill the people at the Good Samaritan hospital in New York where he worked as a nurse.
Two typologies can fit in the classification of Angelo as a serial killer. However, it is not ease to pinpoint one specific typology and claim to be suiting his profile, which is why two of them would be more adequate. Angelo would be classified according to the Holmes typology as a hedonist-gain serial killer (Kocsis, 2008). This classification is founded on the fact that hedonist-gain serial perceive that they stand to benefit from their actions as Angelo did. Specifically, Angelo had a strong desire to be popular but failed inside the mainstream means of gaining popularity (Flowers and Flowers, 2004). Therefore, he resorted to the serial killing acts, though he did not intent to kill per-se. Literature reports that he injected his patients with the drugs and came in with interventions that would restore their condition within a short while (Flowers and Flowers, 2004). However, most of the patients found it difficult to survive until the intervention was adopted since they would literally suffocate to death. In the few cases that Angelo managed to control, both the patients and the hospital fraternity praised him, which acted as a great motivation and the coming to age of a serial killer (Flowers and Flowers, 2004). His case would also be classified as an organized serial killer since he had a credible background (Kocsis, 2008). For example, he was a college graduate, had a well-paying job as a nurse, did not have any history of abuse or neglect, and had a stable family as a married man among other issues (Flowers and Flowers, 2004). His classification as an organized serial killer also follows that he did not live within the neighborhoods of the crime scenes and would purport as a Good Samaritan to the dying patients. In fact, in one of the cases involving a patient called Gerolamo Kucich, he was quotated to have said that he would be making the patient feel better after the injection (Flowers and Flowers, 2004).
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After suspicion, apprehension and trail, Angelo was found guilty of two counts of second-degree murder (depraved indifference), one count of second degree manslaughter, six counts of assault, and one count of criminally negligent homicide (Flowers and Flowers, 2004). The judges sentenced Angelo to 61 years of life in prison, which they considered would be enough to reform him. This followed a failure of defense attorneys to prove to the court that the accused suffered from dissociative identity disorder, which caused him to have multiple identities that meant he was dissociated from the crimes completely. The jury could not allow the use of a polygraph that the accused had taken, which would prove that he had different personalities as the defense attorneys had indicated.
References
Flowers, R. B., & Flowers, H. L. (2004). Murders in the United States: Crimes, killers and victims of the twentieth century . McFarland.
Kocsis, R. N. (Ed.). (2008). Serial murder and the psychology of violent crimes . Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.
