A “money obsessed” GP who poisoned his mother’s partner while disguised as a nurse administering a fake Covid booster jab has been jailed for 31 years and five months.
Thomas Kwan, 53, had denied attempting to murder Patrick O’Hara but changed his plea to guilty after one day of evidence at his trial at Newcastle crown court.
The sentencing judge, Mrs Justice Lambert, on Wednesday described it as “an audacious plan to murder a man in plain sight.”
The court heard Kwan was obsessed by money and motivated by “a sense of entitlement” to his mother’s estate. He attempted to murder O’Hara, his mother’s partner of 20 years, because he saw him as a “potential impediment” to his inheritance.
This was despite Kwan being “a man of considerable means himself” with a “wealthy lifestyle” who had made an offer to buy a £2m property in the south of England, the prosecutor, Peter Makepeace KC, said. “It’s not greed bred of a shortage of money, it’s not a greed bred of necessity,” Makepeace said. “It is a greed bred, purely and simply, of greed.”
The court heard how Kwan came up with an elaborate plan to murder O’Hara, 72, by disguising himself as a community nurse and injecting him with poison. Makepeace said the plot involved Kwan forging NHS documentation, disguising himself, using false number plates, and booking in to a hotel using a bogus name.
“It was an audacious plan,” Makepeace told the jury. “It was a plan to murder a man in plain sight, to murder a man right in front of his own mother’s eyes, that man’s life partner.”
At one point police feared that the chemical weapon ricin had been used to try to kill O’Hara. The court heard that a Ministry of Defence expert believed iodomethane, a chemical used as a fumigant pesticide, was the most likely poison Kwan used.
After the sentencing O’Hara thanked police and doctors and said he felt “justice had been done”.
The poison led to O’Hara getting a rare and life-threatening flesh-eating disease called necrotising fasciitis.
He survived but only after specialists had removed large portions of flesh from his arms in repeated procedures.
O’Hara has suffered extreme PTSD as a result of the crime, the court heard, and is no longer in a relationship with Kwan’s mother, Jenny Leung.
He opted to deliver his own victim impact statement in open court, describing how he was now a “shell of an individual” who suffered extreme fatigue and was constantly on edge. “This incident should have been the end of me,” O’Hara said. “Had it have not been for medical intervention I am positive that, not only would I have lost my left arm, but my life as well.”
He said it felt like his arm was on fire after the injection. “I remember that, when that needle entered my arm, I felt instant, excruciating pain. I had never in my life felt anything that painful before. I instantly thought that something had gone wrong.”
But the “nurse” reassured O’Hara that such a reaction was common. When he did go to hospital medics assumed the problem was a botched Covid injection, the court heard.
O’Hara said he feared Kwan being released and coming after him. “I am petrified that he will cause harm to my loved ones as a result of me assisting the police in his prosecution,” he said.
Neither Kwan’s mother nor O’Hara recognised Kwan behind his surgical gloves, mask and tinted spectacles, and he seemed entirely plausible as he went through a health questionnaire, measured blood pressure and took blood and urine samples, the court heard.
Makepeace said a “particularly unpleasant” aspect of the case, revealed in prison letters sent to the defendant’s wife, was that Kwan was angry that O’Hara was entitled to compensation. Kwan, a GP in Sunderland who lived with his wife and young son in Ingleby Barwick, Teesside, wrote: “One old man’s compensation for three young lives ruined. Where’s the justice in that?”
Paul Greaney KC, defending, said the GP was previously of positive good character, and had “ruined his life”.
He described Kwan’s disguise, when he passed himself off as a nurse, as “amateurish” and “clumsy”.
