‘It was a terrible sensation when I heard the sentence: life.” It was 11 March 2016 and Daniela Poggiali had just been confirmed as Italy’s “angel of death”. Less than 18 months after she had first been arrested, in October 2014, the nurse was now the country’s most infamous killer, convicted of killing one elderly patient and suspected of dozens of other murders.
“I struggled to rationalise it,” she says, “I just thought they were grabbing a crab.” (This is a curious Italian phrase that roughly translates as doing something irrational or idiotic.)
