Prosecutors suspect more victims of Oirschot care worker

Jelle D. (26), a care worker suspected of murdering two residents of the Joris Zorg care home in Oirschot, very probably had more victims, prosecutors say. The Public Prosecution Service (OM) said so on Wednesday at the first public hearing since his arrest in August.

The OM calls the deaths of two men on 15 and 19 August murder. It is also investigating deaths in the weeks before, which it describes as highly suspicious.

According to the OM, neither man had any special medical problems, let alone diabetes. Even so, the OM says, puncture marks from insulin injections were found on both. It says D. gave both men an overdose, and that both died of it.

D. denies the allegations. He told the court he has been wrongly detained for months and accused the OM of tunnel vision. “This pre-trial detention has to stop at some point, because something is being pinned on me that I didn’t do,” he said. He asked to be released until his trial.

In court, his lawyer said there is no reason to keep him in custody. He argued that other staff did not record medication use, that the men may have died of another cause, and that D. was not the last person to visit one of them.

D. took part in the SBS6 programme De Bondgenoten.

The investigation into the earlier deaths is complicated because those who died have already been buried or cremated.