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NSW aged home worker found guilty of murdering two residents

A judge has found Newcastle nursing home carer Garry Davis guilty of murdering two dementia patients and the attempted murder of a third.

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Source: AAP


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A NSW nursing home carer has been found guilty of murdering two elderly dementia patients and attempting to murder a third by injecting them with lethal doses of insulin.

Garry Davis, 29, pleaded not guilty to killing 83-year-old Gwen Fowler and 80-year-old Ryan Kelly, and trying to kill 91-year-old Audrey Manuel at SummitCare aged care home in Newcastle in October 2013.

However, Supreme Court Justice Robert Allan Hulme found him guilty on all counts at the conclusion of Davis's judge-alone trial on Wednesday.

The judge said his decision was a result of a combination of circumstantial evidence, which pointed, beyond reasonable doubt, to Davis as the killer.

He said Davis' callous text messages to a colleague predicting his victims' deaths formed part of this damning evidence.

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"If (Davis) was going to predict someone's death he would nominate people who were the most ill amongst the residents," the judge said.

"Not people who were, despite their respective medical conditions, comparatively stable."

The fact that Davis was the victims' primary medication giver meant they would have been less likely to object to him injecting them than anyone else, Justice Hulme said.

He said this was strengthened by a doctor's evidence that Ms Fowler, Davis' first victim, was "too far demented to really question or raise any alarm".


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