Nursing Home Worker Sentenced For Killings

A nursing home worker was sentenced Thursday to nine years in prison for killing four elderly patients by injecting them with insulin.

The woman, identified under Dutch privacy laws only as Martha U., admitted killing nine elderly patients at the Vliethoven nursing home in the northern Dutch town of Delfzijl, where she worked.

She told police she killed her victims out of sympathy.

The killings do not fit into liberal Dutch euthanasia rules, under which doctors carrying out mercy killings are immune to prosecution if they adhere to government-approved guidelines.