Doctor 300 Deaths: Brazil Doctor Investigated of Using Fatal Method To Clear Intensive Care Unit

A Brazilian doctor is accused of killing at least seven terminally ill patients, to free up beds at the intensive care unit at Evangelical Hospital in Curitiba, Brazil. She is also suspected of being responsible for more than 300 other deaths according to the country's Health Ministry.

Dr. Virginia Soares de Souza, 56-year-old widow along with seven assistants administered muscle relaxing drugs to patients in ICU, then reducing their oxygen supply, which caused them to die of asphyxia.

De Souza arrested last month has been charged with seven counts of aggravated first degree murder. Three other doctors, three nurses and a physiotherapist under her supervision have been charged with murder.

De Souza's wiretapped phone conservation revealed her motive to free up hospital beds for other patients.

"I want to clear the intensive care unit. It's making me itch," she said in one call. "Unfortunately, our mission is to be go-betweens on the springboard to the next life."

Investigators are thoroughly reviewing about 1,700 medical records of patients that died in the last seven years at the hospital, during the time she headed the ICU.

"We already have more than 20 cases established, and there are nearly 300 more that we are looking into," the chief investigator assigned by Brazil's Health Ministry, Dr. Mario Lobato, said on Globo TV's Fantastico program on Sunday.

De Souza claims that the investigators lack the knowledge of how an intensive unit works and she would prove her innocence.

"We will soon prove that everything that took place in that ICU [intensive care unit] is justified by the medical literature," her lawyer Elias Mattar Assad told Globo.