A rogue GP who disguised himself as a community nurse in an elaborate attempt to murder his mother’s partner, is to face a medical tribunal 10 months after he was jailed for over three decades. Dr Thomas Kwan’s “stranger than fiction” murder bid was hatched because he feared he would be cut from his estranged mother’s inheritance in favour of her partner Patrick O’Hara. He dressed as a nurse and visited their home pretending that a jab of pesticide was a Covid booster.
The medic, who spied on the couple via their computer, became “obsessed” with poisons and experimented with castor beans to try to make ricin and also researched arsenic, cyanide and nerve agents. Police discovered “10 poisons used to kill people” among downloaded guides at his home. Kwan, now 54, put fake licence plates on his car then headed to a Newcastle hotel where CCTV caught him in a hat, tinted glasses and mask. He walked to his mother’s house to give the potentially lethal injection in a disguise so effective she did not recognise him.
Within seconds of receiving the jab, Mr O’Hara, 72, yelled out and fell seriously ill with agonising arm pain. He was saved by surgeons after developing a flesh-eating bug, needing weeks in hospital and extensive plastic surgery.
Kwan, who admitted the crime, found out his mother, Jenny Leung, had made a will allowing Mr O’Hara to stay in her home should she die before him.
The married GP plotted for months, developing a deep knowledge of poisons and faking letters supposedly from the NHS offering Mr O’Hara a home visit.
At Newcastle Crown Court Mrs Justice Lambert told Kwan: “It was an audacious plan to murder a man in plain sight and you very nearly succeeded.”
In his victim statement Mr O’Hara said he had no idea Kwan was the supposed community nurse who gave him the jab at the Newcastle home he shared with Jenny, from whom he subsequently split.
He said the injection caused intense pain and he felt as though his arm was on fire. Officers scouring CCTV were able to track Kwan, still in disguise, to a city centre hotel and then on to his home in Ingleby Barwick, Teesside.
The Sunderland-based GP would not tell police which poison he had used as medics battled to save Mr O’Hara.
But the array of dangerous chemicals were found in Kwan’s garage and instructions for making ricin were on his computer.
It was feared he used the chemical weapon on Mr O’Hara but a poisons expert said iodomethane, used in pesticides, was more likely. Kwan strenuously denied the offence and went on trial last summer before changing his plea to guilty after the prosecution opened the case against him.
In November he was sentenced to 31 years and five months behind bars but must now face a Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service hearing on September 15 where he faces being struck off.
