"Porter of Girona" admits to killing eight more senior citizens at care home

Joan Vila Dilmé, the "Porter of Girona" yesterday told a court that he was the author of the deaths of a further eight senior citizens at a residential home in Olot, Girona, during 2009 and 2010. Vila Dilmé confessed to the killing of three residents between 12 and 17 October at an earlier hearing.

Following Vila Dilmé's declaration at the previous hearing, the judge ordered the exhumation of eight bodies of residents of La Caritat, two who were killed in August and October 2009 and the rest this year. Vila Dilmé, who was arrested on October 18, admitted that he had killed two of his victims by administering an overdose of insulin and had ended the lives of the other six by giving them a lethal cocktail of psychotropic drugs.

The deaths were passed as being of natural causes by medical staff at La Caritat, the judge believes, because the bodies were not examined. During the five years Vila Dilmé worked at the care home, 59 people have died, almost half during his shifts.

Vila Dilmé, who maintains he acted out of kindness as his victims were seriously ill, has become one of the most prolific serial killers in Spain. The "syrup maker," Manuel Delgado Villegas, was accused of 22 murders but never sentenced as prosecutors said a mental disorder absolved him of intent. Vila Dilmé wept in court during the first hearing as he explained he suffers from manic depression.