'Respected' GP jailed for trying to kill mum's partner using fake Covid jab laced with poison

Dr Thomas Kwan tried to kill Patrick O'Hara, his mum Jenny's partner of 20 years. He injected him with poison in a fake Covid jab which caused him to have a life-threatening flesh-eating disease

A respected GP who tried to kill his mother's partner with a fake Covid jab laced with poison has been jailed for more than 30 years.

Dr Thomas Kwan tried to kill Patrick O'Hara, now 72, after experimenting with a series of noxious substances, including castor beans to make ricin, in his garage following a row over his mother Jenny's will. Kwan, 53, dramatically changed his plea to guilty mid-way through a trial at Newcastle Crown Court earlier this month.

During the trial the court was told that following the attack on January 22 this year, Mr O'Hara had contacted his GP and the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle to ask about the jab. The site of the injection became inflamed despite him being sent home with antibiotics. But his condition grew worse. He was rushed to hospital and diagnosed with necrotising fasciitis, a life-threatening flesh-eating disease, and had to be treated in intensive care.

Today Kwan was sentenced to 31 years and five months behind bars and told he is a "dangerous" offender who resorted to "extreme" behaviour for his own needs.

Mrs Justice Lambert told Kwan: "Your intention of visiting the home was to administer a lethal injection of poison to Mr O'Hara on the pretence of administering a Covid booster. It was an audacious plan to murder a man in plain sight and you very nearly succeeded in your objection.

"You were in the home of Mr O'Hara for 40 minutes and for some part of that your mother was also present and you took her blood pressure. Extraordinary though it seems, so trusting were they that neither recognised you under your disguise."

The jury was shown the opening shot of a video of Mr O'Hara in the ICU unit of the Royal Victoria Infirmary, close to the home which he shared Jenny, 73, in which he gave an account of the poisoning. The full interview could not be played in court due to a technical issue. But there was a noticeable change in the demeanour of Kwan when he returned to court afterwards, as he sat with his head bowed before the jury was sent home.

The video interview was due to be played in full to the jury the next day, but Kwan opted to plead guilty.

The court had heard Kwan became "obsessed" with ricin, arsenic, cyanide, and nerve agents. He had "10 poisons used to kill people" among guides found after the attack. The jury was told he had "pestered" his mother over her financial affairs after she changed her will to allow Mr O'Hara to live at the home they shared if she were to die first.

Dad-of-one Kwan, of Ingleby Barwick, Teesside, had originally denied attempted murder and grievous bodily harm. He had admitted administering a noxious substance but denied intending to cause serious harm.

Peter Makepeace KC, prosecuting, had earlier told the court that on January 22 this year, Kwan donned a disguise to inject Mr O’Hara, then 71, and his mum Jenny Leung's partner of 20 years, with an unidentifiable poison at their home. He bought a variety of dangerous chemicals, covering his tracks by using the Happy House surgery in Sunderland where he worked as GP and a fake research firm Azxon UK Ltd.

He told how Kwan sent Mr O'Hara two bogus NHS letters from a "community nurse" called Raj Patel, one of Kwan's former colleagues, and even produced a fake ID in a wig, moustache, specs and goatee beard. Mr Makepeace said: "Very considerable portions of Mr O'Hara's arm flesh had to be removed in repeated procedures."

Five days after the attack, Mr O'Hara received another NHS-style letter detailing the results of his blood tests before the jab was given, the jury heard. A package meant for Mr O'Hara was then intercepted by police containing over-the-counter iron supplements which the prosecution say had been sent by the defendant. Detectives also interviewed him just days after the attack.

The jury was shown CCTV of Kwan arriving at the Premier Inn, near his mum's home in Newcastle, before dressing in surgical mask, gloves, hat and dark tinted spectacles to administer the noxious substance to Mr O'Hara. It was believed to be iodomethane, a pesticide, which had never been administered to a human before, the court heard.

Mr O'Hara only became suspicious when Jenny remarked that the nurse was "about the same height" as her son. Opening the case, Mr Makepeace KC told the jury: "Sometimes, occasionally perhaps, the truth really is stranger than fiction," he said. "The case you are about to try, on any view, is an extraordinary case.

"Mr Thomas Kwan, the defendant, was, in January of this year, a respected and experienced medical doctor in general practice with a GP's surgery based in Sunderland. From November 2023 at the latest, and probably long before then, he devised an intricate plan to kill his mother’s long-term partner, a man called Patrick O'Hara.

"On any view that man had done absolutely nothing to offend Mr Kwan in any way whatsoever. He was however a potential impediment to Mr Kwan inheriting his mother’s estate upon her death. Mr Kwan used his encyclopedic knowledge of, and research into, poisons to carry out his plan."

He added: "That plan was to disguise himself as a community nurse, attend Mr O’Hara’s address, the home he shared with the defendant’s mother, and inject him with a dangerous poison under the pretext of administering a covid booster injection. It was a very carefully planned scheme; it involved Mr Kwan forging NHS documentation to lure Mr O’Hara into his plan; personal disguise to shield his identity from his victim and his mother; falsification of number plates on his car to try to evade detection; and using false details to book into a local hotel to use as the base for his operation.

"It was an audacious plan, it was a plan to murder a man in plain sight, to murder a man right in front of his own mother, that man’s life partner."