All charges, including four first-degree murder charges against Dr. Brian Nadler, the former Hawkesbury and District General Hospital doctor accused of murdering four of his patients, were dropped today on the first day of the highly anticipated trial.
Late last week, Dr. Nadler’s defence lawyer Brian Greenspan, with confirmation from Crown prosecutors, announced that they expected all charges against their client to be dropped when the trial was set to start this morning at 10 a.m. at the Ottawa court house on Elgin Street.
Past reporting from the Ottawa Citizen and CBC Ottawa revealed the Crown had little other choice but to drop their case against the Montréal-based internal medicine specialist after certain evidence presented by the Crown was deemed inadmissible during pre-trial, making the Crown’s case ultimately impossible to pursue.
The Crown indicated it chose those route in order to maintain its ability to appeal the pre-trial decisions.
Speaking outside of the court house, Greenspan stated that the case has been difficult for his client after three years of suspicion.
“Three years under the cloud of four charges of first-degree murder, obviously has impacted enormously one’s life, one’s prospect in terms of the future,” he stated. “The cloud, and I refer to it as the innuendo of suspicion, is something which is difficult to overcome.”
After several delays including a change of venue from L’Orignal to Ottawa, the long-awaited trial was expected to start Tuesday, July 2, more than three years after Dr. Nadler was initially charged with first-degree murder of the first patient Albert Poidinger, 89. The Crown said it would drop the case on the first day of trial on Tuesday.
Dr. Nadler was first arrested in March 2021 and charged with the first-degree murder of Albert Poidinger, 89, of Pointe-Claire, Québec, who was a patient at HGH. In August 2022 three more murder charges were laid against the doctor, resulting from a continued investigation of suspicious deaths at the hospital. The alleged victims are Claire Brière, 80, of Rigaud, Québec; Lorraine Lalande, 79, of Hawkesbury; and Judith Lungulescu, 93, of East Hawkesbury Township.
Dr. Nadler’s medical licence was revoked by the the College of Physician and Surgeons of Ontario soon after the he was charged with Poidinger’s death.
