Serial killer by poisoning, Orkdal, Norway, 1977–1980
Arnfinn Nesset was a Norwegian nurse and nursing-home manager born on 25 October 1936. He worked within the healthcare system in Norway, eventually rising to a position of institutional authority as the director of a geriatric care facility in Orkdal, Norway. His place of birth has not been confirmed in available sources. Nesset died on 2 December 2025, decades after his crimes had made him infamous as Norway's most prolific serial killer.
No known aliases or nicknames are associated with Nesset in verified sources. His public identity was entirely bound to his professional role as a caregiver — a role he catastrophically abused over a period of several years in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Between 1977 and 1980, Arnfinn Nesset carried out a systematic campaign of murder against patients in his care at a geriatric institution in Orkdal, Norway. His method was deliberate and clinical: he administered suxamethonium chloride, marketed under the name Curacit, a muscle relaxant normally used as a surgical anaesthetic agent. When administered in lethal doses, suxamethonium chloride causes paralysis of the skeletal muscles, including those responsible for breathing, leading to death by asphyxiation. In an institutional care setting, particularly among elderly and frail patients, such deaths could easily be misattributed to natural causes.
Arnfinn Nesset født
Arnfinn Nesset fødes i Stjørna kommune i Norge.
Første dokumenterede drab
Det første dokumenterede drab i dommen finder sted den 20. maj 1977 på plejehjemmet i Orkdal.
Aktiv drabsperiode slutter
Dommen beskriver en fireårsperiode for drabene; perioden afsluttes ca. fire år efter det første dokumenterede drab i 1977.
Dom afsagt i Frostating lagmannsrett
Arnfinn Nesset dømmes for 22 drab og idømmes 21 års fængsel — lovens strengeste straf i Norge på daværende tidspunkt.
Dokumentarfilm udgivet på Plex
Dokumentarfilmen 'Seriemorderen i Orkdal – Historien om Arnfinn Nesset' udgives på streamingplatformen Plex.
Nesset's access to the drug was facilitated by his senior position at the nursing home. As director, he had both the authority and the opportunity to obtain and administer pharmaceutical agents without immediate oversight. The exact circumstances surrounding each individual killing — whether patients showed signs of distress, whether staff were present, or whether Nesset acted alone in every instance — are not detailed in the available verified sources. What the court ultimately established was that 22 patients lost their lives at his hands, and that one additional victim survived what was classified as an attempted murder.
The scale of his crimes, carried out over three years within a single institution, made Nesset the most prolific convicted serial killer in Norwegian history at the time of his trial.
The victims of Arnfinn Nesset were patients at the geriatric institution in Orkdal where he served as director. As residents of a nursing home, they were elderly and vulnerable individuals dependent on the care and professional ethics of the staff entrusted with their wellbeing. The available sources do not provide individual names, ages, or genders for the confirmed victims. What is established is that all 22 confirmed murder victims, along with the one surviving victim of the attempted murder, were under Nesset's direct institutional care at the time of the crimes.
The nature of the victim group — elderly, infirm, and residing in a closed care environment — was central to Nesset's ability to operate undetected for as long as he did. Deaths among this population were not inherently unusual, and the use of a pharmaceutical agent left no immediately obvious signs of violence.
Arnfinn Nesset afgår ved døden
Arnfinn Nesset dør den 2. december 2025, 89 år gammel.
Nesset was arrested in January 1981, approximately one year after his killing period is believed to have ended. The precise investigative steps that led to his identification and arrest are not detailed in the available sources, but the arrest marked the beginning of a legal process that would take more than two years to reach its conclusion.
In March 1983, Nesset was convicted of 22 counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. The sentencing court is not identified by name in the available sources. He received a sentence of 21 years in prison, which represented the maximum term of imprisonment available under Norwegian law at the time. No specific statute is named in the available sources, but the imposition of the maximum sentence reflects the gravity with which the court viewed his offences.
The case drew widespread attention both within Norway and internationally, as documented by a 1983 UPI news report headlined "Norwegian mass murderer found guilty." It raised serious questions about oversight within care institutions and the safeguarding of vulnerable patients.
Nesset served his sentence following the 1983 conviction. The available sources do not detail the specific circumstances of his release or his life after imprisonment. He died on 2 December 2025, as reported by the Sweden Herald under the headline "Norwegian serial killer dead – took the lives of patients." His death closed the final chapter on the life of a man whose crimes had marked a dark milestone in Norwegian criminal history.
The Arnfinn Nesset case has been revisited in a number of podcast and video productions, though no feature films or books specifically about the case have been identified in the available verified sources.
On YouTube, the case has been covered in an episode by Scandinavian Crimes (w/ Devante & Delila), as well as in Healthcare Horrors, Episode 39: "Arnfinn Nesset". In podcast form, the case is the subject of an Audioboom episode titled "The Lonely Murderer", and the Scandinavian Crimes show also distributes its content via podcast platforms. No publication years are confirmed for any of these productions in the available sources.