Thomas Kwan Northumbria Police

A British doctor who was disgruntled about his inheritance and injected his mother's boyfriend with poison presented as a COVID-19 vaccine was sentenced Wednesday to 31 years in prison.

Dr. Thomas Kwan disguised himself as a nurse making home visits to inject Patrick O'Hara with a poison that caused a life-threatening flesh-eating disease. Kwan believed O'Hara stood in the way of him inheriting his mother's home someday, officials said.

"It was an audacious plan to murder a man in plain sight and you very nearly succeeded," Justice Christina Lambert said. "You were certainly obsessed by money and more particularly, the money to which you considered yourself entitled."

Kwan, 53, pleaded guilty last month in Newcastle Crown Court to attempted murder.

O'Hara, 72, survived after being in intensive care for several weeks. The poison caused and having part of his arm cut away to prevent the flesh-eating disease, called necrotizing fasciitis, from spreading.

O'Hara previously told Newcastle Crown Court he had become a "shell" of himself, the BBC reported.

O'Hara and Kwan's mother, Jenny Leung, have since split up.

Police used surveillance camera footage to track down Kwan.

They found he had hatched an elaborate plot by sending fake letters with National Health Service logos, hyperlinks and even a QR code to offer a home visit for a COVID booster to O'Hara. Kwan disguised himself in head-to-toe protective gear, tinted glasses and a surgical mask and drove a vehicle to the appointment in January using fake license plates.

Before Kwan injected O'Hara in the arm, the doctor spent 45 minutes at a hospital, speaking with a broken Asian accent and carrying out blood checks and health surveys, the BBC reported.

Kwan, who was described as having a morbid obsession with poisons, used iodomethane, a substance found in pesticides that he thought would be difficult for medics to detect, the judge said.

Police found arsenic, liquid mercury and castor beans, which can be used to make the chemical weapon ricin, during a search of his home. He had instructions on how to make ricin on his computer.

Kwan was upset about getting a smaller share of his inheritance when his father died. He had a strained relationship with his mother and learned that she had a provision in her will that would allow O'Hara to stay in her home if she predeceased him.

The doctor had installed spyware on his mother's computer years earlier to track her finances, the BBC reported.

"Your resentment and bitterness towards your mother and Mr. O'Hara was all to do with money and your belief you were not being given money which you thought you were entitled to," the judge said.

O'Hara said justice had been served by the sentence.


Thomas Kwan is seen in disguise, in this screengrab from a CCTV footage taken on January 22, 2024. Northumbria Police/Handout via REUTERS

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