Suspicions were aroused when nearly every patient who came near the 25-year-old nurse developed sudden breathing problems and deteriorated quickly and unexpectedly, prosecutor Michael Austin-Smith QC told jurors.

Mr Geen appeared before Oxford crown court yesterday charged with the murder of David Onley, 77, of Deddington, between January 20 and 23 2004, and Anthony Bateman, 67, of Banbury, on January 6 2004. He is also accused of causing grievous bodily harm with intent to harm 16 other patients, and 18 counts of administering a noxious thing so as to endanger life. He denies the charges.

Doctors at the hospital were initially bewildered by the rare and unexplained respiratory failures that took place between December 2003 and February 2004. But it then emerged that Mr Geen had been on duty in the A&E on each occasion, the court heard.

"In the course of a nine-week period, he deliberately administered drugs or other substances to patients in order to make them collapse so he could enjoy the excitement of trying to revive them," Mr Austin-Smith told the jury.

"It's the prosecution's submission that this defendant loved these moments of drama. As he was later to tell police in interview, he hated the dullness of the minor side ... He preferred to be where the action is."

There had been "locker room chatter about the increased level of respiratory arrests", Mr Austin-Smith said, and suspicions came to a head when the 18th patient, Timothy Stubbs, went into unexpected respiratory arrest.

Mr Austin-Smith said Stephen Smith, who worked at Horton general, came to the "unpalatable conclusion" with his colleagues that a member of the A&E department had to be responsible.

An internal investigation was launched which found Mr Geen had been on duty on all 18 occasions when a patient suffered an arrest. Once the connection was made, Mr Geen was confronted at work and immediately suspended. He was arrested the same day and police found an empty syringe in his pocket. The pocket in which it was found was wet, and tests later established the liquid contained traces of drugs capable of causing respiratory failure.

Normal procedure was to throw out syringes after use, Mr Austin-Smith said. "You may wish to consider why the defendant was carrying around a syringe which had been used on a number of occasions," he told the jury. "When he realised he was going to be arrested he had plainly emptied that syringe."

The court heard that one of the men alleged to have been killed by Mr Geen was already very unwell when admitted in January 2004.

Anthony Bateman was asthmatic, arthritic, had a heart condition and was thought to have an underlying cancer. But this was not, experts later said, the reason for his respiratory arrest. Had doctors known that a muscle relaxant might have been the cause of the arrest, they would have resuscitated him. "This man was seriously ill and he may have died in any event but that is not the question for you," Mr Austin-Smith told the jury.

The second fatal case was also ill when he was admitted. But doctors said there was "no medical reason" why David Onley should have stopped breathing and lost consciousness - unless he had been given an unauthorised muscle relaxant. They said the respiratory arrest would have made Mr Onley more vulnerable to the heart attack he later had.

The trial continues.

“I found this document in the personal archive of a Moscow senator Peter Poludensky, who worked for the Tsar’s Secret Service and died in the middle of XIX century. Apparently the manuscript attracted his attention for some reason,” says Alexander Afanasyev, an expert of the Russian State History Museum, department of manuscripts.

“Ufology is really not my area, but I am determined that the manuscript describes a UFO.”

“Radiance Over the Kremlin”

“On September, 1, 1808, at 8 o’clock and 7 minutes in the afternoon, in the sky, clear and sown with stars, a phenomenon appeared, incomparable in its beauty and rigor, as well as in radiance and enormous size, to anything seen before. As we noticed it, attracted by the loud cracking sound, it was rising in an arch over the horizon, from 55’ to almost 90’. Having passed this distance in an instant, it stopped among the clouds as if over the Kremlin and looked like a long straight plate some nine arshin (6.35 meter) long and half arshin (0.35 meter) thick.

Then on its front edge, turned to the South-West, an oval flame flared, some two arshin (1.4 meter) long and one and a half arshin (1.4 meter) thick, with a flame that can only be compared to the radiance of burning phosphor.

Floating in a circle without open fire or sparkle, it nonetheless lighted everything around as broad daylight; then the flame went out, the light disappeared, but the bright plate remained and quite smoothly went perpendicularly upwards, reached the stars and still could be seen for some two minutes and then, without disappearing, it became invisible due to the extraordinary height.”

Indeed, the mysterious object described bears resemblance to modern UFOs descroptions by its ability to stop and start off abruptly, radiating light, regular shape. However, Afanasyev rules out the possibility of the manuscript being a fake.

“Impossible. The manuscript is written on authentic paper, produced in 1805. The spelling and the style obviously belong to the beginning of XIX century, and the author must have been an educated person, probably a Moscow State University professor, since the University is just across the street from the Kremlin.”

The researcher turned to astronauts, hoping to find out what the author of the manuscript actually witnessed, but unexpectedly the astronomers helped him identify the author.

“In 1808 at a meeting of Moscow Naturalist Society Andrey Chebotaryov, a 24-year-old professor of chemistry at the Moscow University, made a report on a meteor that he happened to see,” says Galina Ponomaryova, an expert of the State Astronomy University.

“Of course it was not a meteor, but at that time any object in the sky was identified as a meteor.”

The Scheme

The manuscript was accompanied by a sketch, depicting what Chebotaryov saw.

1. September, 13, 1808 at 20:07 at the Moscow State University Chebotaryov hears a cracking noise, and lookin out of the window sees a rectangle object 6.35 meters long and 0.35 meters thick, rising in an arc.

2. The object freezes over the Kremlin at some two or three kilometers’ height. On the lateral part a bright ball of flamó flared, some 1.5 meters in diameter. The radiance continued for five seconds.

3. When the radiance went out, the object smoothly raised vertically upwards and was visible for two minutes.

“The aim of this document still remains a mystery for me,” Afanasyev adds.

“At first I suggested that it was a draft for an article in the paper, but neither the Moscow State University’s newspaper, nor any other Moscow edition published this material.

Chebotaryov could be preparing an article for the Moscow Naturalist Society newsletter, but for some reason it was never published and stayed in the archive until Peter Poludensky discovered it. Finally, the manuscript was rediscovered by modern researchers and couls be published for the broader public.

Sixty-four-year-old Thai Ngoc, known as Hai Ngoc, said he could not sleep at night after getting a fever in 1973, and has counted infinite numbers of sheep during more than 11,700 consecutive sleepless nights.

“I don’t know whether the insomnia has impacted my health or not. But I’m still healthy and can farm normally like others,” Ngoc said.

Proving his health, the elderly resident of Que Trung commune, Que Son district said he can carry two 50kg bags of fertilizer down 4km of road to return home every day.

His wife said, “My husband used to sleep well, but these days, even liquor cannot put him down.”

She said when Ngoc went to Da Nang for a medical examination, doctors gave him a clean bill of health, except a minor decline in liver function.

Ngoc currently lives on his 5ha farm at the foot of a mountain busy with farming and taking care of pigs and chickens all day. His six children live at their house in Que Trung.

“I have tried sleeping pills and Vietnamese traditional medicine but nothing helps, even to sleep for a few minutes,” he said.

Creature of the night

Ngoc often does extra farm work or guards his farm at night to prevent theft, saying he used three months of sleepless nights to dig two large ponds to raise fish.

Neighbor Vu said Ngoc volunteered to help beat a drum during the night and guard the house for the relatives of the dead during funeral ceremonies so that they could take a nap.

Vu also said when the commune was planting sugar cane, several people also asked Ngoc to awaken them at midnight to go to work, since he was up anyway.

On Ngoc’s prolonged insomnia, Phan Ngoc Ha, director of the Hoa Khanh Mental Hospital in Danang said sleep disorders often cause anorexia, lethargy, and irritability.

But, in special cases, some people can handle it and still live and work normally, although this was a very small ratio among insomniacs, Ha added.