Networked Knowledge - Media Report

[This edited version of the report has been prepared by Dr Robert N Moles]

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On 3 March 2008 Tom Chivers of the Daily Telegraph reported “Colin Norris, 'Angel of Death' nurse, convicted”

A male nurse has been convicted of killing four elderly women patients by injecting them with insulin. A jury at Newcastle Crown Court found Colin Norris, 31, guilty of the murder of Ethel Hall, from Calverley, Leeds; Doris Ludlam, 80, from Pudsey, West Yorkshire; Bridget Bourke, 88, from Holbeck, Leeds; and Irene Crookes, 79, from Leeds. He was also convicted of the attempted murder of Vera Wilby, 90, from Rawdon in Leeds, who suffered an unexpected hypoglycaemic attack but eventually recovered.

Norris looked on impassively as the foreman of the jury read out the verdict, an 11-1 majority decision that came on the fourth day of deliberations, and kept his head down as he was led from the dock. He will be sentenced tomorrow morning. Mr Justice Griffith Williams told the court: "I have to consider the minimum term which the defendant will have to serve." The judge also offered praise to the jury, consisting of eight men and four women, for their hard work and concentration during the nineteen weeks of the trial. "I am very grateful for the great care and attention you paid to this case," he said. "It has been a very long case and I am conscious of the fact it has caused a lot of inconvenience to some of you."

He also asked the prosecution if there were to be any statements to the court from the victim's families. Robert Smith QC, prosecuting, said that there were few surviving relatives due to the victims' advanced ages. Over the course of the five-month trial the court heard that Norris had killed the "confused" and "difficult" patients during his time working at two Leeds hospitals in 2002. Suspicions were raised when Norris predicted Mrs Halls' death to the minute, saying she would die at 5:15am because "it is always in the morning when thing go wrong". "Whenever I did nights someone always died", he said.

Mrs Hall slipped into a hypoglycaemic coma that night and never recovered. Norris told colleagues "I told you so" when her slumped body was found. She died in hospital a week later. Police then looked in to three other deaths that had occurred while he was working at Leeds General Infirmary and St James' Hospital. They found that three other women, none of them diabetics, had died from insulin overdoses during his stints at the hospitals. During questioning, Norris admitted that to officers that "he seemed to have been unlucky over the last 12 months", but denied killing his patients. Described as a "personable, decent young man, close to his granny", the motive for Norris' crimes is unclear, although prosecutors mentioned a "general dislike of the elderly".

Colin Norris latest in line of murderous medics

Nurse Colin Norris's killings will provoke comparisons with those of other medics who have embarked on killing sprees among their patients.

Any summary of the crimes of nurses and doctors who kill their patients inevitably begins and ends with the murders of Harold Shipman. Shipman was convicted at Preston Crown Court in 2000 of the murder of 15 of his patients while he was a general practitioner in Hyde, near Manchester. A major inquiry into Shipman's activities concluded the doctor killed about 250 patients between 1971 and 1998. Of these 218 could be positively identified.

The killings of Beverley Allitt are much better known than those attributed to these other nurses perhaps because she targeted children. Allitt was called the "Angel of Death" after she was given 13 life sentences in 1993 when she was found guilty of the murder of four young children, the attempted murder of a further three children and of causing grievous bodily harm with intent to a further six. Last year, a judge fixed her minimum prison term at 30 years, saying she "snuffed out" the lives of children on her ward at the Grantham and Kesteven General Hospital, in Lincolnshire.

The case of staff nurse, Benjamin Geen, offers the most similarities to that of Norris. In 2006 Geen, who was then 25, was given 17 life sentences after he was found guilty of murdering two of his patients and attacking 15 others. His trial heard how Geen gave them injections of drugs such as muscle relaxants, insulin and sedatives to stop them breathing while working at the Horton Hospital in Banbury, Oxfordshire.

Another nurse accused of killing patients was Anne Grigg-Booth. The 52-year-old was found dead at home in 2005 eight months before she was due to go on trial accused of murdering three elderly women at Airedale General Hospital, near Keighley, and the attempted murder of a middle-aged man. She had worked at the hospital for 25 years. Grigg-Booth was also facing 13 counts of unlawfully administering poison to 12 other patients.

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