Angel of Death (21 page)

Only when Allitt came within sight of the Court, saw the crowds who had waited three hours to catch sight of her, and heard the barrage of abuse and the jeers, did she react.

She asked one of the officers: ‘Are they going to hurt me?'

The police, concerned for the safety of their prisoner, threw a jacket over Allitt's head as the van pulled to a halt outside the Court. She was led upstairs into courtroom Number One at 11.58am, wearing a grey jumper, purple T-shirt, black jeans and trainers.

It had taken 204 days from the first day of the investigation to put Allitt into court.

Now there were fifty people trying to pack into the first-floor courtroom to see her. Every seat was filled and parents and relatives were allowed to stand, lining the green-painted walls, as Allitt was brought in to stand impassively in front of the three duty magistrates.

Parents were so close they could have reached out to touch her, but nobody tried. After the noisy, angry scenes outside, the silence was over-whelming as prosecuting solicitor, Philip Howes,
rose to ask for Allitt to be remanded in custody for her own safety.

He told bench chairman, Mr Norman Dodson: ‘Feeling is running high in the locality, especially as far as the parents are concerned. There is a clear risk to this woman's safety if you grant bail. Although she has been on bail, charges have now been brought and she realises the enormity of what she faces.'

Mr Kendall was keen to try to calm the rising tide of feeling, and asked for the normal reporting restrictions to be lifted so that the press could publish his announcement that Allitt would be pleading not guilty to all the allegations. He added: ‘The charges will be fought at the appropriate time and place.'

The hearing lasted just four minutes and Allitt was remanded in custody in New Hall Women's Prison, near Wakefield, Yorkshire.

A photograph of Nurse Allitt's face appeared on the front page of almost every newspaper in Britain. The picture, taken in a happier moment, showed her cradling tiny baby, twin Katie Phillips, in her arms.

But there was to be no way now she could ever expect to become Katie's godmother.

Also blazed across the newspapers and on TV bulletins were vivid pictures of Liam Taylor's grandmother, Shirley Little.

She was not a woman to forgive and forget.

As Allitt was driven away to prison, Shirley could contain her fury no longer and was pictured
waving her fists and lunging at the police van, shouting: ‘Remember me, you bleeder.'

She had seen her grandson die in agonising circumstances and had then had to return to the hospital where she worked as a ward orderly.

Liam's mother, Joanne, said: ‘We were all furious when we realised what had happened to Liam. My mother wanted to see her face to face. She even used to pedal up to Allitt's house on her pushbike, just in case she could catch sight of her.'

Shirley took her revenge on Allitt by sticking pins in a photograph snipped from a newspaper; she kept this secretly hidden under a cushion on her settee. Joanne said: ‘I found it one day and screwed it up, thinking it was just a piece of old newspaper. My mum complained because she said she had not finished with it.'

On the morning after Allitt's first appearance, Joanne took a taxi to her mother's house. The driver was full of sympathy for the nurse whose photograph appeared on every front page. He half turned to Joanne, not realising that her baby was among those who had died, and said: ‘Isn't it a shame – they have found her guilty before it's proved.'

Joanne said: ‘I just flew at him. I found myself screaming at him, I was so angry. I just went on and on at the poor bloke who didn't realise at first what he had said that was wrong. He was in a real state. When he drove off he was all flustered.'

Joanne and husband Chris had both found themselves drawn to the house where Allitt had been
living in Grantham. Before she was arrested they would both drive there, wind down the window and stare at the front door in the hope of catching sight of the suspended nurse. Joanne said: ‘The funny thing was whenever I saw the house, my mind went numb and my legs would wobble and go to jelly.'

She had come face to face with Allitt just once since the day Liam had died on Ward Four. Two weeks after his death, friends had taken her into town for a night out to help her get over the tragedy and she spotted Allitt relaxing with her pals in the King's Arms. Joanne was still grateful for the kindness Allitt had shown – still unaware of what was to come.

Joanne said: ‘All I wanted to do was go and talk to her about Liam. I told my friends that I was going to say thank you to her for looking after Liam. Allitt was with six or seven friends, and I tapped her on the arm. I was all choked up. I remember saying: “I want to thank you for looking after Liam.”

‘She just nodded her head and didn't say anything. I couldn't say any more, because I was so upset. I thought she would have shown some feelings but there was nothing there. It was almost as though we had never met.'

She went on: ‘Now I don't feel any pity for her, only hatred. There are nights when I lie in bed and I can picture her standing and looking at Liam. What I would like more than anything is the chance to sit down and talk to her.

‘I want to know why she chose Liam. She was with him for nineteen hours in total. She must have known what he was going through all the time. She was supposed to be caring for him.'

Chris said: ‘Myra Hindley killed children but she was not in a position of trust, working with them in hospital. If you can't trust a nurse, then who can you trust?'

News of the murder charges failed to sway the view of Allitt's family that the police were making an awful mistake. Most of the villagers in Corby Glen stayed loyal, refusing to believe that she was capable of the killings.

But friend Tracy Jobson began to doubt this view. As she waited for the trial she became convinced that her friend was a killer of babies.

She said: ‘I decided that one charge can be a mistake, but when there are twelve then common-sense tells you…Everyone who knows Bev still can't believe she did it. I can't believe it, but I know she has. It's possible someone could do it if they're a bit weird, something out of the ordinary. If you try and compare it with a multi-murderer like the Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe – he had some sort of reason, didn't he? He didn't like prostitutes, but there's no reason behind what's happened here.

‘Maybe she didn't like babies, but what reason is that? You can think that maybe something was telling her that she couldn't let little babies live, but what's the reason?'

It was the absence of a motive that bewildered Tracy. None of the children had been grievously
ill when they had been admitted to hospital, and the senselessness of it all appalled her. Also, like many other nurses, she feared the case could have a long-term effect on the hospital. How many parents, she wondered, would think twice about leaving their children in hospital in future?

If her friend had really murdered Liam Taylor, Timothy Hardwick, Becky Phillips and Claire Peck, there was one question Tracy needed answering: ‘How can you murder a baby at work and then carry on absolutely normally?'

Her mother, who had listened to Allitt's denials and believed them for so long, could understand how so many people had been fooled. But even she wondered how, if she really was the killer on Ward Four, she could have done it and yet remain the same girl?

She said: ‘There are a lot of people at the hospital feel a lot of guilt. They feel they should have seen things and should have known but, really, there was no way of knowing what was going on. When you look back you think: “God!”'

If her friend was really a monster, Tracy accepted that her crimes would find a place in history. ‘What you've got is the biggest serial murderer in a British hospital ever – the strangest, weirdest murderer there has ever been. But you'll never get a true insight into who she was, or what she was really like, unless you knew her…'

Mrs Jobson, her voice shaking with anger, declared: ‘I wish to God I could shut my eyes and pretend it never happened. The trouble is that the
more you knew Beverley Allitt, the more normal she appeared in every way. Absolutely. I'll never understand her as long as I live.

‘I think she's very sick. But, at the same time, I think she knew what she was doing. She's calculating but I think she can't help herself. She can manipulate people, but she doesn't come over as a forceful character.

‘You tend to feel sorry for her. That's how she got you to think, she wanted you to feel sorry for her. I felt sorry for her when she first came here to my house. She went into hospital twice while she was here.

‘I don't think anyone is going to get any answers, even after the trial. I would love to have it all explained to me, why this and why that, but I don't think anyone is going to get answers and explanations.

‘I don't think there's anything in her past that you could say this caused it, or that caused it. It's not like she came from a broken home, or she'd been beaten or her parents were divorced. It's very strange.

‘The weird things that were happening here were her just looking for attention, but she was getting all the attention anyway. At the same time I was keeping the press away from her; I was looking after her. I treated her like another daughter.

‘I am writing my story about what happened here. Even if it comes out two years after the trial, people will still want to read it, they really will. I don't think anybody can imagine what I went
through while Beverley was in my house. People will read it and say: “That's unbelievable.” Nobody will believe it. But I'm doing it for my benefit. It's almost a therapy.

‘I am feeling the reaction. I know a lot of people have been touched by what happened, especially those who have lost children, but it's bad, too, for those whose children could have died. I don't think anybody realises that. There's more than one way of being damaged.

‘I feel as though I have been in a state of shock for six or seven months and, to be honest, I still am. The same with Jonathan. It changes your view on people. It makes you question your own judgement.

‘I know I am not the only one she took in. Nobody could have foreseen it either. I don't think it could have happened in any other way than it did. At the hospital the administrators and the doctors were all taken in, they were all victims.

‘I know some people are complaining that it went on for as long as it did before it was stopped, but the truth is that I am sure if it had been happening on a geriatric ward, it could have still been going on and nobody would have known.

‘You don't notice it when old folk die. They are expected to die suddenly. Babies aren't, are they?'

As Beverley Allitt was taken away from Grantham Magistrates' Court, on her way to a cell at Wakefield, the anger of the parents turned on the hospital.

There were demands for a public enquiry into how so many children had been struck down before the police were called in. And there were questions about how Allitt had been allowed to become a nurse.

But it was a wordy statement issued by Mr Martin Gibson, on behalf of the Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, that first infuriated them. Couched in official language, his statement said:

1.   The Authority has been co-operating closely with the Lincolnshire Police since calling them in at the end of April to investigate unexpected outcomes in treatment on the Children's Ward at Grantham and Kesteven General Hospital.

2.   Having been informed by the police that a former member of staff, who worked on the Children's Ward at the time, has been charged with causing the death and mistreatment of a number of child patients, I would like to say how shocked and saddened the staff of the hospital are at this news, and to express our deepest and most heartfelt sympathy to the families of those children involved in this tragic episode.

          The families who live locally, of all the children whose treatment has at any time been the subject of the police investigations, were seen privately by senior hospital staff as soon as practicable after it became clear that the initial enquiries involved their child, except where the patients declined the offer of a visit (one other family was seen by a local social worker).

          During these conversations the concern and sympathy of all our staff for the families were made clear. It was felt that a public or formal expression of sympathy on the hospital's part should not be made until it was clearer which children were considered by the police to have been involved.

          That stage has now been reached, and a formal letter is going to the families involved, from the Vice-Chairman of the Health Authority, in the absence of the Chairman.

          Our responses to specific media questions about the effect of the events on the other staff at the hospital have been represented by some as showing a lack of concern for the families and children involved. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have provided, or ensured that others provide, practical help to all the families where it is needed.

          For example, we have arranged for Lincolnshire Social Services to organise offers of long-term care to all the families. In providing help, we have been careful not to add needlessly to the grief and worry of those whose children's care and treatment were unaffected by these events.

3.   We confirm that the arrangements for hospital security have been checked, and both the hospital and the police are satisfied as to their adequacy. There has been no further cause for concern since the police were called in.

4.   Parents of the children involved have been seen,
and in some cases continue to be seen, by the Health Authority's staff. If any parents have any anxieties about treatment of their child on the Children's Ward at the hospital in the months January to April of this year, they should contact the General Manager's Office at the hospital and arrangements will be made for them to be seen by medical or nursing staff.