Angel of Death (24 page)

Peter said: ‘They were right to do it. The truth is I could kill her for what she's done.'

As she awaited her trial Beverley Allitt came within a whisker of saving Peter Phillips the trouble of pulling the trigger.

Allitt had long mastered the art of making herself ill in her continuing efforts to attract both attention and sympathy but, while she was in jail in Wakefield, she came perilously close to ending her life. She spent most of her time in the prison’s medical wing or under guard in the local hospital with a string of ailments and, as the weeks ticked by, doctors became increasingly concerned about her dramatic loss of weight. She was not eating and by the time she next appeared in court, this time in Nottingham, she looked a different person. She had slimmed down from more than twelve stones to little more than nine. Parents who travelled to court to see her gasped as she appeared in the dock. Gone was the chubby, overweight young woman they remembered from Ward Four. Instead, Allitt was looking fitter, healthier and happier than they’d ever seen her.

But the truth behind her weight loss became known weeks later. She was still not eating, despite pleas from prison doctors, her parents and
her lawyers, and there were signs that she was suffering from the slimmers’ disease, anorexia nervosa. Her worried parents were sent shopping to buy their daughter new clothes because she had wasted away from a size 16 to a size 8.

Finally, she was so ill that she was carefully moved from her hospital bed to Rampton, the high-security psychiatric hospital in north Nottinghamshire.

By now Allitt was painfully thin. Her chubby features had vanished. Instead, she was drawn and gaunt-faced, her eyes deep set and shadowed by black circles. Her weight had plumeted from more than 13 stones to a pitiful 6st 13lbs. She was withering away, barely half the woman she had been on Ward Four.

Lawyer John Kendall was at pains to stress that the move did not mean she was mentally ill or that she would be unfit to stand her trial. She was only going to Rampton because doctors and nurses there had better facilities to treat her.

In Corby Glen Allitt’s grandmother was desperately worried. She realised that the waiting was taking a terrible toll, but she could not understand why Beverley had all but given up eating. ‘They’ve told me how ill she was and she’s lost so much weight. The waiting for the trial is getting to her – it’s getting to all of us.’

She need not have worried. The move to Rampton provided her granddaughter with more luxurious facilities than she could have dreamed of in any women’s prison. This was a hospital, not a jail,
and she enjoyed her own room with ensuite bathroom facilities instead of her green cell at Wakefield. She began taking enough liquids – glucose and vitamins – to stop the decline. She would still take no solids but her weight loss stabilized. Allitt settled back to await her trial now fixed for Nottingham Crown Court.

Back at Grantham strenuous efforts were being made by the health authority, doctors and nurses to pick up the pieces after the devastating publicity which followed Allitt’s arrest. Worried about its shattered image and teetering public confidence in the hospital, the Regional Health Authority appointed a firm of professional public-relations consultants called Westminster Strategy, based in London. Important questions were being asked by parents: Why didn’t the hospital act sooner? Why did it go on for so long? How was Allitt allowed to nurse so many sick children when she was only just out of training? But there would be no answers. The public-relations people put up a stone wall. They had been advised by lawyers representing the hospital to say nothing until the trial was over. And even then they might say nothing in case they prejudiced any appeal.

David Crampton, who had tried to get answers since son Paul’s three mysterious hypoglycemic attacks, was as frustrated as anyone. ‘Until the hospital sits down and tells us precisely what happened to our children, people will speculate with half the facts, and get half the truth,’ he said.

The enquiry team set up to look into the running, staffing and future management of Grantham and Kesteven Hospital reported back after ten months — but even its findings were ordered to be kept secret until the trial was over.

Dr Richard Alderslade, regional medical officer for Trent Regional Health Authority, announced that his hands had been tied by the restraints of his lawyers. He said: Our intention was to publish a summary of the enquiry report and its full recommendations.

‘We have been advised by our lawyers, however, that publication at this stage might interfere with the proper conduct of the trial of Beverley Gail Allitt and therefore could be contempt of court.’

He added: ‘This is a matter of great regret. We cannot disregard the advice given.’

Parents were convinced that too much was being hidden from them. And the lack of openness made them even more frustrated. In the meantime, Martin Gibson, the hospital’s administrator with ultimate responsibility for Ward Four, the man who had first called in the police a week after the death of final victim Claire Peck, was promoted to a new job in Leicester while the enquiry team was still carrying out its investigations.

Mr Gibson’s successor, Allister Stewart, arrived as the future of paediatrics in Grantham hung in the balance. There were genuine fears among nurses and doctors that the awful events which had spanned those sixty dreadful days might lead to the enforced closure of the Children’s Ward with
services moved to another hospital. The ward was to survive – but only just.

In September 1992, almost a year after Nurse Allitt’s arrest, staff from the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham were asked to take over the running of all children’s health care in Grantham. The ward would remain open but it would be run by another hospital twenty-five miles away.

Union official Jenny Flood described the takeover as a ‘slight on the people of Grantham’. She added: ‘I believe it will do nothing to restore public confidence in the local service or indeed restore the shattered staff morale.’ Hospital general manager, Mr Stewart, put on a brave face. He said: ‘We are delighted that paediatric services will remain local and we recognize that the service will benefit from having a link with a centre of excellence.’

On Monday, 15 February, 1993, two years after the first death that of seven week old Liam Taylor on Ward Four, Beverley Gail Allitt walked into the dock in Court One at Nottingham Crown Court. There had been such a clamour for seats in the courtroom that a ticket system had been introduced and a loudspeaker relay was linked to an ‘overflow court’ set up temporarily in the pressroom.

The stage was set for a dramatic trial though the judge, Mr Justice Latham, could not know the dramas that would unfold in the weeks ahead as he took his place, resplendent in his red robes.
Before him was prosecutor John Goldring, QC, and defence counsel, James Hunt, both of whom had spent months preparing for this moment. Both counsel had junior barristers, for the prosecution Nigel Rumfitt and, for the defence, Dudley Bennett, ready to help analyse every shred of evidence in the weeks and months ahead. Allitt’s solicitor, John Kendall, sat with a mountain of files at his feet on the back row of the legal benches, closest to the dock.

As it turned out, all those touched most by the case were missing. Allitt’s parents, Richard and Lillian, had been advised to stay away; it was felt the trauma would be too much to bear. The parents of all the children who had suffered were also absent. They were to be called as crucial prosecution witnesses and were not allowed, therefore, to attend in case their evidence was affected by what they heard in open court. Instead they would sit at home, reluctantly forced to follow newspaper and television reports of the trial.

A hush descended as Mr Justice Latham announced: ‘Bring in the defendant’.

If Beverley Allitt had been dreading this moment – as surely she must – there was no sign of it. At 12.05pm she walked through the door at the back of the dock into court with her head high, flanked by two women nurses from Rampton. She had been in custody for 453 days. Every eye in the courtroom focused on her gaunt, elfin face, her fair hair cropped boyishly short. She wore blue trousers with a white shirt and blue cardigan which
hid her skeleton frame, ravaged by the effects of her anorexia. There was not a hint of colour in her ashen-white cheeks.

Allitt avoided every gaze, staring blankly, straight ahead of her in the direction of the judge. There was not even a flicker of emotion, no sign of nerves, as one by one the members of the jury – seven men and five women – took their places, each of them warned to expect a trial lasting up to three months. Here before them was a woman who, if they convicted her, would go down in legal history as Britain’s worst woman serial killer, accused of more murders than even infamous Moors murderess Myra Hindley.

But was she guilty? The prosecution was in no doubt that she was. He spent a day and a half telling the jurors how the nurse standing before them had systematically attacked one innocent, sick child after another. No one had seen her do it. Nobody had witnessed her dreadful attacks. It wasn’t even possible to be sure exactly what she had done to them. Some – Becky Phillips, Paul Crampton and the fragile old lady, Dorothy Lowe – had been deliberately injected with insulin. Others had collapsed when she had given them another drug or a cocktail of drugs; Claire Peck had been injected with a deadly dose of potassium chloride. With some she may simply have placed a hand over their tiny mouths to stop them breathing. Mr Goldring for the Crown, speaking calmly and without any emotive phrases, told the jurors: ‘We cannot say in each case what the defendant did.
No one was watching her. Nurses are not expected to assault their patients.’ Nor could he tell why she had attacked them. She had been trained at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital but had been off work so often, owing to various illnesses, that she had needed extra time to qualify as a nurse. She was also rejected by the nearby Pilgrim Hospital, Boston, and faced the grim prospect of being unemployed until Grantham had come to her rescue with a six-month contract on the Children’s Ward.

On Ward Four there was a ‘chilling pattern’ to the attacks. Painstaking analysis of all the evidence revealed that Nurse Allitt was always there. She had been on duty on every occasion the children had collapsed. Youngsters had been safe when she was not at work. And the entire series of attacks had stopped upon her arrest.

There was damning evidence against Allitt. When the police began their enquiries they discovered that someone had tampered with the Ward Notebook, which was kept at the Nursing Station on Ward Four and used to make rough notes about patients. Mr Goldring said that someone had not wanted the police to see all the pages and had taken a pair of scissors to cut several of them from the book. It was no coincidence that the missing pages covered the period during which Paul Crampton, who had survived a massive overdose of insulin, had stayed on Ward Four.

Another medical record file, the Ward Allocation Book, which indicated which nurse had been
assigned to which patient, had also disappeared from the ward. When the police searched Allitt’s home, they had found it tucked in a bag in her wardrobe. Mr Goldring asked the jury: ‘What was it doing there?’, and commented ‘Her explanation was wholly unconvincing.’

Detectives also discovered that the key to the ward’s drug refrigerator, where various medicines (including insulin) were locked, had also strangely disappeared soon after Allitt arrived on the ward. She had been given a bunch of all the ward keys when she was on duty, but then reported that the fridge key was missing. All attempts to trace it had failed. Mr Goldring told the jury: ‘You may come to the conclusion that she had taken the fridge key … also that she was less than frank about it all with the police.’

The diary of heart attacks, respiratory failures, deaths and lucky escapes, exposing the strengths and weaknesses of the prosecution case, was detailed by Mr Goldring. Liam Taylor, admitted with a chest infection, suffered a massive heart attack while he was being ‘specialled’ by Allitt. Mr Goldring alleged she had killed him either by administering a drug or a strong mixture of drugs or even by placing her hand over his nose and mouth to stop him breathing.

Timothy Hardwick, admitted after suffering an epileptic fit, was recovering while being nursed by Allitt, but within an hour he was dead from a heart attack. The prosecution alleged Allitt killed him, but they didn’t know how.

Kayley Desmond, admitted with a chest infection and feeding difficulties, collapsed and stopped breathing three times while being nursed by Allitt. Air had been pumped into her right armpit. The prosecution alleged that Allitt had taken a syringe into her cubicle and deliberately injected her, Kayley survived.

Paul Crampton, admitted with a chest infection, collapsed three times with massive hypoglycemic attacks – a dramatic drop in his blood sugar-level – while Allitt nursed him. She had injected him with a huge overdose of insulin equal to a full adult syringe. Paul should have died but he survived.

Bradley Gibson, admitted with broncho-pneumonia, was alone with Allitt when he suffered a massive heart attack and ‘died’ for thirty-two minutes. The prosecution said they believed he had been poisoned through his drip feed with an unknown drug or a mixture of drugs. Bradley survived.

Henry Chan, admitted with a fractured skull after falling from an upstairs window at home, was alone with Allitt when he stopped breathing and turned dark blue. The prosecution claimed Allitt had placed her hand over his nose and mouth as he slept. Henry survived.

Becky Phillips, was sent home from Ward Four after treatment for vomiting. She died the same night at home. The prosecution alleged that Allitt injected her with slow-acting insulin on Ward Four, either under the skin or into a muscle. She died from a massive hypoglycemic attack.

Katie Phillips, admitted purely for observation, was being ‘specialled’ by Allitt when she turned blue and stopped breathing. The prosecution alleged Allitt had suffocated her with a hand over her mouth and nose. Katie also had five broken ribs caused by Allitt squeezing her so hard it would have also stopped her breathing. Katie survived two more attacks. But she suffered severe brain damage.