Colin Norris

Passions

Scottish serial killer and former nurse from the Milton area in Glasgow who was convicted of murdering four elderly patients in a hospital in Leeds, England, in 2002. He was sentenced in 2008 to serve a minimum of 30 years in prison. Doubts have since been raised about his conviction by, among others, Prof Vincent Marks, a leading expert on insulin poisoning. Norris worked at Leeds General Infirmary and St James's Hospital. Suspicions were raised when Norris predicted the death of one patient, Ethel Halls, saying she would die at 5:15am. Her condition worsened badly that morning around 5am and she died some weeks later. He stated at the time: "it is always in the morning when things go wrong". When questioned by police about this and three other patients who had died while he was on duty, he said "he seemed to have been unlucky over the last 12 months". The four patients were 79, 80, 86 and 88 years old. The trial took 19 weeks and the jury deliberated for 4 days. Norris was convicted by a majority verdict on 3 March 2008 of the murder of four women, and the attempted murder of a fifth aged 90. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, and ordered to serve a minimum term of 30 years in prison the following day. Judge Mr Justice Griffith rejected any possibility that Norris was practising euthanasia because none of the victims was terminally ill. Referred to in the British press as the "Angel of Death", Norris killed his victims by injecting them with high levels of insulin. Jessie McTavish, a nurse convicted and then cleared in 1974 for the murder of an 80-year-old patient with insulin, has been identified as a possible inspiration for Norris. He once attended a lecture on her case while studying at nursing college. New concerns over conviction: On 4 October 2011, new concerns were raised about the safety of Norris's conviction. Prof Vincent Marks - a leading expert on insulin poisoning - said the jury at Norris's trial was led to believe by experts that a cluster of hypoglycaemic episodes, among people who were not diabetic, was sinister. The professor said international medical studies carried out in the years since the 35-year-old Glaswegian was convicted told a different story. "Looking at all the evidence, all I can say is I think Colin Norris's conviction is unsafe," Prof Marks said. Prof Marks says the four patients picked out by the experts after Mrs Hall's death "were all at very high risk of developing spontaneous hypoglycaemia" because they had risk factors such as malnutrition, infection and multi-organ failure. Legal observers have noted that if the medical evidence is discredited then the case against Norris collapses, there being little motive and no forensic evidence linking him to the crimes. Link to Wikipedia biography