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Hatred of elderly turned carer into new Shipman
WARD 36 at Leeds General Infirmary was hardly an obvious choice for newly-qualified nurse Colin Norris when he began work there in October 2001.
Most of the patients were elderly and often suffered from multiple health problems as they recovered from orthopaedic injuries such as broken hips.
He had already confided his distaste for dealing with elderly patients to tutors at Dundee University where he trained, frequently skipping placements treating the elderly at a nursing home and the city's hospital.
Nevertheless he quickly picked up the ropes at the infirmary and became popular with most of his colleagues, who liked his dry humour.
Colleagues assumed Norris was joking when at midnight on November 20 2002 he said he had a "funny feeling" about patient Ethel Hall, going on to predict she would "go off" – suffer some sort of collapse.
It would be "just his luck" as he would have all the paperwork to do if she died, complaining to nurse Ruth Sheehan that whenever he did nights someone always died and that it was always in the morning when things went wrong "about 5.15am".
When she collapsed at 5.05am, he pointed to his watch and callously told her: "I told you so."
While hardly a dedicated nurse, colleagues could never have suspected Norris had been injecting patients with lethal doses of insulin for the previous six months and that Mrs Hall was his fifth victim.
There was disbelief when he was arrested a few weeks later - so much so that he was still urged to come to the staff Christmas party.
Norris, who is gay, was born in Glasgow in 1976. His mother split up from his father, who has not seen his son for 15 years - but she remarried and he came from a very supportive background.
He left school with six GCSE-equivalents and studied travel at college, working for travel agencies and never being unemployed. Aged 22, he decided to take up nursing claiming he wanted to "make a difference".
His motives can only be guessed at.
Det Chief Supt Chris Gregg, who led the investigation into his crimes, believes he simply disliked dealing with older patients who could be difficult and require extra attention and was frustrated at the amount of work he had to carry out.
"Even throwing blankets off the bed would be sufficient for him to kill," he said.
"It was the level of difficulty they were presenting to him which frustrated him – which is similar to Harold Shipman. If they upset him, they suddenly became targets.
"I think Norris took the opportunity to murder people just to satisfy his own frustrations and limitations. He is on a short fuse and anything that slightly agitated him, he responded by killing people with lethal doses."
Some concerns had emerged about Norris during his time at the infirmary. He had been spoken to for swearing at a 17-year-old nurse cadet and about unusual prescribing of opiate painkillers to patients but no formal action was taken against him. Only now is it clear he was refining his murder technique.
In September 2002 he was transferred to St James's Hospital believing he would get more experience dealing with more seriously-ill patients but discovered he was still dealing with orthopaedic patients, complaining he had been transferred under "false pretences". He was openly bitter about the move, repeatedly calling in sick and telling one colleague he "couldn't be bothered".
Here the darker side of his personality was exposed. One experienced nurse said he showed "detached amusement" when his fourth victim Irene Crookes collapsed. He lacked any urgency despite the emergency and had to be told to get equipment to check her vital signs.
He was asked to deal with her body the next night after she had died with a colleague who noted Norris was "disinterested and had no feeling at all for the deceased woman".
He had also seen Norris being very blunt "sometimes nasty and not very caring towards patients in his care".
One patient, Bridget Tarpey, who gave evidence against him, claimed he had told her to "shut up" and another to "rot in hell".
"He was very nasty, he didn't like us old women," she added.
He told another, Ada Waterhouse: "I hope you suffer awfully and nobody's there to help you."
By the time he murdered Mrs Hall, previous deaths had been written off as due to natural causes, and he believed he could kill with impunity.
There is no evidence that he was mentally ill or enjoyed being the centre of attention as efforts were made to revive patients. Twice he was not present when patients were found collapsed.
In police interviews, he continued to maintain his innocence, claiming his remarks had been simply a nurse's black sense of humour and that he had been "unlucky" when patients died.
He told police: "I'm not going to admit to anything I've not done and I never murdered anyone. I didn't inject anybody with anything and I don't think these facts are good enough, I'm sorry."
He continued to claim his innocence during his trial, but was betrayed by flashes of temper giving evidence. Mr Gregg said he came across as "cocky and arrogant".
"He always came back with an answer, always had an excuse, trying to pick holes in the police investigation, trying to tell the interviewers their job, picking up on mistakes describing medical conditions.
"He was very much like Shipman trying to control the interview.
"I thought he believed himself to be smart, smarter than he is, and he had an arrogance about him. This wasn't a remorseful, meek individual who saw the error of his ways.
"He felt pretty sure he could get away with anything."
His initial arrest came only a week after he had picked up the keys to the end-terrace house he bought in Kirkstall, Leeds. He later sold up and moved back to Glasgow to live at his mother's.
He completed a course in teaching English overseas and took up Italian lessons with the intention of teaching there before he was finally charged. But the prison exercise yard will be the limit of his travels from now on.
TIMELINE
October 2001: Nurse Colin Norris begins work on ward 36 at Leeds General Infirmary.
May 17 2002: Patient Vera Wilby, 90, collapses after being given a huge overdose of insulin.
June 25 2002: Norris attacks Doris Ludlam, 80, and she dies two days later.
July 21 2002: A third patient Bridget Bourke, 88, collapses and dies the next day.
September 2002: Norris is transferred to ward 23 at St James's Hospital.
October 20 2002: Patient Irene Crookes dies on her 79th birthday from an insulin overdose.
November 20 2002: Norris, working an extra shift at the infirmary, attacks Ethel Hall, 86.
December 6 2002: Police are called in after tests reveal she has been given a massive overdose of insulin.
December 11 2002: Ethel Hall dies. The same day Norris is arrested and questioned.
October 12 2005:
Norris is charged with murdering four elderly patients and attempting to murder five.
October 17 2007:
Norris denies the charges as his trial begins at Newcastle Crown Court
March 3 2008:
Norris, 32, is convicted of four counts of murder and one of attempted murder following a lengthy trial.
Family and friends had noticed she was getting slightly more frail and forgetful in previous months but until then she had remained active.
Her only son John had even joked with her at her 90th birthday a few months earlier that she would get a 100th birthday telegram from the Queen.
She was taken to ward 36 at Leeds General Infirmary and it was here she became nurse Colin Norris's first victim. She survived a huge overdose of insulin but remained very ill and died the following January.
Mr Wilby said it was several months later when police contacted him to say they were investigating her collapse.
He was now convinced something untoward had happened to his mother and the other patients.
He had hoped she would come to live with his family at their Oxfordshire home as she became more frail but her collapse blighted her final months. She needed intensive nursing and had never really recovered her faculties.
"It's that kind of thing which makes me, not angry, but sad. It's very difficult to come to terms with," he said.
"As a result of someone's actions her last few months were taken away from her.
"The difficult thing looking back is that we had my mother's funeral and you start grieving and you come to terms with it but because we've had the trial hanging over us since 2003, we've not been able to do that properly."
Born in Kirkstall, Leeds, two weeks before the sinking of the Titanic, Mrs Wilby married her husband Norman in 1943 at Burley Methodist Church after they had met at Price Tailors in Kirkstall, which later became United Drapers and John Colliers. Son John was born the following year.
She worked as a secretary there and and later at Leeds City Council and the probation service. She retired in 1975.
She lived in Rawdon for 60 years. Her husband was a Labour councillor for 30 years, at one time chairman of Aireborough Urban District Council.
"He was chairman in Coronation Year which meant they had to go round unveiling a lot of plaques and official duties like that," said Mr Wilby.
They were a close couple and his sudden death in 1988 hit her hard but she joined a bereavement group in Ilkley, a book club and was a member of the Humanist Society.
She liked to travel by bus for coffee at Bettys in Ilkley or go shopping in Leeds. Her family took her for trips to Bolton Abbey, where she enjoyed walking in the woods, or Harrogate.
She had recovered from a heart attack in 1993 and continued to live at home. She was becoming more forgetful and had taken to keeping a daily diary in case something slipped her mind.
Her son found her somewhat confused and frightened after surgery at the infirmary and noted there appeared to be a shortage of staff on the ward – several times she fell out of bed and when she pressed an alarm to go to the toilet it went unanswered. "We were concerned and I think at the time a bit angry at one or two of the things that happened to mum in hospital about her general care," he said.
Perhaps these extra demands were the reason Norris attacked her. Her son, who gave evidence in his trial, found him offhand and unhelpful.
"His whole attitude was to just turn his back and walk away when I was speaking to him. I misunderstood when he was talking about her going to Chapel Allerton thinking this was a nursing home which she would not want, rather than another hospital where she could recuperate, but he didn't bother to explain."
On the night of May 17, Norris gave her the powerful painkiller morphine – even though she had not complained of pain. She became drowsy and shortly before his nightshift ended he gave her a huge overdose of insulin.
Ninety minutes later she was found semi-conscious, suffering a sudden hypoglycaemic attack.
She did go to Chapel Allerton Hospital where her family found staff much more helpful.
Later she went to live in a nursing home in Ilkley before dying at Airedale Hospital, near Keighley, on January 30 2003 from an infection. Her son said: "I can look back on my father's life, what he achieved and what kind of man he was, with very pleasant memories and a feeling of pride, but with my mother, who was an equally decent person, it's been very difficult to start to think of her in those sort of terms – I can't get beyond the last few months of her life.
"She went downhill from being a woman who was starting to become forgetful but was
still fairly mobile and living with a reasonable amount of dignity to not being able to move.
"It feels as if I never really laid her to rest.
"The distressing part is that she could have died in peace; she could have had two or three more years or gone on to 100."
Nurse who hated old killed four women in hospital
Public inquiry must be held says son of Norris victim
I can't grieve properly for mother
She was convinced she wouldn't leave alive
Patient collapsed... just as the accused predicted
Hatred of elderly turned carer into new Shipman
Did another rogue nurse inspire plot to steal fatal drugs?
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