'Errors' by chiefs at hospital in murder claims

Managers are likely to be criticised in an independent report into practices at Airedale NHS Trust between 2000 and 2002, when three elderly women died in suspicious circumstances.

Police investigated the deaths of June Driver, 67, Eva Blackburn, 75, and Annie Midgley, 96, who were all patients at Airedale Hospital, near Keighley.

A senior nurse at the hospital, Anne Grigg-Booth, was charged with murdering all three women, attempting to murder a fourth patient and giving overdoses to a dozen more, but she died before she could stand trial.

Today's report is expected to conclude, however, that Miss Grigg-Booth was one of a number of nurses on night shifts who were able to administer powerful painkillers, against health guidelines.

The hospital was officially opened 40 years ago and treats more than 200,000 patients a year from across Yorkshire and parts of north-east Lancashire.

Board members of the region's strategic health authority, NHS Yorkshire and the Humber, will discuss the inquiry's findings at a meeting before publishing the report.

The inquiry, chaired by Kate Thirlwall QC, was ordered after the Government refused to sanction full inquests into the deaths.

Bradford coroner Roger Whittaker applied for permission to hold inquests but the request was turned down by the Ministry of Justice.

Miss Grigg-Booth was charged in 2004 with murdering Ms Driver in July 2000, Ms Blackburn in November 2001 and Ms Midgley in July 2002.

She was also accused of the attempted murder of Michael Parker in June 2002 and 13 counts of administering noxious substances including the opiate painkillers morphine and pethidine to 12 patients.

The charges followed a painstaking criminal investigation, which began in January 2003 when hospital chiefs called in detectives.

Dozens of patients and relatives were interviewed but police were faced with the problem that some potential victims had been cremated, and vital evidence lost.

Detectives ruled out mercy killing as a motive for the deaths and warned that Miss Grigg-Booth could have murdered more patients but her defence team was expected to bring detailed evidence pointing to her innocence.

Lawyers for Miss Grigg-Booth were to argue she only gave the drugs to patients if they needed pain relief, and only in therapeutic doses, but the evidence was never tested in court because she died aged 52 at her home in Nelson, Lancashire, in August 2005 - before her case came to trial.

A coroner ruled that she had killed herself accidentally by taking an overdose of anti-depressants.

An inquest at Burnley Coroner's Court heard that she had seven or eight times the normal dose of the drugs in her blood.

Miss Grigg-Booth, who was one of the first medics at the scene of the IRA Omagh bombing in August 1998, was an alcoholic and had huge debts when she died.