Dundee killer nurse to appeal

‘Angel of Death’ trained at Ninewells before murders

A nurse dubbed the Angel of Death has had his conviction for murdering four OAPS sent to the Court of Appeal more than a decade after being jailed for life.

In 2008 Colin Norris, right, who trained at Dundee’s Ninewells Hospital, was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in jail.

A jury convicted Norris of murdering four elderly women and trying to kill a fifth by injecting them with massive doses of insulin while at a hospital in Leeds.

Norris’s presence before each of the patients became hypoglycaemic was said to be the only factor common in all cases. The Criminal Cases Review Commission says new evidence around the condition, particularly in the frail elderly, has led to the “real possibility” the Court of Appeal will find the convictions unsafe.

ATayside-trained nurse has had his conviction for murdering four elderly women sent to the Court of Appeal almost 13 years after being handed a life sentence.

Colin Norris has always protested his innocence over a jury’s verdict that he killed four women and attempted to murder another by injecting them with massive doses of insulin while working in Leeds.

The 38-year-old, who trained at Ninewells Hospital, has now been told by the Criminal Cases Review Commission that fresh evidence created a “real possibility” his conviction was unsafe.

In 2008, after a fivemonth trial at Newcastle Crown Court, Norris was convicted of murdering Doris Ludlam, 80, Bridget Bourke, 88, Irene Crookes, 79, and 86-year-old Ethel Hall.

He was alleged to have injected them with lethal doses of insulin at Leeds General Infirmary and the city’s St James’s Hospital in 2002.

He was also found guilty of attempting to murder 90-year-old Vera Wilby.

All five women were inpatients on orthopaedic wards where Norris, originally from Glasgow, was a nurse.

Norris was sentenced to life imprisonment and ordered to serve a minimum of 30 years.

The CCRC said it had decided to refer all five of Norris’s convictions to the Court of Appeal after a “detailed review of this complex and difficult case”.

“The case against him was wholly circumstantial and heavily reliant on expert opinion evidence,” said the CCRC.

An appeal against conviction was turned down by the Court of Appeal in December 2009 and Norris subsequently applied to the CCRC in October 2011.

The CCRC said: “As a result of the new expert evidence, the CCRC has concluded that there is a real possibility that the Court of Appeal will decide that Mr Norris’s conviction for the murder/attempted murder of one or more of the four patients is unsafe.”

It said experts agreed the hypoglycaemia in the four patients other than Mrs Hall may be accounted for by natural causes.

The new evidence has highlighted other developments in the understanding of hypoglycaemia, including its prevalence in the elderly and frail, which cast further doubt on the expert opinion relied upon by the prosecution at trial.

“As regards the murder of Mrs Hall, the CCRC considers that this conviction depends upon support from the other four cases and the prosecution’s assertion that no one other than Mr Norris could have been responsible,” it said.

“In light of the new expert evidence, the CCRC is satisfied that this assertion is now less secure and that, as a result, there is a real possibility that the Court of Appeal will quash this conviction, too.”

JUSTICE: All five of Colin Norris’s convictions have been referred to the Court of Appeal.