World's Most Evil Killers - Season 1, Episode 12 - Beverly Allitt - Full Episode | Forensic Files

-In April 1991, doctors at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital in Lincolnshire were perplexed.
In just 2 months, the health of 13 children on Ward 4 had mysteriously deteriorated.
Four of them had died. -Sadly, I had to share with the parents and said, "Look, this is impossible, but I can't do anything more."
I felt so sad. He died in my hands. -But this was no unfortunate coincidence. -I began to realize that there was a serial killer
that was working on that ward and was causing the collapses of these children. -Unbelievably, one of the nurses
was deliberately attempting to kill her young patients by injecting them with deadly poison.
-A sergeant walked in, and then he said, "We have reason to believe that Paul's illness,
hypoglycemic attacks, were a result of a maladministration of drugs," and I remember my words exactly.
"That would explain a lot, wouldn't it?" -Beverley Allitt, the woman dubbed the Angel of Death,
had, without doubt, become one of the world's most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ It was a case that shocked the world.
For 59 days in 1991, there was a serial killer stalking the children's ward at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital in Lincolnshire,
but nobody knew it. 22-year-old nurse Beverley Allitt's job was to protect the children in her care,
but she abused her role. She was purposely harming them. Her crimes were horrific and ruined the lives of many,
including the families of her innocent victims. -As a judge set to take her down,
there were emotional scenes in the public gallery with families bursting into tears.
One woman jumped up, shouting, "Bastard, bastard." Another shouted, "Lock her in a cage."
-Beverley Allitt had tried to get away with murder. Her story begins over two decades earlier.
Beverley Allitt was born on the 4th of October, 1968, in the small Lincolnshire village of Corby Glen.
She was one of four children. -There don't seem to be any real red flags in Beverley Allitt's background that would suggest
that she'd go on to do the things she did, so normally, when we have a serial killer,
we have an abusive or a violent childhood. There's something that's there in the background,
but with Beverley Allitt, there doesn't seem to be any real powerful explanatory factor.
-Fast-forward to April 1991. 22-year-old Beverley Allitt had been working on the children's ward
at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital for three months. One of the consultants on Ward 4 was Dr. Charith Nanayakkara.
-My first impressions about Beverley Allitt was nothing outstanding. She was just another quiet,
pleasant, obliging nurse who was available. -During Allitt's short time on the ward,
three children had died suddenly, and a further nine had fallen seriously ill under suspicious circumstances.
On April the 22nd, 1991, Beverley Allitt was on duty when 15-month-old Claire Peck was admitted to Ward 4.
She was under the care of the two consultants at the hospital, Dr. Frederick Porter and Dr. Nanayakkara.
-Claire Peck, she had come with a severe attack of asthma, breathing difficulties, requiring oxygen,
so Dr. Porter was called, and he had come. He had tried to resuscitate and provide all the necessary care
as appropriate, and Beverley Allitt, on this occasion, had been with him. In spite of all the efforts taken,
Dr. Porter couldn't resuscitate her, and she had died within hours. -Claire Peck was the fourth child to die unexpectedly
at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital in 3 months. It was an alarming number in such a short space of time.
-I said I really don't know what's going on and got together with Dr. Porter and the senior nursing manager
and checked through all the cases of worrying, suspicions, and uncertainties we had.
I compiled a report and sent it to unit general manager, saying, "We have series of these unexplained
and sometimes explained collapses. We are very worried about these problems, and therefore, their want to bring it to your notice.
We need your help." -On the 30th of April, the hospital decided to ask the police to investigate the deaths
to see if there could be something or someone casting a shadow over Ward 4. The case found its way
to Chief Superintendent Stuart Clifton. -One of my dividend sergeants at Grantham contacted me to say
that he'd had a call from Grantham Hospital, which suggested that they'd had a high number
of collapses of children, which may or may not be down to some criminal act. When I use the term "collapse," I'm talking in terms
of each of them having stopped breathing, and the resuscitation team, known colloquially as the "crash team,"
were called to resuscitate the children. There were two pediatricians employed at the hospital
and Dr. Porter and Dr. Nanayakkara, who had differing opinions about whether the collapses of children
at that hospital over a period of about three months were actually medically related
or whether they were at the hands of somebody who was causing those collapses. -After a meeting between detectives and doctors
on the 3rd of May, it was decided they'd ask Professional David Hull, an expert on pediatrics,
to give his insight on each of the cases. -He set out, in some detail, his findings but concluded by saying,
"Of the 13 children that I've looked at, I think that there are only three that are worthy of further investigation.
In two of these cases, I feel that there will be a medical explanation, and in one case, a little boy called Paul Crampton,
I think it's worthy of further investigation." -Five-month-old Paul Crampton had been admitted to Ward 4
on the 20th of March 1991, with a chest infection. His dad, David, remembers it well.
-Paul was actually born with measles, and he was taken home, and then after a relatively short period, a few months,
Kath took him to the doctor, my wife, and he had a wheeze. They were, I think, overcautious,
but that's the right thing with a child of that age, and they took him into hospital.
-The first 3 days of his care were completely unremarkable, and he was expected to go home on that third day.
During the course of that day, Beverley Allitt brought to the attention of other nurses
the fact that this little boy was having difficulty breathing. -I walked into a scene I did not expect,
and that was Paul in the arms of the nurse, I think, at that particular time. He was cold, clammy, gray, and I recall
that Nurse Beverley Allitt was there, and she said, at the time, "This child is hyperglycemic."
The doctor had been called. The doctor came, and Paul was taken into the treatment room,
and he disappeared for what seemed to be an eternity before we were allowed into the treatment room,
and I remember Paul sat there, playing with his toes. He seemed to have made a total recovery.
-The following day, which was a Sunday, Beverley Allitt went to take the drip down,
and within the space of a few minutes, the boy was, once again, hyperglycemic. -So, obviously, that was quite frightening, so we went,
within a very short space of time, from a child that's coming home to a child that's now seriously ill
and without too much explanation. -Three days later, this little boy is expected to go home that day
because he's continued to recover from his attacks. At about 10 minutes to 12:00,
the boy's father goes up to the hospital canteen to get himself a sandwich, and when he returns some 20 minutes or so later,
he finds a little boy that is gray, arched back and clearly in some form of distress.
-Word came from the ward that Paul had collapsed again, and colleague crashed through,
and when he saw his collapse, he immediately called the team from Nottingham and transferred him.
-He went in the ambulance both with my wife and with a doctor, and Nurse Beverley Allitt went in the ambulance with him.
I remember walking into the ward at Queen's Medical Center, and it was just a totally different atmosphere,
calm, relaxed. Paul was in intensive care, but you got the feeling that he was just going to get better,
and he did. -Transferring Paul Crampton to Queen's Medical Center in Nottingham had saved his life.
Tests reveal the insulin in his blood, which is usually between 4 and 6 milliunits per liter,
was alarmingly high. -Dr. Porter had taken blood, which had been sent to the University Hospital at Cardiff
for examination. The insulin in the blood of Paul Crampton, at 47,000, is the second-highest ever recorded in the world.
-He was fortunate enough to survive, and it just felt that he had abnormal external insulin administered.
-I think, when we got the blood results, I began to realize that there was a serial killer
that was working on that ward and was causing the collapses of these children. -I had a call from Grantham Police,
and it was, "We'd like to come to see you, won't tell you what it is, but we'll come and see you tomorrow."
And so I had an office in Grantham at the time, and the sergeant walked in, and then he said,
"We have reason to believe that Paul's illness, hyperglycemic attacks, were a result of maladministration of drugs,"
and I remember my words exactly. "That would explain a lot, wouldn't it?" -It was unthinkable.
With someone at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital murdering helpless children, the police had to investigate each of the cases
to try and find the killer. They would begin with 7-week-old Liam Taylor who was admitted on the 21st of February, 1991,
just two days after Nurse Beverley Allitt had begun working on Ward 4. They had to tread carefully.
-In a health-care setting, it is very difficult to investigate a murder or a<i> suspected</i> murder
because all of the individuals on that ward have a legitimate reason to be there.
They have the access to the victim anyway, and often, it's very difficult to prove that direct link
between one particular member of staff and one particular victim, so the police have got a really,
really difficult job on their hands when they're investigating this type of crime.
-And it wasn't going to get any easier. -About a week or so into the inquiry, the whole investigation was blown by the local paper,
and of course, then, the world's press descended on Grantham. -Local radio reporter Sean Dunderdale
was one of the first journalists to latch onto the story. -No one has ever experienced a story like this before.
We kind of heard rumors. We know the police were involved at the hospital, that something was happening,
but exactly what, I mean, at that stage, I don't think even the police knew what they were facing,
what they were coping with. Because nobody knew what was happening, there wasn't that much information to start with,
and slowly, it started to develop as a story that, clearly, something big was happening at Grantham,
that there was a major investigation, and eventually, it did sort of get out there into the media
that there had been certainly a number of odd occurrences involving children in the children's ward.
-Detectives began to approach family members of the victims with the shocking news that their children
may have been deliberately attacked by an active serial killer. -In the early stages of the investigation,
the parents were certainly at an attitude that suggested that the police should not be interfering
with an investigation of this type. I think it's fair to say that, as the teams began to investigate the circumstances,
and they became more and more aware of the circumstances surrounding the collapse of their child,
they became more and more on-board. -Police had to try and find a link between all 13 of the children who'd been affected.
They began with the first suspicious case, the death of 7-week-old Liam Taylor who'd been left under the care of a new staff nurse,
Beverley Allitt. -On the 21st of February of 1991, he was taken to Grantham Hospital
and was seen by one of the pediatricians and diagnosed with bronchiolitis. A couple of hours later,
they see their child with just a nappy on. He's clearly terribly distressed, and the nurse,
Beverley Allitt, explains that, during the course of feeding, he'd vomited and choked.
The next evening, the two parents decide to stay in the hospital. The mom is so tired that she goes to bed early,
and the father stays up. He looks in on the child just before midnight, after having had a shower at the hospital,
sees that there's a nurse with him. He goes off to bed, thinking that the problems are over,
and he's awoken about 5:00 in the morning by the night sister who asked him to come
because Liam has relapsed. The child is blue, back arched, and Dr. Nanayakkara tells them that he stopped breathing,
and they'd had some difficulty restarting the heart. Later that morning, Liam dies.
♪♪ -Sadly, I had to share with the parents and said, "Look, this is impossible, but I can't do anything more."
I felt so sad. He died in my hands. -The last nurse to tend to Liam before his death
was Beverley Allitt, who joined the ward just 4 days previously. It was her first-ever nursing role.
-So Beverley Allitt had applied to other hospitals, other departments for a job as a nurse upon her
completing her qualifications, and she'd been turned down by all of them. When Ward 4 employed Beverley Allitt,
it was because they were incredibly short-staffed. They were pretty desperate. They needed more nurses on duty, and normally,
they wouldn't have taken Beverley Allitt on because she didn't have the correct level of qualifications,
the<i> usual</i> level of qualifications that they would ask for, so it was desperation, really.
-Allitt had begun training as a nurse at 16. Even at a young age, she seemed to have an unhealthy fascination with hospitals.
-She was a regular in the A&E department. She would constantly turn up there, complaining of various symptoms and illnesses,
and she got a bit of a reputation amongst the staff there, so they were very surprised to learn
that she was a trainee nurse, and the dots just simply weren't joined up because, often, when somebody is a nurse,
and they're training as a nurse, you're only seeing them, you know, during that part of their day.
You're not seeing the bigger picture. -Detectives investigating these suspicious incidents on Ward 4
had begun to look into each case to find a common link. Beverley Allitt had again been on duty
on the 5th of March, 1991, the day that Timothy Hardwick was admitted. -Timothy Hardwick was an 11-year-old boy.
He had a lot of problems in his life. He suffered with Cerebral Palsy and was epileptic.
He had an epileptic fit in school in Newark. As a result, he was transferred to Grantham Hospital
where doctors managed to get his fitting under control. A very, very short time after Beverley had been left with him,
this child suddenly stops breathing. She raises the alarm, and the crash team recalls.
-One of the staff nurses came to my office and said, "Dr. Nanayakkara, can you please come and see Timothy?
He is not well." Apparently, he had collapsed, and then when I went there, I tried to resuscitate him,
but by that time, he virtually had no signs of life. -Sadly, they can't resuscitate him, and the child dies.
Just five days later on March the 10th, 14-month-old Kayley Desmond was on Ward 4,
suffering with a chest infection. After being left alone with Allitt for some one-to-one nursing,
Kayley had an unexpected heart attack. -Beverley Allitt was seen in the room and actually called other nurses to go
and have a look, which was one of her common things. She would call other nurses to say,
"Come and have a look at this child," and then the crash team would be called. -Kayley survived the collapse
and was transferred to another hospital. Due to the massive toll the arrest put on her young body,
she was left brain damaged. Detectives investigating the unusual pattern of patient
collapses on Ward 4 found a clue in Kayley's X-rays. -We were able to show that there was needle-tracking
under the arm of this little girl and an air bubble, which had obviously caused the equivalent
of what we would call a heart attack. -This mysterious needle mark was further proof
to detectives they were dealing with a killer. They'd already discovered the high insulin count
in the blood of Paul Crampton, who survived. They continued their investigations with the cases
of two more suspiciously ill children, Bradley Gibson and 2-year-old Yik Chan. -Bradley Gibson is admitted under Dr. Porter.
He was about 5 or 6 years old and had breathing difficulties. Dr. Porter had treated him with possible chest infection,
and he then suddenly had stopped breathing and stopped his heartbeat, as well, what you call a cardiac arrest, which is extremely rare.
Dr. Porter had tried repeatedly to resuscitate him with the defibrillator. He managed to get him round, extremely fortunate.
-Yik Chan was admitted with a suspected fractured skull. He was in the hospital for a couple of days,
and he's charging around the place. There's clearly not very much wrong with him.
One particular evening, Beverley Allitt is going off-duty, and she speaks to the oncoming nurse
at about 9 o'clock in the evening and said, "Can you have a look in at Chan? He's crying, and he's not very well."
The oncoming nurse goes into the room and finds him with his back arched and blue,
and the crash team were called, and he's resuscitated. -Bradley Gibson and Yik Chan both survived unscathed.
Three-month-old identical twins Katie and Becky Phillips were not so lucky. The pair were born prematurely
and were regular visitors to Ward 4. In early April 1991, they were back and being treated by Dr. Nanayakkara.
-They had repeated admissions, not surprisingly, again, with a variety of illnesses, diarrhea,
vomiting, breathing difficulties and so on and so forth, and the parents, quite rightly, were very worried
and brought them straight to the hospital rather than going to the GP. I had seen them and discharged them, reassured the parents,
but the same night, Becky was brought to the crash-team staff, taking lots of effort to resuscitate her,
but she was virtually dead, so I had a long discussion with the parents. They were completely shocked, and they were very, very upset.
I left some blood samples in the laboratory for any future investigations, if needed.
-And we subsequently found that blood and had it analyzed, and that contained 9,660 milliunits
per liter of insulin in the blood, and you always have to remember, with these huge figures,
that a child should have 15 to 20 milliunits, so it's horrendous. -Later on that same day, April the 5th,
Dr. Nanayakkara asked Becky's parents to bring her twin sister, Katie, in as a precaution.
-Katie's taken into hospital, and that afternoon, she's allocated to the care of Beverley Allitt.
One of the senior nurses goes to that particular room to see what's going on. As she enters, she sees Beverley Allitt
nursing the child in her arms. The child is crying. She sees the child collapse within Beverley Allitt's arms,
and the crash team are called. They manage to resuscitate Katie, who is later transferred,
but over the next three days, the child, Katie, suffers convulsions, and this child is severely brain damaged
as a result of what occurred. Now, during my investigation, Detective Inspector Jones
managed to find X-rays that were taken at the time. This child had squeeze injuries,
which had broken a number of ribs. -This was further evidence that proved to detectives
that something very sinister was happening on Ward 4 in Grantham and Kesteven Hospital.
Between the deaths of Becky Phillips on the 5th of April and Claire Peck on April the 22nd,
four more boys had been admitted with minor symptoms and unexpectedly came close to death.
That made a total of 13 suspicious incidents -- four deaths and nine close calls --
but now, investigators have the arduous task of making a list of suspects. One of the names on that list
was a woman who always seemed to be on duty whenever something went wrong -- 22-year-old staff nurse Beverley Allitt.
In May 1991, police were investigating a spate of mysterious deaths and illnesses
on the children's ward at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital in Lincolnshire. After digging deeper into the individual cases,
they were certain they were chasing a serial killer. -There's clear evidence of air injected
under the arm of one child. There's evidence of squeeze injuries. There's evidence of insulin.
What was a common factor with the vast majority of these children was that each of them had a cannula fitted, a site,
usually in the back of their hand, where drugs or drips can be administered through,
so injecting cardiotoxic drugs would not be very difficult because it could go in through the IV port.
-This is quite a common method for, firstly, a female serial killer and a health care serial killer.
Poison is a very common method used by these people. It's accessible. It's something that is not going to immediately cause concern
because this is something that's already in that hospital environment anyway, and also, poisoning is quite a remote method
of killing somebody. You're not up close and personal with them. It's not messy.
You can administer the poison and then leave the scene. You don't have to see them suffer the effects of it.
Chief Superintendent Stuart Clifton and his team interviewed all the staff members on Ward 4,
and a new piece of evidence emerged that suddenly became crucial. -I began to look at the circumstances of insulin
in Grantham Hospital, and I found that it was kept in locked fridges on the wards,
and on the children's ward, the key to the fridge had gone missing three days before the first child had collapsed.
Beverley Allitt was the last-known person to have that key, but no hospital investigation had actually taken place.
-Beverley Allitt's name kept cropping up. She always seemed to be at the hospital
when the incidents occurred, and the staff duty rota confirmed this. -What we discovered was that, for every collapse,
Beverley Allitt was the only nurse that was on duty on every occasion, and on many of these occasions,
we could actually put her right at the bedside, either at the time of the collapse or just before.
-On the 21st of May, 1991, Stuart Clifton made the brave decision of having Beverley Allitt arrested.
-I basically couldn't take the chance that, if she was still working on there, she would harm more children,
albeit that I hadn't completed the investigation by any means. We were merely scraping the surface at that time.
So she was arrested, and the house was searched. During the course of that search,
we found a hospital pillowcase, a used syringe and a little child's notebook, and it was headed "allocations book."
-This allocations book had gone missing from Ward 4. It detailed the names of children
who needed extra attention and which nurse was allocated to them. It was not only further proof
that Allitt had been caring for the children who died but evidence that she was hiding the information from her colleagues.
-Beverley Allitt was interviewed at the police station over the course of two days.
She made no admissions. In fact, she went so far as to distance herself from all the events at that hospital,
saying things such as, "I wasn't there on that day. I didn't come on duty until after that had happened,"
so she completely distanced herself, maintained her innocence. She was a very strange girl in the interview
in that she would talk to you quite normally or talk to the interviewing officers quite normally
about things like football, pop music, and the minute you got down to actually talking about the events
at Grantham Hospital, she became a completely different person. -When news of the arrest broke,
the press knew this was a huge story. -Once the investigation went that one step further,
and obviously, a nurse had been arrested, a nurse was clearly under investigation,
they had to go public with that, and that's when it all exploded, really. That's when the world's media were suddenly interested
because it had never been heard of before, that a nurse would do such a thing. You know, it's such a rarity and, certainly in this country,
a first. The whole of Grantham was just surrounded by journalists, TV crews from around the world, newspapers.
-Allitt's arrest was also a huge shock for the victims' families. -I felt mixed emotions.
One is, "Who would want to harm a child?" But secondly, we now know what was wrong with Paul,
and thank God it's not anything to do with Paul. It's not a medical problem. It is an outside influence.
-Stewart Clifton and his team were convinced that Allitt was behind the deaths, but they had no proof.
She was released on bail without charge. -I convinced the hospital that they need to suspend
Beverly Allitt from duty because we couldn't take the chance, and they couldn't take the chance
that another child would be attacked. -The police needed to build a case. If they were right about Allitt,
then they just released a serial killer into the public. Chief Superintendent Stewart Clifton
turned back to the expert, who just a month previously, had concluded the majority of the cases
could be explained medically. -I asked David Hall to go away and re-look at the case notes of the children,
but to use the statements that my team had taken, which detailed the circumstances of the collapse
of each of these children. He agreed to do that. -Months passed as Stewart Clifton and his team
built the case against Beverly Allitt, and by November 1991, Professor Hall had reexamined his original case notes.
Based on the new evidence found by detectives, he agreed that all the incidents could be viewed as suspicious.
On the 20th of November, Allitt was arrested once more. -The former nurse is charged with the murder
of four children. She also faces eight charges of attempted murder of eight other children.
She faces a further eight charges of causing grievous bodily harm with intent. -She was due to appear at the Grantham Magistrate's Court
the next day. Bear in mind, this is a young girl that's never been in police custody before.
At 9:00 the next morning, one of the policewomen had to go and wake her up. She didn't appear to have a care in the world.
-There wasn't very much in the way of remorse. She didn't cry. There was no kind of real visible reaction in her.
So I think she does have that kind of cold personality. She's orchestrated all of these terrible events,
but she doesn't feel any impact from them. She's somebody who doesn't have the same feelings and emotions
as the rest of us. -During the 15-month wait for her trial, the stunned press began to uncover Beverly Allitt's history
of faking illnesses and self-harming. -The more we dug into Allitt's background, again,
the more unbelievable it became. And the one question our listeners would ask is,
"How? How did nobody spot all of this, and allow her to continue being a nurse? How did she get through that recruitment process?"
-We got her authorization from her to have a look at her medical records. They indicated, going back to childhood,
that Beverly liked to be the center of attention. There were incidents while she was at school
where she would sprain a finger and demand that her arm be put in a sling. -I think it's tempting to let look back and say,
"They should have picked up on that. They should have known that this was somebody
who was not quite right." But I don't think they would have automatically made the link
between somebody who was perhaps harming themselves, and somebody who would then go on to harm other people.
Nurses care for their patients. They want to preserve their lives and enhance that quality of life.
So to think that a nurse would do this, it's almost unthinkable. -On February the 15th 1993, 24-year-old Beverly Allitt
was in Nottingham Crown Court, charged with the murder of four children and the attempted murder of a further nine.
Her not-guilty plea meant a trial would have to take place. -For much of the time, Beverly was not there
because she was suffering from anorexia and was supposedly too ill to attend trial.
The judge, in his wisdom, ruled that it should go ahead without her. -The court case was a very harrowing experience.
I mean, it was a long, drawn-out affair. Beverly Allitt wasn't in court for a lot of it.
Again, I think some of that manipulation that she was known for, some of the manipulation she had clearly done in the hospital,
she was trying it with the court case as well, and I know that was having an impact on family members.
They knew of their own individual case, but the actual scale of it, apart from what they'd read in the media,
heard on the radio, it was the first time they'd actually heard exactly what had been happening at Grantham Hospital.
-I mean, that was quite dramatic because obviously it was a significant media interest,
and we couldn't walk down the street from the car park to the court case without having microphones stuffed under our nose
and cameras flashing. And yet, there was a lot of emotion, and a lot of emotion around that time, clearly.
-You couldn't just go home and, you know, close the door and put the TV on and forget about it.
It just was all-encompassing. It was the only thing that was on my mind throughout the case
and for a long time afterwards, as well. -In the times that Allitt was in the courtroom,
she seemed completely distanced from what was going on around her. -I firmly believe she felt
the families would still be on her side because, you know, they had been very close.
You know, they thought that, certainly initially, in those initial stages, that, you know,
she'd helped save, or tried to save, their child's life. And so in court, you know, she would smile at them.
-To the outside world, a lot of the evidence may have seemed circumstantial, but as the trial went on,
it became clear the case against Allitt was a strong one. -For a long time, people believed it must be a mistake.
You know, a nurse surely wouldn't be responsible for that. There must be some other explanation for it.
But then, slowly, as the evidence was revealed, you could see that tide turning,
that people suddenly realized, complete revulsion, that a nurse, of all people, would do that.
You know, suddenly, like, "Well, if I can't trust a nurse, who can I trust?" And I think that was a real shock to the nation.
It resonated right across the country when those actual facts came out about what Beverly Allitt had done.
-During the trial, the jury heard from experts who believe that Allitt had been suffering with a mental illness
throughout her life, which caused her to commit the murders. -The Munchausen syndrome is a condition,
which basically means that people will invent symptoms in themselves in order to gain the attention of medical professionals.
There's also Munchausen syndrome by proxy. This is when somebody invents symptoms in somebody else
in order to get attention from medical professionals, and that somebody else is often a child
or somebody who you're in charge of the care of. -I think she's certainly ill, and there has to be
an element of evil somewhere within that because people can be ill without wishing to cause harm to other people.
-On the 28th of May 1993, after a draining 3-month trial, the jury had reached a decision.
-I think the moment we were called back into the court is something, you know, we'll always, certainly, I'll always remember.
It was very tense, you know, very quiet. A member of the jury stood up, and that first verdict came in of guilty,
and there was just a, again, an intake of breath, lasted just a couple of seconds.
Then, someone, I remember, shouted, "Yes." And I think there was a couple of people clapping,
and then tears from the families, tears from members of the public. It was a very difficult job for the police to actually say,
"You know, without doubt, Beverly Allitt was responsible." So there was always that possibility the jury could have
just tipped the other way, and thankfully, you know, that guilty verdict came in.
I think it was a huge sense of relief for everyone. -On May the 28th 1993, Judge Mr. Justice Latham sentenced Beverly Allitt
to 13 concurrent life sentences, one for each of the charges against her. A relieved David Crampton made a statement outside the courtroom.
-Well, I saw Beverly Allitt as rather a pathetic figure, really, and when we listen to her medical evidence,
we probably could conclude that these tragedies were inevitable. -There was clearly some massive media interest
associated with the Allitt case, both pre and post the trial. That was pretty easy for me and my family
because Paul was at home and well. If Paul... If something worse had happened to Paul,
such as had happened to other families, how would I have conducted myself? I don't know.
Thankfully, I'll never have to know. Paul is 26 years old. He has a house, and he has a long-time partner, lovely girl.
He's got a career. Paul is doing very well, very, very well. -Beverly Allitt was immediately sent to Holloway Prison,
but after just a week behind bars, she was transferred to Rampton Secure Hospital
in Nottinghamshire. -I think the fact that Beverly Allitt has ended up in a secure hospital
is a really interesting one for me because this is somebody who, before developing Munchausen syndrome by proxy,
could have been argued to have just Munchausen syndrome. So she was fabricating illnesses and symptoms in herself
before she was harming other people. She was going after that role as the patient.
She wanted to be seen, you know, by medical professionals and play that sick role.
She's essentially achieved what she set out to achieve. She's got that status of the patient,
which she always wanted. -What do I think about where Allitt is serving her sentence?
I don't waste any energy on that. I don't really think about it. She doesn't enjoy the same freedoms that I do
and the rest of my family and the vast majority of the population in this country.
She's in a prison, whether that is more comfortable than perhaps some people would like is a bit academic really.
-In December 1993, Central Television interviewed Beverly Allitt inside Rampton Hospital as part of a special news report.
-She enjoys relative luxury and freedom within the maximum security ward. The parents of her victims who gave their approval
for these pictures to be included in Central TV's the "Tuesday Special" tonight believe she should be in prison.
-It's not too bad. -What's a good thing about it? -Well, I've got more freedom in here.
-You like it better than where you were before? -Yes. -Why? -Because I got more freedom.
I'm not locked up all the time. -Stewart Clifton also visited Allitt inside Rampton in 1994,
determined to get the truth out of her. -She made admissions at that time. She admitted nine of the 13 cases
that she'd been convicted of. She wouldn't have anything to do with the two Phillips' cases.
The minute that I began to press her for details about precisely what she'd done, what she'd used,
she just walked away from me, wouldn't answer any more questions. -There are plenty of question left unanswered,
especially for the loved ones of the victims of Beverly Allitt. -Allitt's crimes are like dropping a pebble
into a pool of water. Those ripples spread far more, a dramatic effect, clearly on the families, the families of the victims,
but their extended family, grandparents, parents, et cetera, and, of course, a dramatic effect on the hospital and its staff.
So her crimes went far more into the community, not just the immediate people affected.
-I think Beverly Allitt was really most at home when she was in the middle of drama,
so she was deliberately creating the drama and then casting herself in a leading role within it.
-There's a real impact there of, you know, it could have been a family member, you know.
It's the local hospital. One of my members of my younger family could have gone into the hospital
to be cared for by a nurse and look what happened. And that the thing with this story, you know,
it could have happened to absolutely anyone. The parents who were affected by that were purely unlucky
that their child went into that hospital on that day, and that Beverly Allitt was their nurse.
-We may never understand why Beverly Allitt intentionally set out to poison the children she was meant to care for.
Her lust for attention turned from selfish to deadly, and for three months in 1991,
she acted upon it in the most horrific manner. Nobody on Ward 4 was safe, but the determination of doctors and police
brought justice for all the victims' families and proved that Beverly Allitt, the Angel of Death,
was a cold-blooded killer. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪

Beverley Allitt killed four children and attempted to murder nine more while working as a nurse at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital in Lincolnshire in 1991.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

Brief Summary

Beverley Allitt, a nurse, murdered children at Grantham Hospital, leading to a shocking investigation and trial.

Key points

The Angel of Death. Nurse Beverley Allitt becomes one of the world's most evil killers, targeting children.
A Shocking Investigation. The investigation into mysterious child collapses reveals a serial killer in a hospital.
The High Stakes of Care. Doctors and detectives uncover a chilling pattern of unexplained child collapses.
Beverley Allitt Arrested. On May 21, 1991, Beverley Allitt was arrested after being linked to suspicious incidents on Ward 4.
Beverley Allitt's Background. Investigators uncovered Allitt's history of faking illnesses and self-harming, raising questions about her past.
Trial and Verdict. After a lengthy trial, Beverly Allitt was found guilty of murdering four children.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Look, this is impossible, but I can't do anything more.

A doctor shares heartbreaking news with parents.

0:26WatchJul 14, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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