Life imprisonment with a minimum tariff of 30 years imprisonment
Details
Victims
4–10 murder victims, 1 victim of attempted murder
Span of crimes
May – November 2002
Country
England
Location(s)
Leeds General Infirmary and St James's University Hospital, Leeds
Weapon
Overdoses of insulin
Date apprehended
2002
Imprisoned at
HM Prison Frankland
Colin Campbell Norris (born 12 February 1976)[1] is a Scottish serial killer and former nurse convicted for the murder of four elderly patients and attempted to murder another in two hospitals in Leeds, England in 2002.
Norris, who self-admittedly disliked elderly patients and had previously stolen hospital drugs, was the only person on duty when all the five patients inexplicably fell into sudden hypoglycaemic comas, despite the non-diabetic women only being in minor injury wards with merely broken hips. Suspicions were raised when Norris predicted that healthy Ethel Hall would die at 5:15 am one night, which is when she fell into a catastrophic arrest, and tests revealed that she had been injected with an extremely high level of man-made insulin. Insulin was missing from the hospital fridge and Norris had last accessed it, only half an hour before Hall fell unconscious.
Subsequent investigations would find that the unnatural hypoglycaemic attacks followed him when he was transferred to a second hospital, and hospital records revealed that only he could not be eliminated as a suspect. Detectives believed that Norris was responsible for up to six other suspicious deaths where only he was always present, but a lack of post mortem evidence and other factors meant that investigators and the Crown Prosecution Service could not pursue convictions for these deaths. The murder inquiry was led by Chris Gregg and the investigation was praised for its thoroughness.
Doubts were later raised about his conviction by, among others, Professor Vincent Marks, an expert on insulin poisoning, who concluded from his own studies that there was a 1 in 10 chance that each patient's arrest could have happened naturally. However, others have pointed out that C-peptides are produced in hypoglycaemic attacks caused by insulin produced naturally in the body, and these were not detected in any of the blood tests of the victims, indicating that the insulin had been introduced to their bodies externally and artificially. Norris lost an appeal against his conviction in 2009. In February 2021 the Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the case back to the Court of Appeal.
Norris is believed to have been inspired by Jessie McTavish, a fellow Scottish nurse who was convicted of murdering a patient with insulin in 1974 before having her conviction quashed in 1975. The incident had happened at Ruchill Hospital in Glasgow, less than a mile from where Norris grew up. Shortly before he qualified as a nurse he had learned about McTavish.[2]
^Cite error: The named reference RealCrimedocumentary was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^"The hatred that turned Colin Norris into serial killer". www.scotsman.com. 3 March 2008. Retrieved 9 October 2022.
Colin Campbell Norris (born 12 February 1976) is a Scottish serial killer and former nurse convicted for the murder of four elderly patients and attempted...
convicted of lesser charges and nurses such as Lucy Letby, Beverley Allitt, ColinNorris, Benjamin Geen and Victorino Chua have also been convicted of murdering...
2008). "The hatred that turned ColinNorris into serial killer". The Scotsman. Edinburgh. Lucy, David; Aitkin, Colin (2002). "A review of the role of...
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Mystery. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4767-9627-7. "Nurse who inspired ColinNorris". The Telegraph. 2 March 2008. Archived from the original on 11 January...
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heard at the crown court include the trial and conviction of the nurse, ColinNorris, in March 2008, for the murder of four elderly patients and the attempted...
BBC News. March 3, 2004. Retrieved July 24, 2022. "Nurse who inspired ColinNorris". The Telegraph. March 2, 2008. Archived from the original on January...
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