The following day, Paul went grey and unresponsive again, his eyes rolling back in his head. Doctors reattached him to the drip but he remained seriously unwell. It would later be alleged that Nurse Allitt gave him three separate overdoses of insulin that day. Concerned staff transferred him to the Queen’s Medical Centre – accompanied by Bev and the paramedics – and he lived. But, back home, he cried a lot as though reliving a frightening ordeal.
Bradley’s torment
The following day, Bev called another nurse and pointed out that five-year-old Bradley Gibson, recovering from pneumonia, had suddenly lost consciousness. Medics found that he had high levels of potassium in his bloodstream, but that didn’t explain why he had gone into cardiac arrest. Indeed, his symptoms were so odd that the doctors wondered if he’d mistakenly been given the wrong drug. A nurse gave him mouth to mouth resuscitation, after which – still in a coma – he was swiftly transferred to the Nottingham intensive care unit, where he regained consciousness but was a very ill boy. He crawled now rather than walked and cried because his legs hurt so much.
Bradley refused to speak to the nurses, and would turn his head to the wall if one approached him, whereas before he had been a talkative and happy child. Fortunately, he began to get his mobility back and was discharged, though he had terrible nightmares and drew pictures of himself in bed with someone looming menacingly above.
Yik’s terror
A few days later, on 28th March, two-year-old Yik Hung Chan was admitted with a fractured skull after falling from his first floor bedroom. He made a speedy recovery and, by the end of the month, was racing around the ward. So everyone was surprised when Bev told one of her Chinese colleagues that he was crying and asked her to speak to him in his native tongue. The nurse hurried to the little boy, only to find that he’d turned blue. Bev helped the other nurses to administer oxygen, and the child revived. At her happiest in the midst of a crisis, Bev travelled with him in the ambulance to the Queen’s Medical Centre, where he made a full recovery.
Becky’s death
Allitt’s next patient, two-month-old Becky Phillips, wasn’t so fortunate. The baby girl, who had been born three months prematurely, was admitted to Ward Four because she was vomiting up her feed. She stabilised, so a nurse was surprised when Bev said that the baby had gone cold and clammy. To the more experienced medic, the child seemed fine. Bev voiced her concerns again the following day as nurses prepared to discharge the baby, but again she was overruled.
Becky’s overjoyed parents took her home and reunited her with her twin, Katie. But, by the evening, Becky’s eyes were rolling about and she screamed as if in pain. The couple called the doctor out but he said it was probably just a touch of colic; by now, the little girl appeared to be more peaceful. When the family woke the following morning, however, they found that Becky had stopped breathing. They raced her to Grantham Hospital’s casualty department where she was pronounced dead. Staff attributed the fatality to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), more commonly known as cot death. In other words, she had died of unknown causes.
The subsequent autopsy would show that her heart had blistered, unusual for such a young baby, but the cause of death remained SIDS. Ironically, Bev was so nice to Becky’s parents, Sue and Peter Phillips, that they made her godmother to Katie, their surviving twin.
Katie’s paralysis
As a precaution, the hospital admitted Katie and hooked her up to an apnoea monitor to keep a check on her breathing. She was perfectly fine and eventually her parents went home to start planning for her sister’s funeral, leaving Katie in Nurse Allitt’s supposedly capable hands.
Shortly afterwards, Bev alerted the other nurses that Katie had turned blue. They revived her and kept watch by her bedside. The night sister, Jean Savill, started her shift early and stayed with the baby, refusing Bev’s repeated offers to give her a break. The following day, her parents took turns by her bedside, even sleeping there overnight.
By the next morning, when Katie hadn’t had a repeated attack, everyone relaxed, convinced that the crisis was over, and Katie was left alone for a couple of minutes. Medics heard the baby crying, then Bev came racing out of the ward holding her – to everyone’s alarm, the infant was bright red and breathless. Despite their best efforts, the crash team thought that she had died, then her heart restarted. However, she went into convulsions and the worried medics transferred her to the Queen’s Medical Centre, where she was immediately hooked up to a life support machine.
It was found that the nine-week-old had suffered permanent brain damage due to oxygen deprivation, damage that left her partially paralysed and partially blind. Much later, when her X-rays were examined, they would show that someone had squeezed her so hard that her bones had fractured and her ribs had broken.
A mysterious virus
By now, the staff at Grantham Hospital, particularly those associated with Ward Four, knew that there was something very wrong on the ward but there were so many variables that it was hard to pinpoint what was happening. Was there an infection in the hospital or were the babies being admitted already suffering from some unrecognised virus? Had they been given a bad batch of drugs or was something wrong with the food or the water supply? The night sister, Jean Savill, asked for extra staff and for swabs and tests but, due to funding cutbacks, her requests remained unfulfilled.
Jean Savill then wrote to her superiors, pointing out that there had been an unprecedented seven cardiac arrests in the past three months. She again asked for additional staff and was given temporary access to a couple of nurses from the adult wards. She also asked for a defibrillator to be based in the ward – they were using the one based in casualty – but, as this cost £6,000, she had to settle for a few child-sized paddles instead. Jean Savill was a hero in all of this, making herself unpopular with management in order to get the best care for her patients.
Michael’s cardiac arrest
The patients’ suffering continued. Six-year-old Michael Davidson was admitted on 7th April suffering from an accidental airgun wound that had caused a little bleeding. Surgeons removed the pellet from his chest and, two days later, he was recovering well, sitting up and playing games. Bev Allitt prepared a dose of what should have been antibiotics and handed it to another nurse to give to him – but the syringe actually contained a potassium overdose, causing the child to suddenly arch his back, go rigid, turn blue and have a cardiac arrest. Fortunately, he had made a spontaneous recovery by the time the crash team arrived.
A second autopsy
By now, one of the head doctors was sufficiently alarmed that he asked the Phillipses to delay the funeral of nine-week-old Becky in order that the pathologist could do a second post-mortem. Meanwhile, tests at the pathology lab had shown that Paul Crampton’s blood, taken during his seizures at Grantham Hospital, contained more than 30 times the normal level of insulin, but another doctor decided that the lab had made a mistake and the police were not called.
Two further attacks
The next child to suffer a cardiac arrest was eight-week-old Chris Peasgood, admitted with a chest infection. Bev told his mother to go outside and have a smoke – and, when she came back, the child was fighting for his life.
The medics revived him and his nurse, Clare Winser, took up a vigil by his bed. Bev Allitt offered to take over to let Clare go to the ladies’ room and, when she returned, the baby was so close to death that a priest was called in to perform a baptism.
Clare begged his mother to ask for him to be transferred to the Queen’s Medical Centre, warning her that he would be dead before morning if he stayed on Ward Four. Despite the fact that he wasn’t her patient, Bev insisted on accompanying him in the ambulance.
That same month, another Christopher – with the surname of King – was also fighting for his life. He had been recovering well from his operation but deteriorated markedly after Bev Allitt fed him, giving him milk when he was on a post-operative diet of water. Something added to the milk cause
d him to have a heart attack but he was transferred to Nottingham’s intensive care unit and survived.
A growing awareness
In the same time frame, one of Grantham Hospital’s doctors attended a symposium about Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy. The lecturer, top paediatrician David Southall, explained that, if a series of unexpected respiratory arrests occurred and were always in the presence of one person, the doctors should consider MBP and install surveillance cameras. He added that doctors in Chelsea had done so over a five-year period and had observed fourteen MBP mothers secretly suffocating their children. During this time, Grantham’s night sister, Jean Savill, wrote to the management noting that Bev Allitt had been present at more than 20 cardiac arrests in the last two months.
Other nurses began to kid Bev that she must be carrying some mysterious virus that she was passing on to the children. Bev laughed and seemed to enjoy being the centre of attention, but one or two of the nurses also noticed that she enjoyed the excitement of a cardiac arrest, was always at the very core of the action when they were reviving a child and insisted on being the one to escort the child to the Queen’s Medical Centre in the ambulance.
Patrick’s convulsions
The following day – 18th April – seven-week-old Patrick Elstone was admitted to the ward suffering from gastro-enteritis. That afternoon, Bev alerted the other nurses that he looked ill and, when they checked, they found that he was barely breathing. Fortunately, he revived in the treatment room, but a few hours later, Bev again raised the alarm to say that he was blue and breathless. Someone had mysteriously disconnected his apnoea monitor, which would have given off a telltale shriek the moment his breathing stopped.
The crash team revived him and he was transferred to the Queen’s Medical Centre. A doctor from Grantham, suspecting that the child had met with foul play, phoned the Centre and asked them to check his insulin levels. Some of the senior staff had a meeting to voice their concerns but still no one phoned the police and this left the killer free to strike for a final time.
Claire’s death
On 22nd April, fifteen-month-old Claire Peck’s parents brought her into Grantham as she had suffered a serious asthma attack. Left alone with Bev for a few minutes, she turned blue, went rigid and stopped breathing. A doctor stabilised her and went into the corridor to speak to her parents, telling them that they were going to transfer her to Nottingham, but Bev appeared at his side, shrieking, ‘She’s gone blue again’ and, this time, despite Herculean efforts from the hospital’s medics, the baby died.
Tests taken half an hour after she expired showed that her potassium levels were off the scale, but, as potassium leaks from the red blood cells several hours after death, the pathologist decided that she had died of natural causes – specifically, an asthma attack.
Four days later, an empty cot in Ward Four was found ablaze and the hospital fire officer found that it was deliberate. Shortly afterwards, doctors phoned the police. They told detectives about the suspiciously high number of deaths and near-fatal episodes in the past two months, about their fears that a Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy killer was stalking the ward.
Missing evidence
That April, at Grantham Hospital, someone stole the allocation book, without which it was difficult to ascertain which nurses had been responsible for which children. One of the senior nursing staff had written the shifts in her work diary but found that the relevant pages had been torn out.
Fortunately, determined police reassembled the information by careful questioning of nurses and the children’s relatives, ascertaining that only Nurse Allitt had been in attendance during all twenty cardiac arrests.
Questioned
On Tuesday 21st May 1991, police woke Bev Allitt up at 7 a.m. and arrested her for stealing the key to the insulin safe and for the attempted murder of Paul Crampton. Though they repeatedly questioned her at the station for the next 24 hours, she denied everything. Out on bail, she told everyone that she was innocent, that the police didn’t know what they were talking about.
The detectives continued their inquiries, finding samples of some of the children’s blood and tissues. Often the X-rays and samples had mysteriously gone missing, but they collected several that showed foul play. Paul Crampton had astronomically high levels of insulin in his blood and Liam Taylor’s heart had stopped because he’d been asphyxiated or poisoned. Becky Phillips had also been murdered, as a huge dose of insulin had been injected into her bloodstream.
Further MBP behaviour
Three weeks after her release from custody, Bev took her god-daughter, little Katie Phillips, out in her pram despite the little girl’s mother, Sue, protesting that it was raining. Sue had heard about Bev’s arrest but believed that it must be a case of mistaken identity as Bev had been so nice to them. The couple even offered to help pay her lawyers’ fees.
A few minutes later Bev returned, shrieking, ‘Call the doctor – she’s about to have a convulsion.’ The child seemed fine but, having already lost Katie’s twin, Sue was taking no chances. As she dialled her GP, she saw her daughter break out into a heavy sweat then start to moan.
Bev left and the child was admitted to Ward Four, where she continued to have strange choking fits and loss of appetite. When detectives heard that the illness had only come on after she was left alone with Bev Allitt, they seized all medications in the Phillipses’ house in case she had tampered with them.
Suspended from duty, Bev was perpetually bored. A motherly woman called Eileen Jobson – who lived with her teenage son Jonathan – took her in, but soon found that money was going missing from her purse and that, later, the purse itself disappeared. Someone left the plug in the sink with the water turned on and someone scorched an area of carpet with a cigarette lighter. Bev tried to blame all of this on poltergeist activity and said that she often saw ghosts.
Bev shouted for them one day and showed them a knife that was stuck deep into Jonathan’s pillow. She said that a poltergeist must have done it. The teenager was so afraid that they all moved into his grandmother’s house for the night. There, Bev allegedly discovered a knife stuck into the pillow she was about to use.
Dangerous
Police continued to amass evidence against the deadly nurse. They found that Liam Taylor, Tim Hardwick, Bradley Gibson and Claire Peck had probably been poisoned with potassium chloride, as their blood showed unnaturally high levels and such an overdose perfectly explained their symptoms. And only Bev had been in attendance at all 23 cardiac arrests.
Meanwhile, Eileen Jobson’s son, Jonathan, became ill with shooting pains in his legs, though he got better when Bev was admitted to hospital suffering from what appeared to be a breast infection. Doctors found that she was faking her symptoms by heating up the thermometer and injecting water into her own breast.
They sent her back to Eileen’s and she gave Jonathan a glass of juice. Shortly afterwards his vision faded, he went grey and clammy and lost consciousness, but Jonathan revived quickly and doctors believed that he’d fainted due to the hot sun.
Bev also continued to self-harm, breaking her catheter on two occasions so that part of it remained inside her bladder and had to be removed at the hospital. She was readmitted after describing symptoms that suggested she had a brain tumour, but a scan showed no abnormalities and doctors realised that there was nothing wrong with her.
Bev’s malice continued to wreak havoc, even though she was no longer working on Ward Four. The night sister, Jean Savill, was so upset to hear about the murders that she took a paracetamol overdose and was found dead at the home she shared with her husband, and some of the bereaved parents found that their marriages were breaking down due to depression and stress.
The former nurse also gave tablets to her landlady’s dog and it collapsed, foaming at the mouth, but survived after coughing up two tablets. On another occasion, her landlady saw Bev tormenting a cat.
A murder charge
On Tuesday, 3rd September, police arrest
ed Bev Allitt and charged her with Becky Phillips’s murder. She remained cool under questioning and, after eight hours, they let her go. Later that month, she hit her flatmate during a row and the other girl left, went to the police and told them about the violence. Detectives also found out about a suspicious death at the care home where Bev had worked.
On 20th November they rearrested her and charged her with murdering four children, attempting to murder nine children and causing grievous bodily harm to the latter. She refused to answer their questions and soon went to sleep in her cell.
Anorexic
In New Hall Women’s Prison in Wakefield, awaiting trial, Bev regularly arrived at the prison doctor’s with what appeared to be self-inflicted minor injuries. When these failed to get her the attention she needed, she told the authorities that she could no longer face food. In early January 1992 she claimed to have stopped eating and, by June, she had lost four stone. After this, she began to vomit in front of the prison officers, who were understandably baffled – if she wasn’t eating, how could she be vomiting? Concerned, they transferred her to the local hospital, posting a guard outside her door.
Doctors Who Kill Page 11
