That night, baby Becky cried out with what her parents thought was pain. A doctor visited the house and thought it was a case of colic. The parents slept that night with Becky in their bed where she died during the night. An autopsy was performed, but the pathologists found no obvious cause of death.
Katie Phillips, the surviving twin, was then admitted to Ward 4 as a precaution. Nurse Beverly Allitt assured the distraught mother that she would keep an extra special eye on Katie. Left alone with Beverly, baby Katie stopped breathing. The emergency team were called and managed to revive Katie. Sue Phillips attributed Katie’s life being saved to Beverly. In gratitude, she asked Beverly to be Katie's godmother. Nurse Beverly Allitt graciously accepted the honor, as if she had been a hero.
Two days later, baby Katie suffered another attack which caused her lungs to collapse, and it was with considerable difficulty that the emergency team managed to revive her. Once revived, she was sent to Nottingham hospital. Here, the doctors on examining her discovered that five of her ribs were broken and that she had suffered severe brain damage due to oxygen deprivation.
Four more young victims followed but, fortunately, all were saved by being transferred to Nottingham hospital. The doctors at Nottingham's hospital were beginning to suspect that something was not entirely right at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital.
When a little girl, Claire Peck, a fifteen-month-old asthmatic patient who needed a breathing tube was alone with Nurse Beverly Allitt, she suffered a cardiac arrest. The emergency team managed to revive her. When left alone again with Beverly, she suffered another heart attack from which she died on April 22, 1991.
The autopsy examination showed that Claire Peck had died from natural causes. However, Dr. Nelson Porter, a consultant at the hospital was most unhappy at the high number of heart cases which had occurred over the past eight weeks on Ward 4 and began an investigation. At first, he thought that maybe it was caused by a virus in the ventilation system, but tests proved negative. Dr. Nelson Porter then called for more tests to be carried out on baby Claire. These tests showed abnormally high levels of potassium in the baby’s blood and in her tissues there were traces of Lignocaine, a drug used to treat adults suffering from cardiac arrest and one that is never given to babies. The hospital called in the police.
Superintendent Stuart Clifton was put in charge of the investigation, and it didn’t take too long to find the common thread in all the cases: Nurse Beverly Allitt. Within 3 weeks of starting the investigation, Superintendent Clifton arrested Nurse Beverly Allitt. Beverly strenuously denied any knowledge of the attacks. She said all she did was try and save lives. Sue Phillips, the twin’s mother, so believed in Beverly that she hired a private investigator to clear Beverly’s name; a decision she must now seriously regret. After several court hearings, Beverly was charged with eleven counts of causing grievous bodily harm, eleven counts of attempted murder, and four counts of murder. Beverly lost a large amount of weight and developed anorexia nervosa while in prison awaiting her trial. She was also examined by psychiatrists sent by the prosecution and defense teams.
Both sets of psychiatrists diagnosed Beverly as suffering from Munchausen syndrome: a form of severe factitious disorder where the sufferer makes up physical symptoms that are either false or self-induced. Sufferers are not malingering; they just want to play the patient role for attention. They also found her to be suffering from Munchausen by Proxy syndrome. This is when the sufferer harms others to gain attention for themselves.
After several delays caused by Beverly’s “illnesses”, Beverly Allitt’s trial started on February 15th, 1993, at Nottingham’s Crown Court. The trial lasted nearly two months and during it, Beverly only attended sixteen days due to her “illnesses”. Beverly was found guilty of all charges. In May of 1993, Beverly was sentenced to thirteen life sentences. The judge, Mr. Justice Latham, told Beverly Allitt that he considered her "a serious danger" to others. He ordered her to be incarcerated at Rampton Hospital, a secure hospital in Nottinghamshire which houses among others those deemed criminally insane. Beverly Allitt has, since her detention, admitted to three of the infant murders and six of the assaults. Her earliest possible parole date is 2032 when she will be sixty-four.
UNITED STATES
ELIZABETH VAN VALKENBURGH
Born in July of 1799 in Bennington, Vermont Elizabeth van Valkenburgh was about five-years-old when her parents died. After their deaths, Elizabeth was sent to live in Cambridge, New York. Elizabeth received very little education while growing up.
In 1821, at the age of twenty, Elizabeth married her first husband and moved with him to Pennsylvania. Together they had four children. After six years in Pennsylvania, the family moved to 5 miles outside of Johnstown, New York. Elizabeth’s husband died in 1833. It was thought, at the time, to be due to a gastrointestinal illness, dyspepsia.
In 1834, Elizabeth married John Van Valkenburgh. John and Elizabeth had two children together. It was not a happy marriage as John was an abusive drunkard who would beat the children. Sometimes, he would disappear on a drinking bout for days and even weeks at a time.
Eventually, Elizabeth had had enough. On one of his reappearances in January of 1844, Elizabeth procured some arsenic and added it to his tea. John, upon drinking the tea, vomited violently and was ill for several weeks. The local physician, Doctor Burdick, attended to him during his illness. On the 10th of March when Elizabeth saw that John was beginning to recover, she gave him another larger dose of arsenic in his nightly brandy.
John spent the next six days in agonizing pain before dying on Tuesday, the 16th of March. Elizabeth, fearful that the cause of John’s death would be attributed to her, went and hid in Mr. McLaren's, a neighbor’s, barn. During her attempt at hiding, she fell from a haymow and broke her leg. It was here she was found and arrested.
Elizabeth went on trial and was found guilty by the jury of the murder of her husband by poisoning. The judge declared
On the night before her execution, Elizabeth wrote a full confession from Fulton County Jail. In this confession, she admitted to also murdering her first husband with arsenic, as she was angry with him for hanging out in bars.
THE MYSTERIOUS MRS ROBINSON
The "Veiled Murderess"
Henrietta Robinson was the pseudo name of a woman who lived in Troy, New York. In 1854, she was arrested for poisoning a neighbor, shopkeeper Timothy Lanagan, and his sister-in-law Catherine Lubee. Throughout her trial, on May 25, 1853, she sat in court, despite the judge’s admonitions, with her face covered by a black veil. She also refused throughout the proceedings or for the rest of her life to reveal her true name.
According to a biography written about her in 1855 by David Wilson, it is believed she was Charlotte Woods, the third born daughter to Mr. William F. Wood, an important and prominent businessman in Quebec, Canada. Charlotte was born in her father’s house, a home of luxury and refinement, on the shores of the St Lawrence River.
She had, by all reports, grown into an exceedingly beautiful young woman of medium height, with coal black hair, dark blue eyes, a fair complexion, and was exceedingly graceful in her movements. However, she was also reported to possess an uncontrollable temper.
She and her sisters were intelligent girls. Unusual for those times, her father believed that women should receive a higher education and sent all four of his daughters to a celebrated female seminary in Troy, New York. It was an educational establishment founded in 1821 by Emma Hart Willard, which was established to provide young women with an education equal to that of a college-educated young man.
In 1843, in the company of her younger sister Emma, she travelled to Troy. Troy is a city located on the east bank of the Hudson River, six miles north of Albany, where the river meets the canals of Erie and Champlain. At the time that Charlotte moved to Troy, it was rapidly becoming an important industrial city and was full of fine new buildings and bustling streets.
Charlotte stayed at the Troy College for two years. She
became proficient in drawing, painting, music, and excelled in the French language. During her time at college, she met a young man who she became immensely attracted to and he, likewise, to her. Unfortunately, for her parents his standing in society was not considered high enough for their daughter. They removed her away from Troy back to Quebec, believing that with distance she would forget him. However, the lovers continued to correspond with each other.
Stationed at that time in Quebec was an English regiment. A young British Lieutenant became friends with the family. The parents of Charlotte felt particularly well disposed towards this young man as he was of English nobility. The Lieutenant, William Francis Augustus Boswell Eliott, began to court Charlotte, but her heart was elsewhere on the far shore of the Hudson River. However, under pressure from her family, and with a heavy heart, she married the Lieutenant on the 16th of December, 1846. They then set forth for England via New York where they boarded a ship to Liverpool and made their way to London.
Here, she was welcomed to an even more luxurious home and lifestyle than the one she had left behind in Quebec, but her heart was desolate.
For three years, she lived in England. She gave birth to two children, but she was bitterly unhappy and bad-tempered. Her husband did his best to lift her spirits and mollify her by taking her to the Highlands of Scotland and Paris and on tours of Europe. However, nothing made her happy. Charlotte soon began to loathe her husband and became repulsed by him. In 1849, she left England, her husband, and children and clandestinely boarded a boat back to New York accompanied by a young French maid, Helen Reynaud.
On arrival in New York, they stayed a few days in a hotel, Irving House, while they recovered from the journey. They then made their way back to Quebec. Her family, who had by this time been informed of her disappearance from England, was expecting her, but it was not with loving arms that she was greeted. They were furious with her. They said she had shamed the family and the family name and no matter how much Charlotte tried to explain how wretchedly unhappy she had been and how she disliked and was repulsed by her husband, they would not listen.
Her parents disowned her. They said she was unworthy of their name and threw her out, telling her to never ever return or to make contact with them.
As she slept that night in a cheap downtown hotel in Quebec, she was faced for the first time in her twenty-three-years of life of having to make a living for herself. She decided to make her way to Troy, where she hoped her old college would employ her in some capacity as a tutor. However, this was not to be. The college thought, with her upbringing, she would not be suited to being a humble tutor.
She booked into a hotel and, as she ate dinner that night in the hotel dining room, contemplated her choices. They appeared dismal. As she sat there pondering her future she appeared as a highly attractive, well-bred English lady; educated and highly cultivated. She attracted the attention of a fellow diner John Cotton Mather, an important man in the town. He was, at the time, one of three New York State Canal Commissioners as well as a possible Democratic candidate for the New York State Governor in 1854.
She allowed herself to be seduced. John set her up in a small house, which she rented in the name of Mrs. Henrietta Robinson. She hid from her old friends who may have helped her as she felt ashamed at her fallen state and also her pride stopped her from seeking help. She lived a solitary existence with her maid, living for the moment John would visit. She never walked the streets unless veiled or under the cover of darkness.
In her solitude, she began to feel that people were talking about her. She felt like an object of persecution and consequently armed herself with a pistol. Her sense of persecution and paranoia became so intense, she decided to relocate to another area of the city.
In 1853, she moved to the north end of Troy close by the left bank of the Hudson River, where she had found a small white cottage at 627 River Street with columns in front and concealed from the street by a front yard full of shrubs. At the back was a pleasant view of the Hudson River, Green Island, and landscape stretching to the West. She furnished it with taste and elegance and employed an old man as a gardener and a young girl as a servant, her French maid having returned to France.
John kept her bank account well stocked. She dressed well in fashionable clothes of silk and fine linens, but she lived a sad, solitary life far removed from the society in which she had grown up. She had contemplated returning to her husband and children in England and begging their forgiveness but was persuaded from such a move by John.
John then began to have business problems, and his visits to her dwindled. She became more and more unhappy, began drinking heavily, and her paranoia and sense of persecution increased. As John’s problem’s increased with members of his own party seeking his indictment and impeachment on charges of “corruption” and “dereliction,” his visits to Charlotte lessened and money deposited into her bank account lowered even more.
Her behavior became more and more bizarre, and she would threaten people with her pistol at the slightest provocation. Her conduct was making her notorious in the neighborhood. She resolutely, no matter her state, still concealed her real name. She frequently alluded to her husband, accounting for his absence by saying he worked on the railroads and whenever she referred to her parentage, her statements would be contradictory to the point that none could be believed. Sometimes her father was a Lord who had thrown her out of his castle, sometimes she blamed her misfortunes on a wicked step-mother, and sometimes she claimed she was the daughter of a humble Irishman in Vermont or some other state.
On the corner opposite her home was a licensed grocery store and bar run by Timothy Lanagan, an Irish immigrant. He and his family lived above the store. In the evenings, the locals would congregate here for music and dancing. When Charlotte first moved into the cottage, she would send the gardener or the maid to the store for provisions, beer, and sometimes brandy. On some days, they visited the store for alcohol a number of times, making people suspect that “Henrietta,” as she was known, must be in a constant state of inebriation.
Within a few weeks, “Henrietta” began to join the locals in the bar but often she would be annoyed by some real or maybe imagined insult and draw her pistol. Frequently, she would be forcibly ejected from the premises.
On May 25th, 1853, Henrietta visited the store in the morning and bought a quart of beer. Two hours later, she returned to the store and began drinking at the bar. Before long, she became involved in an intense argument with another customer, and Mrs. Lanagan asked her to leave. Henrietta left, seething with anger and resentment.
At lunchtime, she returned to the bar where Mr. and Mrs. Lanagan were having lunch with Mr. Lanagan’s sister-in-law, Catherine Lubee. They asked Henrietta if she would like to join them. Henrietta accepted the invitation.
Following lunch, Henrietta offered to treat them to beer on her account she kept at the bar. Mrs. Lanagan thanked Henrietta but declined the invitation; however, Mr. Lanagan and Miss Lubee accepted the invite. Henrietta suggested she add some sugar to make the beer taste better. As Mr. Lanagan filled the tumblers, Henrietta added the sugar. Then abruptly Henrietta decided she didn’t want a beer after all and left the bar. The Lanagans , who were by this time well-used to Henrietta’s bizarre behavior, thought nothing of it.
Just two hours later, Catherine Lubee and Timothy Lanagan were dead. There was no doubt in Mrs. Lanagan’s mind who was responsible and as she related the circumstances to the police neither were they. Catherine Lubee and Timothy Lanagan had been poisoned with arsenic.
During the police investigation, a local druggist informed the police that he had recently sold Henrietta Robinson arsenic. During a search of Henrietta’s cottage, arsenic was found. Henrietta Robinson was arrested for murder.
While in Troy’s Ferry Street Jail before her trial commenced, Henrietta tried to commit suicide by drinking vitriol; otherwise, known as sulfuric acid. How she managed to procure it, no one knows, but some people speculated t
hat there were people who would prefer her death in prison rather than have her go on trial in a public hearing.
As the story and rumors of the mysterious woman known as “Henrietta Robinson” spread throughout the United States and Canada, newspaper articles began appearing claiming to identify her. A woman who had been a pupil at the Troy Female Seminary claimed that Henrietta was her old fellow pupil Emma Wood, daughter of Canadian William F. Wood. The Troy Times printed this claim, and William Wood sued the paper for libel. Emma Willard, founder of the “Troy Female Seminary”, wrote to the newspapers denying Henrietta Robinson was a former pupil by the name of “Wood. “While in the Ferry Street Jail, “Henrietta” received a variety of visitors including clergy, newspapermen, the infamous feminist Elizabeth Oakes Smith, and Mr. William Wood, brother of the Canadian Misses Woods. During her time in jail, she appeared to be well taken care of financially.
Henrietta Robinson’s trial began on May, 22nd 1984 nearly a year after the murder. The lawyer Martin Townsend represented her and entered a plea of insanity due to alcohol. The prosecution in return argued that drunkenness was neither insanity nor a defense against murder. During the trial, Henrietta appeared each day finely dressed but with her face covered by a black veil.
A newspaper of the day reported:
“The woman Robinson was richly dressed in court this morning. She was veiled so we could not see her countenance. She wore a low-neck, splendid black silk dress, with rich lace under-sleeves, a blue silk velvet mantilla-a very rich and costly article- a dashing display of jewelry…….”
She Devils Around the World Page 15
