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Beverley AllittBeverley Gail Allitt (born 4 October 1968), dubbed the Angel of Death,[1] was an English paediatric nurse who was convicted of killing four children and injuring five others, in 1991, on the children's ward of Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincolnshire where she worked. She has since become one of Britain's most notorious female serial killers. Her main method of murder was to inject the child with insulin or potassium to cause cardiac arrest.[2] Additional recommended knowledge
The victims
The chargesAllitt had attacked 13 children in the space of 15 days before she was finally arrested. It was only following the death of Claire Peck did medical staff become suspicious of the number of cardiac arrests on the children's ward and police were called in. [3] It was found that Allitt was the only nurse on duty for all the attacks on the children and she also had access to the drugs. Four of Allitt's victims had died. She was charged with attempted murder and grievous bodily harm in November 1991. On 23 May 1993 she was found guilty on each charge and sentenced to 13 concurrent terms of life imprisonment - to be served at Rampton Secure Hospital in Nottinghamshire.[4] There were many of Allitt's colleagues who had to give evidence against her at the trial, one of them was Mary Reet. Allitt's trial judge recommended she serve a minimum term of 40 years (one of the longest minimum terms ever suggested by a trial judge, High Court judge or politician), which would keep her in prison until at least 2032 and the age of 64, and even then she could only be released if she was no longer considered to be a danger to the public. In August 2006, Allitt launched an appeal on the length of her sentence[5]. On 6 December 2007, the High Court reaffirmed the original sentence and fixed her minimum tariff at 30 years [6]. Allitt's motives have never been fully explained. According to one theory, Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy explains her actions.[7] This controversial personality disorder is described as involving a pattern of abuse in which a perpetrator physically falsifies illnesses in someone under their care, in order to attract attention. Allitt is one of several serial killers mentioned in the 1994 song 'Archives of Pain', by Manic Street Preachers. In 2005, the BBC made a dramatisation of the story[8], "Angel of Death", starring Hajaz Akram, Ian Kelsey, and Charlie Brooks as Allitt. ReferencesRamsland, Katherine, Beverly Allitt: Suffer The Children. See alsoJohn Bodkin Adams Harold Shipman |
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Beverley_Allitt". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia. |