A Scots nurse dubbed the “angel of death” for killing four elderly patients has taken a step towards freedom after his case was allowed to go forward to an appeal.
Colin Norris, 44, from Glasgow, was found guilty in 2008 of murdering four women and attempting to murder another by injecting them with insulin.
The four who died – Ethel Hall, Bridget Bourke, Doris Ludlam and Irene Crookes – plus the fifth woman were all elderly patients in Leeds hospitals where he worked as a nurse.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has decided to refer all five convictions to the Court of Appeal.
It said: “The CCRC considered new expert evidence presented by Mr Norris’s representatives and instructed its expert to provide reports. As a result, the CCRC has concluded there is a real possibility the Court of Appeal will decide Mr Norris’s conviction for the murder/attempted murder of one or more of the four patients is unsafe.”
Norris was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 30 years.
The case against him was circumstantial and reliant on expert opinion on complex medical and scientific issues.
Experts now agree that the hypoglycaemia in four of the women, other than Ethel, may be accounted for by natural causes, according to the CCRC.
She developed severe hypoglycaemia in hospital and died on December 11, 2002, and the cause of her murder isn’t being queried.
But the CCRC says this conviction depends on support from the other four cases.
