A top forensic scientist believes that a Scots nurse dubbed the “Angel of Death” will soon be revealed as a victim of one of the UK’s worst miscarriages of justice.
Colin Norris has served 17 years of a 30-year sentence handed out in 2008 for the murder of four OAPs and the attempted murder of another at hospitals in Leeds.
Norris’s case has come under increasing scrutiny as it bears close parallels with nurse Lucy Letby, who is serving 15 whole life sentences for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others between 2015 and 2016.
She has already lost two bids to appeal but a panel of medical experts has come forward to challenge evidence against her.
Norris, 48, from Milton, Glasgow, could be freed in May when the Court of Appeal in London considers claims that evidence against him was largely circumstantial and deeply flawed.
Professor Alan Wayne Jones, a retired expert in forensic toxicology, said the similarities in the cases are glaring and he believes both convictions may prove to be unsafe. He said: “I see close parallels between the two cases, absolutely.
“It’s absolutely possible Colin Norris and Lucy Letby could be cleared of these crimes on appeal, given the weight of evidence that might be gathered to undermine the methodology applied in the trials.”
Prof Jones wrote a paper that claims crucial and incriminating tests in the Norris case did not conform to forensic standards.
He also agrees with many experts that unexplained low blood sugar, hypoglycaemia, that linked deaths of victims in the Norris case, can occur more often than was thought at the time of his trial, creating a clear reasonable doubt for the conviction.
Professor Richard Marks, who died last year, originally cast doubt on Norris’s guilt 14 years ago in a BBC documentary. Prof Jones said: “Marks discovered the only real evidence in Norris’s case that insulin was used in the death of one of the elderly ladies’ deaths – Ethel Hall.
“For the other four cases there was no chemical or forensic evidence against him, simply that he happened to be on duty when these elderly ladies died. And when they died, they were diagnosed to have hypoglycemia and because Norris was already suspected in the Ethel Hall case they searched the hospital rota and found that he was on duty when his other elder ladies died and they had hypoglycemia.
“The prosecution put two and two together and accused Norris of killing these other ladies as well. There is ample evidence to suggest he got a raw deal.”
Jones said Ethel Hall’s critical blood sample was analysed by a method called immunoassays. But that is not sufficient for reliable forensic evidence.
He said: “That raised a red flag for me, as in forensic toxicology, we consider positive immunoassay results presumptive positive. We would then be required to verify the results by a more specific method – liquid chromatography mass spectrometry is the gold standard and would make certain that a certain poison had been used.
“But they didn’t do that for Norris’s case. They used a immunoassay and my research found they didn’t even do a repeat analysis.”
Jones said another red flag arose after Ethel’s blood sample was tested for insulin and a compound called C peptide. He said: “They’d already normalised Mrs Hall’s blood sugar by giving her intravenous glucose – and that interfered with the results.
“The lab in Surrey was a clinical and not a forensic lab, and there are more stringent routines in forensic science compared with clinical science, so you have to have quite different standards of things like chain of custody, storage of the specimen, stability of the drug.
“So there are problems with the evidence that make me conclude the conviction is unsafe.”
In his appeal, Norris is expected to claim there are logical explanations for the pensioners’ low blood sugar – being elderly, malnourished and suffering from conditions that could deplete blood sugar.
It is understood the chief evidence in the appeal will not focus on the Ethel Hall case, instead looking to the cases of Doris Ludlam, 80, Bridget Bourke, 88, Irene Crookes, 79, and Vera Wilby, 90.
Jones said Norris’s demeanour at the trial did him no favours, an observation also levelled at Letby.
He said: “He came across as rather cold and unfeeling and was described as that in the evidence. And it would not play well for him if a jury was perceiving him in that way.” Jones said he was “astonished” that Letby had been found guilty of injecting air into the veins of pre-term infants.
He said: “At the big press conference on Letby, where a very strong panel questioned the medical evidence, I was highly impressed by Dr Shoo Lee, who was very clear in his findings.
“He really is an expert in his field, and compared with the prosecution expert in the Lucy Letby case, it’s like night and day, in my opinion.
“Dr Lee recruited experts worldwide to look at the notes from these babies, and they found no evidence of foul play. They found that these babies died because of their premature state and congenital problems that these babies develop or bad hospital care during resuscitation attempts and things like that.
“So there was no real evidence they found to implicate Lucy Letby in murder or to implicate anyone else in murder. Most of the deaths that Lucy Letby was accused of that was from air embolism administration, injecting air into the vein, and the evidence for that was really pulled apart in that press conference.”
Norris’s case will be heard in May by Court of Appeal judges and will take up to four weeks.
The case was referred by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which stated in 2021: “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 first appealed against his conviction but was turned down by the Court of Appeal in December 2009. He applied to the CCRC in October 2011.