ITV1
Nurse Colin Norris murdered four elderly patients and attempted to murder another, by injecting them with overdoses of the diabetic drug Insulin.
Angel of Death explores the sequence of events leading to Norris’s arrest and conviction, and compares his killing spree to that of Britain’s most notorious medical murderer Dr Harold Shipman.
Norris was only caught after a junior doctor at Leeds General Infirmary became suspicious. Dr Emma Ward was called to the bedside of Ethel Hall, an 86-year-old patient, when she suffered a massive and fatal drop in blood sugar just days after being successfully treated for a fractured hip. Mrs Hall initially survived, but never came out of her coma.
Dr. Ward suspected that Mrs Hall had been given an overdose of insulin during the night. That meant one of the staff on the ward was a murderer.
West Yorkshire police were called in to investigate and they soon discovered two more deaths, which eerily echoed that of Ethel. Both were elderly women and both had died after their blood sugar levels had inexplicably crashed.
The nurse on duty on each occasion was Colin Norris.
But finding the evidence to convict Norris was to prove difficult. It was more than five years before he was found guilty of the murders of four elderly women and the attempted murder of another.
Norris was an arrogant and cunning murderer who had a pathological hatred of elderly people. He even boasted on the night that Ethel Hall had her fatal attack, that he knew she was going to die.
The man who led the inquiry, Detective Chief Superintendent Chris Gregg was also in charge of the West Yorkshire Police investigation into Dr Harold Shipman. He and Dr Richard Badcock, the only psychiatrist to formally assess Shipman, are uniquely placed to draw parallels between the two cases.
For Angel of Death, True North had exclusive access to their investigation, including taped interviews with Norris.