|
No freedom for 'angel of death'
06/12/2007 18:43 - (SA)
London - A serial-killer nurse, dubbed the "angel of death" after she murdered four young patients and injured another nine, had her bid for early release thrown out at the High Court on Thursday.
Beverly Allitt, now 39, was given 13 life sentences in 1993 for the killing spree on her child patients while she worked at the Grantham and Kesteven Hospital in Lincolnshire.
She had applied to be released on the grounds of mental illness but Justice Stanley Burnton confirmed her minimum jail tariff at 30 years.
Referring to the victims' families, two of whom were in court, the judge said they had "received a life sentence from which there is no remission (and) no release on licence".
"The impact of these offences does not require to be described and could not be exaggerated," he added. "Young lives were cut short at their inception.
"The offences to the children took place in what should have been - and what their families must have believed to be - a place of safety (but) the offender made it into a place of extreme danger.
"Each of the offences is an immense personal tragedy for the family concerned."
His decision backs the ruling by the trial judge at Nottingham Crown Court that she should serve at least 30 years.
Allitt joined the ranks of Britain's most notorious serial killers after she murdered and maimed her young patients over a period of several months in 1991.
The trial heard that she used injections of insulin to kill 15-month-old Claire Peck, Becky Phillips, aged nine weeks and Liam Taylor, seven weeks.
She also killed 11-year-old Timothy Hardwick. Allitt was said at her trial to have been suffering from the rare Munchausen Syndrome, in which sufferers harm themselves or others for attention.
She was sentenced to be detained at the secure Rampton Hospital in Nottinghamshire under mental health laws.
- Reuters
|
News
