University News Last updated 29 January 2015
The doubt this week expressed by the foreman of the trial jury about the conviction of Colin Norris for murdering four patients aligns with research showing the case to differ markedly from other nursing serial killers.
A study by Birmingham City University criminologists, based on 16 cases from over 37 years, found that Colin Norris did not share the usual nine characteristics of nurses who become serial killers.
Norris, convicted in 2008 of four murders and the attempted killing of a fifth at hospitals in Leeds, lacked many of the usual indictors associated with such serial killing. The research has been passed on to the legal team representing Mr Norris, whose case is being reviewed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
Published in the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, the study was carried out by Professor David Wilson and Dr Elizabeth Yardley of the Centre for Applied Criminology – one of Birmingham City University's Centres of Research Excellence.
Their examination of hospital-based nurses convicted of serial murder in Europe and North America between 1977 and 2009 used a criminological checklist of 22 factors – 'red flags' – and found a cluster of between five to nine such indicators of behaviour. Colin Norris satisfied just two of the red flags, the lowest of all those studied.
The most prolific 'Angel of Death' was the American nurse Charles Cullen who was convicted of 29 murders in the US in 2003. The study found Cullen satisfied 11 of the red flags.
Professor Wilson said: "We hope that this research might help hospital administrators to think more critically when they notice a spike in deaths on a particular ward, rather than relying on crude statistical analyses related to particular nurses and their shift patterns. Inevitably that method will lead to miscarriages of justice."