All language subtitles for murder.uk.s03e04.1080p.web.h264-cbfm_track3_[eng]

(dramatic music)

I'm David Wilson, emeritus
professor of criminology.

And for over 30 years,
I've investigated

the phenomenon of murder
and what it is that might

motivate someone to kill.

Every murder case is different.

But time and again, a
deadly pattern emerges

of warning signs and red flags.

In this new series, I
investigate some of the UK's most

harrowing murder cases
to understand how and why

these terrible crimes occur.

This is Murder UK.

(dramatic music)

In the summer of 2011, Stepping
Hill Hospital in Stockport

sees a sudden, terrifying
outbreak of illness.

The medical staff are immediately
confronted by a series

of events that defy logic.

22 people collapse unexpectedly.

(Nazir Afzal)
It was a normal month.

There are... undoubtedly,
every day, every week,

people die in hospital,

even those who come in on,
you know, chest infections

or something not remotely serious.

But when you've got a spate of
people suffering serious harm

who've come in for
relatively innocuous reasons,

you know, a chest infection
or whatever,

questions are going to be
asked about what's happening.

And the initial reaction
at the hospital

is to seek a scientific
explanation

for what's going on.

They look at monitoring equipment.
Is it faulty?

Is there something going
wrong with the administration

of the medicines?

(David Wilson)
Then, people start to die.

(dramatic music)

(Sarah Jarvis) Of course,
when people go into hospital,

almost by definition,

they are ill or about to undergo

a medical or a surgical procedure.

But many of the patients who died

were not at the end
of their lives.

Many of them
were relatively young.

Once is suspicious.

Twice is a little more suspicious.

A dozen times, something's up.

(Stephen Wright)
My name is Stephen Wright.

I'm associate editor at
The Daily Mail newspaper.

And I cover crime
and investigations.

I've covered some of the biggest
crime cases, both in the UK

and abroad.

Normally, I get attracted
to stories which

involve some degree of scandal.

The police were called
in to investigate

because people were dying.

And it was a mystery,
a big mystery.

I know that from
talking to my contacts

in Greater Manchester Police, such
was the concern that this was out

of control, the idea was
even contemplated that they'd

shut down the hospital.

(David) The scale of the crisis
forces Greater Manchester Police

to call in Detective Superintendent
Simon Barraclough

to lead an investigation into
the unexpected collapses.

(Simon Barraclough) We didn't know
why people were becoming ill.

We didn't know the
source of that illness.

So, in other words,
whether somebody

was actually deliberately in
the hospital poisoning patients.

And what was actually
happening was happening

within that hospital on two
of the very busiest wards

in the hospital.

(Stephen) What stood out
really about these episodes

was that people were coming
in for all types of illnesses.

It wasn't a particular person
or a particular age group.

(David) The police
start to investigate

individual patient files.

(dramatic music)

Josephine Walsh
was a 72-year-old woman.

She had suffered from a
chronic lung condition,

but a treatable one, and
was thought to be getting

better when she was taken ill.

(David) She's given a saline
bag to help rehydrate her.

Using bags of saline to keep
people hydrated are absolutely

standard practice on every ward.

There are many patients who
are unable to drink, either

because they're unwell or
because they're about to have

or have recently had surgery.

It is absolutely standard.

If you walk into pretty much any
adult hospital ward, whether it's

a surgical or a medical one, you
will see numerous patients hooked

up to intravenous bags of saline.

(David) But Josephine's saline
bag doesn't offer rehydration.

Instead, she describes a terrifying
feeling of sudden decline.

(Stephen) She gave a very graphic
description of how she felt

she was dying, how she could
not believe the symptoms

she was suffering, feeling
dizzy, and her blood

sugar levels had gone way down.

The normal times that we see
severe levels of what we call

hypoglycaemia, or
low blood sugar, are

among people using insulin as
a treatment, usually people

with type 1 diabetes.

Sometimes, people with type 2
diabetes need insulin as well.

(David) Josephine doesn't have
diabetes and does not need insulin.

Mercifully, when
she did come round,

someone gave her some
Lucozade, something

as simple as that to get
her sugar levels back up

and quite possibly save her life.

But her statement gave a
really harrowing account

of what it was like,
the agonising feelings

that you had as the saline
drip's taking effect in her body.

(David) The medical
anomaly in these cases

is the discovery of
severe hypoglycaemia

in patients who aren't diabetic.

How does insulin come
to be in bags of saline?

And that shifts the focus
of the investigation

into a contaminated product.

We have to look at access,
access not just to the patients,

but also to the bags of saline.

And that will shift the focus
of the investigation away

from specific illnesses
that individual patients

might have had to the
contaminated product itself.

And Josephine is the first
of many hypoglycaemic attacks

on wards A1 and A3.

(Sarah) Grant Misell
was just 41 years old.

And he'd come in with an overdose.

Now, he was expected to
make a full recovery.

And he'd just been kept in
for observation.

(Stephen) When he did
arrive at the hospital,

he was examined and
treated with a saline drip.

Mr Misell was to suffer
life-changing brain damage

as a result of that interaction.

And this very wealthy,
successful man was warned

he would never be the same again.

On admission, Grant is seen
by a male nurse, Victorino Chua.

His comments in the patients' notes
provide a profound contradiction,

entirely dismissing
Grant's critical state

and raising immediate
questions about his intent.

(Donna Youngs) Grant Misell is
exhibiting all the signs

of a hypoglycaemic attack, but
Victorino writes up his notes

as the patient is settled,
the patient is calm,

and doesn't draw attention
to the clear medical emergency

in front of him.

(dramatic music)

(David) As the investigation
intensifies, the chaos

on wards A1 and A3 only grows.

Stepping Hill Hospital
is desperate to pinpoint

the source of the
patient collapses,

but the truth remains hidden.

There was no sign of

this trend,

this very worrying trend ending,

and obviously, a situation
of deep, deep concern.

I don't think, at that stage,

people in the authorities

contemplated the idea that a nurse
charged with caring for people

could be setting out to
cause complete mayhem.

(Donna) Over the course of
the next just five weeks,

there are more than
20 incidents of people

seeming to suffer from
unexplained insulin overdosing.

And in fact, there are
two deaths as a result

of these incidents in that period.

(Stephen) Tracey Arden
was a woman who

was 44 years of age when
she was admitted to Stepping Hill

in the summer of 2011.

She was a sufferer of
multiple sclerosis.

She wouldn't have had
a long life expectancy.

Nevertheless, she was not expected
to die that year in hospital.

(dramatic music)

(David) Shortly
after Tracey's death,

another patient, Derek Weaver,
follows the same pattern.

(Stephen) Weaver was
in his early 80s who

suffered from a
chronic lung condition

when he was admitted to hospital.

Unfortunately, in this
case, because of the impact

of the low blood sugar on his
body's ability to fight off

the infection,
he died not directly

as a result
of the low blood sugar,

but indirectly as a
result of the effect

that that had
on his body's ability

to fight the bacterial infection
that he'd come in with.

(David) The day after
Derek Weaver's death,

a nurse on ward A1
notices a critical detail.

Five weeks after
this outbreak has started,

on the 11th of July, 2011,

we have a young nurse
about to administer

a saline drip when she notices

that the saline
appears to be foamy, frothy,

which it shouldn't be.

They immediately reported this.

And it was as a result of that

that it was discovered
that that ampoule

had been tampered with.

She can smell
the disinfectant type aroma

of artificial insulin.

The nurse immediately
informs the senior staff.

And an investigation of all the
medicines in the treatment rooms

is immediately carried out.

(David) The sense of fear that
people have about what's happening

on the wards provides the
killer with a great deal

of psychological satisfaction.

The killer must understand that
they are the cause

of what is happening,
but are unidentified.

That gives to them a sense
of power, a sense of control,

and also an imperceptible
sense of being unimpeachable.

And of course, what that does is
feed into the killer's narcissism,

the need to be the
centre of attention,

the need to be the person that
everybody's talking about.

(Sarah) The medical
team immediately

went on to examine other
ampoules and intravenous bags

and discovered that
many of them, too,

had been tampered with and
contaminated, mostly with insulin.

Those bags are plastic.

And they are relatively easy,

because they're plastic,
of course,

to get a needle,
to inject a needle into

in order to contaminate
them with something else.

(dramatic music)

The police arrive
at Stepping Hill Hospital.

Their investigation,
called Operation Roxburgh, begins.

The moment Operation Roxburgh
was set up,

everything at the hospital
changed.

CCTV was set up at the entrance.

It was set up in the treatment
rooms, at the drug storage rooms.

Everybody was under
constant monitoring.

(David) And more saline bags are
found to have been contaminated.

On discovery of 19
contaminated saline ampoules

in the treatment resource room,
CCTV is put into place.

And the medications are kept under
much higher levels of security

as the police try to
establish what's going on.

Clearly, there's a climate
of fear and suspicion.

And it becomes apparent that
there is wrongdoing going on,

that this is no longer
being treated

as some kind of technical
or scientific problem.

Somebody is deliberately
causing harm.

After these bags have been
found to be contaminated,

the police look at others.

And we discover that
it's not just saline bags

that are being contaminated.

A bag of metronidazole,
which is an antibiotic

used to treat severe
infections, has also

been contaminated with insulin.

And another bag has been
contaminated with lidocaine,

which is used as a
local anaesthetic,

but which can also cause
abnormal heart rhythms

and can be potentially fatal.

(Nazir) Other nurses carrying
out their normal activities

were putting people at
risk without any knowledge

that they were doing so.

Nurses were being accompanied
by security guards

doing their job in July
of 2011 because they

were so concerned about
what was happening.

The whole organisation was in...

well, in real danger
of falling apart.

(Sarah) Access was restricted to
even intravenous saline, which

normally, you'd never
think of as something

that you would need to look
carefully about, that you would

need to pay close attention to.

So everybody is going to be
suspecting everybody else

and worrying about the impact,
not just on each other,

but, of course,
also on patients.

(David) Police launch a methodical,
painstaking search for clues.

They must now systematically
dissect the entire operation

patient by patient, shift by shift.

The police do a meticulous and
detailed cross-referencing of all

the hypoglycaemic incidents
that have occurred

in the hospital and
monitor the shift

patterns of more than 4,000 staff.

(Sarah) The investigating team
set about looking at every episode

that they could find of
hypoglycaemia, low blood sugar,

and cross-referenced
all of those episodes

with which staff were on duty.

That must have been a horrible
time for all the staff,

worrying whether they
might come under suspicion.

(David) The police's investigation
leads to one particular name,

Rebecca Leighton.

Her fingerprint
is found on a saline bag

that the police suspect
was contaminated.

(Nazir) Very early on
in this investigation,

the police presented
some evidence which gave cause

for concern sufficient enough

for her to be charged
not with murder

but with causing criminal damage
which endangers people's lives,

i.e. potentially damaging
the saline drips.

(David) Rebecca Leighton is
remanded in Styal Prison.

There was some pressure
to deal with this,

from a police perspective,
as early as possible.

And that meant...
not cutting corners.

It meant that when they
became aware, as they did,

of somebody who was perhaps
involved in nothing overly

criminal, but some kind
of criminal activity,

the suspicion fell on
this particular person.

And then, sadly, the police's
role was to try and find

as much evidence against her
without thinking there might

be somebody else at work here.

(David) In arresting and
prosecuting Rebecca Leighton,

you see the police almost forced
into making a decision

when there simply isn't the
evidence beyond a reasonable doubt

to make that prosecution.

And what does the arrest
of Rebecca Leighton

do for the killer psychologically?

Well, it makes him
feel unimpeachable.

It makes him feel even more
powerful, even more in control.

After six weeks in prison, all
charges against her are dropped.

There's no evidence
she was a poisoner.

(Nazir) Thankfully,
after six weeks,

I'd come to the conclusion
there wasn't enough evidence

against her,
dropped the case against her.

She was very vocal
and later successfully

sued Greater Manchester Police.

(David) The police later
pay Rebecca Leighton

53,000 pounds to settle
out of court for breach

of privacy and negligence.

(Stephen) I mean, that was
really a sensational development

and increased the interest level
in the case,

you know,
a proper crime mystery.

Who was it?

The attacker was still at large.

(Nazir) There was urgency.

And that urgency was such that,
ultimately, the wrong person

was suspected initially.

(dramatic music)

(Sarah) It must have been
horrible for all the staff

left behind when the colleague
with whom they'd worked regularly,

and may well have liked
and trusted,

was arrested.

Suddenly, they were left shaken,

but almost more shaken
when it then

becomes apparent that she
didn't commit these crimes

and is released.

Because the staff will then
have realised that, actually,

they've spent the last
six weeks still living

and working with the culprit.

A murderer has been
among their midst

all that time, even when they
thought they had been caught.

(dramatic music)

(David) After Rebecca's
release, a quiet calm

settles over Stepping Hill.

The attacks stop,
but only for a time.

(Stephen) By that time,
the medical store cupboards

had a lot more security around
them, which meant that

whoever it was who was believed to
be contaminating medical products

wouldn't have such easy access.

Should the killer, the attacker,
wish to continue their spree,

have to find a new method.

(dramatic music)

Everything seems to be
getting back to normal

at Stepping Hill Hospital
until the night

when Victorino Chua
gets into an argument

with the daughter of one elderly
patient that he's looking after.

(David) 86-year-old
Maria Pawlyszyn is

admitted to Ward A3 after suffering
a suspected mild heart attack.

The nurse who looked after
Grant Misell is on shift,

Victorino Chua.

(Donna) Her daughter, who gets
into an argument with Victorino

over the suggestion
from another doctor

that her mother needs
a heart monitor,

and Victorino sulkily
throws a heart monitor

without a plug at the patient.

The daughter, in fury,
argues with Victorino.

The next morning,
her prescription

charts are found to
have been altered,

and not even very well altered.

It's pretty crude.

On careful examination, it turns
out that she's not the only one.

(Donna) And in fact,
the prescription

charts of five other
female patients

have also been clumsily altered.

(David) Altering prescription
charts can be deadly.

(Sarah) In hospital, patients will
have a prescription chart which

will give medications that
they are to be given regularly,

along with how they're to
be given, the dose they're

to be given, how often they're
to be given, and so on,

and drugs which are to be given
as needed, so for instance,

painkillers, which may be
needed and given as required.

Those prescriptions are all
checked against each other.

So if a prescription
chart has been changed

and nobody notices,
then the patient may well be

given something by the nurses
completely unknowingly,

which could do them
harm or even kill them.

Who on Earth would
want to do that?

(David) What's interesting
is that there is a sudden

and, for me, quite a
clumsy change in MO.

You know, Chua stops using insulin

and starts to change
prescription charts.

Now, that's actually quite clumsy.

It's clumsy because it's
quite easy to ultimately

work out who it was that
changed the prescription chart.

We could speculate that he's doing
that because he feels omnipotent.

He feels as if he's never
going to be uncovered.

Or we can interpret that as
simply he becomes more desperate,

he becomes more desperate,
and therefore is

trying anything to cover
the tracks that would have

led investigators to his door.

Six elderly patients,
including Maria Pawlyszyn,

are lucky to survive.

Given the severity, the matter is
immediately referred to the police.

So the police are
called in again.

And this time, they
draw up a Venn diagram

of all the nurses on
shift the night before,

all of this pointing to only one
common denominator,

Victorino Chua.

(David) After emigrating
from the Philippines,

Victorino Chua joined
Stepping Hill Hospital in 2009.

(Stephen) Chua was born in the
Philippines' capital, Manila,

in 1965.

He was one of six
children born to a couple.

He had what we in the
UK would regard probably

as quite a poor background.

His father had died when
he was only 19 or 20.

And that had affected him badly.

But I think one of
his relatives had

encouraged him to become a nurse.

And he went to a respected
local nursing college,

to Metropolitan Hospital
Nursing College.

And then he went to
another nursing college

called the Galang Nursing College,
which was a very notorious

nursing college because
of the poor academic records

there and the finances.

And he did qualify as
a nurse at the Galang.

And he was earning equivalent of
about 3 pounds a day as a nurse.

And he was married and had two
children who he was supporting.

(David) In 2002, Victorino
answers a newspaper

advert to work in a UK care home.

That's not remotely unusual.

There are a huge number of
nurses from the Philippines

working in the NHS.

And I have to say, having
worked with many of them myself,

my experience is that the NHS
would fall apart without them.

(Donna) Victorino works
in a number of care homes

and seems to get on initially
fairly well,

to adjust fairly well, and be
well liked in these care homes.

(David) Victorino, however, is
prone to falling out with people.

(Donna) I think he has that kind of
superficial, gentle personality.

But underneath it all,
there is a burning anger

which does come to the surface.

And we hear about him
leaving care homes

in dispute when there
have been arguments,

disputes with other workers.

You've got to have
professionalism.

And any explosions of ill temper
would be really bad for patients.

But they're also
going to be extremely bad

for the morale of the team.

(dramatic music)

(David) Victorino Chua secures
a job at Stepping Hill Hospital,

despite management being made
aware of his volatile temper.

(Donna) He seems to be getting
on well in his role as a nurse,

but even now, actually, Victorino
is experiencing anger issues.

(Nazir) He did not like
those who managed him.

He did not like the
hospital authorities.

He felt that he should be allowed
to just get on with his job.

Maybe in part,
he was upset about the fact

that he wasn't
being promoted, that he'd

been turned down for promotion.

And so he did not care who was
held responsible for the things

that he was doing,
because ultimately,

senior managers
would take the flak.

(Donna) And we know
that he's actually

seeing a therapist for this anger.

And there are just some bits
of information that come out

from that therapeutic interaction.

(David) Victorino's therapist
offers a simple outlet

for his frustration.

His therapist,
fairly common practice,

recommended that in
order to find an outlet

for his frustration and his anger,
he writes down his feelings.

It's full of details
about Victorino's feelings,

about his early life.

It's full of feelings of
anger towards his colleagues.

(dramatic music)

(David) Chua comes
across, to me, as one

of those people who are
real grievance collectors.

He's fuelled by resentment.

He sees himself as undervalued.

He sees himself as having
been overlooked for promotion.

He sees himself as much
more competent than the role

that he plays within the hospital.

And grievance collectors,
often, are very self-righteous.

And that self-righteousness
seems, to me,

to be what fuels a lot of his
behaviour within the hospital.

He's trying to extract
revenge on those people

who didn't recognise his worth.

And of course, that kind
of righteous slaughter

becomes the outgrowth
of that resentment.

(Sarah) Now, interestingly,
the people who worked with him

say that he was good to work with,

that they enjoyed
working with him,

that he was friendly.

But there are reports that he
was prone to violent outbursts

of temper, and particularly when
his ability or his self-esteem

were challenged.

(David) I know from my own research
that grievance collectors are

often prone to violent outbursts.

But, you know, violent
outbursts, in themselves,

are not evidence of a crime
having been committed.

And therefore, the
challenge for authorities

is that they might be
able to hone in on Chua,

but can they find definitive
evidence that would

prove that he was the killer?

(David) Based
on the evidence, police

discover that Victorino Chua
is the common denominator

in all the collapses.

He's arrested at his
home on January the 5th, 2012.

(Sarah) While they're there,
the police search his home

and they find the bitter
nurse confession, which,

frankly, was a real smoking gun.

"There's a devil inside me.

"Some of these things,
I will take to my grave."

Clearly, he's talking about
what he's guilty of there.

But he also talks a lot
about his colleagues.

Now, some of them, he says,
are OK.

But some of them, he describes
as "nasty bitches."

The bitter nurse confession.

He sees himself as an angel
who turned into an evil person,

but essentially, an angel.

This is a person who does not
really blame himself.

He's so used to attributing
blame to other people.

How many nurses write
a document where they

compare themselves to the devil?

Seems to be some
kind of confession

for all the incidents
and murders that

have taken place in the hospital.

(David) I find the bitter nurse
confession that Chua writes

a kind of fascinating
piece of evidence.

It quite consciously tries
to construct a narrative

about the evil inside the angel.

But it also constructs a narrative
which really shows, I think,

more than anything, the narcissism
that we're dealing with

in relation to Chua.

You know, the bitter nurse
confession is about me, me, me.

And it's serving a purpose for him.

And that purpose is
that we will always

remember that
confession, as opposed

to remembering the
people that he killed.

The confession is
damning, but detectives

know they need ironclad forensic
proof to secure a conviction.

The investigation
moves to the interview room,

where Victorino Chua is
brought in for questioning.

(dramatic music)

(Sarah) The police
describe Victorino Chua

as a narcissistic psychopath.

Now, interestingly, psychopath
is not actually a medical term.

But it's often used
to describe somebody

who doesn't live within
the norms of society

and who doesn't have
any empathy or remorse.

It's closely linked
with sociopathy.

That's otherwise known as
antisocial personality disorder.

And people who have antisocial
personality disorder

don't have any empathy
for other people.

They don't get inside.

They don't have any feelings.

They don't care for anybody.

They only care for themselves.

They don't have a sense
of right and wrong.

(David) Chua refuses to
cooperate with the police.

(Nazir) A very senior
police officer

was trying to persuade
me to charge Chua

on the basis of what little
evidence they had at that time.

And I was pushing back, saying
there isn't enough evidence.

And eventually, after
several hours of discussions,

I was able to persuade him
that we're on the same side.

We want to convict the man who has
caused these deaths and this harm.

But to charge him now
prematurely would ultimately lead

to him being found not guilty.

And you would not get the justice.

And the victims would
not get this justice.

Because of the huge numbers
of opportunities

that he would have had
to poison people

and to put their well-being
at risk,

there was a vast
police investigation.

It was incredibly complex.

There were almost 3,300 witness
statements taken and almost

5,300 items entered into evidence.

The sheer complexity of
this was mind-boggling.

(David) While the police
operation continues,

journalist Stephen Wright is also
investigating Victorino Chua.

(Stephen) Got a
call from my office

saying that there had
been what was perceived

to be a significant arrest in
the Stepping Hill poisoning case.

I was asked, or told, shall
I say, to get the first plane

to the Philippines the next day.

My boss wanted me to try and find
out what I could about this man.

(dramatic music)

I established very soon
in my inquiries,

there were very serious doubts
about his qualifications

and eligibility to be a nurse.

I was able to make contact
with the nursing administrator

at Galang, who still
had Chua's records

from nursing college that looked
like his marks had been amended.

It was highly, highly suspicious.

And police were later
to form the opinion

that someone might even
have sat his nursing

exams for him in the Philippines.

So as a result of those 10 days
of initial inquiries in Manila,

I had really grave concerns about
his qualifications, concerns

about forged references,

concerns about thieving,

which he was accused of
at the hospital from patients.

I got back to the UK
and was put in touch

with the senior officer
in Greater Manchester Police

on the investigation.

I took the decision that it
was in the public interest

for me to hand over my dossier.

(David) At the same time,
the CCTV at the hospital

is also meticulously
trawled by the police.

Chua is seen handling saline bags
shortly before victims fall ill.

The way in which he killed
people was to contaminate bags

either of saline or ampoules
and to inject, usually,

insulin, into those.

(Simon) We identified 42
patients who we believed

had suffered from those
low blood sugar levels.

And we started an investigation
around each of those 42 patients.

Now, over the course of the
time, that was distilled down

to 21 victims, who we felt
we could prove to a court

were indeed poisoned.

(David) Chua engages in what I
would call a kind of medical game

of Russian roulette.

You know, by tampering with
the saline bags, he

allows his colleagues to
use those contaminated

saline bags on their patients.

And that, of course,
directs the finger of blame

away from Chua and
onto his colleagues.

Nonetheless, he's still in control.

He's still powerful.

He's still manipulating.

But it also reveals what he
feels about his colleagues,

which is much the same as he
believed about his patients.

He's indifferent to them.

He doesn't see them as equals.

He merely sees them
as props within a game

that he's playing, a game which
is seeking to exact revenge

on those authorities that did
not give him the promotions

that he felt he was due.

By 2015, the police and the
Crown Prosecution Service

are confident in their
case against Chua.

(Nazir) An inquiry like this,
it's like a jigsaw puzzle.

And you have to put all
the pieces together.

And once you do that, the
picture becomes clear.

In this case, his
presence on the ward,

his animosity towards
the hospital,

his feelings about himself,

the fact that he had access to the
saline drips, the fact that he was

working on those wards, the fact
that he tampered with the records,

the fact that he denied
responsibility, that he tried

to blame other people,
you put all that together,

and you've got a picture of
somebody clearly at work here.

(dramatic music)

So we had opportunity.

We had methods.

What we didn't have
was him actually

doing something that brought
attention to him as somebody

that was ready to harm somebody.

And these records, the
tampering of these records

were, in effect, the smoking gun.

You could put on
somebody's medical record

that they required three
times the level of insulin

that normal people would require.

So he began to tamper
with records, which

meant that he himself didn't
have to administer the fatal dose

or the nearly fatal dose.

Somebody else would do the same.

(David) The court is also
presented with Chua's

bitter nurse confession.

(Nazir) He argued, in his defence,
that it was just the ramblings

of a sad man who was alone.

We were arguing that you can't
just take the letter on its own.

You have to take the
letter with everything else

that we know about
the man, that this

was, in part, the
motivation for this guy

and why he might have done that.

Because in presenting
and prosecuting a case,

you've got to tell
the jury a story.

And the one thing that was
missing in this story was the why.

And the letter helped us
in identifying what the why

was, why he might have done this.

(David) On the 18th of May, 2015,

following three weeks of careful
deliberation,

the jury
finally reaches a verdict.

Of course, in the back of
your mind, you're thinking,

well, you know, you've invested an
enormous amount of time in this.

You also want to ensure that,
most importantly, justice is done.

There are victims
and victims' families

who are looking to you for
closure or some form of closure.

And it's out of your hands.

It's in the hands of
12 members of the jury

who I think were out for 11 days.

And as the days go
by, whilst they're

out considering their verdict,
you are less sure of yourself.

And it was an immense
relief when they came

back with the guilty verdicts.

(David) Chua is found guilty
of the murder of Derek Weaver

and Tracey Arden, the poisoning
of 19 other patients,

and the attempted
poisoning of 7 more.

(Stephen) The families
of those poor victims

have had to deal with the fact
that their loved ones

had their lives taken
by junior nurse

with dubious qualifications
who played God,

effectively, around when
he decided they should die.

The judge was damning
of Chua, jailing him

for a minimum of 35 years,

calling him, you know,
a truly wicked person.

(David) No motive is ever
established for his crimes

beyond his history of
anger and resentment.

My opinion is that

he's a narcissistic psychopath

and an attention seeker

who had complex
mental health issues

but that at his root was an evil,
wicked person

who enjoyed
and took sadistic pleasure

out of seeing people
suffer agonising

deaths or near-death experiences.

(David) In my experience,
serial killers don't just

stop of their own accord.

They have to be stopped.

They might be stopped by being
arrested and incarcerated

for some other crimes.

Or they might be stopped because
eventually, enough evidence

is found so as to convict them.

And I've got no doubt that if
Victor Chua hadn't been stopped,

he would have killed again
and again and again.

(Nazir) Chua was manipulative,
very, very cold.

He didn't care who was harmed.

He didn't care
how they were harmed

or how seriously
they were harmed.

He didn't care who did
the harming,

because at the end of the day,

somebody else would be
attaching the saline drip

or giving the medication.

So he was prepared to put
other people in harm's way.

Other people potentially
could have been prosecuted

for their acts,
despite being innocent.

(Stephen) How on Earth was
this allowed to happen?

What mistakes were made?
What blunders were made?

Why was he able to
contaminate these saline bags?

Why was he able to carry out
these murderous attacks?

A lot of unanswered questions.

So many issues
haven't been resolved.

Questions remain unanswered.

People got away with it.

People allowed him to
get a job in the NHS

when he shouldn't have done.

There hasn't been true
accountability, one could argue.

(dramatic music)

(David) Although new safeguards
are now in place, the tightened

regulations offer little comfort
to the victims' families, whose

lives remain forever changed
by Chua's murderous spree

at Stepping Hill.

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