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A hospital nurse given 13 life sentences for murdering and attacking children must serve a minimum of 28 years and 175 days in prison, a court has ruled.
Beverly Allitt was jailed in 1993 after murdering four young children, attempting to murder a further three children, and causing grievous bodily harm with intent to another six youngsters.
At the High Court in London, Mr Justice Stanley Burnton said Allitt should serve at least 30 years, minus the one year and 190 days she has spent in custody, which is the same term recommended by the trial judge.
All of the victims had been in her care in the paediatric ward of the Grantham and Kesteven General Hospital.
The judge said: “By her actions, what should have been a place of safety for its patients became not just a place of danger, but if not a killing field something close to it.
“I have found that there is an element of sadism in Ms Allitt’s conduct and her offending.
“But that sadism is itself, if not the result, certainly a manifestation of her mental disorder, and it would be unduly simplistic to treat it in the same way as one would if the offender were mentally well.”
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