A HOSPITAL matron with a “God complex” who was facing trial charged with murdering three elderly patients may have killed a further 20 people, police said yesterday.

Anne Grigg-Booth, 52, who was found dead at her home on Monday, had been accused of poisoning patients with opiates on the night shift at Airedale General Hospital, at Keighley, West Yorkshire. She was said to have injected unprescribed doses of the painkiller morphine, pethidine and diamorphine, the drug used by the GP Harold Shipman to kill his victims.

Ms Grigg-Booth was charged last September and was to go on trial at Leeds Crown Court in April for the murder of June Driver, 67, Eva Blackburn, 75, and Annie Midgley, 96. She was also accused of attempting to murder Michael Parker, 42, and 13 counts of unlawfully administering painkillers to 12 other patients between June 2000 and July 2002.

West Yorkshire police, who investigated more than 20 deaths at the hospital, said that the nurse, who was said by colleagues to have had a “God complex”, might have killed others.

Relatives of the dead said that Ms Grigg-Booth’s sudden death had denied them a trial that might have explained the deaths of their loved ones. Her body was found by a neighbour in Nelson, Lancashire. Police are not treating the death as suspicious.

Ms Grigg-Booth, divorced with one son, was understood to have been depressed, drinking heavily and failing to care for herself.

An inquiry began when a routine audit of opiate drugs after Shipman’s conviction revealed that some drugs were missing. Ms Grigg-Booth was suspended from duty as “night nurse practitioner”, a senior post that often put her in charge of nursing at night.

Other nurses described her as eccentric and bossy but popular and well respected. She was known for taking in stray dogs and had a “house full of animals”.

One nurse said: “She was totally in control but did have a bit of a God complex. She thought she could do little wrong, even though it went against hospital rules.”

Another said that she found it difficult to deal with hospital regulations, which could mean bleeping doctors in the early hours to sign off drugs. The nurse said: “Doctors were not happy to be bleeped just to sign their name, and so sometimes drugs would be administered to a patient and then signed off later. I suppose, at other times, the drugs would be administered and never signed off.”

At a preliminary hearing, magistrates in Bingley were told how Eva Blackburn, a widow from Keighley, was taken to hospital after suddenly becoming ill. She died early the next morning with her two elderly sisters at her bedside. One sister, Amy Newman, 83, said last night she had been hoping that the trial would “get to the bottom of what happened”. However, the pensioner, who lives in Cullingworth, near Bingley, said she would not be mourning Ms Grigg-Booth’s death.

She said: “None of us could believe it. Eva was fighting fit and so strong. I just cannot understand why anyone would want to harm such a defenceless old lady.”

The youngest alleged victim of poisoning is believed to be Lorraine Boddy, who was 18 in October 2000 when she was taken to hospital suffering pain from a cyst on her ovaries. At one time her condition was thought so serious that her parents brought in a priest.

Detective Superintendent Phil Sedgwick, who led the investigation, said no one will ever know how many patients the nurse had killed.

The difficulty of establishing how many of her largely elderly and desperately sick patients died, especially when their bodies were subsequently cremated, hampered the investigation.

Ms Grigg-Booth always denied any responsibility for the deaths, or that they were in any way “mercy killings”.

The Crown Prosecution Service decided to proceed with only three murder charges, one attempted murder and the administering poison charges.

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