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murder uk s03e01
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00:11I'm David Wilson, emeritus professor of criminology, and for over 30 years, I've investigated the
00:18phenomenon of murder and what it is that might motivate someone to kill.
00:27Every murder case is different, but time and again, a deadly pattern emerges of warning
00:34signs and red flags.
00:40In this new series, I investigate some of the UK's most harrowing murder cases to understand
00:48how and why these terrible crimes occur.
00:55This is Murder UK.
01:24In 1994, in Borsley Green in Birmingham, Eric Lloyd is being nursed by his Filipino partner,
01:33Marie Wiston.
01:34She's a nurse, and they live together in his home.
01:41Eric Lloyd was eight years older than Marie.
01:48On the surface, it looks like this gentle nurse is taking care of an ill man and looking after
01:58him.
02:01I mean, nursing would have been just the most natural profession for somebody with
02:09Marie's personality.
02:14I was a medical student, and I supported myself through medical school by working as a nursing
02:20assistant in a psychogeriatric hospital where I was surrounded by nurses from the Philippines.
02:28There was a huge influx of nurses from the Philippines around about that time.
02:33They were incredibly devoted, but they also worked very, very long hours.
02:39So if Eric knew that Marie was a nurse, he might have thought that she would be both excellent
02:46at caring, and also very, very grateful to have him to care for her financially.
02:59Eric's medical records show that early on in his relationship with Marie, he suffers two
03:05mystery health scares, both ending in a hospital emergency room.
03:13Shortly after getting together with Eric, Eric is rushed to hospital on two separate occasions,
03:19suffering from excess insulin in his blood.
03:23Doctors are stunned.
03:25Eric isn't diabetic, so why would he have insulin in his system?
03:31The only way to have too much insulin is if you're given too much insulin, then your blood
03:36sugar can drop through the floor.
03:38In the early stages, that can lead to feeling hungry, feeling generally unwell, feeling lightheaded,
03:44possibly having blurred vision, feeling irritable and angry.
03:48As time goes on with a more severe episode of hypoglycemia, you can become disorientated,
03:54you can act very oddly, you can become confused, you can collapse, you can have seizures.
03:58And in extreme cases, it can cause abnormal heart rhythms and even death.
04:06Since Eric wasn't diabetic, the critical question is obvious.
04:12Did his own partner and nurse, Marie Whiston, deliberately inject him with insulin?
04:25It is not something you take without knowing it.
04:27You can't eat insulin.
04:30If you take insulin in oral form, then it doesn't get absorbed into your system.
04:34So it needs to be given by injection.
04:40Eric knows that that just isn't possible.
04:43He hasn't been injecting insulin.
04:47So what sense can he make of this?
04:49And does he suspect Marie?
04:52And yet he remains with her.
04:53I think that, quite simply, Eric Lloyd needs Marie at this stage.
05:13Two years on from his two health scares, Eric seems to have recovered until one day, the inexplicable illness strikes
05:22again.
05:25Marie was working a night shift at the hospital.
05:28She came home from work and found Eric dead.
05:39An unexplained, unexpected death.
05:44Eric's death appears to be from natural causes, but not everyone agrees.
05:50One former police officer in particular, Stephanie Stevens, begins to harbour serious doubt.
06:00I was working as a coroner's officer for the West Midlands Police.
06:06If emergency services are called if there's a sudden death, then usually it would be the ambulance service who arrive
06:13first.
06:13It might be the police service who arrive first, depending on the circumstances.
06:18If they have concerns, any concerns, they are required to inform the coroner's service.
06:23And the coroner's assistant will be informed, and on this occasion, the coroner's assistant, Stephanie Stevens, actually attended the scene.
06:35I always remember it was a Friday, and it was about midday.
06:40I had a phone call from a GP who said that one of her patients had died, and it was
06:47unexpected, and she obviously needed to refer to the coroner.
06:53I went out, went to the house in Belchers Lane, Borsley Green, in Birmingham, which is right opposite to Heartland
07:03Hospital.
07:05Heartland's Hospital is where Marie works.
07:09Marie opened the door, wearing her nurse's uniform.
07:13I went upstairs, walked past a very pretty bedroom, which was obviously her room, walked into his bedroom.
07:22And he was lying across the bed, very, very sparse bedroom, just a bed and a set of drawers, and
07:32he was dead, obviously.
07:35So I examined the body, very, very cold. He'd be dead for a long, long time.
07:40And immediately, Stephanie is concerned and suspicious.
07:45That is entirely due to Marie Whiston's reactions.
07:52I was met by a woman, dressed in a nurse's uniform.
07:57Straight away, I was just like, this is really weird, because it was midday.
08:03And why, why had she only just reported it?
08:07I went downstairs to speak to her, and I said, why are you still in your uniform?
08:16And she said, well, I've just finished nights.
08:20I said, this is midday.
08:22Well, I went out to the shops.
08:26My first impression of Marie Whiston was that she was lying.
08:33She was absolutely lying.
08:37But it is Marie's unusual way of grieving that strikes Stephanie Stevens as most suspicious.
08:44She was trying to cry, but there was no tears, and she was looking out the corner of her eyes
08:51to see if I was looking.
08:54And I was looking, and I could tell that she was lying.
09:00Marie Whiston appeared to be very upset, but she felt that her tears were crocodile tears.
09:06She felt that her concern and her upset was totally false.
09:12If you don't mind me doing this, this is what she was doing.
09:18Trying to cry, but not letting me see.
09:24And I was just, there's something really weird about you.
09:34What Stephanie Stevens seemed to be picking up on is that Marie Whiston was performing grief,
09:42almost as if she was conforming to a script, that it wasn't authentic.
09:47It wasn't emotional.
09:49It wasn't grief.
09:51You know, grief is overwhelming.
09:54Grief is all-encompassing.
09:56And you can't, therefore, switch it on or switch it off again,
10:00depending on who's watching you and how they are reacting to you being in grief.
10:07So I think that's quite interesting, that what Marie Whiston seemed to do was perform a script,
10:12as opposed to actually having those genuine feelings.
10:17Marie also seems unusually anxious for Eric to be cremated as soon as possible.
10:23Stephanie also was very concerned that Marie Whiston appeared obsessed with finding out when and whether Eric could be cremated.
10:35All she said was, I want him cremated.
10:38I need him cremated straight away.
10:40Now, of course, Stephanie Stevens, with her experience with the coroner's office, would have been very aware that a post
10:48-mortem is impossible once a patient has been cremated.
10:51And, of course, there is no chance of going back to look for further evidence.
10:55And straight away, I got this instinct that she was trying to hide something.
11:05Cremation is probably the ultimate form of destroying forensic evidence.
11:12You're literally burning the body, and therefore any toxins within the body, any physical marks on the body are immediately
11:21going to be destroyed because, of course, the body will be burned.
11:24And therefore, pushing in the way that Marie Whiston did for an early cremation is again going to raise suspicions
11:32in the same way that her performance of grief had raised suspicions.
11:37This was, frankly, another red flag.
11:41So she then does some looking around.
11:44She is suspicious enough that she looks around the scene.
11:48She noticed that Eric had vomited, that there was a pool of vomit.
11:53Now, this would be very unusual if a patient had simply had a cardiac arrest.
12:12If a death is reported to the coroner, then it's the coroner's job, or them and their coroner's assistant, to
12:19decide whether there are any suspicious circumstances.
12:22If they do feel that there may be suspicious circumstances, they don't have to have proof at this stage, but
12:29if they feel there may be suspicious circumstances, then firstly, they will report it to the police.
12:35They will decide whether a forensic post-mortem, taking much, much more careful note of what's going on, will happen.
12:43And, of course, they can decide that a death certificate, which will allow the release of the body, should not
12:51happen.
12:54So we took the body back to the mortuary.
12:57Post-mortem was done the very same afternoon.
13:01Despite the post-mortem, Eric's sudden death remains unexplained.
13:09The pathologist called me, this would be now about hyper-3, and said, I can't find a cause of death.
13:17So I've taken stomach contents, blood and urine, as we normally do.
13:23So we took all those contents, obviously because we've got no cause of death.
13:28Stephanie Stevens was suspicious, and there is no question that she was going to allow this to proceed to criminalization.
13:37Without looking into it further, no matter how much Marie Whiston wanted it.
13:42There was no way I was letting it go. No way at all.
13:47Police determine they must uncover more about the background of Marie Whiston.
13:53Marie Whiston grew up in the Philippines, which is an extremely poor country.
13:59A lot of people there either live in very rural locations, or an awful lot of them in the capital
14:04of Manila,
14:05which is very overcrowded and very, very poor.
14:09She marries very young, which is not unusual there.
14:1318-year-old Marie Whiston, in the Philippines, marries a man who, unbeknownst to her, is actually a violent alcoholic.
14:24She then flees the Philippines and comes to the United Kingdom.
14:31Once in England, Marie trains to become a nurse.
14:36If you met her, she would see the most caring and gentle of people.
14:41To go into nursing was a fairly obvious career choice.
14:47There was a television program around about that time called Angels, and there was very much a feeling that nurses
14:54were, in some respect, angels.
14:56There they were in the caring profession, looking after other people.
15:00It would have allowed her a very different lifestyle, if you like, compared to what she'd had.
15:07She wasn't dependent on anybody, as she had been in the Philippines.
15:11It would have allowed her financial independence, and that would have been enormously important for her.
15:17But it would also have given her social status because of the high regard in which nurses were held.
15:24And that would have been, I suspect, very appealing to her.
15:28Now settled in England, Marie decides to remarry.
15:33In 1973, Marie then meets and marries Robert Whiston.
15:39Coming to the UK as an immigrant and fleeing the kind of violent marriage at such a young age that
15:46she did,
15:47she will have felt very exposed and vulnerable.
15:51But over time, and through meeting Robert, she becomes more established.
15:57She has children.
15:58She goes into the nursing profession and puts down roots in England.
16:04Serial monogamy is a survival strategy, especially for people who feel exposed or vulnerable in some way.
16:13And so quickly marrying one partner after another is to give that person a sense of security, a sense of
16:21safety.
16:22The relationship, in other words, isn't emotional.
16:26It's transactional.
16:27If that security no longer is forthcoming, then that person will quickly move on to the next partner.
16:36So serial monogamy is an interesting pattern in how Marie Whiston behaves throughout her life.
16:43But Marie holds a profound secret, one she's desperate to keep away from her new husband.
16:51They went on a holiday to the Philippines.
16:54We don't know if he'd had any suspicions before, but while he was there, it appears his suspicions were very
17:00much aroused that she might still be married to her abusive and alcoholic first husband.
17:10It's actually a bigamous marriage.
17:13She remains married to the violent alcoholic husband in the Philippines.
17:19The bigamy, I think, is just something that she felt she had to do to survive, even if that means
17:26committing bigamy.
17:27And when Robert discovers this, things turn nasty.
17:34He married a gentleman called Robert Whiston.
17:38They had, I think, two children.
17:41But eventually the marriage broke down in rather acrimonious circumstances.
17:47There was a big battle over the custody of the children.
17:51And in the end, it was Robert Whiston who was awarded the custody of the two children.
17:57Robert was given care and control of their children, in other words, effectively full custody.
18:01But I think it would have been very unusual for a father to be given full custody, especially when their
18:08mother was a nurse.
18:10So why does the judge refuse to grant custody to the children's mother, Marie?
18:16There's talk of Marie trying to set fire to Robert.
18:21Somehow the judge is picking up on something unstable, erratic, untrustworthy, lying beneath the apparently placid and gentle demeanor that
18:37Marie is presenting.
18:38And I think this is the first time that anybody is picking up on this.
18:43And I think it's here that we get our first indication of the instability and volatility of Marie's personality.
18:57In 1989, Marie makes the acquaintance of former factory worker, Eric Lloyd.
19:04So, quite quickly, after her marriage to Robert has imploded, Marie meets a car factory worker, Eric Lloyd, who is
19:17not in the best of health.
19:19He and she live together in his house.
19:24Marie very easily falls into a nursing role for him.
19:30Mr. Lloyd had made Mrs. Whiston the beneficiary of his will.
19:35And so, if he died, then she stood to inherit a significant sum of money.
19:44But despite being a beneficiary of Eric's will, Marie immediately embarks on another affair.
19:52Her interest in him waned, and eventually she met a gentleman called Mr. Beattie.
20:01And at the time that Eric Lloyd died, Mrs. Whiston was in effect in her relationship with Mr. Beattie.
20:10This new relationship is more than just a passing fancy.
20:14The pair are making plans to start a new life together in Canada.
20:19In fact, she'd been off registering her forthcoming marriage to another man.
20:25She was aiming to elope with him or to go abroad with him and marry him.
20:30And, of course, if she'd done that, then she would have missed out on her inheritance from Eric.
20:40So, while with Eric Lloyd, she was also conducting an affair with a Mr. Beattie.
20:46I think all the while preparing for that, looking for a means to cash in on her relationship with Eric
20:54Lloyd, knowing that he was not very well.
21:06Of course, when the serial monogamy leads to the end of a relationship, there's often a tipping point.
21:14And sometimes that tipping point, as in this case with Eric, would be because Marie has established that there would
21:21be a better transactional relationship with someone else, in this case with Mr. Beattie in Canada.
21:28She therefore needs to get rid of Eric.
21:31And therefore, the serial monogamy will move on yet again.
21:36It suggests that Eric's murder was a calculated transaction to finalise the past and fund the future.
22:02Stephanie Stevens, the coroner's officer, is sure something's wrong.
22:07And she's not the only one.
22:10Eric Lloyd's family are also certain he didn't die from natural causes.
22:15Just a couple of days after Eric's death, his daughter makes a dramatic accusation.
22:22On a Monday morning, literally as I got to work, knocking at the coroner's door was the daughter saying,
22:30Marie Whiston, my dad's common law wife, I think she has killed him.
22:38So I was like, what makes you think that?
22:41She said, well, Dad's just changed his will.
22:43Well, Marie is the primary beneficiary of Eric's will.
22:49Then, for an unknown reason, Eric changes his mind.
22:54This threatens the most fundamental thing to Marie.
22:57Marie's survival instinct will have been utterly kicked in by this.
23:03To someone like Marie Whiston, to exclude her from his will, will have activated, will have triggered that survival instinct.
23:13Having excluded her from his will, he sealed his fate.
23:17Marie now had both the method and the motive in her hands.
23:27Underneath the placid demeanor, there was always a potential to react to when she needed to, to survive.
23:36But now, things have imploded again and acrimoniously.
23:42She's become something much more strategic, much more dangerous.
23:47She's mutated into somebody much more ruthless.
23:52Somebody who will now do anything to survive.
23:56And I think that that's why very soon after meeting Eric Lloyd, we see her beginning to put into play
24:05a plan to murder him.
24:13Marie appears to have a motive, but which method did she use?
24:18The two mystery insulin overdoses that Eric suffered earlier in their relationship are the key clue.
24:26It seems very likely, given that Eric firstly said he'd never taken insulin,
24:31secondly had no reason to because there's no suggestion that he wanted to harm himself,
24:35and thirdly wouldn't have had easy access to insulin.
24:38The only person who, A, had access to insulin, and B, might have wanted to harm him, is Marie.
24:46That very much suggests that she is giving him insulin in order either to harm him or in an attempt
24:53to kill him.
25:02What I believe is, and this is what I told the coroner,
25:05is that she'd come home from working her night shift.
25:10She'd gone out to dispose of the syringe, which we never found.
25:17I actually went round the bins in Balls of Green looking for the syringe, but I never found it.
25:24There was a pond, and I even went out into the pond and searched the pond to see if there
25:31was anything in the pond.
25:33Nurses are extremely used to giving injections.
25:36Marie Whiston was an experienced nurse.
25:38While she was working on wards, she would almost certainly have had patients with type 1 diabetes,
25:45and she would have been giving them injections, if they were incapable of doing it themselves,
25:52of giving them injections of insulin.
25:55So there's no question she knew about the effect that insulin could have.
25:59She knew about the danger of giving too much.
26:10If you give a person who's got a normal pancreas producing a normal amount of insulin,
26:19extra insulin from outside by way of an injection,
26:23then that can and will reduce dramatically the amount of sugar in the blood,
26:31and that can lead to death, for example, by heart failure.
26:41In fact, as recently as 2020, there was a review in a medical journal
26:46which was sort of asking the question, wasn't saying, but was asking the question,
26:51is insulin the perfect murder weapon?
26:56But at this stage, Eric's post-mortem shows no signs of foul play.
27:02The police are not convinced Marie is a suspect.
27:07When I informed the police, the police were, no, I don't think there's any evidence.
27:14The coroner backed me and he said, actually said to me,
27:19as a coroner's officer, Stephanie, I trust you,
27:21go with your instincts and do what you need to do.
27:27Stephanie returns to Eric's house, determined to find physical proof.
27:48Eric was not a man who was taking injections of insulin or anything else, to her knowledge,
27:54and therefore there's no reason for pre-injection swabs to be in the place
27:59if it wasn't that somebody else had been giving him an injection.
28:04As forensic tests are carried out on the vomit-stained carpet,
28:08Marie offers up another explanation for Eric's death.
28:13Suicide.
28:16Marie Whiston was not about to admit murder straight away.
28:21She, perhaps, does the obvious.
28:23When she suspects, maybe, that there isn't going to be a cremation,
28:28then that the insulin might be found,
28:30she decides to claim that Eric has committed suicide,
28:34which would, of course, be a way of explaining
28:36how he had such high levels of insulin in his body
28:40if she hadn't given it to him.
28:43When Whiston realises that she can't refute the evidence
28:48in relation to the presence of insulin in Eric's bloodstream,
28:53she quite clearly tries to manipulate the narrative once more.
28:57She tries to box clever without admitting her own guilt,
29:02and that's why she starts to claim that Eric committed suicide.
29:06She recognises that the police have evidence in relation to the insulin,
29:10and she's simply fabricating a narrative
29:13to explain why the insulin might be there.
29:18With the police still unconvinced,
29:20it falls to Stephanie to prove that Eric Lloyd died from an insulin overdose.
29:26Now, the best way to show whether you've been given insulin
29:31or whether you've produced it naturally
29:32is to use something called C-peptide,
29:34which is a natural chemical produced by your body
29:38when it's producing insulin.
29:41In the ordinary person where they've got insulin in their blood
29:47that's come from their own pancreas,
29:49there is a known relationship
29:52between the amount of insulin
29:55and the amount of C-peptide.
29:58And if those two substances are in the normal relationship,
30:03well, that demonstrates that the pancreas
30:06is responsible for the insulin that's in the blood.
30:09Where a person is injected with insulin,
30:15that injection does not contain any C-peptide.
30:20The manufacturers of insulin don't put C-peptide in it
30:24because it's not a substance that has any known use to the body.
30:29The science is clear.
30:32If Eric's blood shows insulin without corresponding C-peptides,
30:37it proves the insulin was injected.
30:40But there's a major problem.
30:42The blood samples collected from Eric during his post-mortem
30:46are compromised and may be unusable.
30:51The problem was that they weren't acceptable as evidence
30:55because the samples were too damaged.
31:00Pathologists took two blood samples at the initial post-mortem.
31:04But by the time those samples came to be examined,
31:08they had deteriorated.
31:12What happens is, when somebody dies,
31:16the blood coagulates.
31:18So when we were trying to test
31:21for what we suspected was an insulin overdose,
31:24bear in mind, Eric Lloyd, the deceased,
31:27wasn't a diabetic.
31:29We couldn't test the blood.
31:31The red blood cells within the blood had broken down,
31:36and so the prosecution said
31:38that blood really could give no reliable information
31:43so far as the presence of insulin.
31:46With the blood samples compromised,
31:49Stephanie needs a plan B.
31:53Eric Lloyd's first post-mortem was inconclusive,
31:56but Stephanie Stevens was not prepared to give up.
31:59He had a second post-mortem.
32:04I first became involved with the case of Eric Lloyd
32:08through the coroner's office.
32:10I knew Stephanie quite well.
32:13I would go into the coroner's office most days of the week,
32:16and she seemed to have an instinct about the case
32:21that something wasn't quite right.
32:24There's already been a first post-mortem.
32:28It was a general orgy, so-called coroner's case,
32:32where a colleague of mine had made a preliminary examination,
32:35and his findings were inconclusive.
32:40There's already been some increasing suspicion
32:44about the case was developing
32:46through Stephanie Stevens' concerns,
32:50and therefore it was felt
32:52that the home office pathologist
32:54should have another look at the body.
33:14To bring a case against Marie,
33:16police must prove Eric Lloyd died
33:19from an insulin injection.
33:21But there are no signs of a struggle,
33:23not any obvious needle marks on Eric's body.
33:32I was able to really confirm
33:34that there was no obvious external injuries.
33:38There was a bruise on the thigh,
33:41which possibly may have been related to a needle mark,
33:45but could have occurred
33:46through any other trivial incidents.
33:50Incidents' methods of estimating insulin
33:53are particularly difficult in blood and urine,
33:57especially urine, at the time.
33:59So, again, that was difficult.
34:03We were struggling, really,
34:06to try and prove that...
34:08..or disprove that Mr Lloyd had had an overdose of insulin.
34:16We couldn't test the blood,
34:19so the coroner said,
34:20well, let's try something else.
34:23So this is the first time ever in history
34:26that we'd decided to test the urine.
34:29Looking at both the insulin and his C-peptide level,
34:33the problem was that the samples were so damaged
34:36that they couldn't be used in evidence.
34:38Now, that left the scientists, the investigators,
34:43with only one choice,
34:44which was to turn to the urine samples.
34:47But what they did was to look at two urine samples
34:53that had been taken at the initial post-mortem.
34:57But nobody had ever tested urine before
35:01for the presence of insulin and C-peptide.
35:05Ordinarily, you don't need to.
35:06You just use blood.
35:12With the critical blood evidence ruined,
35:15investigators are forced to look
35:18beyond conventional forensic methods.
35:21So what they did was to compare those urine samples
35:26with lots of other deceased people.
35:30And they treated them blind
35:32without anybody knowing which sample was which.
35:36and they were able to identify
35:37which one had very high levels of insulin
35:40and not of C-peptide,
35:43which suggests that it was an insulin injection.
35:51The central mortuary in Birmingham,
35:53they would be doing something like
35:56six to ten autopsies a day.
35:59So there was the opportunity to take blood and urine samples.
36:04They weren't taking any tissue.
36:05These were materials that would have been gone to waste anyway.
36:15The painstaking work takes a full year as samples are collected
36:21and a new technique is developed.
36:24For 12 months, I collected over 100 urine samples to test for insulin.
36:33And in all those 100, only two came back as positive, and they were the only two people that actually
36:42were diabetics.
36:43And they really developed a new science of examining urine samples in this way and establishing that there was a
36:53relationship between the amount of insulin and the amount of C-peptide in urine,
36:58which could demonstrate that a person had been given insulin from outside the body.
37:06Experts come to a final conclusion.
37:10Eric Lloyd died from a lethal overdose of insulin.
37:20It was as a result of that that they were able to charge Marie Whiston.
37:27But will the controversial technique be enough to convict Marie Whiston of murder?
37:33This science was very controversial.
37:36A lot of experts gave evidence at trial, and it was hotly contested that this science was reliable.
37:44If the science isn't 100% reliable, the prosecution needs compelling circumstantial evidence.
37:53Unfortunately for Mrs Whiston, the prosecution case did not rest solely on scientific evidence.
38:03There was a lot of other circumstantial evidence which the prosecution contended supported their scientific case.
38:13Investigators begin to delve deeper into Marie Whiston's past.
38:22Perhaps most significantly from the prosecution's point of view, during the course of the divorce proceedings from Mr Whiston,
38:34which had taken place many years before, Mr Whiston had sworn an affidavit.
38:41Marie's ex-husband said that not only had she threatened to kill him in the past,
38:47but that she had threatened to do it with insulin, and that, as a nurse, she knew how to do
38:54it.
38:56The ex-husband's affidavit really is a game-changer, both in terms of the investigation and in terms of the
39:04court case,
39:04because what it demonstrates is that this is premeditated.
39:09The ex-husband said that Marie had threatened him by injecting him with insulin,
39:15which of course happens in this case,
39:17and that the injection would be in a pretty obscure place between the toes.
39:22It's almost an open and shut case because of what her ex-husband says.
39:30He had set out, in writing, in a document that had been submitted to the court at the time, 1988,
39:41an allegation that Mrs Whiston had threatened to kill him by injecting him with insulin.
39:54And that she would do so by injecting him between the toes where an injection site would not be discovered.
40:04So, here was this allegation, which was made many, many years before,
40:12which was extremely damaging to Mrs Whiston's credibility.
40:19It was, on the face of it, an extraordinary coincidence that many years ago she should make such a threat,
40:28and then, years later, in respect of a different man,
40:32there should be compelling scientific evidence that that was exactly the way in which he had been killed.
40:43Analysis of the vomit-stained carpet also reveals some damning evidence.
40:52It's highly unlikely that Eric Lloyd, who, from the sound of it, already had great suspicions of his wife,
40:59was going to let her inject him without knowing exactly what was going on,
41:04and to inject him with a drug which he must have known could not possibly be for the benefit of
41:11his health.
41:11So, it's perhaps no surprise that when Stephanie Stevens arranged for the vomit on the carpet to be examined,
41:18it was found to contain sedatives, which almost certainly Marie Whiston had given him to render him unconscious.
41:25That then allowed her to inject the incident freely.
41:30Whiston's trial gets underway at Birmingham Crown Court,
41:34the culmination of three years of painstaking work.
41:41It was a very long and difficult period for Mrs. Whiston,
41:44and when the police interviewed Mrs. Whiston after the death of Mr. Lloyd,
41:50she told lies about her relationship with Mr. Beattie and tried to cover it up.
41:55As the investigation went on, more suspicious lies and other circumstances came to light.
42:01For one thing, Marie claimed that she'd been working a night shift.
42:05Now, that gives her the aura of being very caring.
42:08I've been off caring for patients. I came home and found my husband dead.
42:12In fact, she'd been off registering her forthcoming marriage to another man.
42:17She was aiming to elope with him or to go abroad with him and marry him.
42:23And, of course, if she'd done that,
42:25then she would have missed out on her inheritance from Eric.
42:33She was just lying.
42:35I could just tell she was lying the whole time.
42:40There's no question that Marie believed that her expertise as a nurse
42:44would allow her to get away with murder.
42:47It's ironic that, in fact, it was her behavior when Eric was found
42:53which finally resulted in her being found out.
42:56It was only because she was so keen to get away with murder
43:01and to have Eric cremated
43:03that Stephanie Stevens, the coroner's assistant,
43:07was so suspicious of her.
43:08And it was as a result of that
43:10that a series of investigations was set in place
43:14which resulted in her being convicted.
43:22The jury returns its verdict.
43:25Marie Whiston is found guilty of murder.
43:29She actually stood up and shouted that I was a bitch
43:35because I'd found her guilty.
43:41But it was just her evil, evil behavior
43:50that I knew that she was guilty.
43:54Marie murders Eric actually by injecting him
43:58with an excessive amount of insulin
44:01causing a death which could very easily have been written off
44:06as being the result of natural causes.
44:09Now, there's a sophistication to that
44:12but actually it's a medical sophistication.
44:15It's a sophistication that's born out of her medical knowledge.
44:19Marie Whiston is sentenced to life in prison
44:23with a recommendation that she serve a minimum of 16 years.
44:31I really didn't think we would get a conviction
44:34because I didn't have all that much evidence
44:37but the jury convicted her on my evidence
44:42and the fact that she was just guilty.
44:47On appeal in 2000,
44:50Marie Whiston's sentence is reduced by two years.
44:54Proving to be a model inmate,
44:56she soon earns her parole.
44:58I believe that Stephanie Stevens, the coroner's assistant,
45:01deserves more credit than perhaps anybody else
45:04in bringing Marie Whiston to justice.
45:07I think that Stephanie's involvement in this case
45:10and her suspicions were vital
45:13in pursuing the end result.
45:21Eric became almost a part of my family
45:28because I was just so convinced
45:31that a wrong had been done
45:33and I needed to undo that wrong.
45:40She was such a wicked woman.
45:45Of course, the real hero in this case
45:48is Stephanie Stevens.
45:51You know, Stephanie Stevens saw Marie Whiston's mask slip
45:55and was not prepared to let that go.
45:59And because of her determination to find out the truth,
46:03a calculated killer was brought to justice.
46:09To be continued...
46:34Transcription by CastingWords
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