Rachel Baker found not guilty of Somerset care home murders

Former Somerset care home manager Rachel Baker has been cleared of murdering two elderly residents.

Baker, 44, a registered nurse, was found not guilty of killing Frances Hay, 85, and Lucy Cox, 97, by injecting lethal doses of painkillers at Parkfields residential care home in Butleigh, near Glastonbury. She was also cleared of attempting to murder Hay.

The jury at Bristol crown court was still considering alternative manslaughter charges against Baker in both deaths.

The trial heard that Baker had become addicted to the opiates diamorphine and pethadine, and confessed to stealing prescribed and controlled drugs intended for residents. She admitted 10 counts of possessing class A and C drugs and one of perverting the course of justice.

The jury has been deliberating for more than 24 hours in all, beginning a fortnight ago and resuming yesterday after a six-day break over Easter.

Opening the prosecution case, David Fisher said Baker’s drug use “must have had a substantial effect on her character and conduct”.

He said: “She, for a variety of bizarre and perverted reasons, may have had a desire to control the terminal destiny of some of her residents.”

A care assistant at the home, Kathy Slade, told the court she overheard Baker ask Hay if she wanted to “end it all” two days before she died.

Baker accepted taking the medication amid the “stress, pain and emotional turmoil” of running the home. But she denied that her “diverting” of residents’ drugs ever affected their care.