Waddingham

Leading criminal barristers Sasha Wass and Jeremy Dein revisit the troubling case of a care home nurse convicted of poisoning a patient, a crime for which she would hang.

Nottingham, 1935. Ada Baguley, a 55-year-old resident of a family-run nursing home, passed away. Initially Ada was thought to have died from natural causes, but a post-mortem revealed her body to contain lethal doses of morphine. Dorothea Waddingham, the owner of the nursing home and primary care giver for Ada Baguley, and her partner Joe Sullivan were made subject of an inquest into Ada’s death.

It was revealed that a short time before Ada’s passing, she had changed her will and left her entire estate to Dorothea Waddingham and Joe Sullivan. Furthermore, the victim’s mother, also a resident of the care home, had died in suspicious circumstances too. Investigators deemed the motive for the killing to be financial gain. Dorothea and Joe were arrested and charged with murder. Joe Sullivan was acquitted, but despite professing her innocence, Dorothea was sentenced to death for the murder of Ada Baguley.

Almost 90 years later, Chris Canner, a relative of Dorothea Waddingham, was convinced of Dorothea’s innocence. Chris brought the case to the barristers to see if they could uncover new information from a modern-day nursing historian and a forensic pathologist. Jeremy and Sasha examined the motive surrounding the case and explored whether there was any truth in the accusation that Dorothea killed Ada for money, trying to uncover evidence that would cast doubt over the safety of Dorothea’s conviction.

Now, two years on from their initial investigation, Jeremy and Sasha catch up with Chris to discover that the case is far from closed. Will information from a forensics expert and a new document discovered by a crime writer shed further light on the case?