Rachel Baker found not guilty of 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. 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. In the witness box Baker had denied strongly that she had killed the two women. She said she had thought she was a "good nurse", adding: "I did the best I could always. It was a job I loved. It was my life." Though she now has an eight-year-old daughter, she said that in the years when she was childless she considered the elderly people in her care as her family. "I substituted my residents as my family. I dedicated my life to them," she said. The trial continues.