Murder of Rosie Palmer - Aftermath

Aftermath

A report in the psychiatric care given to Armstrong was published in June 1996, two years after he murdered Rosie Palmer, and the local Health Authority criticised the standard of care as "inadequate and full of shortcomings", but added that the murder of Rosie Palmer "could not have been predicted".

In June 1997, Rosie's mother Beverley launched a £200,000 compensation claim against Tees health authority and Hartlepool and East Durham NHS trust, alleging negligence for allowing Armstrong to be released from their care. This is thought to be the first damages claim against a health authority or NHS trust by a relative of someone murdered by a released patient. The claim was struck out in February 1998 by High Court official Master Hodgson who ruled that Armstrong had made no direct threat against Rosie and her family. He said: "In the absence of such a specific threat I think it is impossible, as the law currently stands, for me to hold that the hospital in these circumstances owes effectively a duty (of care) to the world at large." In June 1999 the case was heard again at the Court of Appeal. On 1 July 1999 Lord Justice Stuart-Smith upheld the previous High Court ruling that there was no connection between the health authority or the hospital and Rosie.

After a number of years during which very little was reported about the Rosie Palmer murder case, Armstrong returned to the headlines in September 2001 when he was granted Legal Aid to pursue a £15,000 compensation claim against Bernard O'Mahoney for "breach of confidence". Armstrong's solicitors backed up the case by claiming that O'Mahoney had pretended to be a woman and allowed police to see a written statement (the letter in which Armstrong admitted to killing Rosie Palmer, as well as his plan to feign mental illness) which was supposed to be kept secret.

The case was dropped in June 2002 after Armstrong decided he no longer wanted to pursue O'Mahoney for damages. Armstrong also dropped his bid to prevent O'Mahoney from publishing a book - Flowers in God's Garden - which included a section about Shaun Armstrong and the Rosie Palmer murder. By this stage, the proceedings had already cost thousands of pounds worth of taxpayers' money.

In March 2010, with Armstrong's earliest possible release date just four months away, Rosie Palmer's mother Beverley Yates oversaw the launch of a campaign in Hartlepool for Shaun Armstrong to be placed on the sex offender's register when and if he is paroled - as the law stands he will not go onto the register once released, because he was not convicted of a sexual offence.