nurses who kill S03E01
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CreativityTranscript
00:00Nurses and carers, we place our life in their hands, but are we always safe?
00:13This is the series that tells the stories of those who take the lives of men and women
00:18they're supposed to care for.
00:30At 96, Gladys Rowe had lived a full and happy life.
00:34She was much loved, cared for, comfortable, blissfully unaware of the issues which shrouded
00:41the woman who helped tend to her needs.
00:45Karen Pedley just didn't seem to be able to stop setting fires.
00:49She was, in fact, a pyromaniac.
00:54I noticed the window was black.
00:57I opened the front door, but he could feel the heat.
01:01The child, Karen Pedley, had been lauded as the saviour of her family after one blaze
01:06at her home.
01:08What this incident did to a girl of 10 years old is to create somebody who only feels truly
01:14alive in response to dramatic stimuli associated with fire.
01:21This deep-seated desire to commit arson had no account of anybody's safety, and indeed
01:28it may have given her additional satisfaction to put others' lives at risk.
01:34And fundamentally, it was that totally selfish desire for gratification that killed Gladys
01:39Rowe.
01:41I knew her as a loving auntie, not anymore.
01:45Because I know everything she's put us through, she can rot in hell.
01:49Karen Pedley.
01:50Mother.
01:51Aunt.
01:52Carer.
01:53Killer.
02:10Karen Pedley was a very mixed-up little girl.
02:36Her troubles began in the family home.
02:41Karen Pedley was part of a very large family.
02:44I think there were eight children in the family, and probably that meant that she didn't get
02:49a lot of attention.
02:51She probably didn't get a sense of her own individuality within that.
02:57It would have all been very chaotic, probably.
03:01But unless you've got quite dedicated, caring and skilled parents, children get very lost
03:09in that kind of atmosphere.
03:12Each child was given a special saving-up jar.
03:15Karen's often, by some accounts, had the least in it.
03:19Did she raid her sibling's jar to top up her own?
03:22According to some, she may have done.
03:24Her parents gave her little attention.
03:26Having a child in a family of this size, when combined with poor parenting, can be
03:35absolutely disastrous psychologically.
03:38It's more than simply a poverty of attention, a lack of attention.
03:42A child can feel like they don't... it's a struggle to even matter.
03:49It's not just insufficient attention.
03:52The children don't learn very basic principles of right and wrong, and they don't get any
03:58positive reinforcement.
04:01The troubled, unattended two-girl did what she could to get attention.
04:06One of her sisters has chosen to live in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 400 miles from where the Petley family were
04:12originally based.
04:14She used to cry more if anything happened.
04:17Though no-one knew, Karen became fascinated by fire.
04:21There was a lot of things going on, especially when the house fire was when we was kids.
04:28The Petley home fire, a turning point in Karen's life.
04:32She was quite the star of what could have been a tragic show.
04:37When Karen Petley was about 10 years old, she apparently discovered a fire in her own
04:45home.
04:46She raised the alarm.
04:47My dad went to work early in the morning, and then Karen was up.
04:51She was downstairs, because she wasn't in the bedroom when I woke up.
04:55And then she came back up the stairs and said, there's a fire in the cupboard.
05:01Flames were coming out, and I actually jumped the flames to get out of the house.
05:05I was the last one out.
05:06So there was nine people in the house altogether, plus my cat, and we lost everything, absolutely
05:12everything, in that house fire.
05:16Everybody agreed Karen saved the day.
05:19She saved the family.
05:21Everybody managed to get out safely.
05:23And that must have been the most wonderful moment for Karen, because she was treated
05:28as a hero.
05:30For the first time in her life, she was getting not just some attention, everybody's attention.
05:39And she was also being courted by the media.
05:43She was given rewards.
05:44She went on a flight on Concorde.
05:47It must have been so wonderful for her at that young age to suddenly know what it was
05:54like to receive all that adoration.
05:59For experts, the house fire and Karen's role in saving the family would change her outlook
06:04on life forever.
06:06It would give her purpose.
06:08I think at this stage, it would be wrong to understand this as preparation for future
06:14fires.
06:15I think it simply speaks to the way in which fires are so central to Karen's identity.
06:23That's all she is in some ways.
06:26And it was only through what happened when she was 10 that she felt fully alive.
06:31So she's always hypervigilant to the possibility of that happening again.
06:37She's always very aware, looking, hoping for chances to experience that feeling that
06:43she had again.
06:46Being quite so praised, so rewarded, contributed to the life and crimes of Karen Pedley.
06:52One day, it would cost an elderly lady her life.
06:56This life-activating effect of the fire was made even stronger for Karen by the praise
07:03and the attention that she got in response.
07:06So that combination is a very powerful combination all together.
07:10Let's face it, when everybody is applauding you, everyone's congratulating you, all eyes
07:16are upon you.
07:17You are not going to forget that moment.
07:19You are in the moment.
07:21And also, your adrenaline levels would be very, very high.
07:27What could have been a tragic disaster became a triumph for little Karen, and the aftermath
07:32was intoxicating.
07:34Chasing praise became a drug.
07:36So for Karen, having experienced nothing her whole life but really a lack of attention,
07:43suddenly she spots the fire and she's celebrated.
07:46She's not just getting attention, she's in the news.
07:49She's being given trips on Concord.
07:53Now this would have had a massive impact on her psychologically.
07:58It would have created somebody who could only respond to massive emotional stimuli.
08:04Put simply, Karen had felt unloved, unnoticed.
08:09Nothing in her life, in her big family, made her feel special or wanted, except when she
08:14was at the centre of attention.
08:16The thing with these kinds of stories is they have a shelf life, you know, they would only
08:21last maybe a couple of weeks at best.
08:25And Karen Peadley would have very, very quickly been thrown unceremoniously back into that
08:32life where she was probably, or felt like, she was nobody.
08:39It now seems certain that return to normality, to not being noticed, kick-started a lifelong
08:44obsession of playing with fire.
08:48For some young people, overnight fame can be very unhealthy.
08:53So they are launched into adulthood, under-socialised, emotionally unbalanced, and yet desperate
09:00somehow to count, to matter, to have an identity.
09:04Now this is a very dangerous combination, and it's exactly what we saw with Karen Peadley.
09:11It would have created somebody whose identity was inevitably, irrevocably tied in with fires.
09:19The Peadleys eventually moved to Cornwall, and Karen began a stable relationship, owned
09:24her own home, started her own family.
09:27But that didn't mean she could be relied upon to behave.
09:30Her personality had been forged in the fire.
09:34So we have Karen experiencing a period of stability.
09:38She is actually finally her own person, in her own home, and at the centre of her own family.
09:45Yes, this must have given her a profound sense of psychological peace, and yet, she
09:51would also have found it a bit unsettling, because don't forget, this is somebody who
09:56only has two emotional modes.
09:58Either she's dead emotionally, or she's fully, dramatically alive.
10:03So this benign, peaceful period would have actually unsettled Karen.
10:10It did unsettle her.
10:11She could not hold down a job for very long.
10:14Karen's first two jobs were at care homes.
10:17Her sister Jenny remembers the time.
10:19She used to be one that goes around to different places if they needed staff.
10:23Though not specifically qualified as a nurse, it seems to have been assumed that, as a carer,
10:28Karen Peadley would be perfectly acceptable.
10:31A carer doesn't require special qualifications, but anyone who is caring for somebody else
10:38should have compassion, should have empathy, and should be prepared to put that person first.
10:45In exactly the same way that the Nursing and Midwifery Council Code of Conduct says that
10:51prioritising people is the first element of the Code of Conduct, always putting their well-being first.
10:59Cornwall, on England's south-western coast.
11:04And Truro, a care home, Roswyn House, which did put its patients' well-being first.
11:13The culture was set by a manager who'd become respected,
11:16and who had affection for those who lived there.
11:19Social services were happy with my experience to then open the home
11:24and become the registered manager.
11:26We were just like one big family.
11:29They were my family then, and everything we had was done to the best of our ability
11:35and to the highest quality, really.
11:38Jenny was proud enough and confident enough to use the home for her own family.
11:44My mother was there for four and a half years.
11:46Although, you know, we didn't have any fall-outs there,
11:49everybody sort of got on with everybody, and it was just a happy family.
11:54And into that happy home came Karen Pedley.
11:59She came originally, I think, to be a cook or a cleaner,
12:02or she was going to be domestic side,
12:04but she did a bit of cooking, she did a bit of cleaning,
12:07but she could also do care as well.
12:11Karen Pedley, the child who had fallen in love with fire,
12:14and how it could make her the centre of attention, had become a carer,
12:18still hooked on flames.
12:20Few, if any, patients or residents where Karen Pedley worked
12:23ever complained about her as a carer.
12:26She was peripheral in many ways, mostly doing the cleaning,
12:29pitching in when wanted.
12:31But she would often fall foul of some employers
12:34when things would go missing,
12:36and she was a very good example of that.
12:38She was a very good example of that.
12:40She was a very good example of that.
12:42She was a very good example of that.
12:44She was a very good example of that.
12:46She would often fall foul of some employers
12:48when things would go missing.
12:50She seemed discontent with the status her job gave her.
12:54Karen Pedley did not have an easy life.
12:56She clearly struggled with many elements of life.
12:59She had a menial job, she couldn't even hold that down.
13:04And wherever she went, flames seemed to follow.
13:10So we have Karen taking on a succession of menial, low-paid jobs.
13:15But I think even these she would have struggled with.
13:18Because don't forget, Karen just was never properly socialised.
13:23So she would have struggled to survive in the world of work at all.
13:27And when inevitably the problems came up,
13:30the only method she has for coping with this
13:33is somehow through starting fires.
13:35Because that's all she knows as a way of redressing the balance,
13:39of getting people who are disrespecting her to treat her,
13:44to notice her, to treat her with respect again.
13:46That's all she knows.
13:50Some patterns started to build in Karen Pedley's life.
13:53And fire actually formed a big part of those patterns.
13:59In a lot of the jobs that she had, there would be fires afterwards.
14:04And especially, it seems, when maybe she'd left on bad terms.
14:09And it started to build a picture,
14:12certainly for us looking back,
14:14we can see a picture of fire after fire after fire.
14:18But she seemed to be getting away with it at the time
14:21and nobody was joining the dots.
14:24And it's clear that she takes quite a lot of pride
14:27in what happened when she was 10,
14:29but in the knowledge that she has about fires.
14:32She must find it strange that other people seem to know so little
14:36about how fires can start.
14:39Indeed, it was sometimes Karen who was raising the alarms.
14:43She was doing these because she was named as a hero,
14:47because she would ring the fire brigade
14:49and she was saving everyone's lives.
14:51There was a fire caused by a microwave oven
14:54at a nursing home where she worked.
14:56Three fires in bedrooms at a home for the elderly.
14:59And three more fires at a social club.
15:02Still another one at a shop.
15:04Karen worked in all of those places.
15:07And a little later on, there was a fire at her sister's home.
15:11Jenny did find something odd about the incident.
15:152010, my house in Hale got caught in a satellite.
15:19We left the house just before 8 o'clock in the morning
15:23with one of my sisters to go to the hospital to watch our children.
15:28So I left at 8 o'clock with the boys, took the boys to school,
15:32and then we headed straight up to the hospital.
15:35When the fire people came at my house after trying to sort it,
15:38he said, it's been going on about four hours.
15:41So that was nearly straight after I left.
15:46But when I rung Karen, cos she was meant to be coming down,
15:50she told me to ring her when I was home,
15:52then she'd leave hers to come down.
15:54So I rung her, and she was at the house within five minutes,
15:58and she lived, like, 45 minutes, half an hour away.
16:01Her nephew, Jenny's son, remembers the event.
16:05I got back to the house, and the family and that were there
16:08with three fire engines, and the house was still smoking.
16:13Karen was there within five minutes, and she lived, like, half an hour away.
16:19At the time, Karen got around on a motorbike.
16:23But that day, a neighbour saw her bike that morning
16:29outside my house on the path.
16:32Conveniently, the ever-vigilant Karen Pedley was on hand
16:35to help her sister and her family after the fire.
16:38Nobody suspected her of being the arsonist
16:41wreaking the havoc that only fire could.
16:46Between 2005 and 2010, Karen Pedley worked at a range of businesses
16:50in Cornwall where there had been fires.
16:53She was working in a club at Carr Harrop.
16:57She was running that place, and there was a couple of fires in there.
17:04She was working for some of the people in the shop in Carr Harrop.
17:08She was nicking their gold and selling it just down the road
17:11from where she nicked it from.
17:13And they found out, so she set fire to that place.
17:18She even set fire to her next-door neighbours.
17:21The pattern seemed to be wherever Karen Pedley was,
17:25there was a fire.
17:27And not only was she there,
17:29she was always the one who would call the police.
17:32She would be there at the scene
17:34watching the catastrophe of her work,
17:39probably reliving some of that glory
17:43that she felt that time when she was 10 years old,
17:47when she became a hero and she got all of that attention.
17:50That must have had something to do
17:53with all of these fires that followed.
17:56And when you start to put all of those things together,
18:00what you actually see is a classic case of pyromania.
18:06The fire-obsessed Karen Pedley had somehow managed
18:09to set off blazers without becoming a suspect in any crime.
18:12Starting fires was a way of getting what she wanted,
18:15sometimes to cover up petty thieving,
18:18others to be able to raise the alarm and appear the hero.
18:22So far, nobody had died because of her,
18:25but her arsonist career was far from over.
18:28In 2010, Karen had found work, yet again, as a care assistant.
18:33Following a dismissal from her care home,
18:36Karen Pedley managed to get another job in a different care home.
18:39This was Rosewin House.
18:41And she, as far as we know,
18:43had all the normal duties of a care assistant.
18:46It was actually quite difficult, quite physical sometimes,
18:49so that would be dealing with the continence issues of patients,
18:54maybe turning them, making sure that they don't get sores,
18:58helping them to eat.
19:01At the time, she seemed to fit in with everybody
19:04and I didn't have any complaints from anybody,
19:07so no reason to think there was any problems, really.
19:12One thing did strike Jenny as odd.
19:15Karen kept asking one of those responsible
19:18for organising fire drills for information.
19:21And she was always pestering him for more training
19:24and talking about fires,
19:26and she actually told him how she'd rescued somebody.
19:30And this was down at the seafarers at Falmouth,
19:33how she'd worked there and she'd rescued somebody
19:36from the home when it caught on fire.
19:40At home, Karen Pedley was far from happy.
19:43She was always short of money.
19:45In her downtime, she was known to scroll through a scrapbook,
19:49charting her childhood years
19:51when she had made the headlines for rescuing her family.
19:55Chillingly, whilst working at Rosewin,
19:57she would call her sister Jenny.
19:59She warned her of frayed wires
20:01that she'd come across at the Rosewin care home.
20:03She kept whinging about it.
20:05She was saying about the electric technoplace,
20:07they could see the wires on the plug sockets
20:09were hanging out of the wall,
20:11and there was a fire,
20:13there was an electric fire in one of the rooms,
20:16and you could see the wires in that.
20:20She told them that we had lots of electrical problems
20:24and we had faulty equipment and all these sort of things.
20:31She said it was wrong, the way the place was, it needed redoing.
20:35In reality, that just was not true.
20:38Pedley was getting her excuses in first,
20:41ahead of setting her latest fire.
20:44I think that Karen Pedley
20:46was really kind of fixated on fires and fire setting.
20:52Perhaps, you know, this was a compulsion for her.
20:55And when she was working in Rosewin House,
20:57she had some conversations with her sister
20:59about some of the fire hazards in the place.
21:03So clearly, all the time,
21:06this obsession, fixation with fire
21:10was taking up quite a lot of her thinking time.
21:14And the fact that she was talking about it to her sister,
21:17and her sister remembers this,
21:19she's not really got her mind on the job.
21:21Why is she thinking about fires,
21:23or why is it so meaningful for her?
21:26Clearly, fire played a very, very big part in her life.
21:30Gladys Rowe was a popular lady in Rosewin House, Truro, around 2008.
21:35Jenny Spargo remembers her,
21:37and events of one evening in particular.
21:40Well, it had been a sort of normal day,
21:43as far as I can remember.
21:45I'd been out in the evening,
21:47and I'd come back into the home,
21:49and my mother was there.
21:51So I went in every night and made sure she was in bed,
21:54and she was OK, and said goodnight to her.
21:57Sometimes she would be in bed,
21:59sometimes she wouldn't, you know,
22:01and if she wasn't, I'd put her to bed.
22:03Dancing with the elderly ladies was part of Karen's charm,
22:07ever wanting to be at the centre of attention
22:10as she helped Gladys Rowe.
22:13That particular night, I'd gone in,
22:15and I'd seen the girls,
22:17and Karen was actually putting her to bed.
22:19They had music on,
22:21and they were singing and laughing and playing around.
22:24That particular November evening,
22:27Karen seemed almost hyperactive.
22:29On the night of the fire in Rosewin House,
22:32it was a point of comment that Karen Pedley
22:35seemed quite excitable, quite happy.
22:38She was jumping around and dancing with the residents,
22:42which wasn't her usual behaviour.
22:45It kind of indicates that she was looking forward to something,
22:50thinking about it, and it was exciting her.
22:54And then I went off to say goodnight to my mother,
22:57and then I went back to my flat,
22:59which was just 100 yards or so down a path
23:03in the grounds of the home.
23:07I'd then gone over and got ready for bed,
23:10and within about 20, 25 minutes,
23:13I had a phone call to say,
23:15can you come over here, there's a room on fire.
23:19Gladys Rowe and Olive Ray had been about to go to sleep.
23:23Another day's look forward to tomorrow.
23:26But had Karen Pedley been up to her old tricks?
23:41As the two women, Gladys Rowe and Olive Ray,
23:44slept in a room at the care home,
23:46the women had been helped into their beds,
23:49secured and safe for the evening.
23:52It was shortly before midnight.
23:55In the quiet of the early hours, Karen Pedley checked one last time.
23:59There was nobody about.
24:01She had the materials that she needed.
24:03She'd placed in the mind of her sister
24:05the idea that the care home was in need of modernisation.
24:08Electrical cables were worn.
24:10None of her claims were true.
24:15Sometime in the wee small hours,
24:17a fire is detected at Rosemont House.
24:20I grabbed some clothes,
24:22ran over there because there was a fire.
24:25I didn't know what to expect, obviously, when I was going.
24:29They then told me that it was in the double room,
24:32which was on the first floor on the landing.
24:35I went up there and I tried to open the door
24:38and I couldn't because the room was just black.
24:41You couldn't see anything. You couldn't see a thing.
24:45All I wanted to do really was go in there and help,
24:47but I knew I wasn't strong enough
24:49and I couldn't do it.
24:51And it's a horrible feeling.
24:54I would say in 48 years of care,
24:57this is the worst thing I've ever had to do.
25:00So I just had to wait until the fire people came.
25:03The fire service were called. This was a big fire.
25:06They got the fire under control.
25:08The ambulance people came and obviously took Gladys to Dresk Hospital.
25:14And it was just horrible.
25:16It was just a horrible, horrible night.
25:19What Karen Pedley did here
25:21was to light a fire in the bedroom
25:25of somebody who was almost certainly,
25:28even if they were in good physical shape,
25:31not going to be able to escape
25:34because they were asleep at the time.
25:36By the time they woke,
25:38the fire could almost certainly have engulfed the room.
25:41Not only did she do that,
25:43but she actually chose to do so in the room
25:47of very, very vulnerable older people
25:52who were not going to be fit to run away,
25:55who were going to be confused
25:57because older people often are in the dark.
25:59They may well have been disorientated.
26:01Who were physically not in a position
26:04where they could easily have dropped to the floor to escape smoke
26:08or gone and rushed and got a towel to wet around their mouths
26:13to help them to avoid smoke inhalation
26:16before they got to the door.
26:18This was a serious fire.
26:20And it didn't take the fire service very long
26:23to work out where the seat of that fire was.
26:26And they found that that fire had been started in room 5.
26:30That was the room where Karen Pedley had been seen
26:33getting very excitable and dancing with the residents.
26:36And it didn't take the fire service very long to work out
26:40that it was the curtains in that room that had been set alight.
26:44The room itself was absolutely devastated.
26:47And what's even more shocking is that these were people
26:51with whom just hours earlier she had been dancing and laughing.
26:56Arsonists, in my opinion, all show a deep lack of compassion.
27:01But this is taking it to another level.
27:05After the incident, Karen's sister Jenny received a call.
27:09That night, straight after the nursing home was set fire to,
27:13I got a phone call saying to me, I've got a line to the police.
27:17She wanted me to say that she was at my house.
27:21I'm not doing it. I didn't do it.
27:25Both women, who'd been in room 5, were rescued from the blaze itself.
27:29Karen had even offered to help the fire brigade out.
27:32But Gladys Rowe later died in hospital.
27:35Gladys had been with us for nine years.
27:38And she was just a character, really.
27:41She lived in one of the flats for a while.
27:43Well, she came into the home, then she went into a flat,
27:46and then she came back into the home again.
27:48And she was quite a character, you know?
27:51The character's life was cut short by smoke inhalation.
27:55Fire kills, and fire kills horribly.
27:57In some respects, you're lucky if you die of smoke inhalation first.
28:02And that sounds like a bizarre thing to say, but all things are relative.
28:06Smoke inhalation is slightly different,
28:09because, of course, fire will burn the skin,
28:11but it will also burn the airways.
28:13But at the same time, when you inhale smoke,
28:15as well as burning all your inner airways,
28:18you'll get a displacement of oxygen from the lungs
28:22with carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide,
28:25which everybody knows is a poison.
28:27And as time goes on,
28:29enough of that carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide
28:32will replace the oxygen that you will lose consciousness.
28:36And later, you may end up with your heart stopping reflexively
28:41as a result of the same transfer of gases.
28:45If you do survive, then there is a strong chance
28:48that your lungs will fill with fluid,
28:50and you will effectively drown in your own lungs.
28:55Karen Pedley, ever ready with a story,
28:57was happy to talk to investigators.
29:00From the very beginning, when it was found by the fire service
29:03that this was a suspicious fire,
29:06Karen Pedley tried to deflect the blame,
29:09not just away from herself,
29:11but on to another specific person.
29:15And she became very, very difficult to deal with over this,
29:18and she became threatening.
29:20She even threatened this other person
29:23that she was going to burn their house down,
29:26which seems a very strange thing to do
29:28when you have been perhaps put under suspicion of arson.
29:32Staff at the home did have their doubts about Karen Pedley.
29:37My suspicions were Karen.
29:39We knew we'd done nothing wrong.
29:41We knew there was nothing there that could set fire to what happened.
29:45Unless... I mean, they were almost down to saying
29:48it was like an act of God and things like this,
29:51as if something had come through the window,
29:54and, you know, these things don't happen.
29:57But people were trying to make up things.
30:00And the other thing that obviously made us feel rather suspicious
30:03was that Karen went home and never came back any more.
30:07She'd just walked out of her job.
30:11But analysing how her mind was working,
30:14Donna Youngs is not surprised by Pedley's response.
30:17She was literally winging it.
30:19After the fire, we know that Karen tries frantically to cover it up,
30:24tries to get an alibi from her sister.
30:26Now, what we know is that when an offence is essentially expressive,
30:31it's about the experience of committing the offence,
30:34that almost by definition,
30:37there's no consideration of the consequences of that act.
30:41And that means that there's also no pre-planning.
30:44There's no consideration of the consequences for you as well.
30:48And I think that's what we're seeing here.
30:50Because for Karen, it was about the fire,
30:53about the act of setting the fire,
30:55and what happens in the immediate aftermath,
30:58the attention that she gets and so forth.
31:01But actually, she's not planning for anything beyond that.
31:06That's all she's focusing on.
31:11Gladys Rowe, at 96, was enjoying life in the care home.
31:15She had died as part of a story which began 33 years earlier,
31:19when a little girl found out that she could big herself up,
31:23she could be seen to matter,
31:25if only she could find a way of becoming the centre of attention.
31:29Gladys Rowe's death would not have ended that compulsion.
31:35To put it very, very bluntly,
31:38Gladys Rowe was collateral damage in her wider campaign of arson.
31:45I don't think she really probably cared that much
31:52if at all that somebody had died.
31:55It may have added to the drama.
32:01This was not her first fire, not by a long way.
32:04But at no point had police ever suspected her of being an arsonist.
32:08So, in the immediate aftermath of the fire at Roswin House,
32:11she was not considered as a killer.
32:15Karen Pedley's days setting fire to things was far from over.
32:19Without the fires, Karen quite simply is not fully alive.
32:24Without the fires and the social approval
32:27that comes with them through her actions,
32:30Karen doesn't really exist.
32:34The Roswin Care Home would eventually close.
32:37Its owners had spent a lifetime making it into a popular
32:40and well-run place for the elderly people to live their lives out in comfort.
32:44Karen Pedley had ended all of that,
32:47as well as the life of Gladys Rowe.
33:02Detectives began to piece together what evidence they could find
33:05after the blaze at Roswin Care Home.
33:07Fire investigators had quickly suspected arson.
33:10They learned from Karen Pedley herself about the concerns
33:13that she had voiced related to the freight wiring.
33:16Far from straightforward who was responsible for what,
33:19Pedley remained a suspect, but there could be no arrest.
33:23This arson was quite difficult to prove for the police.
33:29But, you know, they were working in the background investigating.
33:35Karen Pedley gets back on with her life.
33:37She got work at other residential care homes.
33:40Sure enough, later in 2010, two fires are reported.
33:44Even after this blaze, where Karen Pedley is a suspect,
33:49and she knows she's a suspect, she's not in custody.
33:53There's no evidence against her at this stage.
33:57But she doesn't stop setting fires.
34:02It's like a compulsion with her. She's got to do it.
34:06It's just filling her mind most of the time.
34:10It may seem incredible to many people
34:13that even after she had murdered one deeply vulnerable woman,
34:19she continued to set fires.
34:22It might be that that was because,
34:25as a sociopathic person with a personality disorder,
34:29she had no regard, and that those murders meant nothing to her.
34:34So it didn't change her overwhelming desire to start fires.
34:38It may be that it simply fired her enthusiasm.
34:43If you'll pardon the pun, to continue to start fires,
34:46because she gained added excitement
34:49from the knowledge that she was putting people's lives at risk.
34:54This is a mania. This is a compulsion.
34:58This is something that is taking over her thoughts
35:01way too much of the time.
35:06It was around this time
35:08that the fire at the home of her sister had taken place.
35:11He went straight to my house.
35:13I noticed the window was black and it was actually cracked.
35:17I opened the front door, but he could feel the heat.
35:21Certainly the fact that she was prepared to light a fire
35:24in her own sister's house says everything
35:27about her complete lack of regard for relationships within her life
35:32and for human beings, regardless of how close they were to her.
35:37Karen was quickly on the scene,
35:39just 5 minutes after hearing from her sister.
35:44Very, very often those people will want to be there
35:48once the fire is set.
35:50That is the glory moment for them.
35:52There is the planning and the excitement,
35:55and I'm going to do this.
35:57They're not going to.
35:59They're not sit and see what happens once they set that fire.
36:04Watching people running around,
36:07maybe panicking, the emergency services turning up,
36:11the blue lights flashing,
36:13it's such a huge drama,
36:15and all because of them.
36:17They created it.
36:20The fire at her sister's house gave Karen Pedley
36:23the chance to appear the heroine of the day once again.
36:26She was now able to offer her homeless sister
36:29and her family a roof above their heads.
36:32She put me and my boys up, cos we couldn't get a house.
36:35The council couldn't house us there and then.
36:37And it took about two or three weeks to get that sorted.
36:41Karen Pedley, nobody could prove she was a Nortonist,
36:44was again the star of the real-life show,
36:47offering her sister a lifeline just when she needed it most,
36:50her home gutted by fire.
36:52And I've lost everything to my house fire.
36:54You know what I mean? I've not got nothing left.
36:56And my grandparents, all my mum.
36:58But at least she and her family had a home.
37:01It soon became clear, however,
37:03Karen wanted more than praise for her good deeds.
37:06She wanted money.
37:08So in that time I was staying at hers,
37:10she asked, she wanted money off me.
37:14For being at hers.
37:16For food and gas and electric and all that sort of stuff.
37:20But I paid her the money,
37:23but then she kept on wanting more.
37:26And then certain things had gone missing as well.
37:31What she's trying to do is to recreate
37:34the same kind of scenario.
37:36It's not simply a fire.
37:38She's not your standard addictive arsonist.
37:41It's not the physical reality of the fire,
37:44the flames, the noise, the smell, the sound,
37:47which motivates Karen.
37:50It's this combination of this emotional impact
37:53of something big, primal, something bigger than her,
37:56suddenly happening in her life,
37:58in which she's brought to life
38:00and suddenly she's the centre of attention and she matters
38:03and it literally ignites somebody who,
38:06up until that point, has been emotionally dead.
38:09So it's that scenario that she's trying to recreate
38:12rather than it simply being something more basic
38:15about the sensory qualities of the fire,
38:18which is often what we see.
38:23Police began to investigate Karen Pedley
38:26and noticed a pattern.
38:28They lost job after job
38:30and shown a real sense of grievance each time.
38:33Thereafter, mysteriously, a fire would break out.
38:39They managed to get enough evidence together
38:42to be able to arrest Karen Pedley.
38:45And as soon as she's arrested, what happens?
38:49What happens is that the lifelong smoker Karen
38:52gets up to her old tricks.
38:55She sets fire to her own cell.
38:58I mean, this compulsion that she has,
39:00she doesn't seem to realize
39:02how it's constantly pointing the finger back at her,
39:06that she is actually guilty of all these fires.
39:10Setting fires is everything to Karen.
39:12It's what brings her alive,
39:14but it's also what helps her to cope
39:16with grievances, with any problems.
39:18So it's boredom, but it's more than that.
39:20It's her defense strategy.
39:22It's her out.
39:23It's her coping mechanism.
39:25It's her way of stimulating herself to life.
39:28Every question that life asks her,
39:30her answer is a fire.
39:36By 2014, detectives were gathering enough evidence
39:39to charge Karen Pedley.
39:42It had been three years
39:44since she had claimed the life of Gladys Rowe.
39:46Since then, there had been at least three more fires
39:49where she was the main suspect.
39:51Would her arsonist trail be stopped?
39:53Would she kill again?
39:56Incident by incident,
39:58detectives visited the timeline of Karen Pedley's life.
40:03In 2002, she had worked
40:05at the Trafoola House Nursing Home
40:07in St. Dei, Cornwall.
40:09After losing her job, a fire had begun.
40:12In 2006, she had worked at the Carharack Social Club.
40:15There had been allegations that she had been stealing,
40:18and again, she had lost her job.
40:20Shortly after that, there was a fire there, too.
40:24And then there was a scrapbook found at her home,
40:27evidence of her continuing obsession
40:29with the rescue of her family
40:31after little Karen had raised the alarm.
40:35Karen Pedley may well have been stuck
40:37at a stage of development
40:39where she believed that nothing was her fault.
40:42It's possible that she was exposed at the age of 10
40:46to an episode in which she was highly praised
40:50and it was made very, very clear to her
40:52that the reason that she was being rewarded
40:56was because the consequences of fire were so serious.
41:00Her brain was developing at that stage.
41:03It was very vulnerable to ideas
41:06that can sit and perhaps fester
41:09and develop there in an abnormal way.
41:11Being an adolescent is a confusing time,
41:14and things that happen then have a major impact on us.
41:18So Karen Pedley had one perception in her mind,
41:21that fire is dangerous and that it is a bad thing to happen.
41:25She has another perception in her mind
41:27that when something bad happens to her,
41:29someone needs to be punished for making that happen to her
41:33by having something bad happen to them.
41:35The obvious connection between the two
41:38is to make sure that that punishment is fire.
41:44In 2016, the evidence of Karen Pedley's lifelong association
41:47with fire, her presence at the Rosemond Nursing Home
41:50on the night of the arson,
41:52and reports of the steps that she had taken to cover her tracks
41:55led a jury to find her guilty of the murder of Gladys Rowe
41:58and four other offences of arson.
42:01Some of those incidents involved her raising the alarm.
42:06It's got praise for it and all this stuff.
42:10And then I find out years later that it was her.
42:15Pedley was given a life sentence
42:17and will serve a minimum of 27 years.
42:20Even the judge at the trial said that Karen Pedley
42:23didn't seem to care about Gladys Rowe's death.
42:28She continued to set fires even after that.
42:32It was a sentence that some in her own family felt just.
42:37The longer she's inside, the longer people are safe.
42:41I don't want her to get released.
42:43She's got 27 years.
42:45She should never get out for what she's put people through.
42:48And I don't want her to put other people through it
42:50when she gets released.
42:51I was only 10 when all this happened.
42:54And it's not the life I was wanting to live.
42:57I had a loving family and then they do this to us.
43:03Karen Pedley has clearly been committing arson
43:07for many, many years.
43:09And were she to have the opportunity today,
43:11I have no doubt that she would continue to do so.
43:14This behaviour was never going to change
43:17if she was given the slightest opportunity.
43:20Well, I think she's caused a lot of heartache
43:22and a lot of grief to a lot of people.
43:24And she's now basically in prison,
43:30which is where, yes, she should be.
43:32You can't go round just catching fire to people
43:35because you want to be a hero.
43:37I'm sure there's much better ways of being a hero
43:40than doing that.
43:43They talk about looking at the flames
43:46and being drawn by them and almost mesmerised by them.
43:50This is a mania, this is a compulsion.
43:56I just don't want anyone else to die because of her.
43:59You know what I mean?
44:00When I found out that she had killed someone,
44:03that was it.
44:05Last straw, mate.
44:07You know what I mean?
44:08She's sick.
44:10She's sick, big time.
44:13I don't want to see her again.
44:15No way.
44:17She's a criminal.
44:19She's a murderer.
44:21She's sick in her head.
44:25Karen Pedley, the little girl who became fixated with fire.
44:32The ten-year-old rewarded for her heroism,
44:35who found a dangerous way of becoming the centre of attention.
44:39Karen Pedley, the carer who killed.