No investigation into mental hospital where Janet Muller escaped before she was killed

Mill View Hospital in Nevill Avenue, Hove, have also refused to make their internal review public after Janet Muller walked out of the front door and climbed over a garden fence on March 12.

The 21-year-old was found burned alive in the boot of killer Christopher Jeffrey-Shaw’s hired car the following day in Rusper Road, Crawley.

Michael Mergler, deputy managing director of Sussex Partnership Trust, which runs the hospital, said: “It was an internal review and as a result we’re taking extra training in assessing risks and communicating those risks as well as time management.

“There will be no external review per se because we shared the findings with our partners, so it’s in a wider sphere, it’s not just us.

“It’s really important we understand what went wrong.”

But when asked what did go wrong, he said: “It’s very, very unfortunate and she shouldn’t have been able to walk out twice.”

The hospital introduced a taller garden fence afterwards but The Argus can reveal an application for this was put in before her death. Nobody was reprimanded over her escape.

A member of staff at Mill View hospital has called the tragic death completely preventable, citing the known security weaknesses in the psychiatric ward from which she escaped.

The hospital was granted planning permission for the fence on March 3, the day Janet Muller was sectioned under the Mental Health Act after she had suffered an acute psychotic episode meaning she had lost touch with reality.

People are sectioned when they are deemed by health professionals to be putting their own safety or someone else’s at risk and are suffering from a mental disorder. They are admitted, detained and treated in hospital against their wishes.

Talking last year, the staff member, who has asked not to be named, said: “Mill View is supposed to be a secure psychiatric hospital, dealing with people who are very ill.

“But the female garden had a nine foot wall and they’ve allowed a large creeper to grow there which acts as a step and people climb over it.

“Any able-bodied person is able to jump over it.

“Mentally ill patients are getting out once a week and now someone has been murdered.”

“This was a completely preventable thing.

“She got out the same way people have been getting out ever since I’ve been working here.

“Hospital management have known about this problem for years.”

The member of staff claimed that hospital management had asked staff not to speak to the press, but said: “Janet was very unwell, so how is it okay that the men get the right level of security but not vulnerable women?”

Dr Gurprit Pannu, consultant psychiatrist and clinical director for Brighton and Hove, said:

“We would like to express our sincere condolences to the family of Ms Muller following her tragic death. We would also like to apologise unreservedly for the fact that Ms Muller absconded from hospital whilst she was under our care.

“The circumstances leading to Miss Muller’s death could not have been anticipated.”

The police will also launch an internal review into their investigation.

Detective Superintendent Adam Hibbert, head of Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team stated it was a normal protocol.

He added: "I would like to reiterate what the senior investigating officer has already said that any new information about the case would be reviewed and responded to accordingly. Our sympathies remain with Janet's family at this difficult time."

Jeffrey-Shaw, 28, of No Fixed Abode, will be sentenced on Friday.

‘WE HAD OPPORTUNITIES TO STOP IT’

Gareth Davies tried to get answers from Michael Mergler, deputy managing director of adult services at Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, on what is being done over failings in the case of Janet Muller.

GD: Janet Muller suffered an acute psychotic episode which means she had lost touch with reality – what does that mean?

MM: What I can’t do is go into details about the treatment she was receiving.

GD: I’m not asking you to comment about her in particular, but generally, how would that present itself in a patient?

MM: Refused to comment.

GD: Why not? I don’t understand what it means and neither will a lot of our readers, what does it mean?

MM: Refused to comment.

GD: OK, Janet was sectioned under the Mental Health Act on March 3, how many times had she escaped since then?

MM: I wouldn’t be able to comment on that.

GD: Why not? It was said in open court. It’s a matter of public record.

MM: It would be breaching patient confidentiality because we didn’t put it out there.

GD: She escaped in the morning and was found in the Devil’s Dyke area – what happened?

MM: She had been with us for a couple of weeks before and it’s very unfortunate she was able to leave twice. As soon as we knew this had happened we were in contact with the police and that’s how she was found and returned to us.

GD: Well we know she walked out through the front door, so how did she go from that to leaving again a matter of hours later, which we understand was over the fence via climbing a tree?

MM: It’s known that she walked out through the front door, but we have lots of people coming and going.
We worked very closely with police and it does seem that’s how she climbed over the fence and that led to the tragic circumstances that followed. All I can say is we realise we had opportunities to stop that and we assessed that.

GD: We know the male and geriatric wards are more secure than the female’s, so what’s the difference?

MM: Again, I cannot confirm that, it was very unfortunate. It’s not a prison, it’s a hospital. We don’t have total 100 per cent security.

MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS

EVERYTHING about this trial hummed with mediocrity from start to finish leaving more unanswered questions about the death of Janet Muller than there already had been.

The very first act of the Crown Prosecution Service was to tell Lord Justice Jeremy Stuart-Smith there had been a blunder with the jury’s bundles.

They were in Brighton.

The jurors were in Guildford.

There was a four-hour delay and then proceedings got underway.

As prosecutor Philip Bennetts guided the jury through the agreed facts it became clear that 25 minutes of silence would be the most important. This was the time on March 13 between Janet Muller’s last sighting at 1.13am on Kingsway in Hove heading east towards Brighton and 1.38am when Christopher Jeffrey Shaw’s hire car is spotted heading northbound near Pyecombe on the A23.

Everyone expected the prosecution to produce the killer witness – the person who saw Jeffrey-Shaw and Janet Muller meet.

The person who saw her get in the car. But nothing – more silence.

Those 25 minutes are crucial.

A jury has to be sure he murdered her to send him down for life.

With absolutely no prior meetings, communications and nothing even putting the pair of them within a mile of each other – it was unlikely this would be the case.

But Jeffrey-Shaw claimed he was in Brighton that night canvassing the city’s club district for drug users on behalf of a traveller he owed money to.

This is probably the most CCTV-clad area in the county. Yet, according to DCI Karen Mizzi, not a single camera picked him up.

Why wasn’t this presented to the jury?

Also, in Jeffrey-Shaw’s defence, he claimed the traveller and Janet Muller had been involved in a botched armed robbery in which she was shot dead near a house in Crawley he visited two hours before torching the car.

The Argus asked Sussex Police how many beatings, shootings, robberies, armed robberies, attempted robberies or attempted armed robberies were reported in the Crawley area on March 13. 

The answer – zero. Again, the jury were unaware of this.

So Judge Lord Stuart-Smith added another twist – a manslaughter charge – giving the jury the option of finding him guilty of setting the car alight knowing she was in the boot but thinking her to be dead.

They agreed with this, somehow.

There were so many holes in both the defence and the prosecution, yet there were key witnesses missing from the trial.

Janet Muller’s partner, Helen Sutton, was living in Beckenham at the time her girlfriend was killed. So too was Jeffrey-Shaw.

Janet and Helen had a seven-minute phone conversation at the time she escaped Mill View Hospital for the second time.

Nobody apart from those two know what was said between them. Surely she was interviewed.

Likewise, Jeffrey-Shaw’s girlfriend at the time – named as Fiona Cleary in the trial – was key. It was the car that she signed for that became the centre of a murder trial.

Yet not a single one of her words, barring texts, made it to the courtroom.

The other huge piece of missing information is Janet Muller’s movements between her leaving Mill View Hospital in Hove and heading along the seafront at 1.13am.

CCTV captures her walking in the subway near Portslade Train Station at just after 10.30pm – a reasonable time to assume she walked straight from the hospital to there. The next footage is of her is staggering down Boundary Road, falling off the pavement, two hours later. 

What had she been doing? Where had she been?What had she taken?

The defence’s case is based upon a character that, to the police’s mind, does not exist.

Steve the traveller and his accomplice Mickey who lent a cash-strapped Jeffrey-Shaw £800 to pay off a drug debt and lumped 100 per cent interest on in a week.

The prosecution said Jeffrey-Shaw hung his lies on the pegs of truth put forward by the case against him.

Without police finding Steve and Mickey – he cannot be proved innocent. Without police filling the gaps – he cannot be proved guilty of murder. He’s fallen somewhere between the two and been found guilty of manslaughter.

Detectives have stated this case is closed, but that they would consider re-opening it if new evidence came to light.

Somebody, somewhere, who saw Janet or Jeffrey-Shaw between 1.13am and 1.38am on March 13, must be able to either prove he is lying or telling the truth.

There is more to this story than has already been told.