Carer faces jail after being caught peddling sick OAPs' pills

May 11 2008 Exclusive by David Taylor And Gayle Ritchie

A CARE worker faces jail after being snared peddling NHS drugs in a Sunday Mail probe.

Susan Gray admitted supplying powerful dihydrocodeine pills and cannabis to our investigator last year.

The 43-year-old was trusted to look after vulnerable people and had access to their medication.

But we exposed her sick sideline peddling exactly the same types of drugs prescribed to those in her care.

Dihydrocodeine - known as DFs - is a powerful prescription painkiller.

Gray, who worked part-time at sheltered housing run in partnership by Bield Housing Association and Edinburgh City Council, sold our team the drugs four days after meeting us.

While with a pal and three children - the youngest of whom was two - she met us outside a church on Peffermill Road, yards from where she worked.

The divorcee led our reporter to the home she shares in Craigmillar, Edinburgh, with her partner, three of her own four kids and two grandchildren. She said she had no Valium but offered dihydrocodeine.

The pills, made from the same plant as heroin, are used as painkillers after operations but in high quantities can kill.

The three children - aged between two and eight - were in the house as grasping Gray did the deal last April.

In the kitchen, she said: "I can do you a box of DFs as well as 35 others for s37.50.

"If you want any more in future, just let me know and I can get as many as you like. The hash will cost s60."

The box of DFs sold to us had the remains of a pharmacy label on them - suggesting they had been prescribed to someone else.

Shortly after buying the drugs, we spotted Gray with one of the elderly people in her care. She was suspended by her bosses after our revelations but they refuse to say whether she was sacked or quit last August.

Bield Housing Association said:

"This individual is no longer in our employment."

Dihydrocodeine is a Class B drug but possession without prescription can lead to a five-year jail term. Anyone caught supplying can be sentenced to up to 14 years.

Cannabis was downgraded to Class C by Tony Blair's government in 2004 but on Thursday it was announced that it would revert back to Class B.

The move means the maximum sentence for possessing cannabis rises from two years to five years.

Gray pleaded guilty to two drug dealing charges at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Friday and could be jailed when she is sentenced on May 30.

Sheriff James Farrell told the court:

"It was a small-scale commercial operation by the sound of it."

Gray has no previous convictions.

JAILED BY THE sunday mail

The Sunday Mail has a proud record of exposing and jailing criminals.

Some of the highlights over the last five years include:

SCHOOL TORTURER

DE LA SALLE welfare officer Michael Murphy, 74, was finally jailed last week for abusing boys in his care at a Stirlingshire List D school. Murphy, known as Brother Benedict, was exposed by us in 2001 and convicted in 2003, but a string of appeals had kept him out from behind bars.

DRUG-DEALING KILLER

MURDERER Rosie Blake was jailed for three years thanks to us in 2006. Blake, 54, sold our reporter heroin while she was on early release from prison for murdering lover Ted Ingle with a baseball bat while he was asleep. Cops raided her flat in Gorgie, Edinburgh, after our expose.

RAPIST AND MURDERER

A SERIAL rapist and a murderer were exposed as drug smugglers in jail in 2006. Beast of Ibrox Dominic Devine, 51, jailed in 1987 for several rapes, and 'Laughing Strangler' Billy Stewart, 45, met our reporter on prison work placements and agreed to take heroin back into jail.

SUNDAY EMAIL

r.findlay@sundaymail.co.uk