A MENTAL health nurse from Bridgwater who worked at Broadmoor high security hospital, has been jailed for two years after selling stories about some of Britain's most notorious killers to tabloids.

Kenneth Hall, 49, sold a string of stories to the News of the World and the Mirror newspapers.

He said he was frustrated with the way the hospital "mollycoddled murderers, rapist and paedophiles".

It included tales about Robert Ashman, who attacked an MP and killed his assistant with a samurai sword.

Hall, of Fairfax Road, also sold stories about killers suing the NHS, and forged documents to beef up his tales, London's Old Bailey heard.

As well as working as a mental health nurse at the hospital, Hall was responsible for some of the security at the institution.

He pleaded guilty to misconduct in public office between June 29 2002 and October 6 2004 and one count of forgery.

The Old Bailey heard how Hall first sold stories to a freelance reporter who often worked for the News of the World called Anna Gekoski.

He later also made contact with a reporter at the Mirror.

He used his privileged position as a nurse to disclose confidential information to newspapers, making thousands of pounds for himself.

Prosecutor Stuart Biggs said Hall had knowingly breached his work code of conduct which expressly stated that he was not to disclose information about patients to the media.

He added: "Mr Hall knew from the outset that what he was doing was a serious matter, and was in direct breach of the short code of conduct."

When arrested, Hall accepted he had forged a number of documents, saying: "You just fabricate, make it up, do a letter - they can't go to Broadmoor and verify it, can they?"

Biggs said: "He explained that the desire for money was coupled with his frustration at the way in which Broadmoor 'mollycoddled murderers, rapists and paedophiles'.

"The paper was duped to an extent - great extent, the people referred to are of course done a disservice, the institution is done a great disservice, and the public who were forced to receive information that is entirely false information, the journalist taking it on its face [value] because it appeared to come from a source within the institution itself," he continued.

Sentencing him, Judge Timothy Pontius said there had been a "grave" breach of trust.

He added: "The trust not only of the public, but of course that of the patients themselves, many of them suffering from extremely serious mental illness which led to their detention in hospital for very many year many years."

He added that the offence was made worse by the fact that his offending continued after he left the hospital.

Judge Pontius continued that although the some of the patients had committed the gravest of crimes that gained notoriety in the public, they were still entitled to professional care and a respect for their privacy.

He said that Hall could not viably justify what he did by claiming it was "altruistic whistleblowing", because his offending continued after his employment ended.

Biggs said investigators found emails between Gekoski and Hall dating to September 19 2003 with the subject heading "Ashman".

Attached were documents forged by Hall claiming to be patient notes relating to Ashman, and some genuine notes.

In the email Hall wrote: "Hope it goes in as a lot of work went into getting copies of those."

Hall resorted to faking documents when he could not smuggle the originals out of the hospital, but also smuggled out genuine documents relating to Ashman.

The court heard that he made £23,800 from selling stories, continuing to feed his contacts fake stories even after he had stopped working at Broadmoor.

Hall's wife, Karen, who was also a nurse at Broadmoor, pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the commissioning of the offence by allowing money she knew her husband got through the sale of stories, into her account.

Last month she was handed a five-month jail sentence suspended for one year.

The Halls have three children, aged seven, 11 and 12.