Dr Harold Shipman. Active as a GP from 1977 to 1998 in Greater Manchester, UK
Victims: around 250 deaths
Harold Shipman was probably the worst serial killer in history. As a family doctor in the suburbs of Greater Manchester, he is believed to have killed around 250 of his patients. Shipman was mild-mannered and was widely respected as a doctor who specialised in treating elderly patients.
HIS BACKGROUND
Harold Shipman grew up in the East Midlands city of Nottingham, into a working class family on a large council estate. His parents were both ardent Methodists.
Shipman was bright and passed the exam to go to his local grammar school. He was an excellent runner and rugby player, but his mother was diagnosed with cancer and Shipman saw doctors treating her with morphine and increasing the dose until she died in 1963. A year later, Shipman went to university to study medicine, marrying while he was a student (he and his wife Primrose had four children).
He started work as a GP in Yorkshire in 1974, but in 1975 he was caught forging signatures to prescribe pethidine, an anaesthetic, for himself. After a rehabilitation course, he moved across the Pennines to Hyde in 1977. Shipman became a well-known and popular doctor, and even appeared on a TV documentary.
CONCERNS ABOUT HIS PATIENTS
Concerns were first raised about the high death rate of Shipman’s patients in 1998, when a local funeral director spoke to someone at Shipman’s surgery. Linda Reynolds contacted the local coroner, especially about how many of Shipman’s patients had been cremated using forms countersigned by Shipman himself. Police investigated but could not find enough evidence to arrest the doctor. Incredibly, Shipman thought he had got away with it, and killed another three patients before he was finally caught some months later, after a local taxi-driver accused Shipman of killing 21 of his patients. That would have made him Britain’s worst killer and one of the world’s worst.
Shipman’s last victim was Kathleen Grundy, who was found dead at her home in 1998. Shipman had been the last person to see her alive, and signed her death certificate giving her cause of death as “old age”. But alarm bells were raised when Kathleen’s daughter Angela heard that her mother had written a new will just before her death, leaving all her money to Shipman.
The police exhumed Kathleen’s body and it was found to have high levels of diamorphine, the drug used for terminal cancer patients. Shipman claimed that Grundy had become a drug addict, but police found that Shipman’s computerised records saying this had only had the comments added after her death. Police also found that Shi[pman had a typewriter that was used to create the fake will. So Shipman was arrested.
HIS TRIAL AND SENTENCE
The number of cases was overwhelming , so the police used 15 sample charges of murder where they could confirm the victims had been prescribed diamorphine, then died, with Shipman signing their death certificates and falsifying their medical records.
Shipman was found guilty of the 15 murders and the judge sentenced Shipman to life, recommending he never be released (confirmed by the Home Secretary). Given the sentence, the police did not pursue further charges. Shipman maintained his innocence throughout, and he is the only British doctor ever convicted of murdering his own patients.
Shipman was found dead in his prison cell, hanging himself in 2004.
The number of victims is an estimate based on looking at Shipman’s records and comparing the statistics for deaths amongst his patients compared to the population as a whole. The numbers could be even higher, but with 250 victims, he is probably the most prolific serial killer ever.
But the police investigators became more and more horrified as they began to suspect the number was much higher. They estimated 250 from the number of elderly patients of Shipman’s who died after he started treating them with morphine.