Harold Shipman

Before his arrest in 1998, British serial murderer Harold Shipman, who worked as a medical practitioner in England, murdered almost 200 of his patients.

Harold Shipman: Who Was He?

Harold Shipman, a British serial murderer, graduated from Leeds School of Medicine and began practicing medicine in 1970. He murdered at least 215 and maybe as many as 260 of his patients between then until his arrest in 1998 by injecting them with fatal amounts of drugs.

Early Years

Harold Frederick Shipman, known as “Fred,” was born the middle child into a working-class household on January 14, 1946. He was his dominating mother Vera’s favorite kid. She implanted in him a sense of superiority at a young age that contaminated most of his subsequent interactions, leaving him a lonely adolescent with few friends.

When his mother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, he cheerfully took charge of her care as she deteriorated, captivated by the good effect that morphine had on her pain, until she died on June 21, 1963.He was devastated by her loss, and after failing his admission examinations the first time, he was admitted to Leeds University Medical School for training two years later, after serving his hospital internship.

Still a loner, he met his future wife, Primrose, when she was 19 and five months pregnant with their first child, and they married when she was 17.

By 1974, he was a father of two and had established a medical practice in Todmorden, Yorkshire, where he first flourished as a family practitioner until reportedly succumbing to Pethidine addiction.He falsified prescriptions for significant amounts of the substance, and when detected by his medical colleagues in 1975, he was forced to leave the practice and attend a drug recovery facility. Following the investigation, he was fined and found guilty of forgery.

Shipman was hired at Donneybrook Medical Centre in Hyde a few years later, where he established himself as a diligent doctor who earned the trust of patients and colleagues alike, despite a reputation for arrogance among junior employees. He worked there for over two decades, and his actions drew little attention from other healthcare professionals.

Crimes

The local undertaker noted that Dr. Shipman’s patients seemed to be dying at an exceptionally fast pace, and that they all died in identical poses: most were fully dressed and sat up or sat down on a couch. He was anxious enough to speak with Shipman about it, who told him that there was nothing to worry about. Later, another medical colleague, Dr. Susan Booth, saw the resemblance and reported it to the local coroner’s office, which informed the police.

Shipman was cleared after a clandestine examination, since his documents looked to be in order. The investigation neglected to call the General Medical Council or do a criminal background check, both of which might have revealed proof of Shipman’s past criminal history. Shipman allegedly manipulated his patients’ medical records to verify their causes of death, according to a later probe.

Shipman’s denial of all accusations did little to aid the investigators, and his position as a kind, family doctor made it nearly hard to determine when he began killing his patients, or how many perished at his hands.Indeed, it was Angela Woodruff, the daughter of one of his victims, who refused to believe the justifications supplied for her mother’s murder that brought his killing spree to a stop.

Following an earlier visit by Shipman, Kathleen Grundy, an active, rich 81-year-old widow, was discovered dead at her home on June 24, 1998. Shipman told Woodruff that an autopsy was unnecessary, and Grundy was buried according to her daughter’s wishes.

Woodruff was a lawyer who had always managed her mother’s affairs, so seeing another will that left the majority of her mother’s assets to Dr. Shipman caught her off guard. Woodruff believed the paper was a fake and that Shipman had murdered her mother and forged the will in order to profit from her death. After reviewing the material, Detective Superintendent Bernard Postles of the local police department came to the same conclusion.

Grundy’s corpse was unearthed, and a post-mortem confirmed that she died of a morphine overdose, which was delivered within three hours of her death, exactly during Shipman’s visit.Shipman’s residence was searched, uncovering medical records, an unusual collection of jewelry, and an antique typewriter that turned out to be the source of Grundy’s fake will.

The medical data acquired instantly indicated to the police that the case would expand beyond the single death in question, and priority was given to those fatalities that would be most fruitful to examine, especially those who had not been cremated and who had died after a home visit by Shipman.

In a substantial number of cases, Shipman recommended families to cremate their relatives, emphasizing that no further examination of their deaths was required, even when the relatives died of causes previously unknown to the family. Shipman would submit electronic medical notes to back up his cause of death announcements in circumstances where they were questioned.

Aftermath of the Trial

Shipman would, in most cases, modify these medical notes immediately after killing the patient, police discovered, to ensure that his narrative matched the historical records. Shipman had overlooked the fact that any change to the data would be time stamped by the computer, allowing investigators to determine which records had been changed.

On September 7, 1998, the police accused Shipman with 15 charges of murder and one act of forgery after an intensive investigation that included multiple exhumations and examinations.

On October 5, 1999, Shipman’s trial began in Preston Crown Court. Shipman’s defense council’s attempts to have him tried in three phases, namely cases with physical evidence, cases without physical evidence, and the Grundy case (where the forgery distinguished it from other cases), as well as to have damning evidence relating to Shipman’s fraudulent accumulation of morphine and other drugs, were thrown out, and the trial proceeded on the 16 charges included in the indictment.

Shipman killed the 15 patients because he relished having power over life and death, according to the prosecution, and any allegations that he was behaving humanely were discarded because none of his victims were suffering from a terminal condition.

As the first witness, Woodruff emerged. The jury was struck by her honest demeanor and story of her unwavering commitment to discover the truth, and the defense’s attempts to discredit her were mostly ineffective.

The government pathologist then took the court through the terrible post mortem results, which revealed that morphine poisoning was the most common cause of death.Following that, fingerprint examination of the fabricated will revealed that Grundy had never handled the document, and her signature was disregarded as a crude fabrication by a handwriting expert.

A police computer analyst then testified about how Shipman tampered with his computer records to generate symptoms that his deceased patients never experienced, in most cases only hours before they died.

The pattern of Shipman’s actions became considerably evident as the trial advanced to other victims and their relatives’ statements.He would pretend to phone the emergency services in front of family, then terminate the call when the patient was revealed to be dead. No real calls were made, according to phone records.

Finally, evidence of his medication stockpiling was shown, including fake prescribing to patients who didn’t need morphine, over-prescribing to those who did, and documentation of his trips to recently dead patients’ homes to gather unwanted medicine supplies for “disposal.”

Throughout the trial, Shipman’s pompous tone did little to help his defense present a picture of a committed healthcare provider. Despite their best efforts, his arrogance and habit of shifting statements when he was caught in clear falsehoods did not endear him to the jurors.

The jury was sufficiently convinced by the testimony and evidence presented, and unanimously found Shipman guilty on all charges: 15 counts of murder and one count of forgery, on the afternoon of January 31, 2000, following a meticulous summation by the judge and a caution to the jury that no one had actually witnessed Shipman kill any of his patients.

The court sentenced fifteen people to life in prison, as well as a four-year term for forgery that he converted to a “whole life” sentence, thus eliminating any chance of release. Shipman spent time in Durham Prison.

The revelation that a doctor had murdered 15 people shocked the medical world, but it turned out to be unimportant in the light of further inquiries into his patient case list history.

Professor Richard Baker of the University of Leicester undertook a clinical audit of Shipman’s practice, comparing the number and pattern of fatalities to those of other practitioners.

It was discovered that death rates among his senior patients were much higher, that they congregated at specific times of day, and that Shipman was present in a disproportionately high number of instances. The audit goes on to say that during a 24-year period, he may have been responsible for the deaths of at least 236 patients.

Separately, a commission chaired by High Court Judge Dame Janet Smith examined the records of 500 patients who died while in Shipman’s care, and the 2,000-page report concluded that it was likely that he murdered at least 218 of them, though Dame Janet offered this number as an estimate rather than a precise calculation because certain cases presented insufficient evidence to allow for certainty.

Shipman may have been “addicted to murdering,” according to the panel, which also criticized police investigative processes, alleging that the investigating officers’ lack of expertise led in missed opportunities to bring Shipman to court sooner.

Margaret Thompson, 67, died in March 1971 while recuperating from a stroke, and he may have killed his first victim just months after receiving his medical license, although killings previous to 1975 were never formally verified.

Shipman was pushed from British patient murderer to the world’s most prolific known serial killer, regardless of the precise number. Throughout these investigations, he stayed in Durham Prison, professing his innocence, and was fiercely protected by his wife Primrose and family. In June 2003, he was transferred to Wakefield Prison, making it easier for his family to visit him.

Shipman was discovered hanged in his Wakefield jail cell on January 13, 2004, using bed linens attached to the cell window bars.

His whereabouts remain a mystery, with some stating that his body is still in a Sheffield morgue, while others think that his family has custody of his body, suspecting that he was murdered in his cell and seeking to postpone his interment pending additional examinations.