Dr. Harold Shipman

[cruororism]

Dr. Death

update - See bottom of page.

Kill Total 38+ (POSSIBLY UP TO 500 ! ? )

Family GP Harold Shipman had become the focus of Europe's biggest ever murder investigation: he is suspected of killing more than 116 patients over 14 years. Dr. Death -- as he is known by British media -- was linked to 77 killings after police subsequently charged him with six murders and started investigating other suspicious deaths surrounding his medical practice.
Originally arrested on 7th September 1998, this father of four was initially charged with one murder, that of Mrs. Kathleen Grundy aged 81.
Up to nine bodies were exhumed by police . Police checked the bodies for lethal dosages of drugs. To avoid publicity and crowds, police had been performing the exhumations at night, witnessed by a priest. All the exhumations have recovered the remains of female patients ranging in age from 49 to 81. In many of the cases, Dr Shipman's patients opted for cremation, forcing investigators to make deductions from the patients' medical records and from their families' evidence.
The investigation into Shipman's practice began after relatives of Mrs. Grundy, a former mayoress and respected charity worker from Hyde, near Manchester, discovered that she had left nothing in her will to her two sons and her daughter. The will had been changed only 15 days before her death. Dr Shipman is charged with falsely obtaining cash and possessions from Mrs. Grundy's estate, the will had been altered in Shipman's favour, to the tune of £386,000.
Police said after Shipman was charged with the first murder that he may have claimed another 27 victims, all former patients. The bearded, grey-haired doctor wept when he first appeared in court charged with three murders.
Shipman had provided death certificates giving plausible causes of death for his alleged victims, most of whom were elderly. He had practiced as a family doctor in Hyde for more than 20 years and police are now reported to be investigating up to 3 000 prescriptions that he wrote.
"He is the dullest serial killer I have ever met," a spokesman for the Greater Manchester Police said. "He certainly doesn't act like a murderer." This is the feeling echoed by almost everyone who has come into contact with Harold Shipman, the quiet doctor who has been accused and charged of being one of Britain's most prolific killers of modern times.
Dr Shipman was found guilty by a jury of seven men and five women in a total of 15 murders. It is reported that a total of 150 further cases are being investigated, although the Greater Manchester Police remain tight-lipped. They refused to "enter into speculation about more charges or whether a line will be drawn here". All of the deaths were sudden. All of these vulnerable elderly women died within an hour of a house call from their doctor, who, it is claimed, administered a fatal injection of diamorphine, (Heroin) after which it is alleged he fabricated the cause of death on the death certificates, and in the case of Mrs. Grundy, altered her will.
Sentenced on 31/1/2000 Shipman was condemned to 15 life sentences.
FACTS;
OFFENDER; DR. Harold Frederick Shipman
Date of Birth; 14th January 1946
Place of Birth; Nottingham
Location of deaths; Hyde, Greater Manchester, Cheshire, UK.
Prosecuting Lawyer; Richard Henriques QC
Defense lawyer;

PSYCHOLOGY;
At age 17 "Fred", as Shipman was known as a child, witnessed the death of his dear mother, at this age he had seen doctors applying doses of morphine to relieve pain in his cancer ridden mother. He was a clever child who progressed well through junior school, moving on to Pavement high Grammar School. In 1965 he went on to study Medicine at Leeds University. When only 17, his girlfriend, Primrose, became pregnant, his life was again turned upside down, they got married in November 1866, and went on to have four children.
In 1970 Shipman had graduated from university and worked in a local infirmary, by 1974 he was a General practitioner (GP). Shipman started suffering blackouts, it was then that a friend discovered that he was addicted to the Morphine type drug of Pethidine. It was discovered that Fred had been writing himself prescriptions for these potentially lethal drugs. Fired from his job as a GP and given a heavy fine, Shipman went off to a drug treatment centre, saying that he had got involved with drugs while at university, strangely he was never struck off as a GP at that time. In 1977 he emerged in Hyde where he joined a local GP practice, and in 1993 set up his very own practice, Described as very arrogant by the police when they first arrested him, Shipman denied all charges levied against him. According to the DCI that interviewed him he was dominant and controlling, and attempted to control the interview, twisting things the way he wanted, belittling the police at every opportunity. The local coroner is convinced that Shipman killed because he enjoyed it, he enjoyed viewing the process of death, he liked the feeling of power over life and death. A forensic psychologist who spoke with Shipman disagrees, he believes Fred was trying to resolve an anxiety within himself, perhaps an anxiety that even Shipman did not realise he had.

UPDATE.
Princess Anne shakes hand of well spoken man on a visit to Strangeways prison, horror ! it was Shipman !
Police still getting calls from the public suggesting further Shipman victims
Body count may now be as high as 175
Shipman moved from Strangeways prison in Manchester to undisclosed location, after it was discovered that he may have been responsible for the death of two of the relatives of prison guards at the prison.

DECISION MADE -
23 further charges of murder that were passed to the CPS (Crown Prosecution service) are NOT to be progressed any further..... !!

28/2/00 An official appeal against his conviction on 15 counts of murder and one of forgery against Dr. Harold Shipman has been lodged within the mandatory 28 day period at Preston Crown Court. papers will now be prepared and sent to the Appeal Court in London. No date for the appeal has yet been set.

5/5/01 Press speculation mounts as it is revealed that some research into the death rates in Shipman's surgery was much higher than the national average. Various figures have been quoted, putting Shipman's total at possibly as high as 500. We wait to see if any of this can be substantiated.

All in all Shipman is a different breed of serial killer, and, as to how many he did kill, we will probably never know.

July 24, 2002

[cruororism]

Until last week, Britain’s worst serial killer was Victorian serial poisoner, Mary Ann Cotton, who murdered an estimated 21 people in the 1870s. Now that dubious distinction is claimed by Dr. Harold Shipman.
Officially, Dr. Harold Shipman murdered at least 215 of his patients – 171 women and 44 men ranging in age from 41 to 93. After a year-long public inquiry, the 2,000-page report into his 23-year murder spree was released by High Court Judge Dame Janet Smith. The records of nearly 500 patients of Shipman’s who died while in his care between 1978 and 1998 were scrutinized in the investigation.
Another investigation, conducted by University of Leicester professor Richard Baker determined that the real minimum number of Shipman victims was 236. Associated Press reported that Judge Janet Smith said “the full toll may be higher, citing a ‘real suspicion’ that Shipman had killed 45 more people for whom there was insufficient evidence to be certain. In another 38 cases, there was too little information to form any opinion on the cause of death.”
Despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt, the 56-year-old former physician maintains his innocence, continuing to shroud the motives for his extraordinary crimes. The official report speculated that the doctor was “addicted to killing” much like he was addicted to painkillers around the time the murders started. Like other death angels such as Dr. Michael Swango, the American doctor who killed patients in both Africa and the U.S., there was no hint of a sexual interest in his victims. Rather, as South Manchester coroner John Pollard speculated, Shipman “simply enjoyed viewing the process of dying and enjoyed feeling the control over life and death.”
A fatal fascination with death, dying and drugs is consistent with the behavior of the 17-year-old Shipman who spent hours comforting Vera, his cancer-stricken dying mother. In the young man’s mind, there was a powerful emotional connection between the visit of the family doctor and the relief that his injections of morphine brought to her suffering. Is it just a coincidence that he began abusing painkillers himself and shortly after he began practicing medicine, he used a lethal injection of pain medication to murder his first victim?
Judge Smith found Shipman’s “non-violent” killing almost incredible. “The way in which Shipman could kill, face the relatives and walk away unsuspected would be dismissed as fanciful if described in a work of fiction.” Even more incredible was that his murders of so many people did not arouse suspicion for decades, even though there were supposedly safeguards in place at that time.
Clearly new safeguards are needed and a number of them are now in the works in Britain. For example, after he murdered a victim, Dr. Shipman would often arrange for the body to be cremated if the family did not object, thereby destroying evidence of his crime. Judge Smith points out that new pre-cremation procedures are needed to prevent future abuse. Also, the system failed tragically when Shipman, after being convicted of drug abuse in 1975, was allowed to obtain enormous quantities of painkilling drugs. For example, in the name of a dying patient, Dr. Shipman obtained enough of the painkiller diamorphine to kill 360 people.
Is Shipman a one-off monster as some have suggested? There is growing evidence that he is not as rare as one hopes him to be. Disguised in the aura of respectability that normally surrounds medical professionals, a number of monsters like Shipman have gradually been masked, but only after numerous deaths have taken place. These “angels of death” are not only doctors, but nurses, therapists, hospital workers and proprietors of care facilities for the sick and the elderly. Dr. Michael Swango killed his patients because it gave him a thrill and a feeling of power; Beverley Allitt and Genene Jones, pediatric nurses, killed their young patients to get more attention for themselves; Dr. Marcel Petiot and Dr. H.H. Holmes killed for money; Dr. Josef Mengele killed for political beliefs, and so on. The medical profession clearly needs more oversight if the world is to rid itself of this problem.

[Salem6]

Killer doctor Harold Shipman has died after being found hanging in his cell, the Prison Service said.

Family GP Harold Shipman was in Wakefield Prison after being jailed for life in January 2000.

He murdered 15 patients and went down in history as the UK's biggest convicted serial killer.

The 54-year-old GP, from Hyde, Greater Manchester, was given 15 life sentences to run concurrently for the murders, and four years for forging a will.

13/01/04


news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3391871.stm