Dr. Death

Harold Fredrick Shipman  was a convicted English serial killer who was dubbed "Dr. Death".

Overview
A doctor by profession, he is among the most prolific serial killers in recorded history with 218 murders being positively ascribed to him, although the actual number is likely much higher.

On January 31, 2000, a jury found Shipman guilty of 15 murders. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and the judge recommended that he never be released. The whole life tariff was confirmed by the Home Secretary a little over two years later.

After his trial, the Shipman Inquiry, chaired by Dame Janet Smith, investigated all deaths certified by Shipman. About 80% of his victims were women. His youngest victim was Peter Lewis, a 41-year-old man. Much of Britain's legal structure concerning health care and medicine was reviewed and modified as a direct and indirect result of Shipman's crimes, especially after the findings of the Shipman Inquiry, which began on 1 September 2000 and lasted almost two years. Shipman is the only British doctor found guilty of murdering his patients.

Shipman died on January 13, 2004, after hanging himself in his cell at Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire.

Medical god
Psychologist Dr David Holmes told BBC One's Inside Out North West that Shipman thought he was a god. He said:

-'He saw no one as being superior to him. In his own mind, in his own eyes, he was some sort of medical god.'

Also, in her first TV interview since the inquiry, chairman Dame Janet Smith told the programme that she still found Shipman's actions profoundly shocking.

-"I think the nearest I can get to explaining what motivated him was that I think that he felt he knew best when it was time for somebody to die," she said. "I suppose in a way it made him compare himself to God."

('Shipman - When Doctors Kill', BBC One, Monday July 19, 2010)

Early life and career
Harold Frederick Shipman was born in Nottingham, England, the second of four children of Vera and Harold Shipman, a truck driver. His working class parents were devout Methodists. Shipman was particularly close to his mother, who died of cancer when he was 17. Her death came in a manner similar to what later became Shipman's own modus operandi: in the later stages of her disease, she had morphine administered at home by a doctor. Shipman witnessed his mother's pain subside in light of her terminal condition, up until her death on June 21, 1963.

Shipman received a scholarship to medical school, and graduated from Leeds School of Medicine in 1970. He started work at Pontefract General Infirmary in Pontefract, West Riding of Yorkshire, and in 1974, took his first position as a general practitioner (GP) at the Abraham Ormerod Medical Center in Todmorden, West Yorkshire. In 1975 he was caught forging prescriptions of pethidine for his own use. He was fined £600, and briefly attended a drug rehabilitation clinic in York. After a brief period as medical officer for Hatfield College, Durham, and temporary work for the National Coal Board, he became a GP at the Donneybrook Medical Centre in Hyde, Greater Manchester, in 1977.

Shipman continued working as a GP in Hyde throughout the 1980s and founded his own surgery on Market Street in 1993, becoming a respected member of the community. In 1983, he was interviewed on the Granada television documentary World in Action on how the mentally ill should be treated in the community.

Detection
In March 1998, Dr. Linda Reynolds of the Brooke Surgery in Hyde—prompted by Deborah Massey from Frank Massey and Son's funeral parlour—expressed concerns to John Pollard, the coroner for the South Manchester District, about the high death rate among Shipman's patients. In particular, she was concerned about the large number of cremation forms for elderly women that he had needed countersigned. She suspected Shipman was, either through negligence or intent, killing his patients.

The matter was brought to the attention of the police, who were unable to find sufficient evidence to bring charges; The Shipman Inquiry later blamed the police for assigning inexperienced officers to the case. In April 17, 1998, when the police abandoned the investigation, and Shipman's eventual arrest, he killed three more people. His last victim was Kathleen Grundy, a former ceremonial Mayor of Hyde, who was found dead at her home on June 24, 1998. Shipman was the last person to see her alive, and later signed her death certificate, recording "old age" as cause of death.

Grundy's daughter, lawyer Angela Woodruff, became concerned when solicitor Brian Burgess informed her that a will had been made, apparently by her mother (although there were doubts about its authenticity). The will excluded her and her children, but left £386,000 to Shipman. Burgess told Woodruff to report it, and went to the police, who began an investigation. Grundy's body was exhumed, and when examined found to contain traces of diamorphine, often used for pain control in terminal cancer patients. Shipman was arrested on 7 September 1998, and was found to own a typewriter of the type used to make the forged will.

The police then investigated other deaths Shipman had certified, and created a list of 15 specimen cases to investigate. They discovered a pattern of his administering lethal overdoses of diamorphine, signing patients' death certificates, and then forging medical records indicating they had been in poor health.

Prescription For Murder, a book by journalists Brian Whittle and Jean Ritchie, reports two theories on why Shipman forged the will. One is that he wanted to be caught because his life was out of control; the other reason, that he planned to retire at fifty-five and leave the country.

Trial and imprisonment
Shipman's trial, presided over by Mr Justice Forbes, began on October 5, 1999. Shipman was charged with the murders of Marie West, Irene Turner, Lizzie Adams, Jean Lilley, Ivy Lomas, Muriel Grimshaw, Marie Quinn, Kathleen Wagstaff, Bianka Pomfret, Norah Nuttall, Pamela Hillier, Maureen Ward, Winifred Mellor, Joan Melia and Kathleen Grundy, all of whom had died between 1995 and 1998.

On January 31, 2000, after six days of deliberation, the jury found Shipman guilty of killing 15 patients by lethal injections of diamorphine, and forging the will of Kathleen Grundy. The trial judge sentenced him to 15 consecutive life sentences and recommended that he never be released. Shipman also received four years for forging the will. Two years later, Home Secretary David Blunkett confirmed the judge's recommendation that Shipman never be released, just months before British government ministers lost their power to set minimum terms for prisoners.

On February 11, 2000, ten days after his conviction, the General Medical Council formally struck Shipman off its register.

Shipman consistently denied his guilt, disputing the scientific evidence against him. He never made any statements about his actions. His defence tried, but failed, to have the count of murder of Mrs Grundy, where a clear motive was alleged, tried separately from the others, where no obvious motive was apparent. His wife Primrose apparently was in denial about his crimes as well.

Although many other cases could have been brought to court, the authorities concluded it would be hard to have a fair trial, in view of the enormous publicity surrounding the original trial. Also, given the sentences from the first trial, a further trial was unnecessary. The Shipman Inquiry concluded Shipman was probably responsible for about 250 deaths. The Shipman Inquiry also suggested that he liked to use drugs recreationally.

Despite the prosecutions of Dr John Bodkin Adams in 1957, Dr Leonard Arthur in 1981, and Dr Thomas Lodwig in 1990 (amongst others), Shipman is the only doctor in British legal history to be found guilty of killing patients. According to historian Pamela Cullen, Adams had also been a serial killer — potentially killing up to 165 of his patients between 1946 and 1956 — and it is estimated he may have killed over 450, but as he "was found not guilty, there was no impetus to examine the flaws in the system until the Shipman case. Had these issues been addressed earlier, it might have been more difficult for Shipman to commit his crimes." H. G. Kinnell, writing in the British Medical Journal, also speculates that Adams "possibly provided the role model for Shipman".

Death
Harold Shipman committed suicide by hanging in his cell at Wakefield Prison at 06:20 on January 13, 2004, on the eve of his 58th birthday, and was pronounced dead at 08:10. A Prison Service statement indicated that Shipman had hanged himself from the window bars of his cell using bed sheets. Some British tabloids expressed joy at his suicide and encouraged other serial killers to follow his example; The Sun ran a celebratory front page headline, "Ship Ship hooray!"

Some of the victims' families said they felt cheated, as his suicide meant they would never have the satisfaction of Shipman's confession, and answers as to why he committed his crimes. The Home Secretary David Blunkett noted that celebration was tempting, saying: "You wake up and you receive a call telling you Shipman has topped himself and you think, is it too early to open a bottle? And then you discover that everybody's very upset that he's done it."

Despite The Sun's celebration of Shipman's suicide, his death divided national newspapers, with the Daily Mirror branding him a "cold coward" and condemning the Prison Service for allowing his suicide to happen. The Independent, on the other hand, called for the inquiry into Shipman's suicide to look more widely at the state of Britain's prisons as well as the welfare of inmates. In The Guardian, an article by Sir David Ramsbotham (former Chief Inspector of Prisons) suggested that whole life sentencing be replaced by indefinite sentencing as these would at least give prisoners the hope of eventual release and reduce the risk of their committing suicide as well as making their management easier for prison officials.

Shipman's motive for suicide was never established, although he had reportedly told his probation officer that he was considering suicide so that his widow could receive a National Health Service (NHS) pension and lump sum, even though he had been stripped of his own pension. His wife received a full NHS pension, which she would not have been entitled to if he had died after the age of 60. FBI profiler John Douglas asserted that serial killers are usually obsessed with manipulation and control, and killing themselves in police custody, or committing "suicide by cop", can be a final act of control. Shipman had been emotional and close to tears when his refusal to take part in courses which would have encouraged him to confess his guilt led to privileges including the opportunity to telephone his wife being removed. Privileges had been returned the week before the suicide. Additionally, Primrose, who had consistently believed that Shipman was innocent, might have begun to suspect his guilt. According to Tony Fleming, Shipman's ex-cellmate, Primrose recently wrote her husband a letter, exhorting him to "tell me everything, no matter what".

Aftermath
In January 2001, Chris Gregg, a senior West Yorkshire detective was selected to lead an investigation into 22 of the West Yorkshire deaths. Following this, a report into Shipman's activities submitted in July 2002 concluded that he had killed at least 215 of his patients between 1975 and 1998, during which time he practiced in Todmorden, West Yorkshire (1974–1975) and Hyde, Greater Manchester (1977–1998). Dame Janet Smith, the judge who submitted the report, admitted that many more suspicious deaths could not be definitively ascribed to him. Most of his victims were elderly women in good health.

In her sixth and final report, issued on 24 January 2005, Smith reported that she believed that Shipman had killed three patients, and she had serious suspicions about four further deaths, including that of a four-year-old girl, during the early stage of his medical career at Pontefract General Hospital, West Riding, Yorkshire. Smith concluded the probable number of Shipman's victims between 1971 and 1998 was 250. In total, 459 people died while under his care, but it is uncertain how many of those were Shipman's victims, as he was often the only doctor to certify a death.

The Shipman Inquiry also recommended changes to the structure of the General Medical Council.

The General Medical Council charged six doctors who signed cremation forms for Shipman's victims with misconduct, claiming they should have noticed the pattern between Shipman's home visits and his patients' deaths. All these doctors were found not guilty. Shipman's widow, Primrose Shipman, was called to give evidence about two of the deaths during the inquiry. She maintained her husband's innocence both before and after the prosecution.

In October 2005, a similar hearing was held against two doctors who worked at Tameside General Hospital in 1994, who failed to detect that Shipman had deliberately administered a "grossly excessive" dose of morphine.

A 2005 inquiry into Shipman's suicide found that it "could not have been predicted or prevented," but that procedures should nonetheless be re-examined.

In 2005, it came to light that Shipman might have stolen jewellery from his victims. Over £10,000 worth of jewellery had been found in his garage in 1998, and in March 2005, with Primrose Shipman pressing for it to be returned to her, police wrote to the families of Shipman's victims asking them to identify the jewellery.

Unidentified items were handed to the Assets Recovery Agency in May. In August the investigation ended: 66 pieces were returned to Primrose Shipman and 33 pieces were auctioned. The proceeds of the auction went to Tameside Victim Support. The only piece actually returned to a murdered patient's family was a platinum-diamond ring, for which the family were able to provide a photograph as proof of ownership.

A memorial garden to Shipman's victims, called the Garden of Tranquillity, opened in Hyde Park (Hyde) on 30 July 2005.

Harold and Fred (They Make Ladies Dead) was a 2001 strip cartoon in Viz, also featuring Fred West. Extracts from the strip were subsequently merchandised as a coffee mug.

Shipman, a television dramatisation of the case, was made in 2002 and starred James Bolam in the title role. The case was also referenced in an episode of the 2003 television series Diagnosis: Unknown called "Deadly Medicine" (Season 2, Episode 17, 2003). Shipman's activities also inspired D.A.W., an episode of the American TV series Law & Order: Criminal Intent. In it, the police investigate a physician who they discover has killed 200 of his patients.

Both The Fall and Jonathan King have released songs about Shipman. The Fall's song is, "What About Us?", from the 2005 album Fall Heads Roll.

King's song became controversial when, six months after its release, it was reported to be in Shipman's defence, urging listeners not to "fall for a media demon".

As of early 2009, families of the victims of Shipman are still seeking compensation for the loss of their loved ones.

In September 2009, it was announced that letters written by Shipman during his prison sentence were to be sold at auction. Following complaints from victims' relatives and the media, the letters were removed from sale.