Doctors Who Kill

by Davis, Carol Anne; Davis, Carol Anne

  Unlike many of his fellow students, he did not become queasy when attending autopsies and, instead, seemed fascinated by the corpses. At this stage in his life, he’d probably only seen two naked bodies – his wife’s and his own – so his curiosity was understandable.

  The young medic passed his exams in 1970 and moved his little family to Pontefract, where he was a junior houseman at the local infirmary. At this stage, Shipman’s regular injections of pethidine would still have been creating a euphoric state, making him feel detached from the everyday pressures of life.

  The following April, the couple had their first son. Fred stayed on at Pontefract Infirmary for another two years, earning qualifications in obstetrics and gynaecology, but he really wanted to be a GP and, in 1974, he moved into general practice, working alongside several other doctors in Todmorden, Yorkshire.

  He proved to be a natural, putting in long hours and taking further work home with him. The couple were able to afford a semi-detached house and soon settled into the community.

  A growing addiction

  By now his dependence on pethidine had reached a dangerously high level, and most of the veins in his arms and legs had collapsed. As a result, he was forced to inject into his groin, the practice of many junkies. Over time, the drug causes neurological symptoms, so he began to have blackouts when he got home from work. On one occasion he passed out whilst having a bath and Primrose was unable to revive him. She called one of the other doctors at his practice and Shipman was sent for tests and wrongly diagnosed with epilepsy. Primrose now chauffeured him to all of his appointments as he was unable to drive.

  Months later, his fellow doctors discovered that he’d been prescribing pethidine for numerous patients but actually keeping it for himself; suddenly they understood the real reason for his blackouts. They confronted him and he said that he would get help but would continue to work at the practice. He seemed unaware of how unethical his behaviour had been. When they insisted that they’d get a temporary doctor to come in whilst he went into rehab, he stormed out in a rage. Arrested for drug misuse, he admitted to police that he’d been overworked and depressed, so had been injecting himself with pethidine up to fourteen times a day.

  Shipman began to receive treatment whilst awaiting trial – it normally only takes three weeks for the symptoms of pethidine withdrawal to abate.

  Unable to work as a doctor or pay his mortgage, he and Primrose gave up their house and took the children to live with her parents. When his case came to court, the magistrate was sympathetic (drug misuse amongst the medical fraternity is not uncommon) and he was fined heavily but spared a custodial sentence. He and his family moved to Darlington, where he worked as a clinical health officer, liaising between GPs and community groups.

  However, he wanted to return to GP practice, so was delighted in 1977 when he saw that there was a vacancy in Hyde, Greater Manchester, where he’d be working alongside six other general practitioners. He was honest about his former pethidine abuse and the other GPs agreed that he deserved a second chance. They – and the patients he inherited from the previous incumbent – liked him and he presented himself as being friendly and humorous with an enquiring mind.

  Strange days

  Superficially, Shipman was very similar to his contemporaries in that he had a semi-detached house with a garden, but Primrose had long ago stopped doing even basic housework so the Shipmans’ home was filthy and rank. Newspapers were piled up in every room and clothes littered the floors. Yet the couple went on to have a third child in March 1979 and a fourth in April 1982, both boys.

  Jekyll and Hyde

  At home, the doctor was becoming an increasingly irate parent (and Primrose had become clinically obese) but most patients saw a very different side to the doctor, who kept up with the latest medical breakthroughs and was prepared to prescribe expensive medicines for them. He used their first names and asked after their spouses, children and pets. As a result, he had an excellent reputation in the area and there was a year-long wait to get on his list.

  Shipman doubtless revelled in the deference that his elderly working-class patients showed him, as this buoyed up his own impression of himself as an important man, yet he was aloof and abrupt with the practice’s receptionists and with drug reps, or any other co-worker whom he saw as less educated than himself. And, over time, the other doctors noticed that he had to get his own way at meetings and show his superiority.

  Suspicious deaths

  By the early Eighties, some of the doctor’s patients had begun to die unexpectedly. A sprightly pensioner, for example, was found dead in her chair, ostensibly by Dr Shipman, moments after finishing her lunch. The seventy-year-old had arthritis but was otherwise fit and in very good health. Although the families and friends of many of these elderly ladies were deeply shocked at their sudden demise, there was nothing to alert the medical fraternity to the fact that they might have a serial killer in their midst. (Police believed that she was one of his earlier victims, though he was never charged with causing her death. They would take him to court for only fifteen murders in order to avoid overwhelming the judicial system and the jury.)

  As he aged, Shipman became increasingly aloof and cantankerous and, in 1992, moved into a surgery of his own, close to the centre of Hyde. Female patients now began to die on his premises.

  An 82-year-old went to the doctor in January 1994, suffering from shoulder pain. Police suspect that Shipman injected her with a fatal dose of diamorphine (all of his victims appeared to have been given lethal injections of drugs, mainly from the morphine family) but he told her friend, waiting outside, that she had keeled over and died as he took her blood pressure. He said that it had been a massive heart attack.

  Eighteen months later, one of his 68-year-old patients felt unwell whilst out shopping, so called in to his surgery for a check-up. She, too, apparently succumbed to a massive heart attack.

  Later that year, an 87-year-old woman walked to Shipman’s for a check-up, reached the surgery and apparently had a stroke, followed, moments later, by another stroke. Again, because of her age, her shocked family accepted the doctor’s explanation for her unexpected death.

  In May, 1996, a 72-year-old pensioner went to the doctor for her usual three-monthly injection for pernicious anaemia. She had driven to the surgery in her car but left on a covered stretcher bound for the mortuary, much to the distress of her relatives.

  A year later, 63-year-old Ivy Lomas took the bus to the doctor’s practice in Hyde. She was a regular visitor, often complaining of aches and pains, and it seems that Shipman was tired of her. He later told police that he had put her in the treatment room to rest whilst he attended to three other patients, returning to find her dead. She, too, was listed as having died of a heart attack. In three years, a total of five women died in Shipman’s surgery, yet many doctors have never had a single patient die on their premises.

  Such deaths would occur in his practice throughout his working life, and a local taxi driver, John Shaw, who drove elderly patients to Shipman’s surgery, became increasingly perturbed at the number that suddenly expired.

  The visitor

  Many more of Shipman’s patients died at home, often being found after he’d been seen leaving the property. Others had told friends that they were expecting a home visit from the doctor – but, when they were found dead, he denied having visited them.

  Alone in house after house, Harold Shipman helped himself to rings, brooches and necklaces and gave them to Primrose, probably telling her that they were gifts from grateful patients. He also took the contents of the deceased’s purses or petty cash tins. On other occasions, he took family heirlooms, leaving the relatives of the deceased to regard each other with suspicion, wondering which of them had taken their mother’s coveted china dolls or auntie’s jewellery box. Police now believe that by this time Shipman was killing at least one patient every week, sometimes more.

  The local undertaker was becoming suspicious as the do
ctor had a much higher death toll than any other GP in the area. The firm also noted that virtually all of the women had been found sitting upright and fully clothed during the daytime, with only one having died in her nightdress and at night, yet it’s much more usual for elderly people to die in bed after a few days or weeks of ill health.

  Shipman also used his patients to get more drugs for himself, prescribing large amounts of morphine to a patient called Jim King, supposedly for prostate cancer, but the hospital had written to him to say that their original diagnosis was wrong, that Mr King didn’t have the disease – news that Dr Shipman had suppressed. The doctor continued to prescribe morphine for the unfortunate man, turning him into an addict. He also prescribed morphine for those who were terminally ill, but kept some of the drug for himself, using it to kill his healthy and unsuspecting patients, both female and male, though the former predominated.

  Meanwhile, the relatives of Shipman’s patients were amazed at the speed with which their loved ones had deteriorated. In January 1998, Tony Nuttall returned from work to find that his 64-year-old mother Norah had a persistent cough and had been given medication that morning by the doctor. Tony popped out to do a few chores and when he returned, Shipman met him at the door and said that his mother had chest pains, that he’d called 999. The doctor then pretended to examine his mother further and announced that she was dead, adding that he’d cancel the ambulance. He appeared to make this call but, later, records would show that he hadn’t phoned the emergency services.

  Shipman pulled a similar stunt with other friends and neighbours, saying that he had booked his ailing patient a hospital bed then pretending to call and cancel it. It made him look like a caring GP, part of a wider medical circle, rather than a serial killer who was acting alone.

  On 18th February 1998, he falsified another patient’s records, typing the symptoms of a brain tumour into Maureen Ward’s medical files. (He was treating her for headaches.) Immediately afterwards, he drove to the 58-year-old’s flat and apparently found her dead.

  By March 1998, a local doctor who was asked to countersign many of Shipman’s death certificates was so alarmed at the death count that he contacted the police. They investigated quietly for three weeks, without alerting Dr Shipman, but could find no motive for murder and decided that the doctor had done nothing wrong.

  The killing continues

  The doctor continued to kill with impunity. On 11th May 1998, he visited 73-year old Winifred Mellor at her home and gave her a lethal injection, then went to a neighbour, saying that he could see her lying in her chair but that she wasn’t answering the door. Upon being given entry, he confirmed her death and, when the neighbour left, stole the contents of Mrs Mellor’s purse. She was a deeply religious woman so her priest arrived and Shipman was offhand with him and with the family, telling them that she had had angina. He later falsified his records to create a false history of this disease.

  On 12th June 1998, Joan Melia felt that she was coming down with a summer cold and went to the doctor. She was seventy-three but looked much younger and had just come back from an energetic foreign holiday. To her surprise, Shipman said that she was suffering from pneumonia and sent her home. He made an unexpected visit to her house later that afternoon and injected her with his beloved morphine, after which it’s likely that he took her life savings; she was known to keep money on the premises but very little was found. Her boyfriend found her dead in her chair at 5 p.m., a cup of tea by her side. He phoned Shipman, who came round and offhandedly confirmed the death.

  Shipman often spent time in a patient’s flat after they died. One woman noticed that he was with her 58-year-old neighbour (who had developed breathing difficulties due to a bad cold) for almost an hour. She let herself in after he’d gone and found the patient dead and already cold. Confronted by this information, the doctor said that he’d spent the time trying to convince his patient to go to hospital. In reality, he probably spent it prowling around the house, looking for valuables.

  Another woman waited in an upstairs kitchen whilst her friend was downstairs in the lounge being attended to by the doctor. Shipman suddenly walked into the kitchen and was startled to see her there but, after a moment, he recovered his equilibrium and told her that her friend had died of a massive stroke.

  Also, a man who called round at his sister’s house was in time to see the doctor leaving the house with a sewing machine. Shipman said that his sister had just died but that she’d previously said that he could have the machine for Primrose, his wife.

  Forgery

  So far, Shipman had apparently been content with stealing cash and trinkets from his victims’ houses but now he got greedy. He gave 81-year-old Kathleen Grundy a lethal injection, then forged her will, making him the benefactor of her £400,000 estate.

  Kathleen’s relatives were immediately suspicious. She’d been in excellent health, could walk for miles and spent most days doing charitable and community work. On 23rd June 1998, she mentioned to friends that she was taking part in a medical trial being run by Dr Shipman and said he was coming to her house to take blood the following day. She’d been found dead by a charity co-worker within hours of the doctor’s visit to supposedly take blood, yet he told enquirers that he’d only seen her for a chat.

  Even more suspicious was the appearance of her will. She was an educated woman with secretarial training, yet the will was filled with spelling and typing errors. Kathleen had been very close to her family, and her daughter Angela, a solicitor, had always handled her legal affairs, yet the will had been sent to a firm of solicitors in town. The document said that she’d chosen to be cremated but before her death she’d talked of wanting to be buried. Her relatives contested the will and, a month after burial, her corpse was exhumed.

  Autopsy

  Meanwhile, police went to Shipman’s surgery and asked to see his typewriter. ‘Kathleen Grundy borrows it,’ he said as he handed it over, clearly keen to explain why Kathleen’s will had been typed on his machine. Tests indeed showed that the will had been typed on the machine, though Kathleen’s fingerprints weren’t on it – but Shipman’s were. One of his fingerprints was also found on the will, a document that had supposedly gone straight from Kathleen to the solicitors in town.

  Shipman now started to tell anyone who would listen that Kathleen had been an intravenous drug user. He falsified her medical records to suggest a history of suspected drug use, but computer experts were able to show when these bogus entries had been made.

  The doctor continued to practise, though he offered at least some of his patients the option of seeing another medic. He broke down on two or three occasions when discussing Kathleen Grundy’s suspicious death with them, but he remained arrogant when dealing with police officers, making it clear that he regarded them as inferior beings.

  A murder inquiry

  On 2nd September, the toxicology reports came back, confirming that there was a large amount of morphine in Kathleen Grundy’s system. Shipman had been careless in his choice of drug – many disappear from the body within days, but morphine can remain in the tissues for centuries. Somewhat alarmingly, he was allowed to continue his surgery until Monday 7th, when he was arrested.

  The authorities continued to exhume Shipman’s patients. Another eleven graves were opened and large amounts of morphine were found in the corpses. Questioned further by police in October 1998, Shipman realised that he was going to jail for a very long time and became so upset that he suffered a kind of psychological collapse, apparently crawling about on the police station floor and becoming incoherent. He was charged with three murders and sent to prison, where he was put on suicide watch. Later, he was charged with another twelve murders, though police were convinced that there were dozens more.

  Meanwhile, Shipman responded to the antidepressants that the prison doctor prescribed for him, and he began to write frequent ungrammatical stream-of-consciousness letters to various acquaintances. In one letter, he said that he’d ret
ire completely from medicine if he was cleared.

  Trial

  His trial opened at Preston Crown Court on 5th October 1999. He was accused of killing fifteen women, namely Kathleen Grundy, Joan Melia, Winifred Mellor, Bianka Pomfret, Marie Quinn, Ivy Lomas, Irene Turner, Jean Lilley, Muriel Grimshaw, Marie West, Kathleen Wagstaff, Pamela Hillier, Norah Nuttall, Elizabeth Adams and Maureen Ward. Police were convinced that his victim count ran into triple figures (including the victims previously mentioned in this profile) but, as is the case with most prolific killers, they prosecuted him for a few cases which offered the clearest forensic proof.

  The evidence against Shipman was overwhelming. His patients had mainly been energetic and in good spirits up until his often-unexpected visit, and morphine had been found in their tissues post-mortem. In other instances, the police had found records that said patients were being prescribed diamorphine by the doctor – yet, when they contacted these patients, they found that they’d never been given the drug and didn’t have conditions that warranted its use. It was obvious that Shipman had been stockpiling diamorphine so that he could kill other patients with impunity. Phials of the drug – and morphine tablets – had been found in a carrier bag at his home.

  On 25th November, the doctor himself took the stand. He admitted changing his computer records, but said that he had only done so to bring his written accounts in line with information that his patients had given him several months before. He could give no explanation as to why his patients had ended up with huge amounts of morphine in their systems and also failed to explain why he had never called an ambulance and why he had been so insistent that there was no need for a post-mortem, even when the distraught families said that they wanted one.