Harold Shipman

Harold Frederick "Fred" Shipman (January 14, 1946 – January 13, 2004) was an English general practitioner who was one of the most prolific known serial killers in modern history.

He was convicted on 15 sample charges in 2000 and sentenced to 15 consecutive life sentences.

After his trial, an inquest decided that there was enough evidence to suggest that Shipman had killed a total of 215 people, about 80% of them female. His youngest victim was Peter Lewis, a 41-year-old man. The official inquiry into his career concluded that he had probably killed 250 people, 218 of whom were positively identified.

Much of Britain's legislation concerning health care and medicine was reviewed and heavily modified as a direct and indirect result of Shipman's crimes, especially after the findings of the Shipman Inquiry which began on September 1, 2000.

Early life
He attended the High Pavement Grammar School, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England. His mother, Vera, died in 1963 from lung cancer when he was 17. Shipman studied at the University of Leeds Medical School from 1964, and around this time met his future wife, Primrose, three years younger than him. They married on 5 November 1966, and she gave birth to their first child, Sarah, on St Valentines Day 1967; they went on to have four children in all. In 1970 he graduated from Leeds Medical School and started work at Pontefract General Infirmary in Pontefract, West Riding of Yorkshire.

He started killing patients in custody during his work for the police and the Prison Service in 1970, although this was not discovered until after his death.

In 1974 Shipman took his first position as a general practitioner (GP) in Todmorden, 12 miles west of Halifax, West Yorkshire. In 1975 he was caught forging prescriptions of pethidine for his own use. He was sent briefly to a drug rehabilitation clinic in York, after which he was pronounced clean. After a brief spell as medical officer for Hatfield College, Durham, County Durham 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 a clinic of his own in Market Street in 1993, becoming a respected member of the community.

Detection
In March 1998, Dr. Linda Reynolds of the Brooke Surgery in Hyde, opposite Shipman's clinic, went to John Pollard, the coroner for the South Manchester District, with concerns 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 said he was "killing" his patients, although she was not sure whether it was negligent or intentional.

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. Between the time the investigation was abandoned on April 17 and Shipman's eventual arrest he killed a further three people. His last victim was Kathleen Grundy, a former Mayor of Hyde, who was found dead at her home on June 24, 1998. The last person to see her alive had been Shipman, who later signed her death certificate.

Grundy's daughter, lawyer Angela Woodruff, became concerned when she was informed by solicitor Brian Burgess that a will had been made, apparently by her mother, which excluded her entirely and left £386,000 to Shipman. Woodruff went to the police, who began an investigation. Grundy's body was exhumed and examined, and found to contain traces of diamorphine (heroin). Shipman was arrested on September 7, 1998, and was found to own a typewriter of the type used to make the forged will.

The police then looked into other deaths that Shipman had certified and drew up a list of 15 specimen cases to investigate. A pattern emerged of him administering lethal overdoses of diamorphine, signing patients' death certificates, and then forging medical records to indicate they had been in poor health.

Trial and imprisonment
Shipman's trial, presided over by Mr Justice Forbes, began on October 5, 1999. Shipman was prosecuted for the murders of Marie West, Irene Turner, Lizzie Adams, Jean Lilley, Ivy Lomas, Jermaine Ankrah, Muriel Grimshaw, Marie Quinn, Kathleen Wagstaff, Bianka Pomfret, Naomi Nuttall, Pamela Hillier, Maureen Ward, Winifred Mellor, Joan Melia and Kathleen Grundy, over a period from 1995 to 1998.

After jury deliberations of six days, Shipman was convicted on January 31, 2000 of killing 15 patients with lethal injections of diamorphine. The trial judge sentenced him to 15 consecutive life sentences and recommended that he should never be released. Two years later Home Secretary David Blunkett confirmed this recommendation, just months before British government ministers lost their power to set minimum terms for prisoners.

In February 2002 Shipman was formally struck off the GMC register.

Shipman consistently denied his guilt, disputing the forensic evidence against him, and 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.

Although there were many other cases that could have been brought to court, it was concluded that it would be hard to have a fair trial, in view of the enormous publicity surrounding the original trial; in any case, a further trial would be unnecessary, given the existing sentences. The Shipman Inquiry concluded that Shipman was probably responsible for about 250 deaths.

Some commentators have postulated that his murder of older women was somehow related to the painful experience of his mother dying when he was young, while others said the motive was an arrogant desire to control life and death. The Shipman Inquiry suggested that he liked to use drugs recreationally.

Suicide
Shipman was found hanged in his cell at Wakefield Prison at 6:20am on January 13, 2004, on the eve of his 58th birthday, and was pronounced dead at 8:10am. 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 in particular ran a celebratory front page headline, "Ship Ship hooray!"

However, the victims' families said they felt cheated as his suicide meant that they would never have the satisfaction of Shipman's confession, and answers as to why he had committed his crimes. 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".

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 has asserted that serial killers are usually obsessed with manipulation and control, and killing themselves in police custody, or committing "suicide by cop", is their final act of control.

It was asked why he had not been on suicide watch at HMP Wakefield even though he had been during earlier stays at HMP Manchester (Strangeways) and HMP Frankland after threatening to kill himself.

Shortly after Shipman's death Sir David Ramsbotham wrote an article in The Guardian newspaper which urged whole life sentencing to be eliminated and replaced by indefinite sentences. He said indefinite sentences would be a better option than whole life sentences because, while a prisoner might still never be released, they would always have the hope that it might happen.

Aftermath
It is unclear when Shipman started killing people, or even how many he killed. 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 had practiced in Todmorden, West Riding of Yorkshire (1974 – 1975) and Hyde, Cheshire (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 January 27, 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 that the probable number of Shipman's victims between 1971 and 1998 was 250. In total, 459 people died while under his care. It is uncertain how many of these were Shipman's victims, as Shipman was often the only person to certify a death.

The Shipman Inquiry also made recommendations about changes to the structure of the General Medical Council.

Six doctors who had signed cremation forms for Shipman's victims were charged with misconduct by the General Medical Council, which claimed that they should have noticed the pattern between Shipman's home visits and his patients' deaths. All of 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, and had failed to detect that Shipman had deliberately administered a "grossly excessive" dose of morphine.

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

In 2005, it transpired 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 Asset Recovery Agency in May. In August the investigation ended, 66 pieces were returned to Primrose Shipman and 33 pieces, which she confirmed were not hers, 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 July 30, 2005.

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

Shipman, a TV dramatisation of the case, was made in 2002 and starred James Bolam in title role.

In an episode of the TV series Law & Order: Criminal Intent called "D.A.W.", police detectives Robert Goren and Alexandra Eames investigate a doctor they suspect of being a serial killer. Many aspects of the case resemble that of Shipman, including his early drug addiction and the number of people he is suspected of killing. At a party at the end of the episode, where the suspect is confronted with the evidence, one the guests, wearing a grey beard and glasses, looks very much like Shipman. The episode also includes a "red herring" character named "Hal Shipman".

Both The Fall and Jonathan King have released songs concerning Shipman. 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".