How doctor who ‘killed 250 people’ went undetected for years

For two decades, this doctor hid behind a smile and his glowing reputation. Nobody had a clue of the horrors that he was committing.

For more than two decades, he hid behind a smile and his job as a doctor.

Nobody had a clue about the horrors that he had committed. Until one day, that all changed.

Living in Hyde, UK, with his wife and four children, Harold Shipman was a respected family man who was known to make house calls to elderly patients.

Usually that would be a blessing. However, for many of his patients it was quite the opposite.

Because Shipman, who mainly targeted older women, would inject many of them with fatal doses of morphine.

Later known as the “angel of death”, he would even change medical notes to make it sound like his patients were seriously unwell, before pushing grieving family members to opt for cremations over burials.

That way, the evidence of his gruesome acts vanished.

The majority of his victims were found fully clothed and sitting in a chair, seemingly passing of natural causes. And while he mainly targeted elderly women, his youngest victim may have been only four-years-old.

Convicted of murdering over a dozen of his own patients, Shipman was sentenced to a life term in prison in 2000, however four years later came his suicide at age 57.

It’s believed the true number of his victims is much higher - over 250.

Dr Harold Shipman was charged with murdering his patients.

For years his crimes went unnoticed. However, a few months before his last killing, concerns were raised by Deborah Massey, from the local funeral parlour. She had noted a high number of Shipman’s patients were dying.

Massey told Linda Reynolds, from a doctor’s surgery, who then told John Pollard, the coroner for the South Manchester District.

Then, despite police being informed, they were unable to press charges due to lack of evidence.

In the meantime, three more of Shipman’s patients died.

Then, taxi driver John Shaw, who often transported his patients, contacted police to say he believed Shipman had killed 21 people.

By 1997, Shipman had spiralled, committing 37 murders in that one year, that means he was killing a patient every 10 or so days.

It was Shipman himself who would eventually bring about his own undoing, making sloppy mistakes in 1998 with 81-year-old patient Kathleen Grundy, a wealthy widow.

This case would truly uncover a monster.

Murder victim Kathleen Grundy.

It was Shipman himself who would eventually bring about his own undoing. Picture: UK police

Following her mother’s death, Grundy’s daughter, lawyer Angela Woodruff, realised something was very off when she discovered her mother had cut her out of her will and left everything to Shipman. That was a total value of £386,000 (AUD$772,790).

Grundy’s will, which arrived at Woodruff’s solicitor’s address on the same day she died, included a letter. It had been typed on a Brother typewriter - the same type as her will was typed on - and was signed by Grundy.

“I give all my estate, money and house to my doctor,” it read. “My family are not in need and I want to reward him for all the care he has given to me and the people of Hyde.”

Woodruff went to the police and an investigation was launched. When her mother’s body was exhumed, traces of medical heroin were found in her system.

Primrose Shipman, wife of British serial killer doctor Dr Harold Shipman at her home in Mottram, Manchester in 2000.

Although Shipman claimed it was due to Grundy being an addict, medical notes he had shown stating this were found to have been added after her death.

He was then arrested.

Later, his fingerprint was found on Grundy’s will.

Shipman was found guilty of 15 counts of murder and one charge of forgery, and two years later the leader of The Shipman Inquiry, Dame Janet Smith said she believed he was responsible for 250 deaths.

Some of the patients allegedly killed by family GP Dr Harold Shipman.

A dark past

Tragedy had struck Shipman at the age of 17, when his mother Vera became terminally ill with lung cancer and died shortly after. She had been given large doses of morphine for her pain.

Shipman enrolled in Leeds University Medical School to become a doctor soon after her death.

It’s suspected that Shipman committed his first murder in 1972 during his first job at Pontefract General Infirmary in West Yorkshire. At the age of 26, Shipman became the doctor for four-year-old Susie Garfitt. The girl was suffering from pneumonia, triggered by her cerebral palsy and quadriplegia.

Susie’s mother recalled that Shipman encouraged her to leave to drink some tea. Ten minutes later, she returned to find her daughter dead.

“The fact that the death occurred so soon gives rise to the suspicion that Shipman somehow precipitated the death,” Dame Smith said in 2005.

At the time, nobody suspected Shipman could have killed Susie and he went on to work at a private practice in West Yorkshire, where colleagues noticed large amounts of the painkiller pethidine were vanishing.

It turned out that Shipman was addicted to the drug and had been injecting himself daily. He was fined $1200 and joined a rehab program, before joining a practice in Hyde with 3000 patients. Here was where he began killing in a large scale.

Joan Clayton holds a photo of her mother Bertha Moss, victim of British serial killer Dr Harold Shipman. Picture: Patrick Hamilton.

“Many patients describe Shipman as having a wonderful bedside manner, especially with the elderly,” Dame Janet later concluded about how his unsuspecting victims were tricked.

“He would make much of them and sometimes tease them gently. They liked it. He made them feel that he was a real friend as well as their doctor. Yet he would kill them.”

The speed of the deaths was also astounding.

“Some of his descriptions of sudden death are breathtaking,” Dame Smith wrote.

“‘I turned round to get my stethoscope out of my bag and she just collapsed and died’; ‘I was telephoning for an ambulance and she gave one cough. When I turned round, I could see that she had died’; ‘She just died while I was examining her’.”

To this day, nobody knows why he killed his patients, with the belief he enjoyed controlling who lived and who died.

Originally published as How doctor who ‘killed 250 people’ went undetected for years