Ep 33-The Original Doctor Death: Harold Shipman

Send us a text

What happens when the person you trust most with your life becomes your executioner? In this chilling episode, we unravel the disturbing case of Dr. Harold Shipman, the most prolific serial killer in modern history, whose medical license became his perfect disguise for murder.

Harold Shipman wasn't lurking in shadows or breaking into homes at night. He was a respected family doctor in the small English town of Hyde, invited into living rooms, offered cups of tea, and trusted implicitly by a community that never imagined their GP was systematically killing his patients. With at least 215 confirmed victims—though the true number may be closer to 250—Shipman's reign of terror lasted over two decades before anyone connected the dots.

Resources: 

The Doctor From Hell, by Genoveva Ortiz

Podcast Harold Shipman, on Killer Psyche by Candace De Long

BBC True Crime Documentary: Doctor Death-Harold Shipman (2018)

Support the show

Don't miss a (heart) beat! Check out our Instagram @doctoringthetruthpodcast and email us your Medical Mishaps at [e-mail]. Join us on Facebook at Doctoring the Truth, and TikTok @doctoring the truth. Don't forget to download, rate, and review so we can keep bringing you more exciting content each week!

Stay safe, and stay suspicious...trust, after all, is a delicate thing!

Don't forget to check out these fantastic discounts from our sponsors:

Get 30% off your order with the code STAYSUSPICIOUS at thecuminclub.com

Visit www.shimmerwood.com for an exclusive 30% off with our discount code STAYSUSPICIOUS

20% Off Strong Coffee Company https://strongcoffeecompany.com/discount/STAYSUSPICIOUS

www.handful.com for 30% off with our code STAYSUSPICIOUS

www.standshoes.com for 15% off any product with our code

STAYSUSPICIOUS

.Visit oldglory.com for 15% off your entire order with our code: STAYSUSPICIOUS.

Hurry because this deal expires on October 31st. Visit quantumsquares.com and use promo code STAYSUSPICIOUS for 25% off today!

Visit ...

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Amanda Jenna, did it work?
Did you hit the button the sametime as me?

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Well, I don't know if it's exactly the same time, but
it's pretty darn close and Iwill find out in edits.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
I had the honor of counting down to when we click
the button this time.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Because every time I count I forget to.
I'm so excited about counting,I have to put all my energy into
that that I forget to actuallyhit the button.
So I forget to.
I'm so excited about countingand to put all my energy into
that that I forget to actuallyhit the button.
So I was like okay, adhd, I gotto focus, I got to focus on the
button Amanda, you count?

Speaker 1 (00:34):
And then I felt nervous like, oh, I'm counting,
okay, okay, it's a lot ofpressure.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
It's a big responsibility, but I knew you
were up for the task.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Thank, you so much I have confidence in you.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Listen after 33 episodes, one of us has got to
figure it out.
Yeah, and if not I guess you'rereally good at editing now, so
I'm getting there, although youknow a couple episodes ago.
Well, we don't need to bringthat up.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
That's in the past, we don't need to keep dwelling
on the past.
Let's just move forward.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
We are moving forward .
So we're still in summer.
How's it feel?

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Once again sick of it .

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Every morning I get up I'm like do I need a sweater
or a jacket?
No, I actually need a way toremove layers at the end of the
day when it's getting super hot.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
When I don't need a jacket right away in the morning
, I just know I'm like.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
You know, normally I put my capri pants and my
open-toe shoes like at the backof the closet.
Oh no, those babies I'm like.
Well, maybe this will be thelast week I get to wear these.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
The shoes are like we are sticking around.
They're getting an extraworkout this year Again.
Glad it's not snowing, but getthe F out of your hot weather.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
I'm dying for a little bit of cardigan, a little
bit of leather.
Ankle boots, thigh boots,whatever boot you're into like a
boot.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Like the steering wheel heat, a little seat heat.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Can't turn that sucker on unless you want to
sweat yourself silly.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Oh no, I still do.
It's for the back pain, Don'tyou do that.
It feels nice.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
I do If I have back pain.
Yeah, most of the time I'm justsweating.
I mean to the point where mycar overheated so much I had to
take it into the dealership toget a new.
I have a Subaru, so they had tocall Japan and be like you know
what this thing overheated andsend me a new computer because

(02:45):
it delaminated the computer?
Wow, because my car was gettingtoo hot while it was sitting at
work waiting for me to get out.
Oh yeah, it was crazy.
So my whole computer screen youknow it's like a little iPad in
there it was just like bleep,bleep, bleep, bleep and just
like it's one thing to misshearing your podcast during your

(03:06):
commute, which I super missedand on music, but then it would
start just like jumping aroundand glitching and like basically
beeping and yelling at me,which was a huge distraction
yeah, driving, and now that carsare basically computers, I
would have felt very concerned.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Driving, well, obviously it was a big deal.
I was was going to say it was acouple of weeks without your
car.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Oh yeah, no, it was a big deal.
So anyway, got her back.
After a couple of weeks she gota new.
She got a new jet, fresh newJapanese computer and your
girl's going to start puttingthose things that I thought only
old people did.
You know, put those foil thingsin your dash to keep your car
cool.
You know those littlesunscreens that have the foil on

(03:49):
the outside.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Oh yeah, Sunscreen.
I was picturing you with likean aluminum hat, Not hat, but I
was like what?

Speaker 2 (03:59):
I'm going to start wearing a tinfoil hat in case
the FBI finds me.
They're going to read mybrainwaves.
We crazy Listen.
I think it's a full moon.
Patients are crazy, People arecrazy.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Every kid's things keep breaking, so that would
track, I guess, with the fullmoon in my world.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
There was definitely full moon energy today and I
feel like, as a monday, it'sbeen pretty much a week already
in one day yeah, your life's alittle crazier than mine, cray
cray well, I'm happy for youthat wasn't as crazy as mine
well, it never is.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
But thank you so much .

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Sorry for you thanks for rubbing it in that extra
little bit.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
You know, I got to help one of your patients today
though, so thank you for that.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
I love how collaborative we are between the
educational team and theclinical team.
It's been really good, reallyreally good.
It's amazing to have you inthat academia place, so thank
you for all you do for kids?

Speaker 1 (05:10):
Thank you, are you verklempt All?

Speaker 2 (05:12):
right, that's enough of that warm fuzzy stuff.
Have we got any corrections forlast week?
Probably not, because it wasyou.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
No.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
Oh, wow, wow.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
You know what someone did tell me that they listened
to our podcast and I was like,oh my gosh, wow and thanks and
they go.
Jenna's so funny, she's so goodat storytelling.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
And I was like and and what they meant to say was
you you asked well, they neversaid anything about me.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
Oh, which is fine, that's fine.
They must have just listened toone episode.
Yes, she's great.
We're both great.
I will laugh at her.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Oh, well, well, thank you.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
So anyway into the no correction section, someone you
know.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
a lot of people think that you are just wonderful oh,
and, and I feel the same wayand I hear wonderful stuff about
you all the time.
So, oh, my god, we're so mushytoday I know it's like a mutual
admiration society right up inhere, and you know what
listeners we feel that way aboutyou guys too.
You're the best listeners onthe planet.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
The mushy membership.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
No one ever wanted a alley cats you guys are so
complimentary, like I've alwaysheard.
Like don't read your comments,don't look at your ratings,
because you know you'll just besad, honest, I mean, and maybe
it's just because we're early onin this whole podcast game, but
you guys are amazing, thank you.
Thank you for being sosupportive and so positive.

(06:48):
We love you.
And, speaking of love, I loveOld Glory.
I love Old.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
Glory.
We love a family-ownedsuperstore.
We do.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
And how long have they been in business?

Speaker 1 (07:03):
You know what, since 1969.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
1969?
I wasn't even a glimmer in myparents' eye at that point.
Believe it or not, who's doingthis?
I started it on.
No, I got it.
I got it, okay, okay.
Family owned, operating since1969.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
No, I got it.
I got it, Okay, Okay.
Family owned, Operating since1969.
Check, check, check.
Offering over 300,000officially licensed items across
music, sports, entertainmentand pop culture, they offer high
quality graphic tees, hoodies,hats, accessories featuring
iconic brands such as Bob Marley, the Beatles, Grateful Dead,

(07:46):
Rolling Stones and Metallica.
Sports fans can find theirofficial gear from the NBA, NFL,
NHL, MLB and NCAA to show theirteam pride.
Beyond music and sports, OldGlory carries products
celebrating TV shows, movies andlifestyle brands, including
quirky gifts and fan favoriteapparel.

(08:07):
With same-day order processingand free standard shipping, it's
a reliable one-stop shop forhigh-quality merchandise for
yourself or as gifts.
Visit oldglorycom for 15% offyour entire order with our code
STAYSUSPICIOUSS-T-A-Y-S-U-S-b-i-c-i-o-u-s stay

(08:28):
suspicious, stay, staysuspicious.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
You know what I may be.
A some might say I'm a bit of adork or a nerd.
But when you were going nba,nfl, nhl, I mean, let's face it,
I'm not a big sports person,but I was like nal, like
national acoustic laboratoriesshe's like nal dsl all the else,

(08:53):
um, all right.
Well, thank you for that.
Listen, today we're talkingabout the doctor from hell, uh,
so there's gonna be somedisclaimers, some triggers, uh,
and listen, if you wantinformation about where we
obtained I don't know why, allof a sudden I had to go East
Coast Um, but remaining sourceswill be cited in our show notes.

(09:17):
So you know, yeah, but honestly, my primary resource was a book
called the Doctor from Hell byGenoviva Ortiz, and then some
podcasts, including just amazingwoman killer psyche, candice
DeLong.
She has a podcast.
I've told you about it.
Have you listened to her?

Speaker 1 (09:38):
Yeah, that's a great podcast.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah, she's an FBI behavioralist and a psychiatric
nurse who does a podcast on whypeople do what they do.
She's amazing.
And then there was the BBC truecrime documentary, Dr Death.
So the trigger warnings aremurder, elder abuse and sexual
misconduct.
So consider yourselves warned.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
I have one other trigger warning.
It's not really a triggerwarning, but I'm just going to
pre-warn you guys that your girlread a book your girl isn't
Jenna, not me and this episodeis 17 pages long and she says
this isn't going to be long, butI'm just here to warn you.
If you have a longer car ridecoming up soon, maybe press

(10:21):
pause on this one and save it.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
Okay, well, let's see how she does two times the
speed listen.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
I'll listen to this one when I have to go back to
gerber you're so funny I lovethat.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
So much listen.
I, yes, I may run a book, buthere's the thing this guy killed
218 people.
So you know, you do you guys,you know what you're in for.
It wasn't gonna be short and Ifeel like I'm the I'm like the
two-parter mishap.
It's like I can't ever getthings condensed, so we're gonna
try anyway.
Okay, I'm now.
I'm looking at this time.
Okay, 11 minutes.

(10:58):
All right, here we go, okay 11minutes seven seconds, seconds
Go, go.
All right, let's set the mood.
Doctors occupy one of the mostsacred positions in our society.
We hand them our bodies and indoing so, we hand them our trust
.
We let them peer into ourthroats and listen to our hearts
.
Occasionally, we let them lookinto our ears.

(11:19):
We take their pills, theirinjections and their advice.
And when a doctor tells ussomething, we believe it, even
when it hurts, even when it'sfatal.
Dun, dun dun.
What if your doctor wasn'tthere to save you?
What if the person in the whitecoat with the stethoscope and
the calm, professional tonewasn't a guardian of life at all

(11:40):
, but its executioner?
Life at all, but it'sexecutioner.
What if, instead of restoringyou to health, I had a mosquito
on my computer screen and hemade a punctuation?
Okay, he's gone.
This is going to be a funepisode.
What if, instead of restoringyou to health, your doctor was
quietly and deliberatelyarranging your death?

(12:01):
No, this isn't hypothetical.
Happened, and it happened not inthe shadowy world of illegal
back alleys, but in the bright,respectable world of the
National Health Service inBritain.
His name was Harold FrederickShipman.
His patients called him DrShipman.
His colleagues thought himbrusque but dependable.

(12:22):
His neighbors considered him anordinary family man, but
history remembers him assomething else entirely the most
prolific serial killer inmodern history.
The official tally stands at215 confirmed murders, but the
real number is likely closer to250 and possibly even higher.

(12:43):
The truth is that we'll neverknow, because his victims were
mothers, grandmothers, neighbors, friends, ordinary people who
trusted the man who came intotheir living rooms with a black
doctor's bag.
So today, alleycats, we unravelhow Harold Shipman, a
small-town GP, managed to murderhundreds of people while hiding

(13:03):
in plain sight for over twodecades.
Let's talk about his childhood.
Harold Frederick Shipman wasborn on January 14, 1946, in
Nottingham.
Post-war England was stillhealing Bomb sites dotted city
streets.
Rationing had ended only twoyears earlier and families were
learning how to piece togethereveryday life after years of

(13:26):
fear.
Nottingham was a working-classcity renowned for its coal
textiles and association withthe legend of Robin Hood.
In this landscape of factorysmoke and modest terraced houses
.
Harold entered the world as thesecond of four children.
His father, harold Sr, was atruck driver.
He brought home modest wagesand left the running of the

(13:48):
house to his wife, vera.
Vera was strict, disciplinedand uncompromising.
She had clear expectations and,in her eyes, harold little
Freddy as he was called at homecould do no wrong.
He was her chosen child, hergolden boy.
From the beginning, haroldthrived on that attention.

(14:08):
His teachers noted hisintelligence, but also his
arrogance.
He wasn't content simply toanswer questions correctly.
He needed to demonstrate thathe was more intelligent than
everyone else in the room.
Obnoxious yeah, not endearing.

Speaker 1 (14:26):
It's always that classmate where it's like can
you just stay after class totalk about this further, so we
can move on with our?

Speaker 2 (14:33):
lives.
Can we brown nose?
Later it's the student thatraises their hand and goes.
But you forgot to assignhomework.
Yeah, yeah, and you're like,circle him.
So his classmates found himaloof, cold and detached.
He wasn't interested in muckingabout or sneaking cigarettes
behind a bike shed.
He was a serious boy,self-contained and convinced

(14:55):
that he was superior.
At school he found success onthe rugby field and in athletics
.
He was strong, fast andcompetitive.
But even in sports hisaloofness set him apart.
He was a team player only inname.
He was more interested in beingseen as a standout than part of
the group.
So he was the kind of guy thatwould hog the ball, I'm sure,
for attention to make that goal.

(15:23):
Beneath the arrogance was anunusual intensity, a
watchfulness.
And when tragedy struck, thatintensity fixed itself on
something peculiar.
When Harold was 17, vera wasdiagnosed with terminal lung
cancer.
Watching his mother decline wasagonizing.
But Harold wasn't just grieving, he was studying.
I know it's creepy.

(15:43):
Right Every day the localdoctor visited the house to
administer morphine.
Harold sat by his mother's bedand watched the transformation.
One moment Vera was writhing inpain and gasping for breath and
then the next day, after aninjection of morphine, her face
smoothed into calm, Her pain waserased and her peace was

(16:04):
restored.
This must have left a deepimprint.
I mean, most teenagers in hisposition would have been
devastated by their mother'ssuffering, comforted by the
morphine and grateful for thedoctor's compassion.
But not Harold.
He saw something else.
He saw the sheer power thatcame with a syringe else.

(16:26):
He saw the sheer power thatcame with a syringe the ability
to end agony, bring relief orbring silence.
When Vera died in June 1963,harold lost his greatest
champion.
But he also gained somethingelse an idea, a belief in the
authority of doctors not just toheal but to control life and
death itself.
That belief would guide him forthe rest of his life.

(16:49):
After Vero's death, haroldbecame even more determined.
He excelled in school, secureda place at the University of
Leeds Medical School and in 1970, he qualified as a doctor.
During his studies, Harold meta shy teenager named Primrose
Oxtoby.
She was just 17 when theymarried.
Having dated for only twomonths, she had become pregnant

(17:09):
and her strict Methodist parentsinsisted that Harold do the
right thing.
Nevertheless, primrose wasdevoted to him and over the
years she gave birth to fourchildren and remained
steadfastly loyal to her husband, despite whispers circulating
about them.
Her loyalty became one of thegreat mysteries of this story.
What did she know and how muchdid she choose not to see?

(17:32):
At Leeds, harold's personalitysolidified.
He was not the charming,empathetic medical student that
others aspired to be.
He was arrogant, argumentativeand determined to assert his
authority.
He lacked the warmth that putspatients at ease, but he
compensated with an aura ofconfidence and professionalism.

(17:52):
He projected certainty, and inmedicine certainty is often
mistaken for confidence.
By the early 1970s, shipman hadbegun practicing general
medicine.
On the surface, he was themodel family doctor young,
ambitious and serious.
But beneath the surface hisweaknesses were already visible.
He was detached, he didn't havemany friends and he isolated

(18:16):
himself from others and hecarried with him a secret habit
that would almost end his careerbefore it began, secret habit
that would almost end his careerbefore it began.
By 1975, harold had developed adependency on pethidine, a
synthetic opioid used for painrelief.
Whether it was stress,curiosity or some twisted echo
of the morphine that he'd seengiven to his mother, nobody

(18:38):
knows.
But what we do know is thatHarold became addicted.
He had easy access.
He wrote prescriptions forhimself, forging the names of
patients, and he dosed in secret, feeding his habit with the
very tools entrusted to him as ahealer.
Eventually, his fraud wasdiscovered.
He was caught forgingprescriptions.
He was arrested and fined 600pounds and sentenced to attend a

(19:01):
drug rehab program.
For most people that would havebeen career-ending.
But this is where the systemfailed spectacularly.
Instead of revoking his medicallicense, the General Medical
Council, which is like the AMAhere in the United States,
allowed him to continuepracticing.
He was marked as a man who madea mistake.
It was a lapse in judgment, buthe could be trusted again.

(19:23):
The council made a catastrophic.
It was a lapse in judgment, buthe could be trusted again.
The council made a catastrophicmisjudgment because Harold had
learned a lesson indeed, but itwasn't about humility or
accountability.
He learned about survival andthat the system was forgiving
and that the guardians ofmedicine were not looking too
closely and they'd protect theirown.

(19:44):
So he could make mistakes, evencriminal ones, and still walk
away into his role as a trustedGP, and this lesson emboldened
him.
In 1977, harold Shipman moved toHyde, a small industrial town
near Manchester.
Hyde was precisely the kind ofplace where a doctor like Harold

(20:04):
could hide in plain sight.
Harold's hiding in Hyde.
The town was working class,tight-knit and bound together by
traditions of trust.
Neighbors knew one another.
Families lived in duplicaterows of terraced houses for
generations, people looked aftereach other and they respected
authority figures priests,teachers and doctors among them.

(20:26):
Harold settled into a practiceand quickly built a reputation
for himself.
He wasn't worn but he wasreliable.
He made house calls.
He remembered medical histories.
He projected confidence.
Patients described him as stern, brusque and even rude, but
they still respected him, andfor many in Hyde, respect
mattered more than charm.
They didn't want a doctor tojoke with them.

(20:48):
They wanted a doctor that wouldtake charge of their care, and
Harold did precisely that.
He became an integral part ofthe community.
He was invited into livingrooms, cups of tea were placed
in his hands and he was trustedwith the intimate details of
people's lives.
It was the perfect cover.

(21:11):
From the late 70s into the 1990s, hyde became a town in quiet
mourning.
At first nothing seemed unusual.
People died, elderly patientspassed away in their homes.
Funerals were part of life.
But then patterns began toemerge.
Relatives walked into rooms tofind their loved ones not in bed
but seated in chairs upright,fully dressed.
Sometimes their glasses werestill on their faces and books

(21:31):
in their laps and knittingneedles resting idly by their
sides.
One woman was found with hershoes, neatly laced, as though
she'd been preparing to step out, and another was found with her
tea, who was still warm steamcurling above her cup.
It was death presented astranquility, too neat and too
staged.
And I should note.

(21:54):
I don't think I've mentioned ithere, but when Shipman's mother
was dying of cancer, she usedto sit by the window with a cup
of tea in her lap, waiting forhim to come home from school
every day to greet him and learnabout his day.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
Yeah, Okay, yeah, that just got even creepier the
undertakers noticed theweirdness of all this.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
They whispered about it in pubs and shook their heads
.
Strange, isn't it?
You never find them in bed,it's always in a chair.
One muttered, makes our jobeasier.
Shipman practically sets thatout for us.
They laughed uneasily, butbeneath the humor was a sense
that something was wrong.
Other doctors noticed too.
Shipman's death rates wereastronomically high.

(22:42):
A typical GP signed perhaps 23death certificates a year and
shipmen sometimes signed 70.
Year after year the numberspiled up.
Statistically it was impossible.
Imagine a teacher whose entireclass fails every year.
Imagine a bus driver whocrashes three times a month.
At some point you stop callingit bad luck and start

(23:05):
investigating.
But in Hyde people explained itaway.
Older people die.
Doctors sign certificates.
Suspicion doesn't flourish.
One year GP insists otherwiseand Harold, calm and
authoritative, always had thelast word.
The city of Hyde trusted him.
They felt themselves lucky tohave a doctor so dedicated, so

(23:26):
willing to make house calls andso invested in his patients.
Even as funerals multiplied,even as obituary columns
lengthened, hyde saw him not asa harbinger of death but as a
guardian of health.
But in reality Hyde had inviteddeath into his living rooms.
No-transcript.

(23:52):
By the mid-1980s Hyde was awashwith funerals.
At first no one thought much ofit.
It was a community of olderfamilies, and people died of
natural causes all the time.
But those closest to deathundertakers, doctors and
families themselves, even a taxidriver began to see the
peculiar signature of Shipman'spatients.
They didn't just die, they diedsitting up.

(24:12):
I mean imagine walking intoyour mother's house after her
morning phone call, expecting tofind her in the kitchen with
toast on her plate, only to seeher slumped in the armchair in
the living room, still dressed,shoes on her feet, spectacles on
her nose.
At first you think how peacefulit looks like.
She nodded off while she wasreading the paper.
The kettle was still warm andcrossed word.

(24:33):
Half complete, a dignified end.
And that was the story thatpeople told themselves.
But once you saw it again andagain and again, it became eerie
.
Therein lay the shield thatHarold carried with him.
He was a doctor.
If anyone else had been foundin rooms filled with bodies,
suspicion would have ignitedlike a fire.
But when one signing the deathcertificates was a GP, polite
and reliable, no one wanted tobelieve otherwise.

(24:55):
So families didn't questionanything.
After all, their loved oneswere elderly.
Shipman's reputation in Hyde wascomplicated.
He was beloved because hesomehow remembered the details
of his patients' lives and theirfamilies and had a comforting
bedside manner.
He would stop to admire theroses.
He remembered theirgrandchildren's names.
He took time to get to know theisolated and lonely pensioners.

(25:18):
Like no one else had he turnedup when he was called.
He made house visits withoutcomplaint.
He was seen walking brisklydown the streets of Hyde with
his black bag in hand the imageof an old-fashioned country
doctor.
Interestingly, I learned thathouse calls were common in
England until as recently as2019, when the National Health

(25:39):
Service discontinued them due totime and personnel constraints.
I mean, to me it sounds oldtimey, but I mean this was six
years ago where they finallysaid we don't do this anymore.
So it was much more commonthere, much more recently than
it was in than it has been inamerica.
So there was that opportunitythere for that intimate

(26:04):
relationship between hyde andhis patients and also lack of
witnesses, truth be told right.
So he used that trust of himbeing a doctor as his camouflage
.
The behavior where he garneredtrust with his patients was in
stark contrast to his behaviorin the workplace.

(26:24):
He was rude to people likenurses and receptionists that he
thought were inferior to him.
At best he ignored them, atworst he barked and shouted at
them, often degrading andhumiliating them.
In the book Doctor from Hell, adrug rep talked about her first
day on the job and how nervousshe was.
Shipman reared up into her face, shouting questions and

(26:45):
berating her for not having theevidence that he demanded, with
the scientific white papers orbackground to promote the
product she was selling.
The poor girl ended up in tearsand still still Shipman's
colleagues put up with himbecause they believed that he
was brilliant and because hispatients loved him.
And also in the post-war era.
The population was burgeoningbut there weren't enough doctors

(27:06):
to go around.
So again, shipman was invitedinto the most intimate places
kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms.
Families offered him tea, toldhim their worries and exposed
their vulnerabilities.
They welcomed him as afigurative authority and once
inside, once the door closed,harold had total control.
For decades he operated in thismanner.

(27:28):
The dust mounted, the whispersspread, but no action was taken.
It wasn't until one summermorning in 1998 that the mask
finally cracked.
One neighbor said of a victimsaid I used to see Harold on our
street all the time, black, bagin hand, brisk walk, always
looking serious, and people saidthat's a proper doctor, don't
waste time with nonsense.

(27:48):
And you'd nod along because itwas true, he looked the part.
And then my friend Elsie diedjust like that.
She'd been fine the week before.
I'd had tea with her, forgoodness sake, we were talking
about the jumble sale.
She wasn't sick.
And then suddenly she's goneand Harold's there saying well,
it was her heart.
We all believed him.
We thought, well, if Dr Shipmansays it's her heart, then
that's what it is.
It never occurred to us toquestion him.

(28:10):
Why would it?
He was the doctor.
But when the news came outlater, when they said he'd
killed her, I felt sick, notjust for Elsie but for all of us
.
We'd all trusted him, we'dinvited him into our homes and
all the while he was deathhimself walking our streets.
One nurse reported.
I worked with him once or twice, not closely, thank God, but

(28:32):
enough to get a feel he was cold, efficient.
Yes, he knew his medicine, nodoubt, but there was no warmth,
no compassion.
Patients were numbers, notpeople.
I remember thinking once whenhe prescribed morphine for a
patient who didn't seem to needit.
Well, that's odd.
But I didn't say anything.
Because who was I.
I was a nurse and he was a GPthe authority.
If I had spoken up I'd beenbrushed aside.

(28:55):
One night we had three patientsdie.
This was unheard of.
It still haunts me to this day.
It keeps me awake at nightknowing I might have seen
something and said nothing.
But that's the thing aboutShipman.
He made you doubt yourself.
He wore authority like armorand the rest of us stayed quiet.
An undertaker said quote I canstill see their faces, the women

(29:21):
, the old men sitting so neatlyin their chairs.
I remember saying once to mywife strangest thing, all of Dr
Shipman's patients die tidy.
We laughed, we laughed, but Ishould have known better.
I'd been an undertaker longenough to know death isn't tidy,
it's messy.
People fall, they suffer, theydon't sit upright with their
hands folded like they'rewaiting for a bus.
I told myself it was acoincidence.

(29:43):
I told myself I was imaginingthings.
And then, years later, when itall came out the murders, the
numbers, the truth I realizedI'd been staring murder in the
face and I looked away.
And that guilt never leaves you.
I should have said something weall should have.
And with that somber note we'regoing to take a break and visit

(30:06):
our welcome to the chartsegment where we learn about
what's happening in medicine andhealth care.
So first centuries, blindnesswas considered irreversible If
you were born with an inheritedretinal disease.

(30:27):
There was no cure, onlyadaptation.
But in the last decade, genetherapy has begun to change that
story.
The first breakthrough camewith Veretagene neprovic risal,
known as Luxturna.
Approved in 2017, it treatsinherited blindness caused by
mutations in the RPE65 gene.

(30:49):
Delivered as a one-timeinjection under the retina, it
replaces the faulty gene with aworking copy.
Patients who once struggled tonavigate a dimly lit room
suddenly found themselves ableto recognize faces, read signs
and even drive.
It was the first time modernmedicine had literally rewritten
DNA in the eye to restorevision.

(31:11):
And the research hasn't stoppedthere.
In 2025, data from the Skylineprogram for X-linked retinitis
pigmentosa showed encouraginglong-term results.
Patients who received high-dosetreatment had a responder rate
of approximately 57%, meaningthat their eyes showed a
clinically significantimprovement on microperimetry

(31:31):
testing.
When I was reading this article, I was like there's got to be a
typo, because apparentlysomebody mentioned decibels.
And I'm like, no, that that'san audiology thing.
But did you know?
And I talked to an optometryfriend today, she I was like
what?
What is this decibel businesswith eyeballs?
Apparently, microparametrytesting measures retinal

(31:55):
sensitivity in decibels, so thehigher the number, the dimmer
the light that the retina candetect.
So the trial defined respondersas eyes that could improve by
at least 7 decibels at 5 or moretested points.
Put simply, after therapy thesepatients could see light where
they had previously seen nothing.
So those improvements remainsteady for up to three years.

(32:24):
Other gene therapies are alsomoving forward.
Trials for LCA5-related Lebercongenital amaurosis have shown
safety in early signs ofrestored function, especially in
children.
Researchers are exploringmodifier therapies that not only
replace broken genes but alsoenhance protective factors in
the retina, thereby slowingdegeneration in conditions like
retinitis pigmentosa and Ushersyndrome, which includes gradual

(32:45):
vision and hearing loss, orprogressive, not necessarily
gradual.
This is medicine at its mosthopeful.
Blindness, once thoughtpermanent, is becoming
reversible, for some.
Patients who lived in darknessare now navigating the world
with restored vision.
For families, it feels lesslike science and more like a
miracle, isn't that amazing?

Speaker 1 (33:09):
That's amazing.
I love that so much.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
I love it too, did you so?
You worked in optometry for awhile.
Do you remember them measuringanything in decibels?
I was shocked.
I was like this has got to be atypo.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
Yeah, so I worked in ophthalmology at one of the
biggest hospitals in the worldand so I supported 47 doctors of
all specialties and definitelyhad RP patients.
And I remember there was thisone invention thingy for RP
patients where they could wearglasses and that was like

(33:44):
restoring their vision.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
Sorry, RP is retinitis pigmentosa.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
Which is can you give us a little?
It's like a degeneration of theretina over time.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
Okay, yes, yeah, so these.
I shouldn't even mention theglasses because I don't know
enough about them to explainthem to you guys, but this
patient was blind and with theseglasses he could, like, see and
navigate around objects, whichwas awesome.
So it sounds like this is doingthe same thing, but at like a

(34:17):
gene level, so that you wouldn'thave to wear the glasses.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
I mean cool, so cool.
I know it's not like perfectvision, but can you imagine
going from not seeing anythingto being able to see how to
navigate your world withoutcolliding into something?

Speaker 1 (34:32):
I mean that's huge.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
That's crazy.
I love it.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
And think for our ushers patients, like of course
their hearing would still begone but to be able to see and
not be blind and deaf, huge Iwas excited to read that ah, all
right well like if, if you'redeaf, at least you can still see
your world and communicate aslif you want.
You know what I mean.

(34:57):
You're through a.
At least you can still see yourworld and communicate ASL if
you want.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
You know what I mean.
You're through a cochlearimplant.
I'm just saying yeah, yeah,well, I mean it doesn't restore
your hearing Capital.
D deaf or deaf, yeah, dependingon whether you.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
You can still communicate.
I mean, obviously people thatare blind can communicate, but I
just feel like that would be somuch harder.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
And maybe that's because I'm versed in this.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I think it precludes people whoare deaf from being able to
communicate manually with signlanguage if they can't see, so
this opens up.
Yeah, right for communication,which is fantastic.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
I like that yeah, I work with blind and low vision
teachers.
I'm going to ask them if theyheard.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah, that's crazy very cool, all right.
Well, now that I've lifted youup, we're going to bring you
back down.
So yeah, we're going to talkabout the death of kathleen
grundy.
Kathleen grundy was not yourtypical shipment victim At 81,
she was elderly, yes, but shewas sharp, active and highly

(36:02):
respected, a former mayor ofHyde.
She lived alone, but sheremained busy with community
work.
She attended luncheons,participated in charity events
and continued to tackle herdaily crossword.
She wasn't frail, she wasn'tdying and she had more energy
than many of the younger peoplein the town.
On June 24, 1998, kathleen wasfound dead at her home.

(36:25):
Shipman had visited her thatmorning.
He told the family that shepassed peacefully, signing the
death certificate as quote oldage end quote as the reason for
passing.
I mean, it seemedstraightforward, if not a little
callous, as the reason forpassing.
I mean it seemedstraightforward, if not a little
callous.
But then came the will.
A new will surfaced, typed up,in which Kathleen left her

(36:46):
estate nearly 400,000 pounds toher doctor, harold Shipman.
Her children were cut outentirely.
Here's what Shipman failed toreckon with.
This is where he went wrong,and thank goodness he finally
did, because her daughter,angela Woodruff, was a solicitor

(37:07):
.
She knew something was wrong.
The language on the will wasclumsy and riddled with errors,
the typing was sloppy and it didnot read like her mother and
Angela smelled fraud immediately.
Not to mention, if her mom hadwanted something drafted up, she
would have asked her daughter,the solicitor, who would have
done it for her right.
And they were super close.
They talked all the time, everysingle day, and she'd never

(37:30):
mentioned about being ill orneeding any help with anything
or changing her will, and thatwould have never happened.
They were very close.
So Angela went to the police,kathleen's body was exhumed,
which was the first body inManchester to have been exhumed
at all, and so I mean it was ahuge deal.
They did it at like three inthe morning to like avoid people

(37:52):
being able to see and like itwas just a huge thing, and they
sent tissue into the labs andtests revealed lethal levels of
morphine in the tissue.
So the forged will, combinedwith the toxicology, finally

(38:15):
exposed Shipman and broke hiscarefully constructed facade.
It had always been arrogancethat drove him to kill, the
certainty that he wasuntouchable, narcissist, much
dude.
But that arrogance, thankfully,was also his downfall, if he
hadn't tried to steal money, ifhe just kept killing quietly, no
one would have ever stopped him.
But Harold Shipman couldn'tresist.
He wanted control, and controlwasn't just over life and death,

(38:36):
it extended to inheritance, andthat was the mistake that undid
him.
So the investigation into Haroldbegan, cautiously but quickly
gathered speed.
Police officers combed throughrecords, interviewed families
and began to notice the samechilling patterns.
His computer, seized bydetectives, contained falsified
notes, medical histories that healtered after he killed the

(38:57):
patients to make their deathsseem natural.
So he'd go and inject morphinein Mrs So-and-so and then come
back and say, oh, she's, youknow, alter the medical record
and say, oh, she's had all theseheart issues, blah, blah, blah.
So he covered his tracksdigitally.
But not well enough.
The fraud was blatant.
They got a forensic it personwhich I think is super cool to

(39:23):
go through his computer and hisdata and they figured out like
time and date stamps of when hehad entered notes and they were
physically after the, the dateand time stamp of where the
medical examiner had said apatient had died.
So he was going in writing,yeah, rewriting history.

(39:44):
So more bodies were exhumed,more bodies of former patients
were tested and again morphineshowed up in multiple toxicology
reports, and patients who neverneeded strong painkillers were
found to have lethal doses intheir systems.
So the police soon realizedthey weren't dealing with just
one or two deaths.
They were dealing with anepidemic.

(40:05):
Shipman was arrested onSeptember 7, 1998.
He was calm, expressionless anddenied everything.
He claimed that the accusationswere ridiculous and insisted
that he was being persecuted,that he was a victim of paranoia
and grief-stricken familiesunwilling to accept natural
death.
But the evidence said otherwise.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
Oh, toxicology reports say otherwise.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
Exactly One victim's daughter said smug face.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted to jump up and shakehim and say why, why her, why

(40:51):
any of them?
But he never answered.
He never gave us that.
He just sat there silent as ifour grief didn't matter, as if
we were nothing.
And that's what he stole fromus, not just our mothers, not
just our fathers.
He stole our peace, he stolethe chance to understand and
we'll never get it back.
And, honestly, if you watch thedocumentary that I listed in
the resources, you just want topunch this guy in the throat.

(41:14):
He's so arrogant.
At one point when he's beingquestioned, he just turns his
back on the investigators andrefuses to talk, and he just
looks smug and arrogant and just, oh, he's such a jerk.
I just want to grab him by thebeard and rip it out.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
Sorry, I'm not a violent person, but oh my god, I
did a picture of him as a bigguy yeah, big bushy beard.

Speaker 2 (41:34):
And just smack, smack , smack and more than that
probably.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
Our hand gestures are , I feel like better with our
audio.
This is an auditory medium.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
So just picture me punching somebody in the throat
that deserves it.
Okay, so the trial of HaroldShipman opened in October 1999
at Preston Crown Court, which isa grand Victorian building with
stone steps worn down by morethan a century of footsteps.
Inside the courtroom wasbuzzing with tension.
Journalists jostled for spaceon the benches, notebooks ready,

(42:06):
pens poised.
Families of the dead satshoulder to shoulder, clutching
photographs and clutching eachother.
The public gallery was packedand the atmosphere was electric,
like the beginning of a playwhere everyone had dreaded but
couldn't look away from.
Shipman entered the dockwearing a dark suit, a neat tie
and an expressionless smug jughandle of a face, and if anyone

(42:28):
expected contrition, they weredisappointed.
He sat there like he wasattending a particularly dull
staff meeting, not sitting thereas a manic used in the most
prolific murderers in britishhistory.
His gaze was steady, his lipswere tight and his demeanor was
arrogant and indifferent I don'tknow which is worse.
The prosecution began with themost damning piece of evidence

(42:50):
Kathleen Grundy's will, angelaWoodruff, kathleen's daughter,
was called to the stand and, asa solicitor as we know, she was
meticulous, measured anddevastating.
She told the jury how hermother had been healthy, active
and in no way inclined to leaveher fortune to her GP.
She described receiving thesuspicious will, her immediate
recognition of the clumsy typingand awkward phrasing and the

(43:11):
certainty in her gut that it wasa forgery.
She spoke with quiet fury, herwords slicing through the
courtroom, the jury leaned inscribbling and journalists kept
their pens flying across paper.
In her testimony you could hearnot just the grief of a
daughter but the controlledanger of a professional
dismantling the man who killedher mother, the controlled anger

(43:32):
of a professional dismantlingthe man who killed her mother.
Then came the toxicology reportlethal morphine in Kathleen
Grundy's body, morphine thatshould never have been there.
Morphine was administered by aman who had no medical reason to
prescribe it, and from therethe prosecution built his case,
victim by victim.
They told the story of eachsudden death, each altered

(43:53):
medical record, each falsifiednote on Shipman's computer.
They brought in experts whoexplained how the records had
been changed after the deathsbackdated, to make the illnesses
appear worse than they reallywere.
They showed the jury thepatterns elderly women, sudden
deaths, house calls and morphine.
One undertaker testified aboutthe oddness of the patients who

(44:13):
were always found sitting neatlyin their chairs.
Another witness described howShipman had discouraged families
from requesting autopsies.
He would assure them oh, thedeath is natural, there's no
need to prolong the grief.
In fact, you should probablycremate your loved one.
Families trusted him and heused that trust to keep his
crimes hidden In the gallery.

(44:35):
Families of victims listenedwith horror and vindication For
years.
They suspected something waswrong and lived with nagging
doubts, whispers of too suddenor too strange.
And now those suspicions werebeing validated, but at a cost
almost too painful to bear.
The defense tried to poke holes.
They suggested the morphine hadbeen administered for pain
relief and that elderly patientswere simply frail and the

(44:57):
prosecution was weavingcoincidences into a conspiracy.
But the weight of the evidencewas crushing.
Too many deaths, too manyaltered records, too many bodies
with morphine coursing throughveins.
That should have been clear.
And Shipman himself nevertestified, never explained.
I'm surprised, actually, for anarcissist who would have

(45:21):
thought he would have testified.
They all seem to think they canpull one over on everybody.
But he sat in silence day afterday, stone-faced, as if the
trial was a trivialinconvenience.
Some days he leaned back in hischair with his eyes half-lidded
, as if he was bored.
Want to punch him.
Yet Mm-hmm Family seethed athis composure.

(45:42):
Journalists scribbleddescriptions of his icy, calm
and supercilious manner byJanuary 2000,.
After months of testimony, thecase was clear, the jury retired
to deliberate.
And after six days testimony,the case was clear, the jury
retired to deliberate and aftersix days returned to the
courtroom Guilty Six days.
Yeah Well, I mean, there's a lotof evidence to go through, but
I mean I mean I guess.

(46:02):
but like I, know I've kind oftaken six minutes, but guilty,
yeah, guilty in all counts 15murders and one forgery.
Guilty in all counts 15 murdersand one forgery.
The judge sentenced Shipman tolife imprisonment, recommending
he never be released.
A whole life tariff.
For once the paperwork was notin his favor and I will say I

(46:32):
will add all of the rest of theevidence that had come up.
They had to stop at 15 becausethere was no way they were going
to be able to give Shipman afair trial because of how
widespread the knowledge was andthe fact that I mean after 15,
it's like, well, you're goingaway forever.
But still part of me is likesad that he didn't have to sit
through that and hear from everysingle victim's family.
But anyway, shipman stilldidn't confess, he didn't

(46:52):
explain and didn't apologize.
The trial established his guilt, but it didn't answer the
question that everybody longedto know.
The guilty verdict should havebeen the end of the story, but
for most murderers, 15 countswould be enough to cement their
legacy of monsters.
But, as we know, the trial onlyscratched the surface.
Everyone knew that 15 was justa fraction of the truth.

(47:12):
The whispers in Hyde, theundertakers and the suspiciously
neat deaths, all of itsuggested hundreds more, and so
the Shipman Inquiry was born.
Dame Janet Smith, a senior highcourt judge with a reputation

(47:33):
for meticulousness, and theinquiry, began in 2001 and
stretched for years, wouldeventually produce six reports
totaling more than 4,000patients.
It was, in essence, a secondtrial, not of Shipman himself,
but the systems that had allowedhim to operate for so long.
Dame Janet approached the taskwith surgical precision.
She sifted through more than270,000 pages of evidence.

(47:54):
Medical records were pulledfrom dusty files and scrutinized
line by line.
Computers were examined fortraces of tampering, families
were interviewed, their griefrecorded alongside suspicions,
and colleagues were asked hardquestions about what they'd seen
and why they remained silent.
The inquiry revealed astaggering pattern.
At least 215 patients had beenmurdered, and it was likely more

(48:18):
than 250.
Some estimates climbed evenhigher.
The victims were overwhelminglyelderly women, but there were
men among them too, and not allof them were frail or dying.
Many of them were healthy,active, with years of life ahead

(48:38):
.
What tied them together wastrust.
Trust in their doctor.
Trust that when Harold Shipmanbrought out his syringe, it was
to ease pain, not induce it.
Trust that when he signed acertificate, it was honest.
That trust was betrayed againand again.
The inquiry also exposedsystemic failures.
Doctors operated with mentaloversight.
Prescriptions for controlleddrugs were not closely monitored

(48:58):
.
Death certificates could besigned without question.
Cremation forms required asecond doctor's signature, but
in practice these wererubber-stamped without scrutiny.
These were rubber-stampedwithout scrutiny Again and again
.
Shipman exploited these cracks.
He altered records on hiscomputer to make deaths look
natural.
He signed certificates withauthority that no one challenged

(49:19):
.
He persuaded families not torequest autopsies.
He operated in plain sight,protected by his white coat and
by the cultural reverence fordoctors and by the reluctance of
others to question one of theirown.
Dame Janet Smith's conclusionwas blunt.
The system failedcatastrophically.
The National Health Service hadplaced too much trust in its
doctors and that trust had beenweaponized.

(49:40):
The inquiry recommendedsweeping reforms.
Death certification wasoverhauled.
Prescribing practices weretightened.
Doctors were monitored moreclosely.
Controlled substances likemorphine would be tracked with
far greater rigor.
The medical profession, onceinsulated by unquestioned
authority, would now besubjected to scrutiny.

(50:01):
However, for families in Hyde,the reforms offered little
comfort.
They already lost mothers andfathers, grandmothers and
friends.
No policy change could bringthem back.
No new regulation could erasethe funerals, the grief, the
empty chairs and living rooms.
For them, the inquiry confirmedwhat they already suspected the
man they trusted had beenkilling with impunity for

(50:24):
decades, and nobody stopped him.
Imagine attending funeral afterfuneral only to wonder later was
it natural, was it Shipman?
Every condolence card written,every hymn sung, every handshake
at a gravesite, all of it wascast into doubt.
People looked back on the facesthey comforted, the tears they
shed, and wondered if they hadbeen mourning not just loss but

(50:45):
murder.
Trust evaporated, patientsbecame suspicious of their
doctors, and families beganquestioning every prescription,
every diagnosis.
So the relationship betweendoctor and patient, once sacred,
was now contaminated with fear.
The grief was communal, heavyand suffocating.
Hyde became known not just asan ordinary town, but the town

(51:07):
of Shipman.
Its name is forever linked tobetrayal, and residents carried
the stigma of the shame, asthough they'd been complicit
simply by trusting him.
For many, the most significantwound wasn't just the loss of
loved ones, but the loss offaith Faith in the system, in
authority and the very peoplemeant to protect them.
And that is what Harold Shipmanstole most brutally.

(51:28):
Why did he do it, though?
That's the question thathaunted everyone.
He never confessed or explainedor offered remorse.
He sat through his trial silentand indifferent, and he died in
prison without ever answering.
Theories abound.
Some believe it all goes backto his mother, to the trauma of
watching her die and themorphine that soothed her pain.

(51:50):
Perhaps Harold was replayingthat scene over and over,
recreating the trauma ofwatching her die and the
morphine that soothed her pain.
Perhaps Harold was replayingthat scene over and over,
recreating the moment of control, the illusion of compassion.
Others see it as pure power, aGod complex.
He decided who lived, who diedand when.
He wrote himself in the role ofarbiter, wielding the syringe
like a scepter.
For Shipman, death wasn't atragedy.

(52:11):
It was a performance, adecision that only he had the
right to make.
Still others suggest a darker,sadistic pleasure, the lack of
remorse and the clumsy forgeryof the will.
The sheer scale of the killingssuggest not mercy but arrogance
.
He killed because he could,because nobody stopped him,
because he was untouchable, andperhaps that's the most chilling
answer of all.
He killed because he could,because nobody stopped him,
because he was untouchable, andperhaps that's the most chilling

(52:32):
answer of all he killed becausehe could.
On January 13, 2004, haroldShipman hanged himself in his
cell at Wakefield Prison.
He'd been working with textilesand had saved enough scraps to
create a noose with which tohang himself.
He killed himself on the daybefore his 58th birthday.
For the families, it wasanother act of cruelty.

(52:54):
They hoped, however, faintly,that he might one day explain
himself, confess or offer someshred of understanding, but
instead he denied them that hehad controlled the deaths of
hundreds of others and in theend he controlled his own.
He left behind no note, noconfession, no explanation, just
silence.
His last phone call to his wife, primrose, ended with his words

(53:16):
I love you too, don't forget, Iwill always look after you.
The prison service announcedhis death early that morning.
Newspapers splashed the newsacross their front pages.
Some called it justice andothers called it cowardice.
Families expressed anger.
He cheated them once more,robbed them of the answers that
they craved.
Harold Shipman left the worldexactly as he'd lived in it on

(53:41):
his own terms, indifferent tothe devastation that he caused.
One of the theories as to why hekilled himself just days before
his 58th birthday was that hiswife Primrose, was not able to
collect his pension unless hedied before the age of 60.
So he killed himself so thatshe would be taken care of.

(54:02):
And that kind of ties into hislast words to her about how he
would take care of her.
So, in closing, harold Shipmanwas not a shadow lurking in an
alley.
He wasn't a masked intruderbreaking through windows.
He was a doctor.
He came into homes, patted thedog, drank the tea and asked

(54:23):
after the family, and thenpulled out a syringe that
delivered death.
He turned the most sacred trustinto a weapon.
He wore a white coat ofauthority and behind it
concealed his cruelty.
He showed us that sometimes thedeadliest monsters aren't
strangers.
They are the very people weinvite into our homes.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
Wowzers, First of all I want to applaud you on your
timing.
I would not be the Sherburn yet.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
that story is crazy there's so much more to it and
that it's not even that long agono it seems old timey.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
I know right, it does seem old timey.
I think it's because he tookhis black bag into the home, so
like it feels old timey for here, just because that hasn't been
a thing here for so long.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
But 2019?
.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
2020 was the last date we heard of Well, 2019 was
when the National Health put anend to the expectation.

Speaker 1 (55:23):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
But he died in 2004.
But still I mean, yeah, hekilled himself in 2004.
But yeah, I mean I feel likethat's yesterday.
It was 21 years ago.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
Yeah, I find it interesting what his motive
could have been.
I think he was.
Obviously it has a tie to hismom.

Speaker 2 (55:44):
Yeah, I think he saw how she was, but I don't think
he was doing it out of like anangel of mercy type thing.
I think he was like I am theman, because if you read the
book or watch the documentaries,he was really, really into
making sure everybody knew hissuperiority.
He would be like trying tooutdo everybody and he would

(56:09):
never listen to advice fromother people.
He always knew more.
And it seemed to harken back tothe fact that his mother, his
mother.
So Anflin was very classist.
They were very like well,you're, you don't go above your
station.
And his mother really wanted togo from lower class to middle

(56:30):
class, and so she would say theywere in a lower class
neighborhood.
She wanted better for her son,and so she'd say these people
aren't good enough for you.
You aren't allowed to associatewith these lower class people.
You're better than them.
And so she kind of raised himthat way, and I'm not saying
it's her fault, but, like youknow, but kind of like set a
little root if, if you want arecipe to, yeah, raise a

(56:53):
narcissist, that's one way to doit.
Yeah for sure, right, oh yeah,you're better than everybody
else.
And especially when he's thefavorite, he's the unabashedly,
unembarrassedly, you know,favorite child of the family,
and everybody knew it.
Yeah, it's just a thing, likelike we're not supposed to play
favorites for a reason.
So he just assumed thatentitlement was like I'm the

(57:14):
best.
Who the hell are you to say I'mnot?

Speaker 1 (57:16):
and then, when he was , so when he felt like these
people got close to him, like,yeah, I'll drink your tea, I'll
get to know your family secretsand whatever, make you trust me.
And no, no, I'm gonna kill younow because you don't know me,
i'm'm still better than you.

Speaker 2 (57:30):
Well, he was playing God.
He was like, and I can snuffyou and I can snuff you Because
it doesn't seem to be, I mean,the last one that got him caught
he just misjudged the fact thatthis woman, I mean she used to
be mayor and the day before shedied she was out, you know,
pruning her hedges and herneighbors were like I don't
understand.

(57:50):
She wasn't frail.
We watched her jump off at thebus stop before the bus had even
stopped.
She jumped off.
She leaped off a bus before ithad even stopped at the bus stop
and just went on her way.
You know what I mean.
Like she was well fit.

Speaker 1 (58:04):
It feels like he started to get like bored and
had to like escalate what he wasdoing.

Speaker 2 (58:11):
So he's like, okay, yeah, I'm gonna try.
Yeah, you got greedy, becausemost of it didn't seem
financially motivated it was.
It was purely the control andthe power and he I think he got
off on playing god well, goodriddance.

Speaker 1 (58:28):
That is sad for the rest of the families that they
only did.
15 I get why they did only Imean, but even though he would
have sat there smug andstone-faced and that would have
been infuriating for thefamilies to witness, at least
like he would have had to listento their words impact
statements.

Speaker 2 (58:43):
I mean at least they did go on afterwards to do the
inquiry.
That exposed 215 for sure.
Some things that I've read goup more in the 400s.
So I mean, like this guy was, Imean it was almost three
decades that he was doing this.
Well, yeah, and think about allthe paper carts.

(59:04):
And Hyde was the last town thathe was in, but he was in
several different locationsbefore then.
So he started from the verybeginning, leaving a trail
behind.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
So I encourage that was another thing.
I felt bad for the town of hydethat it had that nickname
shipman.
Yeah, uh, what was that?

Speaker 2 (59:23):
I don't know that it was the town of shipman like oh,
that stinks they'd had anotherI forget what it was they'd had
another murder.
Oh, the couple, myra, myra andian myra and ian whatever, that
horrible couple that werekilling kids were from hide the

(59:44):
toy box.
No, the moors killers, myrahindley and ian, I shouldn't
look it up, but anyway, anyway,another horrible, horrible story
.
So they're like come on, guys,we're just trying to be a town,
a nice town here.
Listen, if you're listening tosome of this, ian Brady.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
Ian.

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
Brady and Myra Hindley yeah, horrible, horrible
, yeah, so to segue into it.
You want to feel better?
Check out shimmerwood tryshimmerwood beverages go amanda
go you can.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
You can find them at shimmerwoodcom.
They craft cbd in few seltzersusing full spectrum cb a calming
, non-intoxicating effect.
Twice named the number one CBDdrink by Forbes.
These refreshing seltzerscombine main source, fruit,
cocktail bitters and cleaningredients.
No added sugars, caffeine orartificial flavors.

(01:00:43):
I'm only starting to chucklebecause I know the flavors are
coming up and I'll never forgetthe real comment Available in
bold flavors like Raz, Lime,Chai, Cherry, Ginger, Orange and
Just Hemp Just.

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
Hemp.

Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
Shimmerwood offers a natural, flavorful alternative
to alcohol or sugary drinks.
Perfect for relaxing anytime,straight or mixed.
Visit wwwshimmerwoodcom for anexclusive 30%.
That's crazy 30% Off with ourdiscounts code.
Stay suspicious.
S?
T A Y S, u, s, p I C I O U SYay.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
Okay.
So today's medical mishap isbrought to us by an anonymous
listener, friend of the pod, whojust sent this link, nothing
else.
And you know what?
The link didn't need anythingfurther.
Oh my gosh, let me tell youwhat the title is Doctor who

(01:01:40):
left patient during operation tohave sex with nurse allowed to
practice.
Oh gosh, and again, this isanother man.
So you know what?
Uk, are you okay?
You know you had shipping andwe're doing this now, are we
okay?

Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
UK.
It's like are we, are we reallyone to ask if anyone's okay?

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
Oh, that's true or not, but like it's okay.

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
That's true, that's true.
They're like actually Americaare you?
Okay, no, we're not.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
Is anyone okay?
I don't think so.
So this is from the guardian inmanchester.
Apparently a doctor I'm sorry.
A doctor who left a patientmidway through an operation to
have sex with a nurse is at avery low risk of repeating a
serious misconduct, ruled amedical tribunal.

(01:02:32):
Dr Suhail Anjum, 44, and theunnamed nurse were caught in a
compromising position by acolleague who walked in on the
pair at Tameside Hospital.

(01:02:53):
The consultant and anesthetisthad asked another nursing
colleague to monitor the malepatient who was under general
anesthesia so that he could goto the quote bathroom, end quote
.
Instead, anjum, married fatherof three, not a naughty went to
another operating theater at thehospital in Ashton-under-Lyne,

(01:03:16):
greater Manchester, wherebonking took place, and I love
this.
They try to give this apseudonym to the nurse and they
called her Nurse, like theletter C, but it comes across as
Nursie.
So bonking took place atNurssey.
On 16 september 2023, a medicalpractitioner's tribunal service

(01:03:39):
hearing was told.
Another nurse at the hospitaldescribed seeing nursey with her
trousers around her knee areaand her underwear on display,
and that dr anton was tying upthe cord of his trousers oh, wow
, boy getting hot under thecollar up in here.
Anjum was absent from theoperating room for eight minutes

(01:04:00):
.
So never feared, and take long,no harm.
Well, thank goodness for that,because I wouldn't be funny, but
the matter was reported tomanagement and Anjum was
dismissed in February 2024following an internal
investigation.
Last week he told adisciplinary tribunal that he
wanted to resume his career inthe UK and relocate with his

(01:04:23):
family, after they had sincemoved to his native Pakistan
where he worked as a doctor.
He promised that there wouldnever be a repeat of the one-off
error of judgment.
You mean your eight-minuteerror.

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
Yeah, eight minutes of wondering about that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:38):
Giving evidence.
He said it was quite shameful,to say the least.
I only have myself to blame.
Well, who?

Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
else would you have to blame.
He's just disappointed.
Everyone knows it was eightminutes.

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
Also, who else would you have to blame?
Did someone have a gun to yourhead?
Oh say you're going to thebathroom and then go find nursey
in the next room.
No, come on, dude.
Of course you only haveyourself to blame.
I let down everybody, not justmy patient and myself, but just
want to say you also let nurseydown down.

(01:05:10):
Yeah, I shouldn't say that, butI let down my colleagues who
gave me a lot of respect.
Well, they don't now, dude, onMonday.
They're like bathroom break myass.
I can't believe we're talkingabout this.
I love this so much.
So on Monday, the tribunaldetermined that Angem had put
his own interests before thoseof us.
Yeah, he wasn't thinking withhis head brain that Angem had

(01:05:30):
put his own interests beforethose of him.
He wasn't thinking with hishead brain of the patient and
his colleagues, and the incidentinvolving Nurse C had the
potential to distract him.
You think so.
It had the potential todistract him.
He may not have been able togive his full attention to the

(01:05:51):
patient's care.

Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
end quote the tribunal.
Could you imagine youranesthesiologist just steps out
for eight minutes, or like alsoyou're the one covering the
bathroom break, so like the acttook eight minutes, but like you
had to get to the room and hadto like undo your drawers and
whatever.
So I'll be like did bro fallinto the toilet, is he okay?
Like do you need to bro fallinto the toilet, is he okay?

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
Like do you need to go home for the day?
The tribunal chair, rebeccaMiller, said his actions, while
they didn't harm the patient'ssafety, were significant enough
to amount to misconduct.
That was serious.
However, she was satisfied thatAngem was determined not to
repeat his past misconduct andconsidered the risk of
repetition to be quote very low.
No sanction will be imposed onthe doctor and the hearing will

(01:06:39):
reconvene in Manchester onTuesday to decide whether to
issue a warning on hisregistration.
Angem had admitted to engagingin sexual activity with Nurse C
and that he knew she was likelyto be nearby when he left his
patient.
Oh wow.
He also admitted his actionshad the potential to put his
patient at risk.
What do we think, listeners?
Is this somebody that you wantin charge of your general

(01:07:01):
anesthesia?
Just saying, if there's a bodynext door, you're kind of
screwed, but only for a fewminutes, don't worry.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
God, oh Angem, oh bless.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
So, Tara, you're okay .
You guys were under thespotlight this week, but maybe
next week it'll be aboutdifferent countries and asaps
and yeah, we can't say quite yet, but but it'll be something

(01:07:41):
that we look forward to for sureyeah, I'm sure it will be in
America.

Speaker 1 (01:07:49):
So, yeah, next week we'll cover.
We'll cover a case.
It'll probably be a doozy, sojust get your seatbelt on, but
until then, don't miss a beat.
Subscribe or followingDoctoring the Truth wherever you
enjoy your podcasts, forstories that shock, intrigue and
educate.
Trust, after all, is a delicatething.
You can text us.
You can text us directly on ourwebsite at doctoringthetruth,

(01:08:12):
at buzzsproutcom.
Email us your own story ideas,medical mishaps and comments at
doctoringthetruth, at gmail, andbe sure to follow us on
Instagram atdoctoringthetruthpodcast, and
Facebook at doctoringthetruth.
We are on TikTok atdoctoringthetruth and at oddpod.
Don't forget to download, rateand review so we can be sure to
bring you more content next week.
I just want to say good job toJenna one more time, because

(01:08:35):
that was 17 pages, you guys.
So until then, stay safe andstay suspicious.
Bye, goodbye.
I still wouldn't be to Sherburn.
By the way, it's an hour and 12minutes.

Speaker 2 (01:08:48):
Oh no, that's so long .