December 22, 2024 • 47 mins
Doctor Death: Britain's Worst Serial Killer (True Crime Documentary)
Britain’s biggest serial killer was a doctor, Dr Harold Shipman. Unsuspected for many years, Dr. Shipman selected his victims from his patient list. There were clues, but who in the community would believe that a doctor would kill his patients? Suspected of killing over 350 people during his career, it was clumsy attempts at forging the will of one of his victims in his own favour that alerted the police and led to his arrest. Found guilty at his trial and jailed for life, Dr Shipman committed suicide never accepting his guilt.
Criminal Methodology
Shipman carefully selected his victims, targeting elderly women who trusted him as their doctor. He would visit them at home or administer lethal injections during routine consultations, claiming they had died of natural causes. In many cases, Shipman falsified death certificates and medical records to cover his tracks, citing heart failure or other common ailments as the cause of death.Shipman was also known to manipulate his victims’ wills, forging documents to make himself the beneficiary of their estates, further demonstrating his calculated and predatory behavior.
Key Events Leading to His Arrest
Harold Shipman died by suicide in January 2004, hanging himself in his prison cell at Wakefield Prison. His death, though a relief to many, denied families further answers and accountability.
Legacy and Impact
Shipman’s crimes led to widespread reforms in the UK’s medical and legal systems, including:
Doctor Death Britain's Worst Serial Killer True Crime Documentary
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-podcast-2025-police-interrogations-911-calls-and-true-police-stories-podcast--5693470/support.
Britain’s biggest serial killer was a doctor, Dr Harold Shipman. Unsuspected for many years, Dr. Shipman selected his victims from his patient list. There were clues, but who in the community would believe that a doctor would kill his patients? Suspected of killing over 350 people during his career, it was clumsy attempts at forging the will of one of his victims in his own favour that alerted the police and led to his arrest. Found guilty at his trial and jailed for life, Dr Shipman committed suicide never accepting his guilt.
Criminal Methodology
Shipman carefully selected his victims, targeting elderly women who trusted him as their doctor. He would visit them at home or administer lethal injections during routine consultations, claiming they had died of natural causes. In many cases, Shipman falsified death certificates and medical records to cover his tracks, citing heart failure or other common ailments as the cause of death.Shipman was also known to manipulate his victims’ wills, forging documents to make himself the beneficiary of their estates, further demonstrating his calculated and predatory behavior.
Key Events Leading to His Arrest
- The Murder of Kathleen Grundy (1998):
- Shipman's last known victim, an 81-year-old widow, raised suspicion after her daughter, Angela Woodruff, discovered a forged will leaving all of Grundy's estate to Shipman.
- An autopsy revealed lethal levels of morphine in her body.
- Police Investigation:
- Police exhumed several bodies of Shipman’s patients, finding consistent evidence of morphine overdoses.
- His records showed a pattern of deaths shortly after visits, often with fabricated medical histories.
- Arrest:
- Shipman was arrested in September 1998, and further investigations revealed an alarming number of deaths under his care.
- Shipman stood trial in October 1999, charged with 15 counts of murder and one count of forgery.
- In January 2000, he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
- The trial was one of the most high-profile in British history, shedding light on the systemic failings that allowed Shipman to go undetected for so long.
Harold Shipman died by suicide in January 2004, hanging himself in his prison cell at Wakefield Prison. His death, though a relief to many, denied families further answers and accountability.
Legacy and Impact
Shipman’s crimes led to widespread reforms in the UK’s medical and legal systems, including:
- Tighter regulations on death certification
- Improved oversight of medical practitioners
- Greater scrutiny of controlled substances like morphine
Doctor Death Britain's Worst Serial Killer True Crime Documentary
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-podcast-2025-police-interrogations-911-calls-and-true-police-stories-podcast--5693470/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
The thud of a mechanical digger disturbs the silence of
a graveyard.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I'm very conscious of coming across real evil.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
That's real evil.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Here in the dead of night. Police exhume a body.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
It's a hard thing to go through.
Speaker 5 (00:38):
I've no loved one dot God, this.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Is the moment the murderous activities of Britain's biggest serial
killer were unearthed.
Speaker 6 (00:46):
That son of a gun killed my father on Christmas Eve.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
In the coming weeks, the hush of night was to
be repeatedly broken by exhumation after exhumation.
Speaker 7 (01:00):
Who's to joke about it? Because she's always down there
and I bet he's got fed up with and bump
her off.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
And now, over the coming months, detectives were to investigate
the deaths of nearly one hundred and fifty patients of
doctor Fred Shipman.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
How far does this go? How deep is it? How
many people have been murdered by doctor Shipman? I don't
think that they'll ever be an answer to that question.
The only person that knows as not talking to us today.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
As the fifty three year old doctor who used his
caring manner as a cover for murder was led away
to spend the rest of his life behind bars. Two
major questions are being asked, why and how did he
literally get away with murder for so long? For the
first time, the true extent of his ruthless killing spree
(01:58):
can be revealed. How five patients died inside his surgery,
How he killed eight patients in one month, How he
murdered six patients in one street, How to obtain the
means to kill he turned a patient into a drug addict.
How he then killed that patient's father when he asked
(02:21):
too many questions about his son's treatment. How he murdered
another patient he believed had left him a small fortune.
And tonight we can reveal that the man dubbed doctor
Death will in the next few days be charged with
at least eighteen more murders, making in one of the
world's most prolific serial killers. A senior detective lights candles
(02:59):
to the memory of fifteen murder victims of doctor Harold
Frederick Shipman. Stan Egerton was a detective for thirty years,
but nothing during his long service could prepare him for
the enormity of his final case. He still finds it
difficult to come to terms.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
With the exhumations created numerous emulsions, and the one that
sticks in my mind more than any is intrusion. Not
only were we intruding into death, we were intruding into
the grief of the families.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Only months away from retirement, Inspector Egerton was asked to
investigate what appeared to be a routine case, never envisaging
that it would lead to him exuming twelve bodies and
arresting and charging a mass murderer.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
This was a case of a forgery, an attempting to
obtain moneies by deception. Never at the beginning of the
investigation did I ever envisage that I'd be dealing with
not only one murder investigation, but a number of murder investigations.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Inspector Edgerton had been asked to look into the will
of Kathleen Grundy, who died suddenly on June the twenty fourth,
nineteen ninety eight, at her home in Joel Lane, Hyde,
on the outskirts of Manchester. Missus Grundy, a former mayress
of Hyde, was well known about the town as a
sprightly eighty one year old involved in a host of
(04:34):
social activities.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
She was highly respected in the area. She spent all
a spare time working on behalf of other people. She
ran a luncheon club two or three days a week.
She worked at elk their age. She did the banking
for them. She was a remarkable woman.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Two days before she died, a local firm of solicitors
received a crudely typed will purporting to be from Missus Grundy,
who they had never dealt with before. On a standard
Post Office form, Missus Grundy's whole three hundred thousand pound
estate was bequeathed to her doctor, Fred Shipman. Eight days later,
(05:22):
Hamilton's received a letter informing them of Missus Grundy's death.
They contacted her daughter, Angela Woodruff in Lemington, Spa.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
She realized that there must be something wrong because she
is a solicitor in her own right, and, adding fact,
got a mother's will in her possession that had been
made some ten years prior to her death.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Confused and alarmed, Missus Woodruff turned private detective, and armed
with a copy of the Shipman's will, she traveled to
Hide to track down the two people who had allegedly
witnessed it. One of the witnesses was Paul Spencer. Missus
Woodraft soon discovered how devious Shipman had been and how
(06:08):
he tricked her mother.
Speaker 8 (06:12):
Sat in doctor Shipman's surgery. There was maybe six or
seven other people in the surgery. Doctor Shipman popped his
head around his door and asked whether myself and another
girl that was in the surgery with a PRAM wouldn't
mind witnessing a document. So, thinking nothing of it, I
stood up went into the room. There's an old lady
sat in the room. I now know that lady to
(06:34):
Missus Grundy. The doctor passed me I folded over document,
which he said. As he passed it, he asked Missus
Grundy whether or not she was okay with it, or
something along the lines of are you sure about this?
Is this okay? He indicated where I was to sign
the document. The document was folded over, so I couldn't
(06:56):
read it. I couldn't see what was on the document,
and being in the surgery, I didn't dream of asking
assigned my name. Missus Grundy's signature was already on the document.
I believed I was signing a medical form. I didn't
for a minute believe I was signing a will. I
would have expected to sign wills in solicitors offices, not
in doctor surgeries.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Missus Grundy believed she was signing an authorization giving her
approval to take part in a survey on aging for
Manchester University. Shipman's greed was his undoing. Missus Woodruff went
to the police in her hometown of Lemington, SPA, who
referred her complaint to the Greater Manchester Force. The file
(07:40):
dropped on Inspector Egerton's desk.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
Having spoken to Angela Woodruff, the Disceach's daughter, we realized
that we were up in a can of worms. That
we didn't know at that stage how far it was
going to go, although it's very very fair to say
still didn't think at this stage that I was looking
at a murder inquiry.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Returning to Hyde from seeing Missus Woodruff, mister Egerton realized
that this was not the first time the police had
shown an interest in doctor Shipman. Four months earlier, after
a worried GP had expressed concerns about the high number
of deaths among Shipmen's patients, a secret police inquiry was
(08:24):
ordered by the local coroner, John Pollard.
Speaker 9 (08:27):
Originally, I was approached by a local general practitioner in
the Hyde area and she felt that she had been
signing rather more second cremation certificates than would normally be
the case where the first signature was that of doctor Shipman,
and on the basis of that, she then telephoned me
(08:48):
and asked me to look into the matter to make
sure that everything was as it should be. There were
two possible explanations for that. One was that something untoward
was happening, or the other explanation was that doctor Shipman
was just a very very conscientious dupe and happened to
be in attendance with a lot of patients shortly after
they died at their home address.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
But the concerned doctor was not the only person to
notice the abnormal number of deaths being certified by Shipmen undertaker,
Debbie Bambroff was another The well respected family firm Frank
Massey and Son is the largest independent funeral directors in Hyde.
Speaker 10 (09:33):
We were concerned that there were too many deaths from
one surgery, especially when that surgery only had one doctor.
Most of the deaths seemed to fit into a pattern.
Usually ladies, nearly always ladies, never anyone that had been
ill as interminally ill. It seems strange that nearly all
(09:55):
the people that had died were dressed. I was ill.
They generally usually in bed with the nightwere on, but
that was never the case. They were always fully dressed,
as if they just come back from shopping. It was
very rare that anyone actually died in bed. It was
usually sat up in a chair in the living room.
Things just didn't add up. We talked about it as
a family. The circumstances of.
Speaker 11 (10:18):
The deaths never came to me. One day and just
said she was concerned with all these sudden deaths, which
was doctor Shipman was signing the forms for And I
sort of said, there's nothing to worry about. It's just
that his old patience. And I think she had a
word of another doctor about it, and then she she's
had another word with me. This was a couple of
(10:39):
months later something like that. So away with that, I
thought I would down and have a word with doctor Shipman.
Speaker 10 (10:45):
When my father went to see doctor Shipman about the
concerns that we had. I think it took a lot
of courage to do that. It was ridiculous. We trust
a man and for us to make accusations, assumptions, to
have concerns about a doctor maybe murdering people, because that's
(11:08):
what it is.
Speaker 11 (11:09):
That was the last one in the surgery at the time,
said to me, yes, come on in went in his surgery.
I told him then it was a bit rather embarrassing
what I'd come for, and explained to him that both
myself and my daughter a bit concerned with some of
these deaths. And he didn't show any signs of shock, surprise,
(11:31):
anything at all. He just said, I'll show you if
he got his book out, which is the register that
he keeps a copy of the certificate that he's given
to her next of kin to a deceased person, and
showed me on there and he said, anybody can come
and look at this book that wishes.
Speaker 10 (11:48):
To our minds had been put at ease, maybe not fully,
but had been put to tease by various people in
authority that there was nothing untoward.
Speaker 11 (12:00):
We had a call off a police constable. The constable
just said to us what it boils down to us,
he's got a vast amount of patience elderly patients, and
he's such a careing doctor that it just he gets
more deaths than anybody else. And with that I was
quite satisfied.
Speaker 9 (12:18):
The police carried out a full investigation at that stage
based upon the instructions that I gave to them. I
was quite satisfied with the inquiry that they made, but
it led to nothing. That they couldn't see anything that
was wrong.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
At that time, mister Pollard's instructions that Shipman was not
to be made aware of any inquiries or their source
prevented police carrying out a full investigation.
Speaker 10 (12:42):
I would carry on going to see my doctor, Dr Shipman,
as normal, and the longer I sat in his room,
the more I thought how ridiculous these suspicions and concerns
had been. It was impossible to think that my doctor,
who I trusted in and confided in, could be doing
something so terrible.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Aware from Debbie's father's visit that his murderous activities had
aroused suspicions, did Shipman panic and hurriedly decide to forge
missus Grundy's will to provide him with the funds to flee.
Inspector Egerton thinks not.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
It's been suggested from a number of sources that one
of the reasons why he perhaps forged the will as
he did, was that he thought that his world was
collapsing around him. I personally don't go along with that
view at all. It's my firm belief that he thought
(13:46):
he was so invincible, so super intelligent, that he thought
that he the police weren't aware of what was going on.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Following the coroner's inquiry, Shipman's belief that he could fool
anyone led him to commit three more murders, the last
being Missus Grundy. The crude forging of her will was
the act of supreme arrogance that was to be his downfall.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
And I think it's part of this arrogance. I've got
away with this for the length of time that I have.
Nobody's queried me about it. Nobody's questioned me about it.
I might as well make a few bob out of this.
May well have been his thoughts, and he's proceeded to
put together that will, which when you look at it,
is just an amateurist attempt.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
The inquiry was beginning to take off at a rapid
rate of knots, and I've got to say that he
sets of Superintendent burn Ad Apostles took hold of things
then and said, well, let's sit down and let's go
through this piece by piece, and let's simulate exis exactly
(15:00):
what we've got. It must have made him sit up
sharply in his chair when a detective inspector suddenly talking
about exhamation of bodies. But to give him his due,
it didn't take him long to realize and grasp that
what I was telling him was probably the only direction
(15:22):
that we could go in.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
In the dead of night. A month after Missus Grundy
was buried at Hyde Chapel, Inspector Egerton was in charge
of exhuming her body.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
The actual logistics of doing an exhamation is a mammoth operation.
There are so many things to consider to keep the
decency of the matter, to show respect and reverence to
the deceased remains. There was the family that had to
be considered. We had to make sure that we'd identified
(15:56):
the correct grave. We had to take soil samples, make
sure that the mortshie were put on notice because we
were going to have a pulse morton. It's a strange
feeling to be stood there at three o'clock in the morning,
in the pitch dark with a team of men that
were going to dig up a body. Being the senior
(16:19):
officer at the exhamation, so I was also conscious of
the welfare of all the staff that were there. Even
though some of them were not police officers, there were
civilian members of support staff. I was conscious of their
feelings as well.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
At the same time as Missus Grundy was being exhumed,
Stan Egerton had a team of detectives Raidshipman's home and
surgery looking for the typewriter and other evidence used to
forge the will.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
Dr Shipman was well aware of what we were looking
for and in fact produced the typewriter, which is a
portable type typewriter. It didn't look a very expensive machine,
but he produced it from a cupboard in the surgery.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
The typewriter, the forged will, and samples taken from Missus
Grundy's liver and muscle tissue were sent to the Forensic
Science Laboratory at Chorley for analysis. Experts quickly established that
Shipman's typewriter had been used to forge the will and
the letter there a But while Inspector Egerton waited for
(17:35):
Missus Grundy's post mortem results, he was approached by a
local taxi driver who'd built up his own dossier of
suspicions against Shipman. Going back many years.
Speaker 12 (17:47):
Perhaps two dozen of my customers passed away in very
very similar circumstances, all of them doctor shipments perships. People
were having the car from the doctor and within a
couple of hours of him visiting them, they were passing away.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
John was talked out of going to the police by
his wife, worried about wrongly accusing a well respected doctor
of murder, but when the investigation into Kathleen Grundy's death started,
he decided it was time to act.
Speaker 12 (18:21):
When I approached mister Editton after Kathleen under his death
and I told him that I'd compiled a list of
my customers who died in similar circumstances to Kathleen, going
back six years, he was shocked.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
When I questioned them, and I looked into it, it was
plainly evident to me that we were going to have
to examine the deaths of a number of other people.
Got reactions set in, and when that was discussed by
the senior management teams, we then decided that yes, we'd
have to look at further exhamations.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
In Part two, the death of Shipman's mother and how
it may have been his trigger for murder, Harold Frederick
Shipman was born in Nottingham in January nineteen forty six.
His early years were spent at this house in Longmead Drive.
(19:22):
His father, also Harold Frederick, was a long distance lorry driver.
His mother Vera, was ill for many years, slowly dying
of cancer. Fred the middle one of three children, was
the clever one of the family. He passed his eleven
plus to the local grammar school high Pavement. Although never
(19:43):
a high flier and in the sea stream, Shipman was
respected by the other boys for his sporting prowess on
the athletics track and the rugby field, seen here securing
the ball in a line out in some rare footage
of a school ma Shipman is well remembered by former schoolmates.
Speaker 13 (20:04):
I was a friend of Fred.
Speaker 12 (20:05):
We were in the same year as one another.
Speaker 13 (20:08):
We played rugby together.
Speaker 8 (20:11):
He was a very very able sportsman and notable for
is rugby and also for his athletics.
Speaker 14 (20:18):
Fred was a very quiet, calm individual until he got
on the rugby field and then he was quite a
fiery character, but as an individual off the field, very
easy going and quiet. Young man.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Fred passed five O level gcees and went into the
sixth form, only for disaster to strike. His mother died.
Fred was just seventeen. Vera Shipman had fought a long
and brave battle against cancer with ever increasing daily injections
of morphine. Some believe this early introduction to morphine and
(20:59):
death had a lasting effect on young Fred. His reaction
at the time was considered bizarre.
Speaker 15 (21:07):
It must have been a Monday morning that we met
up and we were walking back to school and did
you do you know, what did you do for the weekend?
And I told him what I'd done at the weekend,
and I'll ask you what he'd done. And he said, oh,
my mum died. I said, oh god, what did you do?
Speaker 7 (21:25):
You know?
Speaker 15 (21:25):
It must have been awful And I said, ah, yeah,
I went for a run. But he went on to
say that he'd actually run till I think he said
two o'clock in the morning or something, and in the
pouring rain.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
After his mother's death, Shipman decided to become a doctor.
He spent the next six years as a medical student
here at Leeds University. In his first year, he met
his wife, Primrose oxterby then a pretty seventeen year old
window dresser. Within months, prim was pregnant with Sarah, the
(22:05):
first of their four children, and much against her parents' wishes,
they were quietly married. After a couple of years training
as a houseman, Shipman joined a group gp practice in
the Yorkshire milltown of Toddmden in the mid nineteen seventies.
(22:27):
He's remembered fondly for his enthusiasm.
Speaker 16 (22:30):
It started with a keen young man coming as the
latest ideas and techniques, with a greatly live enthusiasm and
very much hands on putting it into practice and encouraging
(22:51):
us all to do the same thing. And I think
we all benefited from his sojourneral with us.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Despite his popularity, Fred had problems. He started having mysterious blackouts.
Dr Greeve, Shipman's senior partner at the time, remembers being
called to Fred's home after he collapsed in the bath.
Speaker 16 (23:17):
He had one or two blackouts and was finally diagnosed
by a consultant as having epilepsy and being unable to
drive a car. So his wife volunteered to fill in
this so that he could continue to work, which he
did very efficiently.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
But Fred Shipman hadn't told his colleagues the truth. He
was a drug addict with a huge dependency on pethodine,
a painkiller used in childbirth.
Speaker 16 (23:51):
I mean there wasn't any great disaster or anything.
Speaker 17 (23:54):
It was just.
Speaker 16 (23:56):
He could no longer.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
He was a sick doctor. Therever he had to go.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
In February nineteen seventy six, Harold Frederick Shipman stood in
the dock at Halifax Magistrate's Court and admitted eight charges
of obtaining drugs by deception and asked for seventy four
other offenses to be taken into account. He was fined
a total of six hundred pounds. The court heard he
(24:21):
obtained the highly addictive drug by over prescribing for patients
at a local nursing home and by forging prescriptions. Shipman
agreed to undergo treatment at the renowned Retreat Hospital in York.
Although the General Medical Council was notified, Shipman was not
struck off. In nineteen seventy nine, free of his addiction,
(24:47):
he applied to join a group practice in Hyde, a
small Cheshire market town with a population of sixty thousand.
At his interview, the six partners were impressed by Shipman,
particularly his honesty that he had been addicted to pethidine.
They decided to give him a second chance. Fred Shipman
(25:10):
threw himself into local community life, both as a hard
working doctor and as a member of local organizations like
the Saint John Ambulance Brigade, the Scouts and as a
local school governor. He soon became so popular that he
had a long waiting list of people wanting to join
his panel. But in nineteen ninety one, Shipman delivered a
(25:33):
bombshell to his partners after almost twelve years, he was
leaving to go it alone in a single handed practice,
and glibly announced he was taking his three thousand patients
with him. The parting was acrimonious, but Shipman didn't care.
He'd carefully planned the move for months and within weeks
(25:55):
opened just a few yards away in a converted shop
in Market Street. Now unsupervised, he could enjoy his secret
self indulgence murder.
Speaker 17 (26:08):
And as a single handed general practitioner, he would show them.
He would show how good he was and how he
could help people, and he would do things his own
way and without the breaks of working in a partnership
and the constraints that daily testing yourself against colleagues has
on one. Perhaps that was one of the fact as
(26:31):
that led to him going off for else.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
How seriously Shipman had gone off the rails only became
clear when the toxicology results came back from the forensic
science laboratory.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
I'm still amazed that the results that we got back
from the forengic examination were as they were. I didn't
expect that for one minute.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
The death certificate issued by Shipman recorded Kathleen Grundy had
died of old age. The truth was she had been
killed by a massive dose of morphine.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
Such an amount that the forensic scientists had no doubt
that death would have occurred in quite a short time.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
She had been to visit him on the previous day
to her death at around about four o'clock, and he
made an appointment with her to go and take a
blood sample. The following morning, He's made an appointment to killer.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
When questioned, Shipman's incredible claim was that missus Grundy at
eighty one was a Heroin addict, what had started as
a simple fraud investigation was now a full scale murder inquiry.
Information flooded in from anxious callers to special helplines, and
(27:49):
detectives began to notice a pattern to the deaths.
Speaker 4 (27:54):
The number of people that died at home, single women
living on their own, dying within an hour, as soul
of seeing doctor Shipman dying sat in a chair, dressed
in the day clause, so many of them going to
the surgery and dying in the surgery. It just stretched
(28:17):
logic to something that you could not believe. And right
away we knew that we were probably dealing with one
of the biggest murder investigations that one could imagine.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
But it was Shipman's fascination with computers that was to
provide another major breakthrough for the inquiry team and help
convict him. Detectives examined the deaths of nearly one hundred
and fifty of his patients.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
Checks of some of the computerized records of some of
the deceased patients revealed that visits that they'd made to
the surgery had been a literated. Things that had been
written in about the patient's health had been taken out,
and we can only surmise that that was done because
it didn't correspond with what was on the death certificate.
(29:14):
On other occasions, visits appeared on the patient's record when
in fact we believed that no visit was made to
the surgery. It was as though he was building up
a history that would tie in with the medical records
(29:34):
that he wrote on to the death certificate. He was
certainly covering up his tracks for something.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
And police computer experts soon discovered what it was. Shipman
was altering patient records to conceal his crimes, and on occasion,
to save time, he recorded their death before he killed them.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
The number of deaths towards the end and were increasing
at such a rapid rate that I sometimes wonder whether
he'd have time to prepare a lot of what he
was doing, and this was why he was changing the
medical records round about the time the person died shortly afterwards,
(30:20):
and in fact, in one case he was altering the
records before body was even found. What we decided to
do was to go back over a period of twelve
months and ascertain how many people had died and how
many death certificates that Dr Shipman had written in a
(30:43):
twelve month period. There were some thirty six deaths. One
of the things that had jumped out at us was
that never had there been a post morten. We also
realized that the number of deaths that he had in
a twelve month period was two and a half times
more than the average.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
An incident room had been set up at Ashton underlying
Police Station, manned by fifty six hand picked detectives. Special
flow charts were designed showing when, where, how and under
what circumstances patients had died in the previous five years.
Speaker 4 (31:22):
Our investigations established that on many many occasions, doctor Shipman
had seen them on the day that they died. In
a lot of cases, you'd seen them within if not
an hour, certainly a couple of hours of death. And
again that itself become illogical.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Alice Kitchen was one of those illogical cases where Shipman
had visited shortly before she died, but there was something
unusual which bothered her family.
Speaker 5 (31:53):
All the family were very surprised and wondered why she
was sat where she was on the sete because she
never sits there. She always sits in a chair where
she can see out the window and as soon as
anybody pulls up, she's got the door open ready for
them before they've got to the door. She always sits there.
And where she was found on the city she had
her back to the window. And I do know that
(32:17):
one neighbor that was interviewed was asked if she saw
Doc Shipman coming or going, and she said that he
was coming out as she was going in her house,
and that she thought it was unusual that my mother
was sat on the city She could see the back
of her, and she said that she never sits there
and that she always sees everybody to the door, and
she didn't see him to the door. She thought that
(32:39):
was odd and Dot Shipman never spoke to her and
never said she's not well, will you sit with her?
Or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Alice Kitchen may have died in an unusual chair at home,
but five of doctor Shipman's patients died in an even
more unlikely place his surgery.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
We spoke to a number of doctors and said, you know,
how many times have you ever had a patient dying
the surgery, and most doctors look aghast. It never happens.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
One of those who died in his surgery was seventy
two year old Edith Brady, a long term patient of
Fred Shipman. Edith, who loved a social occasion, was the
principal guest at the family's Christmas party. A few months
before her death.
Speaker 7 (33:28):
They told me that she gone in the back room
to lay down, and he just went in and founded
head and that he worked on her and nothing I've
been done. So we spent some time when I gave
her a kiss and noticed how tired as she was,
(33:48):
and they said it was her heart, and we just
accepted that that's what it was. And I was just
glad that she didn't have to have a pause Martin,
because I didn't want to be imaged about. I just said, well,
you know, I'm glad she was there, and he said, well,
she's not the first one to die. I had another
lady that died in here who said that at the time,
(34:11):
and I was glad because that's a place she liked
to be. She liked doctor Shipman. We used to joke
about it because she's always down there, and I bet
he's got fed up with and bumped her off. And
now now when I think about it, it's unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Detectives were also noticing other disturbing facts that Shipman had
been present when six of his patients died in one
street in an eighteen month period, and that in one month,
eight women patients died mysteriously.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
We saw that on one occasion in a particular month
there were eight people died, which is on average of
two a week, and whenever we spoke to other people
in the medical profession that they stood back in amazement.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
In Part three, how Shipmen stole from his patients and
acquired his means to kill For a second time, Hyde
was overshadowed by mass murder in the mid nineteen sixties,
it was home to Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, the
(35:24):
Moor's murderers. Now it was home to Fred Shipman, and
as the new investigation grew once again the population faced
the horror of killing. Attending the exhumations of his parishioners,
father Denis Marr found himself a central figure.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
The community were in shock would be a good way
of describing it. In shock, they just couldn't believe this
was happening, and they didn't want to believe it. It's all
a bad dream. On top of this of shock and
disbelief and the shuttering of trust, people also had a
(36:06):
sense of guilt. They had suspicions but didn't voice them
or speak of them for a number of reasons because
at the time they didn't want to upset other members
of the family. But a more common factor. Who would
have believed me anyhow if I said this to anybody.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Father Dennis vividly remembers Shipman's dismissive manner towards the grieving
family of Winnie Meller, only hours after he'd murdered her.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Her daughters were in deep shock. I was very shocked, myself,
very saddened because I was quite fond of win to
the lovely person. And the doctor came in in a
very brusque manner and said something along the lines of
(37:00):
you were aware your your mother had a heart condition.
I could see the look of surprise in the daughter's faces.
He followed this up by saying she wouldn't accept treatment
and she wouldn't go to the hospital. The daughters now
are kind of looking in amazement at him. He immediately
(37:21):
followed this up by saying, do you have an undertaker?
And at this stage I intervene and said, well, the
woman has just died, and I think we just leave
that at the moment. He then uh followed on saying,
and by the way, there's no problem with issuing a
(37:44):
death certificate. I can do I can do that, just
pop down to the surgery and.
Speaker 6 (37:49):
That was it.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
He was gone. Knowing what I know now, I can
certainly say he was making sure that nothing would go
wrong and that there would be no lem meant to
blame in any way attached to him, or any suspicion whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
When detectives searched Shipman's home, they found a large number
of rings and other jewelry stuffed into a bag in
the garage. This habit of petty theft from his victims
provoked feuds within their families.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
Various members of the family being questioned as a who
got there forst? And home profound mum forst and so on,
and is leading to a kind of suspicion so all
around the place. I do know also from one family
that one of the women, on the day of her death,
(38:45):
had been to collect her pension, which would have been
in the region of suppose seventy eighty pounds. She certainly
didn't spend all that that afternoon, but no money being
(39:06):
found in our parts after she died.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
It may never be known how often Shipman emptied the
purses of his victims for poultry sums, but from one
of them he expected to inherit sixty pounds. Biancha Pomfret
was the youngest of Shipman's victims, only forty nine when
he killed her. Divorced and suffering from manic depression, Missus
(39:32):
Pomfret had come to depend on doctor Shipman.
Speaker 13 (39:36):
In a nutshell. She thought the well of him, to
the extent that several years ago we were contemplating moving houses,
and one of the reasons why we didn't move is
she stressed that she would have preferred to have stared
in termside and under doctor Shipman. I think if somebody
(39:57):
puts the relationship that they've got with the doctor about
moving on to a new formal life, got to be
quite a close link, so much so that she informed
me several months before her death that she was actually
leaving all the moneys and properties to him in a will.
(40:20):
She also stated that she told doctor Shipman this. Fortunately,
I convinced her that the proper thing to do would
be to leave her moneys and properties to the grandchildren.
I can't speculate as to why Shipman murdered bi Ancha,
(40:44):
whether or not it was because of the fact that
he thought he was going to benefit financially, or maybe
even if she had informed him, he realized he'd been
cut oud of well, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Biancha Pomfret was the fourth victim to be exhumed. In
the following month, police opened eight more graves and removed
the bodies for examination. Each body contained varying high levels
of morphine. But even without a body, police were able
to charge Shipmen with the murders of six patients who'd
(41:23):
been cremated. So incriminating was the computer and other circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
The evidence that we were being presented with in relation
to those bodies where they had been cremated, was so
of a welming as far as we were concerned, that
we could not just put it to one side.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
By now it was becoming obvious to police that Shipman
arrogantly believed he'd created the perfect murder and had got
away with it for years.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
He believed that he was able to face this thing out,
that people didn't have a superior enough intellect to break
down and establish the facts of what had gone on here.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
When he was arrested, detectives like stan Egerton saw that
arrogance at first hand.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
During the course of questioning. His arrogance was to the
fore all the time. Whenever I spoke to him, it
was plainly obvious that he thought I was beneath him,
and that he gave a distinct impression that it should
be at least a superintendent that was talking to him
(42:32):
and dealing with him, and he made that plainly obvious
that I wasn't his intellectual equal.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
I think that he came in to be interviewed on
the first occasion, on the seventh of September, and having
walked in through the door, he expected to be walking
out around about five o'clock in the evening, and I
think he was surprised when he was charged with murder.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
You could see his demeanor change, voice changed. The arrogance
was the first thing to go. And then to a
certain extent, he tried then to control the interview by
changing the subject or trying to indicate to the interviewing
(43:16):
officers that they didn't understand. And as we went further
into the interviews and we put the forensic evidence towards him,
the morphine in the body, he could not any way
explain that. The medical records, he couldn't explain again why
they'd been changed. Eventually he got more and more distressed
(43:42):
and at one stage actually broke down.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
But what really shocked hardened detectives like Inspector Egerton was
the ruthless and cynical length Shipman went to to obtain
his weapon to kill the morphine. Two years ago, former
airline pilot Jim King was wrongly diagnosed with cancer a
week after marrying his American wife, Debbie. After undergoing three
(44:11):
months of painful chemotherapy, Shipman was told he'd never had cancer,
but Shipman failed to pass on the good news. Instead,
Shipman continued to prescribe Jim massive amounts of morphine in
order to maintain a regular supply of his murder weapon.
Speaker 6 (44:32):
He was told on three separate occasions by consultants from
different hospitals that I had not had cancer. I had
never had cancer, but he still proceeded to do this.
I know now why did this? Because the more patients
that you have are terminally ill, the more morphine that
(44:52):
you can have in your stock.
Speaker 17 (44:54):
If you're in general medical practice and you are caring
for terminal patients at home, sooner or later you can
acquire You can guarantee that you will acquire heroin which
has been unused and which you basically do not have
to account for.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Jim's father, a Shipman. Patient was so concerned about his
son's health that he started asking questions too many for
Shipman's liking, and the doctor killed him.
Speaker 6 (45:23):
My father had been down to the surgery a few
times to ask doctor Shipman what was going on with
my kiss because he could see me deteriorating rapidly with
the amount of morphine I was using. I mean, that's
sort of a gun killed my father on Christmas Eve
(45:44):
of all the days I mean to do this, And
I believe he did that because he needed to stop
this man complaining at that time, because the last thing
he needed was to have complaints, knowing that what we
know now, the last thing he needed is for somebody
to come forward and say, what the hell's going on here?
(46:06):
And then all this lot would have come out. And
you know, it's a shame it hadn't come out, because
after he killed my father, he proceeded to kill four
or five other other people.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
And Shipman would almost certainly still be killing today but
for his amateurish attempt to forge Missus Grundy's will. But
the big question still remains, why did a doctor dedicated
to saving life murder his patients. Those close to the
case have their own theories.
Speaker 4 (46:38):
He might get a kick out of being in control,
and the ultimate power is the power over life and death.
I can't think of anything else that could explain it.
Speaker 17 (46:51):
Why he did it, I think is simply a matter
of convenience. That it was more convenient, perhaps to get
rid of a patient who was an all could patient
by killing her than by trying to persuade the Family
Practitioner committee to transfer her to another general practitioner. It's horrendous,
(47:14):
isn't it to think of that that could happen, But
it clearly did. I think that a significant number of
the people that doctor Shipman killed he may have killed
quite simply because he did not wish to continue caring
for them, for whatever reason.
The thud of a mechanical digger disturbs the silence of
a graveyard.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I'm very conscious of coming across real evil.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
That's real evil.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Here in the dead of night. Police exhume a body.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
It's a hard thing to go through.
Speaker 5 (00:38):
I've no loved one dot God, this.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Is the moment the murderous activities of Britain's biggest serial
killer were unearthed.
Speaker 6 (00:46):
That son of a gun killed my father on Christmas Eve.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
In the coming weeks, the hush of night was to
be repeatedly broken by exhumation after exhumation.
Speaker 7 (01:00):
Who's to joke about it? Because she's always down there
and I bet he's got fed up with and bump
her off.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
And now, over the coming months, detectives were to investigate
the deaths of nearly one hundred and fifty patients of
doctor Fred Shipman.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
How far does this go? How deep is it? How
many people have been murdered by doctor Shipman? I don't
think that they'll ever be an answer to that question.
The only person that knows as not talking to us today.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
As the fifty three year old doctor who used his
caring manner as a cover for murder was led away
to spend the rest of his life behind bars. Two
major questions are being asked, why and how did he
literally get away with murder for so long? For the
first time, the true extent of his ruthless killing spree
(01:58):
can be revealed. How five patients died inside his surgery,
How he killed eight patients in one month, How he
murdered six patients in one street, How to obtain the
means to kill he turned a patient into a drug addict.
How he then killed that patient's father when he asked
(02:21):
too many questions about his son's treatment. How he murdered
another patient he believed had left him a small fortune.
And tonight we can reveal that the man dubbed doctor
Death will in the next few days be charged with
at least eighteen more murders, making in one of the
world's most prolific serial killers. A senior detective lights candles
(02:59):
to the memory of fifteen murder victims of doctor Harold
Frederick Shipman. Stan Egerton was a detective for thirty years,
but nothing during his long service could prepare him for
the enormity of his final case. He still finds it
difficult to come to terms.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
With the exhumations created numerous emulsions, and the one that
sticks in my mind more than any is intrusion. Not
only were we intruding into death, we were intruding into
the grief of the families.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Only months away from retirement, Inspector Egerton was asked to
investigate what appeared to be a routine case, never envisaging
that it would lead to him exuming twelve bodies and
arresting and charging a mass murderer.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
This was a case of a forgery, an attempting to
obtain moneies by deception. Never at the beginning of the
investigation did I ever envisage that I'd be dealing with
not only one murder investigation, but a number of murder investigations.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Inspector Edgerton had been asked to look into the will
of Kathleen Grundy, who died suddenly on June the twenty fourth,
nineteen ninety eight, at her home in Joel Lane, Hyde,
on the outskirts of Manchester. Missus Grundy, a former mayress
of Hyde, was well known about the town as a
sprightly eighty one year old involved in a host of
(04:34):
social activities.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
She was highly respected in the area. She spent all
a spare time working on behalf of other people. She
ran a luncheon club two or three days a week.
She worked at elk their age. She did the banking
for them. She was a remarkable woman.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Two days before she died, a local firm of solicitors
received a crudely typed will purporting to be from Missus Grundy,
who they had never dealt with before. On a standard
Post Office form, Missus Grundy's whole three hundred thousand pound
estate was bequeathed to her doctor, Fred Shipman. Eight days later,
(05:22):
Hamilton's received a letter informing them of Missus Grundy's death.
They contacted her daughter, Angela Woodruff in Lemington, Spa.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
She realized that there must be something wrong because she
is a solicitor in her own right, and, adding fact,
got a mother's will in her possession that had been
made some ten years prior to her death.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Confused and alarmed, Missus Woodruff turned private detective, and armed
with a copy of the Shipman's will, she traveled to
Hide to track down the two people who had allegedly
witnessed it. One of the witnesses was Paul Spencer. Missus
Woodraft soon discovered how devious Shipman had been and how
(06:08):
he tricked her mother.
Speaker 8 (06:12):
Sat in doctor Shipman's surgery. There was maybe six or
seven other people in the surgery. Doctor Shipman popped his
head around his door and asked whether myself and another
girl that was in the surgery with a PRAM wouldn't
mind witnessing a document. So, thinking nothing of it, I
stood up went into the room. There's an old lady
sat in the room. I now know that lady to
(06:34):
Missus Grundy. The doctor passed me I folded over document,
which he said. As he passed it, he asked Missus
Grundy whether or not she was okay with it, or
something along the lines of are you sure about this?
Is this okay? He indicated where I was to sign
the document. The document was folded over, so I couldn't
(06:56):
read it. I couldn't see what was on the document,
and being in the surgery, I didn't dream of asking
assigned my name. Missus Grundy's signature was already on the document.
I believed I was signing a medical form. I didn't
for a minute believe I was signing a will. I
would have expected to sign wills in solicitors offices, not
in doctor surgeries.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Missus Grundy believed she was signing an authorization giving her
approval to take part in a survey on aging for
Manchester University. Shipman's greed was his undoing. Missus Woodruff went
to the police in her hometown of Lemington, SPA, who
referred her complaint to the Greater Manchester Force. The file
(07:40):
dropped on Inspector Egerton's desk.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
Having spoken to Angela Woodruff, the Disceach's daughter, we realized
that we were up in a can of worms. That
we didn't know at that stage how far it was
going to go, although it's very very fair to say
still didn't think at this stage that I was looking
at a murder inquiry.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Returning to Hyde from seeing Missus Woodruff, mister Egerton realized
that this was not the first time the police had
shown an interest in doctor Shipman. Four months earlier, after
a worried GP had expressed concerns about the high number
of deaths among Shipmen's patients, a secret police inquiry was
(08:24):
ordered by the local coroner, John Pollard.
Speaker 9 (08:27):
Originally, I was approached by a local general practitioner in
the Hyde area and she felt that she had been
signing rather more second cremation certificates than would normally be
the case where the first signature was that of doctor Shipman,
and on the basis of that, she then telephoned me
(08:48):
and asked me to look into the matter to make
sure that everything was as it should be. There were
two possible explanations for that. One was that something untoward
was happening, or the other explanation was that doctor Shipman
was just a very very conscientious dupe and happened to
be in attendance with a lot of patients shortly after
they died at their home address.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
But the concerned doctor was not the only person to
notice the abnormal number of deaths being certified by Shipmen undertaker,
Debbie Bambroff was another The well respected family firm Frank
Massey and Son is the largest independent funeral directors in Hyde.
Speaker 10 (09:33):
We were concerned that there were too many deaths from
one surgery, especially when that surgery only had one doctor.
Most of the deaths seemed to fit into a pattern.
Usually ladies, nearly always ladies, never anyone that had been
ill as interminally ill. It seems strange that nearly all
(09:55):
the people that had died were dressed. I was ill.
They generally usually in bed with the nightwere on, but
that was never the case. They were always fully dressed,
as if they just come back from shopping. It was
very rare that anyone actually died in bed. It was
usually sat up in a chair in the living room.
Things just didn't add up. We talked about it as
a family. The circumstances of.
Speaker 11 (10:18):
The deaths never came to me. One day and just
said she was concerned with all these sudden deaths, which
was doctor Shipman was signing the forms for And I
sort of said, there's nothing to worry about. It's just
that his old patience. And I think she had a
word of another doctor about it, and then she she's
had another word with me. This was a couple of
(10:39):
months later something like that. So away with that, I
thought I would down and have a word with doctor Shipman.
Speaker 10 (10:45):
When my father went to see doctor Shipman about the
concerns that we had. I think it took a lot
of courage to do that. It was ridiculous. We trust
a man and for us to make accusations, assumptions, to
have concerns about a doctor maybe murdering people, because that's
(11:08):
what it is.
Speaker 11 (11:09):
That was the last one in the surgery at the time,
said to me, yes, come on in went in his surgery.
I told him then it was a bit rather embarrassing
what I'd come for, and explained to him that both
myself and my daughter a bit concerned with some of
these deaths. And he didn't show any signs of shock, surprise,
(11:31):
anything at all. He just said, I'll show you if
he got his book out, which is the register that
he keeps a copy of the certificate that he's given
to her next of kin to a deceased person, and
showed me on there and he said, anybody can come
and look at this book that wishes.
Speaker 10 (11:48):
To our minds had been put at ease, maybe not fully,
but had been put to tease by various people in
authority that there was nothing untoward.
Speaker 11 (12:00):
We had a call off a police constable. The constable
just said to us what it boils down to us,
he's got a vast amount of patience elderly patients, and
he's such a careing doctor that it just he gets
more deaths than anybody else. And with that I was
quite satisfied.
Speaker 9 (12:18):
The police carried out a full investigation at that stage
based upon the instructions that I gave to them. I
was quite satisfied with the inquiry that they made, but
it led to nothing. That they couldn't see anything that
was wrong.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
At that time, mister Pollard's instructions that Shipman was not
to be made aware of any inquiries or their source
prevented police carrying out a full investigation.
Speaker 10 (12:42):
I would carry on going to see my doctor, Dr Shipman,
as normal, and the longer I sat in his room,
the more I thought how ridiculous these suspicions and concerns
had been. It was impossible to think that my doctor,
who I trusted in and confided in, could be doing
something so terrible.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Aware from Debbie's father's visit that his murderous activities had
aroused suspicions, did Shipman panic and hurriedly decide to forge
missus Grundy's will to provide him with the funds to flee.
Inspector Egerton thinks not.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
It's been suggested from a number of sources that one
of the reasons why he perhaps forged the will as
he did, was that he thought that his world was
collapsing around him. I personally don't go along with that
view at all. It's my firm belief that he thought
(13:46):
he was so invincible, so super intelligent, that he thought
that he the police weren't aware of what was going on.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Following the coroner's inquiry, Shipman's belief that he could fool
anyone led him to commit three more murders, the last
being Missus Grundy. The crude forging of her will was
the act of supreme arrogance that was to be his downfall.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
And I think it's part of this arrogance. I've got
away with this for the length of time that I have.
Nobody's queried me about it. Nobody's questioned me about it.
I might as well make a few bob out of this.
May well have been his thoughts, and he's proceeded to
put together that will, which when you look at it,
is just an amateurist attempt.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
The inquiry was beginning to take off at a rapid
rate of knots, and I've got to say that he
sets of Superintendent burn Ad Apostles took hold of things
then and said, well, let's sit down and let's go
through this piece by piece, and let's simulate exis exactly
(15:00):
what we've got. It must have made him sit up
sharply in his chair when a detective inspector suddenly talking
about exhamation of bodies. But to give him his due,
it didn't take him long to realize and grasp that
what I was telling him was probably the only direction
(15:22):
that we could go in.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
In the dead of night. A month after Missus Grundy
was buried at Hyde Chapel, Inspector Egerton was in charge
of exhuming her body.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
The actual logistics of doing an exhamation is a mammoth operation.
There are so many things to consider to keep the
decency of the matter, to show respect and reverence to
the deceased remains. There was the family that had to
be considered. We had to make sure that we'd identified
(15:56):
the correct grave. We had to take soil samples, make
sure that the mortshie were put on notice because we
were going to have a pulse morton. It's a strange
feeling to be stood there at three o'clock in the morning,
in the pitch dark with a team of men that
were going to dig up a body. Being the senior
(16:19):
officer at the exhamation, so I was also conscious of
the welfare of all the staff that were there. Even
though some of them were not police officers, there were
civilian members of support staff. I was conscious of their
feelings as well.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
At the same time as Missus Grundy was being exhumed,
Stan Egerton had a team of detectives Raidshipman's home and
surgery looking for the typewriter and other evidence used to
forge the will.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
Dr Shipman was well aware of what we were looking
for and in fact produced the typewriter, which is a
portable type typewriter. It didn't look a very expensive machine,
but he produced it from a cupboard in the surgery.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
The typewriter, the forged will, and samples taken from Missus
Grundy's liver and muscle tissue were sent to the Forensic
Science Laboratory at Chorley for analysis. Experts quickly established that
Shipman's typewriter had been used to forge the will and
the letter there a But while Inspector Egerton waited for
(17:35):
Missus Grundy's post mortem results, he was approached by a
local taxi driver who'd built up his own dossier of
suspicions against Shipman. Going back many years.
Speaker 12 (17:47):
Perhaps two dozen of my customers passed away in very
very similar circumstances, all of them doctor shipments perships. People
were having the car from the doctor and within a
couple of hours of him visiting them, they were passing away.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
John was talked out of going to the police by
his wife, worried about wrongly accusing a well respected doctor
of murder, but when the investigation into Kathleen Grundy's death started,
he decided it was time to act.
Speaker 12 (18:21):
When I approached mister Editton after Kathleen under his death
and I told him that I'd compiled a list of
my customers who died in similar circumstances to Kathleen, going
back six years, he was shocked.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
When I questioned them, and I looked into it, it was
plainly evident to me that we were going to have
to examine the deaths of a number of other people.
Got reactions set in, and when that was discussed by
the senior management teams, we then decided that yes, we'd
have to look at further exhamations.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
In Part two, the death of Shipman's mother and how
it may have been his trigger for murder, Harold Frederick
Shipman was born in Nottingham in January nineteen forty six.
His early years were spent at this house in Longmead Drive.
(19:22):
His father, also Harold Frederick, was a long distance lorry driver.
His mother Vera, was ill for many years, slowly dying
of cancer. Fred the middle one of three children, was
the clever one of the family. He passed his eleven
plus to the local grammar school high Pavement. Although never
(19:43):
a high flier and in the sea stream, Shipman was
respected by the other boys for his sporting prowess on
the athletics track and the rugby field, seen here securing
the ball in a line out in some rare footage
of a school ma Shipman is well remembered by former schoolmates.
Speaker 13 (20:04):
I was a friend of Fred.
Speaker 12 (20:05):
We were in the same year as one another.
Speaker 13 (20:08):
We played rugby together.
Speaker 8 (20:11):
He was a very very able sportsman and notable for
is rugby and also for his athletics.
Speaker 14 (20:18):
Fred was a very quiet, calm individual until he got
on the rugby field and then he was quite a
fiery character, but as an individual off the field, very
easy going and quiet. Young man.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Fred passed five O level gcees and went into the
sixth form, only for disaster to strike. His mother died.
Fred was just seventeen. Vera Shipman had fought a long
and brave battle against cancer with ever increasing daily injections
of morphine. Some believe this early introduction to morphine and
(20:59):
death had a lasting effect on young Fred. His reaction
at the time was considered bizarre.
Speaker 15 (21:07):
It must have been a Monday morning that we met
up and we were walking back to school and did
you do you know, what did you do for the weekend?
And I told him what I'd done at the weekend,
and I'll ask you what he'd done. And he said, oh,
my mum died. I said, oh god, what did you do?
Speaker 7 (21:25):
You know?
Speaker 15 (21:25):
It must have been awful And I said, ah, yeah,
I went for a run. But he went on to
say that he'd actually run till I think he said
two o'clock in the morning or something, and in the
pouring rain.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
After his mother's death, Shipman decided to become a doctor.
He spent the next six years as a medical student
here at Leeds University. In his first year, he met
his wife, Primrose oxterby then a pretty seventeen year old
window dresser. Within months, prim was pregnant with Sarah, the
(22:05):
first of their four children, and much against her parents' wishes,
they were quietly married. After a couple of years training
as a houseman, Shipman joined a group gp practice in
the Yorkshire milltown of Toddmden in the mid nineteen seventies.
(22:27):
He's remembered fondly for his enthusiasm.
Speaker 16 (22:30):
It started with a keen young man coming as the
latest ideas and techniques, with a greatly live enthusiasm and
very much hands on putting it into practice and encouraging
(22:51):
us all to do the same thing. And I think
we all benefited from his sojourneral with us.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Despite his popularity, Fred had problems. He started having mysterious blackouts.
Dr Greeve, Shipman's senior partner at the time, remembers being
called to Fred's home after he collapsed in the bath.
Speaker 16 (23:17):
He had one or two blackouts and was finally diagnosed
by a consultant as having epilepsy and being unable to
drive a car. So his wife volunteered to fill in
this so that he could continue to work, which he
did very efficiently.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
But Fred Shipman hadn't told his colleagues the truth. He
was a drug addict with a huge dependency on pethodine,
a painkiller used in childbirth.
Speaker 16 (23:51):
I mean there wasn't any great disaster or anything.
Speaker 17 (23:54):
It was just.
Speaker 16 (23:56):
He could no longer.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
He was a sick doctor. Therever he had to go.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
In February nineteen seventy six, Harold Frederick Shipman stood in
the dock at Halifax Magistrate's Court and admitted eight charges
of obtaining drugs by deception and asked for seventy four
other offenses to be taken into account. He was fined
a total of six hundred pounds. The court heard he
(24:21):
obtained the highly addictive drug by over prescribing for patients
at a local nursing home and by forging prescriptions. Shipman
agreed to undergo treatment at the renowned Retreat Hospital in York.
Although the General Medical Council was notified, Shipman was not
struck off. In nineteen seventy nine, free of his addiction,
(24:47):
he applied to join a group practice in Hyde, a
small Cheshire market town with a population of sixty thousand.
At his interview, the six partners were impressed by Shipman,
particularly his honesty that he had been addicted to pethidine.
They decided to give him a second chance. Fred Shipman
(25:10):
threw himself into local community life, both as a hard
working doctor and as a member of local organizations like
the Saint John Ambulance Brigade, the Scouts and as a
local school governor. He soon became so popular that he
had a long waiting list of people wanting to join
his panel. But in nineteen ninety one, Shipman delivered a
(25:33):
bombshell to his partners after almost twelve years, he was
leaving to go it alone in a single handed practice,
and glibly announced he was taking his three thousand patients
with him. The parting was acrimonious, but Shipman didn't care.
He'd carefully planned the move for months and within weeks
(25:55):
opened just a few yards away in a converted shop
in Market Street. Now unsupervised, he could enjoy his secret
self indulgence murder.
Speaker 17 (26:08):
And as a single handed general practitioner, he would show them.
He would show how good he was and how he
could help people, and he would do things his own
way and without the breaks of working in a partnership
and the constraints that daily testing yourself against colleagues has
on one. Perhaps that was one of the fact as
(26:31):
that led to him going off for else.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
How seriously Shipman had gone off the rails only became
clear when the toxicology results came back from the forensic
science laboratory.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
I'm still amazed that the results that we got back
from the forengic examination were as they were. I didn't
expect that for one minute.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
The death certificate issued by Shipman recorded Kathleen Grundy had
died of old age. The truth was she had been
killed by a massive dose of morphine.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
Such an amount that the forensic scientists had no doubt
that death would have occurred in quite a short time.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
She had been to visit him on the previous day
to her death at around about four o'clock, and he
made an appointment with her to go and take a
blood sample. The following morning, He's made an appointment to killer.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
When questioned, Shipman's incredible claim was that missus Grundy at
eighty one was a Heroin addict, what had started as
a simple fraud investigation was now a full scale murder inquiry.
Information flooded in from anxious callers to special helplines, and
(27:49):
detectives began to notice a pattern to the deaths.
Speaker 4 (27:54):
The number of people that died at home, single women
living on their own, dying within an hour, as soul
of seeing doctor Shipman dying sat in a chair, dressed
in the day clause, so many of them going to
the surgery and dying in the surgery. It just stretched
(28:17):
logic to something that you could not believe. And right
away we knew that we were probably dealing with one
of the biggest murder investigations that one could imagine.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
But it was Shipman's fascination with computers that was to
provide another major breakthrough for the inquiry team and help
convict him. Detectives examined the deaths of nearly one hundred
and fifty of his patients.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
Checks of some of the computerized records of some of
the deceased patients revealed that visits that they'd made to
the surgery had been a literated. Things that had been
written in about the patient's health had been taken out,
and we can only surmise that that was done because
it didn't correspond with what was on the death certificate.
(29:14):
On other occasions, visits appeared on the patient's record when
in fact we believed that no visit was made to
the surgery. It was as though he was building up
a history that would tie in with the medical records
(29:34):
that he wrote on to the death certificate. He was
certainly covering up his tracks for something.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
And police computer experts soon discovered what it was. Shipman
was altering patient records to conceal his crimes, and on occasion,
to save time, he recorded their death before he killed them.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
The number of deaths towards the end and were increasing
at such a rapid rate that I sometimes wonder whether
he'd have time to prepare a lot of what he
was doing, and this was why he was changing the
medical records round about the time the person died shortly afterwards,
(30:20):
and in fact, in one case he was altering the
records before body was even found. What we decided to
do was to go back over a period of twelve
months and ascertain how many people had died and how
many death certificates that Dr Shipman had written in a
(30:43):
twelve month period. There were some thirty six deaths. One
of the things that had jumped out at us was
that never had there been a post morten. We also
realized that the number of deaths that he had in
a twelve month period was two and a half times
more than the average.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
An incident room had been set up at Ashton underlying
Police Station, manned by fifty six hand picked detectives. Special
flow charts were designed showing when, where, how and under
what circumstances patients had died in the previous five years.
Speaker 4 (31:22):
Our investigations established that on many many occasions, doctor Shipman
had seen them on the day that they died. In
a lot of cases, you'd seen them within if not
an hour, certainly a couple of hours of death. And
again that itself become illogical.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Alice Kitchen was one of those illogical cases where Shipman
had visited shortly before she died, but there was something
unusual which bothered her family.
Speaker 5 (31:53):
All the family were very surprised and wondered why she
was sat where she was on the sete because she
never sits there. She always sits in a chair where
she can see out the window and as soon as
anybody pulls up, she's got the door open ready for
them before they've got to the door. She always sits there.
And where she was found on the city she had
her back to the window. And I do know that
(32:17):
one neighbor that was interviewed was asked if she saw
Doc Shipman coming or going, and she said that he
was coming out as she was going in her house,
and that she thought it was unusual that my mother
was sat on the city She could see the back
of her, and she said that she never sits there
and that she always sees everybody to the door, and
she didn't see him to the door. She thought that
(32:39):
was odd and Dot Shipman never spoke to her and
never said she's not well, will you sit with her?
Or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Alice Kitchen may have died in an unusual chair at home,
but five of doctor Shipman's patients died in an even
more unlikely place his surgery.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
We spoke to a number of doctors and said, you know,
how many times have you ever had a patient dying
the surgery, and most doctors look aghast. It never happens.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
One of those who died in his surgery was seventy
two year old Edith Brady, a long term patient of
Fred Shipman. Edith, who loved a social occasion, was the
principal guest at the family's Christmas party. A few months
before her death.
Speaker 7 (33:28):
They told me that she gone in the back room
to lay down, and he just went in and founded
head and that he worked on her and nothing I've
been done. So we spent some time when I gave
her a kiss and noticed how tired as she was,
(33:48):
and they said it was her heart, and we just
accepted that that's what it was. And I was just
glad that she didn't have to have a pause Martin,
because I didn't want to be imaged about. I just said, well,
you know, I'm glad she was there, and he said, well,
she's not the first one to die. I had another
lady that died in here who said that at the time,
(34:11):
and I was glad because that's a place she liked
to be. She liked doctor Shipman. We used to joke
about it because she's always down there, and I bet
he's got fed up with and bumped her off. And
now now when I think about it, it's unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Detectives were also noticing other disturbing facts that Shipman had
been present when six of his patients died in one
street in an eighteen month period, and that in one month,
eight women patients died mysteriously.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
We saw that on one occasion in a particular month
there were eight people died, which is on average of
two a week, and whenever we spoke to other people
in the medical profession that they stood back in amazement.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
In Part three, how Shipmen stole from his patients and
acquired his means to kill For a second time, Hyde
was overshadowed by mass murder in the mid nineteen sixties,
it was home to Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, the
(35:24):
Moor's murderers. Now it was home to Fred Shipman, and
as the new investigation grew once again the population faced
the horror of killing. Attending the exhumations of his parishioners,
father Denis Marr found himself a central figure.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
The community were in shock would be a good way
of describing it. In shock, they just couldn't believe this
was happening, and they didn't want to believe it. It's all
a bad dream. On top of this of shock and
disbelief and the shuttering of trust, people also had a
(36:06):
sense of guilt. They had suspicions but didn't voice them
or speak of them for a number of reasons because
at the time they didn't want to upset other members
of the family. But a more common factor. Who would
have believed me anyhow if I said this to anybody.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Father Dennis vividly remembers Shipman's dismissive manner towards the grieving
family of Winnie Meller, only hours after he'd murdered her.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Her daughters were in deep shock. I was very shocked, myself,
very saddened because I was quite fond of win to
the lovely person. And the doctor came in in a
very brusque manner and said something along the lines of
(37:00):
you were aware your your mother had a heart condition.
I could see the look of surprise in the daughter's faces.
He followed this up by saying she wouldn't accept treatment
and she wouldn't go to the hospital. The daughters now
are kind of looking in amazement at him. He immediately
(37:21):
followed this up by saying, do you have an undertaker?
And at this stage I intervene and said, well, the
woman has just died, and I think we just leave
that at the moment. He then uh followed on saying,
and by the way, there's no problem with issuing a
(37:44):
death certificate. I can do I can do that, just
pop down to the surgery and.
Speaker 6 (37:49):
That was it.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
He was gone. Knowing what I know now, I can
certainly say he was making sure that nothing would go
wrong and that there would be no lem meant to
blame in any way attached to him, or any suspicion whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
When detectives searched Shipman's home, they found a large number
of rings and other jewelry stuffed into a bag in
the garage. This habit of petty theft from his victims
provoked feuds within their families.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
Various members of the family being questioned as a who
got there forst? And home profound mum forst and so on,
and is leading to a kind of suspicion so all
around the place. I do know also from one family
that one of the women, on the day of her death,
(38:45):
had been to collect her pension, which would have been
in the region of suppose seventy eighty pounds. She certainly
didn't spend all that that afternoon, but no money being
(39:06):
found in our parts after she died.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
It may never be known how often Shipman emptied the
purses of his victims for poultry sums, but from one
of them he expected to inherit sixty pounds. Biancha Pomfret
was the youngest of Shipman's victims, only forty nine when
he killed her. Divorced and suffering from manic depression, Missus
(39:32):
Pomfret had come to depend on doctor Shipman.
Speaker 13 (39:36):
In a nutshell. She thought the well of him, to
the extent that several years ago we were contemplating moving houses,
and one of the reasons why we didn't move is
she stressed that she would have preferred to have stared
in termside and under doctor Shipman. I think if somebody
(39:57):
puts the relationship that they've got with the doctor about
moving on to a new formal life, got to be
quite a close link, so much so that she informed
me several months before her death that she was actually
leaving all the moneys and properties to him in a will.
(40:20):
She also stated that she told doctor Shipman this. Fortunately,
I convinced her that the proper thing to do would
be to leave her moneys and properties to the grandchildren.
I can't speculate as to why Shipman murdered bi Ancha,
(40:44):
whether or not it was because of the fact that
he thought he was going to benefit financially, or maybe
even if she had informed him, he realized he'd been
cut oud of well, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Biancha Pomfret was the fourth victim to be exhumed. In
the following month, police opened eight more graves and removed
the bodies for examination. Each body contained varying high levels
of morphine. But even without a body, police were able
to charge Shipmen with the murders of six patients who'd
(41:23):
been cremated. So incriminating was the computer and other circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
The evidence that we were being presented with in relation
to those bodies where they had been cremated, was so
of a welming as far as we were concerned, that
we could not just put it to one side.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
By now it was becoming obvious to police that Shipman
arrogantly believed he'd created the perfect murder and had got
away with it for years.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
He believed that he was able to face this thing out,
that people didn't have a superior enough intellect to break
down and establish the facts of what had gone on here.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
When he was arrested, detectives like stan Egerton saw that
arrogance at first hand.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
During the course of questioning. His arrogance was to the
fore all the time. Whenever I spoke to him, it
was plainly obvious that he thought I was beneath him,
and that he gave a distinct impression that it should
be at least a superintendent that was talking to him
(42:32):
and dealing with him, and he made that plainly obvious
that I wasn't his intellectual equal.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
I think that he came in to be interviewed on
the first occasion, on the seventh of September, and having
walked in through the door, he expected to be walking
out around about five o'clock in the evening, and I
think he was surprised when he was charged with murder.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
You could see his demeanor change, voice changed. The arrogance
was the first thing to go. And then to a
certain extent, he tried then to control the interview by
changing the subject or trying to indicate to the interviewing
(43:16):
officers that they didn't understand. And as we went further
into the interviews and we put the forensic evidence towards him,
the morphine in the body, he could not any way
explain that. The medical records, he couldn't explain again why
they'd been changed. Eventually he got more and more distressed
(43:42):
and at one stage actually broke down.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
But what really shocked hardened detectives like Inspector Egerton was
the ruthless and cynical length Shipman went to to obtain
his weapon to kill the morphine. Two years ago, former
airline pilot Jim King was wrongly diagnosed with cancer a
week after marrying his American wife, Debbie. After undergoing three
(44:11):
months of painful chemotherapy, Shipman was told he'd never had cancer,
but Shipman failed to pass on the good news. Instead,
Shipman continued to prescribe Jim massive amounts of morphine in
order to maintain a regular supply of his murder weapon.
Speaker 6 (44:32):
He was told on three separate occasions by consultants from
different hospitals that I had not had cancer. I had
never had cancer, but he still proceeded to do this.
I know now why did this? Because the more patients
that you have are terminally ill, the more morphine that
(44:52):
you can have in your stock.
Speaker 17 (44:54):
If you're in general medical practice and you are caring
for terminal patients at home, sooner or later you can
acquire You can guarantee that you will acquire heroin which
has been unused and which you basically do not have
to account for.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Jim's father, a Shipman. Patient was so concerned about his
son's health that he started asking questions too many for
Shipman's liking, and the doctor killed him.
Speaker 6 (45:23):
My father had been down to the surgery a few
times to ask doctor Shipman what was going on with
my kiss because he could see me deteriorating rapidly with
the amount of morphine I was using. I mean, that's
sort of a gun killed my father on Christmas Eve
(45:44):
of all the days I mean to do this, And
I believe he did that because he needed to stop
this man complaining at that time, because the last thing
he needed was to have complaints, knowing that what we
know now, the last thing he needed is for somebody
to come forward and say, what the hell's going on here?
(46:06):
And then all this lot would have come out. And
you know, it's a shame it hadn't come out, because
after he killed my father, he proceeded to kill four
or five other other people.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
And Shipman would almost certainly still be killing today but
for his amateurish attempt to forge Missus Grundy's will. But
the big question still remains, why did a doctor dedicated
to saving life murder his patients. Those close to the
case have their own theories.
Speaker 4 (46:38):
He might get a kick out of being in control,
and the ultimate power is the power over life and death.
I can't think of anything else that could explain it.
Speaker 17 (46:51):
Why he did it, I think is simply a matter
of convenience. That it was more convenient, perhaps to get
rid of a patient who was an all could patient
by killing her than by trying to persuade the Family
Practitioner committee to transfer her to another general practitioner. It's horrendous,
(47:14):
isn't it to think of that that could happen, But
it clearly did. I think that a significant number of
the people that doctor Shipman killed he may have killed
quite simply because he did not wish to continue caring
for them, for whatever reason.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!