Doctor 'addicted to killing'
Shipman may have been "addicted to killing", according to High Court Judge Dame Janet Smith, whose report into the case is highly critical of the way the family GP was able to murder so many patients over such a long period without being caught. Dame Janet's report into Shipman's killings said that he began his murder spree in 1975, just a year after entering practice in Todmorden, West Yorkshire.
By the time he was finally arrested in 1998 he had killed 215 patients and there was a "real suspicion" that the doctor, from Hyde, Greater Manchester, could have claimed another 45 victims. Dame Janet's shocking conclusions confirm Shipman as one of the world's deadliest serial killers. The report said that systems which should have safeguarded patients against misconduct failed and that it was "deeply disturbing" his killings did not arouse suspicion for so many years. Commenting on what prompted Shipman, Dame Janet said there was evidence he had been addicted to the painkiller pethidine in the 1970s.
"I think it is likely that whatever it was that caused Shipman to become addicted to pethidine also led to other forms of addictive behaviour," she said.
"It is possible that he was addicted to killing." She said that "deeply shocking though it is" the bare statement that Shipman had killed more than 200 of his patients "does not fully reflect the enormity of his crimes".
As a GP, Shipman was trusted implicitly by patients and their families.
"He betrayed their trust in a way and to an extent that I believe is unparalleled in history," said Dame Janet. Dame Janet said the "way in which Shipman could kill, face the relatives, and walk away unsuspected would be dismissed as fanciful if described in a work of fiction.
"Although I have identified 215 victims of Shipman the true number is far greater and cannot be counted. I include the thousands of relatives, friends or neighbours who have lost a loved one or friend before his or her time in circumstances which will leave their mark forever."
Dame Janet, who has been hearing evidence since June last year at Manchester Town Hall, delivered decisions in 494 cases.
She decided that the first of Shipman's victims was Mrs Eva Lyons, who he murdered in March 1975 while at the Abraham Ormerod Medical Practice in Todmorden.
Another 71 patients were killed during Shipman's time at the Donneybrook House group practice in Hyde. The final 143 were murdered at the one-man practice he set up in Market Street, Hyde, in 1992.
Of his victims, 171 were women and 44 were men, with the oldest being 93-year-old Ann Cooper and the youngest 41-year-old Peter Lewis. The judge said in her six-volume, 2,000 page report: "There are 45 deaths for which I have found that a real suspicion arises that Shipman may have been responsible, although the evidence is not sufficiently clear for me to reach a positive conclusion that he was.
"In addition, there are a further 38 deaths in respect of which there was so little evidence, or evidence of such poor quality, that I was unable to form any view at all."
The inquiry examined a total of 888 cases. Dame Janet said there was "compelling evidence" in 394 of them that Shipman was not responsible for the death. Shipman is to be sent a copy of the report in Frankland jail, County Durham, where he is serving life for the murders of 15 patients. Dame Janet's list of 215 patients who were unlawfully killed include the 15 women he was convicted of murdering at Preston Crown Court in January, 2000, and a further 27 on whom inquests were later held.
Dame Janet said that the majority of deaths were followed by cremation. Procedures that required a second doctor to sign the certificate and a third doctor employed by the crematorium to check were intended to safeguard the public.
But even with those in place Shipman was able to kill 215 people without detection.
"In reality, the procedures provided no safeguard at all," said the report. Shipman had also managed to avoid referring deaths to the coroner that should have been referred, in all but very few cases. He had been convicted of drugs offences in 1975 and had declared his intention never to carry controlled drugs again. Yet he was able to obtain large quantities. Before his arrest in 1998 none of his patients suspected Harold Shipman was anything other than he appeared a kindly, caring GP devoted to his practice.
Only after he clumsily forged the £386,000 will of his last victim, 81-year-old Kathleen Grundy, did police start to uncover the horrific death toll that stunned and shocked the town of Hyde in Greater Manchester. Shipman killed his victims with injections of diamorphine the clinical name for heroin. He had stockpiled vast amounts of the drug by falsely prescribing it as a painkiller for dying patients.
After his arrest police found enough diamorphine for 1,500 fatal doses hoarded in his home in Mottram-in-Longendale, Tameside.
His killing spree began in earnest when he set up his single-handed practice at The Surgery in Hyde's Market Street in 1992. In a surpris ing number of cases Shipman admitted to being present when his patients died or claimed to have discovered the body and would dismiss in front of relatives the need for a post-mortem examination. Back at his surgery he would falsify his computer records to create bogus symptoms that would explain his victims' deaths. In March 1998 a member of staff at an undertakers and another GP in Hyde became alarmed at the death rate among Shipman's patients.
South Manchester Coroner John Pollard called in Greater Manchester Police but an investigation found nothing untoward.
Born on January 14, 1946, to a working class family in Nottingham, Harold Frederick Shipman was known as a clever, confident child.
In 1963, when he was 17 and studying for A-levels, his mother, Vera, died at the age of 43 from lung cancer, the pain of her last days helped by large doses of morphine.
The trauma of the bereavement and his closeness to his mother, his inability to form meaningful relationships and his arrogance could have combined with his need for control to give him a perverted pleasure from causing death.
Studied at Leeds University Medical School in 1965 and began going out with farmer's daughter Primrose Oxtoby. Primrose became pregnant and the couple were married during Shipman's first year at university.
Became a houseman at Pontefract General Infirmary in 1970 in West Yorkshire, before joining his first practice in Todmorden, in the Pennines.
Began forging prescriptions to supply himself with the painkiller pethidine, which he injected for six months to the point where his veins collapsed.
Resigned when drug habit discovered, fined £600 on drugs and forgery charges, but was not struck off or even censured.
Three days before murder conviction nearly 30 years later, General Medical Council find records of the conviction in their files.
Underwent psychiatric treatment and returned to work as a medical officer in Durham before moving to the Donneybrook practice in Hyde, setting up home in nearby Mottram with Primrose and their four children.
Shipman given 15 life sentences two years ago with recommendation from the judge that he should never be released.
Currently being held at the high-security Frankland Prison in County Durham and refused to co-operate with the public inquiry chaired by Dame Janet Smith.
