When British Serial Killer Harold "Fred" Shipman Died, a Country Cheered

Harold Frederick 'Fred' Shipman may well have a shot at being one of the most prolific serial killers of all time and he was also the only English doctor ever convicted of killing his patients.

If one plays the numbers game, Shipman's convictions are not overwhelming as he was convicted of only 15 counts of murder. An official enquiry into the extent of the Death Doctor's crimes - The Shipman Inquiry - was held after his trial, however, and this established that he could easily have been responsible for as many as 250 murders, and maybe even for more than 450...

In a striking difference between Shipman and many other budding serial killers, his mother loved him and treated him well, preferring him to his siblings. He was devastated when she died at 43 from lung cancer - he was only 17 years old at the time - and he went into seclusion but soon recovered sufficiently to enter medical school. In 1977, Shipman became a General Practitioner in Hyde, Greater Manchester, and it was only in 1988 that things fell apart.

After becoming concerned about the number of Shipman's patients that were dying, and the number of his patient's corpses that were being cremated, a fellow doctor mentioned to the coroner that Shipman might somehow be killing his patients. The coroner brought the matter to the attention of the police, who performed a perfunctory investigation and found insufficient evidence to enable them to file charges. They therefore abandoned the investigation, which was unfortunate as Shipman was then able to kill three further people between March 1988 and September 1988, when he was finally arrested.

The last victim that he did away with was the former mayor of Hyde, Kathleen Grundy. This was, perhaps, a mistake as Grundy's daughter contested the changes that had recently been made to her mother's will in terms of which Shipman now inherited her substantial fortune. And it was Grundy's daughter's solicitor who contacted the police and re-instated the investigation. Grundy's body was then exhumed and re-examined and pathologists found traces of diamorphine, a heroin based pain medication used by terminally ill cancer patients, in her system. Shipman was arrested on September 17^th 1998, and, among his belongings, the police immediately located Grundy's typewriter with which Shipman had typed the new will. There was no longer any question of his guilt.

As the authorities were now aware that Shipman's patients had been dying mysteriously for quite some time, the remains of fifteen of Shipman's deceased patients were then chosen as test cases and their bodies exhumed and tested for diamorphine. All of the exhumed exhibited traces of diamorphine poisoning, and a pattern slowly emerged with the good doctor's patients dying after being overdosed with diamorphine and his then falsifying their medical records to show that they had been in poor health and would not long survive.

Despite denying his guilt, Shipman was found guilty and sentenced to fifteen concurrent life sentences. Given the enormous publicity generated by his case, it was felt that he would not get a fair trial if he would be tried for the murders of the other victims identified during the Inquiry, and no further charges were thus filed. Just like the Graham Young situation, the Shipman case also prompted the British government to rewrite legislation in an attempt to protect possible future victims of enterprising poisoners.

He cheated both the law and the families of the victims out of their revenge, however, when he hanged himself in his cell on January 13^th 2004, one day before his 58^th birthday. In a questionable attempt at humor, The Sun's headline celebrating the killer's passing ran "Ship Ship Hooray!". But Fred Shipman's suicide, like Peter Kurten's capitulation and Albert DeSalvo's confession, seems to have had in part a philanthropic motive: he had wanted his wife to receive his National Health Services' pension, which she would not have done had he died after turning 60. Apparently, even the Death Doctor was not one hundred percent evil.

Sources:
Harold Shipman Wikipedia
Schechter, Harold. The Serial Killer Files. New York: Ballantine Books (2003)
The Shipman Inquiry The Shipman Inquiry