Serial Killers: Harold Shipman

Harold Shipman

a.k.a. Dr.Death

Who?

Birthday:

January 14, 1946

Birthplace:

Bestwood Council Estate, Nottingham England

Family:

Vera (mother) and Harold (father) Shipman raised three children: Harold, Clive and Pauline Shipman

Early Life and Adolescents

Early Life

- Known to have early feelings of superiority which left him isolated with few friends.

- Obvious favorite of his mother, Vera.

- Very involved in athletics in high school including captain of rugby team

- Mother got sick and died when he was 17, had to take intensive care of her and developed a fascination of morphine and painkillers.

-Decided to pursue a medical career due to mothers illness

College/Adulthood

Adulthood

- Admitted to Leeds University Medical school after failing entrance exam once.

- Married wife, Primrose, at age 19 when she was 17. Had first child fie months later

- 1974, became a father of two and joined a medical practice in Todmorden, Yorkshire as a family practitioner.

- Became addicted to painkiller Pethidine and caught forging prescriptions for painkillers, forcing him to leave practice.

Later career:

Later career

- Entered drug rehab program

- Accepted onto staff at Donneybrooke Medical Centre in Hyde

- Worked there for 20 years and obtained reputation for arrogance and high rate of death in patients.

- Local undertaker notices suspicious similarities in Shipman´s patients that died and a police investigation ensues but Shipman was cleared.

- Failed to contact or find Shipmans previous criminal history for drug abuse.

Characteristics of deaths:

Characteristics

Deaths commonly involved the following circumstances:

- Was a patient of Harold Shipman

- Died in a sitting up position

- Commonly elderly or of similar feeble state

- Usually fully clothed

- Uncommon rate of death

- Was ot previously known to be near death

- Family members absent

- Etc...

Capture of Harold Shipman

Known Crimes

When patient of Shipman, Kathleen Grundy, an active, wealthy, 81 year old widow was found dead shortly after a visit with Shipman, her daughter, a local lawyer, started to closely investigate the doctor. Mrs.Grundy´s will was also changed, leaving most of her assets to Harold Shipman in an unexpected turn of events. Police took Shipman into custody after finding important medical records tampered with by Shipman that involved patients times and causes of death.

Known Crimes and Victims

Victims

Harold Shipmans suspected timeline of known killings went from March of 1971 to September 7, 1998

It is suspected he killed anywhere from 15 to 236 people over the course of his medical career or 25 years.

Those people include Eva Lyons (70), Percy Ward (90), Dorothy Tucker (51), Peter Lewis (41) and many more and mainly took place at the patients home or his healthcare facility.

Would commonly overdose them and then alter their medical records to throw the police and officials off his trail.

Arrest and Trial

Arrest and Trial

During the trial of Harold Shipman, which commenced in Preston Crown Court on October 5, 1999, he was tried for drug prescription forgery, alteration of medical records, and murder. He was charged with 15 counts of murder and one count of forgery on January 31, 2000 with the punishment 15 life sentences plus four years, making it an effective whole life sentence with no possibility of parole or bail.

Sentence and Confession:

Sentence and confession

After Shipman was sentenced to a full life sentence in prison, he was moved to Wakefield Prison in June 2003. He was vivisted by his wife Primrose and family repeatdely in prison but on January 13, 2004, Harold Shipman commited suicide by hanging himself with his bedsheets tied to the bars on his window cell.

Shipman never confessed or admited to themultiple murders charged againt hum. Its thought that his wife was starting to become suspicious with his innocence, prompting Shipman to kill himself

Why?

Why?

Since Harold Shipman never cnfessed, he also never tolf anyone why he killed so many people. Experts claimed that his reasons were that he had an early fascination in death since his mother died. He also had obvious sympotoms of narcissism and supriority that coupled with his addiction to drugs like morphine, created a lethal combination. That he was addicted to killing and liked exercising control over life and death in his patients is also a prevalent theory.

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The End

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