Harold Shipman

Harold Frederick Shipman (born January 14, 1946 in Nottingham , † January 13, 2004 in Wakefield ) was a British family doctor and a serial killer at least 218 times .

Life

Shipman was born on the Bestwood Council Estate in Nottingham, England, the second of four children. His father was the truck driver Harold Frederick Shipman (May 12, 1914 - January 5, 1985), his mother was Vera Brittan (December 23, 1919 - June 21, 1963). Both were devout Methodists and members of the working class . In his youth he was a talented rugby player in various youth leagues. He was a runner and became vice captain of his school's athletics team in his senior year . When he was 17 years old, his mother, to whom he was very attached, died of lung cancer . Like his late-stage victims, she was given morphine , which her doctor administered at home.

On November 5, 1966, he married Primrose May Oxtoby. They had four children.

Shipman studied medicine at the Leeds School of Medicine and graduated in 1970. He began to work in the General Infirmary in Pontefract , West Riding of Yorkshire . In 1974 he took his first position as a general practitioner at the Abraham Ormerro Medical Center in Todmorden , West Yorkshire. In 1975 he began to manufacture the opioid pethidine for personal use. For this he was fined £ 600 and attended the drug rehabilitation clinic in York. He then became a general practitioner at Donneybrook Medical Center in Hyde near Manchester in 1977.

In 1983 he was interviewed by Granada Television in the documentary World in Action about the community's dealings with the mentally ill . In 1993 he opened his own practice and was subsequently considered a respected citizen.

discovery

In March 1998, Linda Reynolds of Brooke Surgery in Hyde commented on the high death rate of Shipman's patients and the particularly frequent subsequent cremation of elderly women, as noted by the funeral home "Frank Massey and Son's" . The police learned of this but did not find sufficient evidence to bring a charge. He killed three more people between April 17, 1998, when police completed the investigation and the arrest. His last victim was Kathleen Grundy, who was found dead in her home on June 24, 1998.

In August 1998, Hyde taxi driver John Shaw reported to police that he suspected Shipman had murdered 21 patients. Grundy's daughter, Attorney Angela Woodruff, took notice when her colleague Brian Burgess told her that her mother had made a will excluding her and her children from the inheritance, and that Shipman would receive £ 386,000. After that, Grundy went to the police. Since her mother was buried in the earth , her body could be exhumed. During the subsequent investigation, traces of heroin were discovered, which is often used for pain therapy in end-stage cancer patients . Shipman was arrested on September 7, 1998. The type of typewriter that was used to write the fake Last Will was found during the subsequent house search.

As a result, police investigated further deaths certified by Shipman and made a list of 15 deaths. She discovered a pattern of administering lethal doses of heroin, signing death certificates, and forging medical records.

"Prescription For Murder," a 2000 book by journalists Brian Whittle and Jean Ritchi, describes two theories about Shipman's motive. He either wanted to be discovered in order to get his life under control or he wanted to amass a fortune to retire at 55 and then leave the UK .

David Spiegelhalter said in 2003 that statistical surveillance revealed that there were 67 deaths in women over 65 in 1996 and 119 in 1998.

Trial and prison

The trial began on October 5, 1999 in Preston Crown Court. Shipman's attorney was Giovanni di Stefano . Shipman was murdered by fatal heroin injection from 1995 to 1998 to Marie West, Irene Turner, Lizzie Adams, Jean Lilley, Ivy Lomas, Muriel Grimshaw, Marie Quinn, Kathleen Wagstaff, Bianka Pomfret, Norah Nuttall, Pamela Hillier, Maureen Ward, Winifred Mellor, Joan Melia and Kathleen Grundy indicted. On January 31, 2000, after six days of deliberation, the jury found him guilty of 15 cases of murder and one case of forgery of documents . The judges gave life sentences fifteen times. He received another four years for forging wills. Ten days after the conviction, he was removed from the register of doctors by the General Medical Council .

No further charges were made, because of the high level of publicity at the first hearing, a fair trial would have been difficult and Shipman had already been sentenced to multiple life imprisonment.

Shipman consistently denied his guilt as well as the scientific evidence against him. He never spoke publicly about the actions. Shipman's wife, Primrose, was convinced of her husband's innocence.

Shipman is the only doctor in the history of British medicine found guilty of the murder of his patient.

A total of 459 people died during Shipman's medical treatments. The exact number of his murders is unclear, but the official investigation report estimates it to be 250.

death

On January 13, 2004, at 6:20 a.m., Shipman hanged himself in his cell in Wakefield Prison. At 8:10 am he was pronounced dead. He had hanged himself with his bed linen.

Over five years after Shipman's death, the auction of 65 letters he wrote between his arrest and suicide attracted attention. They give insights into his psyche.

literature

• Yapp, Nick: True Crime Parragon Books, ISBN 978-1-4054-9795-4

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mark Oliver: Portrait of a necrophiliac . In: The Guardian . January 13, 2004, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed July 22, 2017]).
2. ↑ Why Some Doctors Kill. November 18, 2002; Retrieved July 22, 2017 (Australian English). 
3. ^ Kaplan, Robert M. (Robert Malcolm), 1950-: Medical murder: disturbing cases of doctors who kill . Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW 2009, ISBN 1-74175-610-3 , pp. 59, 60 .
4. ^ The Compact Christmas Collection . In: The Independent . December 6, 2001 ( independent.co.uk [accessed July 22, 2017]).
5. ↑ truTV Official Website | TV Show Full Episodes and Funny Video Clips. Retrieved July 22, 2017 . 
6. ↑ ^{a b} BBC NEWS | UK | Harold Shipman: Timeline. Retrieved July 22, 2017 . 
7. ↑ By Nigel Bunyan: The Killing Fields of Harold Shipman . In: Telegraph.co.uk . ( telegraph.co.uk [accessed July 22, 2017]).
8. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20100302150056/http://www.tamesideadvertiser.co.uk/news/shipman/uncovering. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on March 2, 2010 ; accessed on July 22, 2017 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
9. ↑ Reiner Luyken: Everyone loved Doctor Death . In: The time . September 8, 2013, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed July 22, 2017]).
10. ↑ BBC NEWS | England | Manchester | Shipman inquiry criticises police. Retrieved July 22, 2017 . 
11. ↑ ^{a b} BBC News | UK | Doctor 'forged victim's medical history'. Retrieved July 22, 2017 . 
12. ↑ BBC News | THE SHIPMAN FILES | The Shipman tapes I. Retrieved July 22, 2017 . 
13. ↑ Ritchie, Jean, 1922-: Prescription for murder: the true story of mass murderer Dr Harold Frederick Shipman . Warner, London 2000, ISBN 0-7515-2998-2 , pp. 348 and 349 .
14. ↑ Spiegelhalter, D. et al. Risk-adjusted sequential ratio tests: application to Bristol, Shipman and adult cardiac probability surgery. Int J Qual Health Care , vol. 15, pp. 7-13 (2003).
15. ↑ BBC NEWS. Retrieved July 22, 2017 . 
16. ↑ BBC NEWS | England | Manchester | Shipman's 'reckless' experiments. Retrieved July 22, 2017 . 
17. ^ Corinne Sweet: He could do no wrong . In: The Guardian . January 15, 2004, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed July 22, 2017]).
18. ↑ James Stovold: The Case of Dr. John Bodkin Adams. Retrieved July 22, 2017 . 
19. ↑ BBC NEWS | UK | Harold Shipman found dead in cell. Retrieved July 22, 2017 . 
20. ↑ Shipman prison letters to be sold accessed on news.bbc.co.uk on January 15, 2014