Harold Shipman(Dr. Death)

By: Brittany Balmer

Who is Harold Shipman?

• His full name was Harold Fredrick Shipman

• Born the son of Vera and Harold Shipman

• His father was a truck driver and his mother was a home maker.

• Harold Shipman was a family GP in Britain and he was Britain's most prolific serial killer.

Childhood

• Harold Shipman was born into a working class family in Nottingham on January 14, 1946

• Shipman was a very clever kid growing up. He always made straight A’s

• Shipman was an active rugby player as a child.

• He was a very antisocial person. He pushed himself away from others and didn’t like to let people into his life.

• He was the middle child of three.

The Death of His Mother

• The death of Shipman's mother, Vera, is what lead Harold Shipman to become a doctor. He witnessed the doctor help his mother through the pain of cancer and witnessed firsthand what morphine will do to the body.

• His mother was the only person in his life that was always there for him. He was considered his mother's favorite. His mother always made him wear a tie while his siblings were allowed to wear casual clothing.

• Vera always pushed Harold to do his best in everything and she is the reason that he became antisocial.

Medical School

• Harold Shipman received a scholarship to medical school and studied medicine in 1965 at Leeds University.

• While at medical school he met Primrose and they had 4 children.

Addiction

• Shipman began having an addiction to a morphine like drug called pethidine when he joined his first practice in 1970. He began having blackouts and self-diagnosed himself with having epilepsy to hide his addiction.

• He was convicted for prescribing medicine to patients and then using it, but he was only fined.

• He was forced to leave the practice and to go to a drug rehab center.

• His only reason for being addicted to the drug was that he was fascinated with medicine.

Rehab• When Shipman was confronted by his

colleagues he admitted to having an addiction from his days in medical school when he had accidentally tried it. He was then advised to go to the Retreat in York for help with his drug addiction.

After Rehab

• Two years after rehab Shipman obtained a new job at Donneybrook Medical Center in Hyde. He remained at this job until 1993 when he opened up his own private practice.

MO• All of his victims were elderly patients (Ages

51-90)

• Killed with lethal injections of diamorphine (heroin)

• All patients were in good health and lived on their own.

• Bodies were all found sitting in a chair fully dressed.

Warning signs

• The local undertaker began to notice a strange pattern when he was called to pick up the bodies.

• Shipman's patients died at an unusually high rate.

• The bodies were all found the same way.

• When Shipman was confronted about the number of deaths he said that there was no reason to be concerned.

Reason for killing

• Although Harold Shipman never admitted to killing anyone they speculated that the reason he committed the murders was because he was fascinated with medicine and enjoyed seeing how it would affect the body.

The Trial

• The trial went cold in 1985 because of lack of evidence.

• The trail was reopened after the death of Kathleen Grundy.

• The jury deliberated for six days and found Shipman guilty of killing 15 patients by lethal injections of diamorphine, and forging the will of Kathleen Grundy

• Shipman was convicted of 15 murders, sentenced to 15 concurrent life sentences.

How he was caught.

• In 1998 the death of Kathleen Grundy raised suspicions. When her family and friends become worried they visited her house and discovered the body. They contacted her doctor, Harold Shipman, and he declared her death as a heart attack and signed the death certificate.

• Grundy's daughter believed that the death of her mother wasn’t an accident so she had the body examined. The toxic report came back positive for diamorphine.

• Other families started to questions on whether the death of their relatives were an accident or not. When they had the bodies examined they all came back positive for diamorphine.

Victims

Marie West, 81 Irene Turner, 67

Lizzie Adams, 77 Jean Lilley, 59

Ivy Lomas, 63 Muriel Grimshaw, 76

Marie Quinn, 67 Kathleen Wagstaff, 81

Bianka Pomfret, 49 Norah Nuttall, 64

Pamela Hillier, 68 Maureen Ward, 57

Winifred Mellor, 73 Joan Melia, 73

Kathleen Grundy, 81

Shipman's death

• Shipman was found hanging from the ceiling of his jail cell on Tuesday January 13, 2004

Books about Harold Shipman

Statistics

• Around 80% of his victims were women

• 171 women and 44 men

• Shipman signed 22 death certificates and he was present at 40% of the deaths. Studies show that the national average for GPs to be present at death is somewhere around 0.8%.

• Shipman began killing when he was 25

Pictures

Contradictions• On murderpedia.com it said that he killed 15-215 patients and on

Nynewsdaily.com it said that he killed 250 patients.

• On murderuk.com it said that he killed patients ranging from age 41-93 years old and on ourcivilisation.com it said that he killed patients ranging from age 49-81 years old.

• On crimelibrary.com said that all the patients that he killed were in good health, but on the same site it said that many of the patients that he killed were already on their death bed.

• On crimelibrary.com it said that all of the bodies were found fully clothed and sitting in a chair, while on another site it said that some bodies were not fully clothed.

• On imdb.com said that Shipman injected his patients with morphine and nydailynews.com said that he injected them with diamorphine.

Sources

• http://www.nydailynews.com/news/justice-story/dr-death-britain-prolific-serial-killer-article-1.1423566?pgno=1

• http://murderpedia.org/male.S/s/shipman-harold.htm

• http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/3391897.stm

• http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/notorious/shipman/student_4.html

• http://www.theguardian.com/society/2005/aug/25/health.shipman1

• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4724155/The-Killing-Fields-of-Harold-Shipman.html

• http://www.murderuk.com/serial_dr_harold_shipman.html

• http://forensicsciencecentral.co.uk/haroldshipman.shtml

• http://www.weirdisland.co.uk/people/murders/harold-shipman-doctor-death.html

• http://www.ourcivilisation.com/decline/shipman.htm