Top5 Secret Facts Of Serial Killer Doctor Harold Shipman’s Life That Expose Him

The world’s biggest serial killer doctor would probably never have been caught if he knew how to operate a computer. Imagine a person who is committing serial killings who is also a friend of his victim, a well-known name in the city and also a doctor. This is the astonishing story of Doctor Harold Shipman who used his clinic not to save lives but to take lives.

Doctor Harold Shipman kept on committing serial killings under everyone’s nose for 23 years in a small town of England. Even after killing more than 250 people, no one suspected Doctor Harold Shipman and probably would never have been caught him if he had not made a small mistake. What was the reason for killing people? Why was he not caught for so long and what clue did the police get which exposed the serial killings that were going on for years in a single moment.

5) Cleverness

Doctor Harold Shipman used to run his clinic in a small town named Hyde in England. The total population here was around 30,000, out of which 3000 people were patients of Doctor Harold Shipman. The doctor mostly targeted such patients who lived alone and were very old. Whose death could not be suspected by anyone. The doctor used to go to the patients’ homes and give them as much time as possible. To lighten the burden of the patients’ hearts, the doctor would listen to them and make them feel that they may be alone but the doctor is with them.

The patients trusted Doctor Harold Shipman so much that they even gave the keys of their houses to the doctor. Due to this behavior of his, he had become very famous in Hyde. Because people felt that Doctor Harold Shipman treats patients only through talks. But under the guise of all this, Doctor Harold Shipman used to extract secret details of the patients in conversations like who is alone at what time, who has how much wealth, who come to the house and where the relatives live.

When Doctor Harold Shipman was satisfied, he would kill his patients by giving them an overdose of medicine. Now since those patients were already over 80 years old, no one might suspected their death. This continued for many years and no one caught him.

When Doctor Harold Shipman’s patients used to die, he used to sign Form B himself. Form B is the form which has to be signed by the doctor treating the patient. In which the details of the patient’s death are written. But the problem was that Form C which has to be signed by the other doctor was also signed in most of the cases by Doctor Harold Shipman’s friend doctors or people who did not suspect him. In this way Doctor Harold Shipman used to write fake information in the death certificates of his patients. Due to which no one suspected him.

4) Drug Addiction

Doctor Harold Shipman started his career in a town called Pontefract, 70 km away from Hyde. Where he used to work in a hospital. Then in 1974 he left Pontefract and went to Todmorden. Where he got a position as a general practitioner in Abrahams Medical Centre. During his job here, he was caught giving excessive quantity of Pethidine to some patients. Pethidine is actually a pain killer. But it is a very addictive medicine. Doctor Harold Shipman was addicted to Pethidine and he used to deliberately give this medicine to his patients. Even though the patients did not need Pethidine.

Actually Doctor Harold Shipman was addicted to Pethidine. He used to prescribe Pethidine to the patients, out of which he used to give some to the patients and used the rest himself. What happened was that the patients used to feel very good after taking this medicine. Whereas in reality they did not know that they were taking drugs. This was the reason why patients were attracted to Doctor Harold Shipman even if they didn’t want to. After getting caught, the hospital administration fired Doctor Harold Shipman.

The matter reached to the point of cancelling his license but Doctor Harold Shipman paid a fine of 600 pounds and got himself admitted to a rehabilitation center, which saved his license from being cancelled. After spending some time in the rehabilitation center, when everyone forgot him, he came to Hyde in 1977. Where he got a job as a general practitioner in Donneybrook Medical Center.

In the meantime, neither did he give up drugs nor did he kill old patients. But the frequency of these murders increased a lot from 1993 when he opened his own clinic in Hyde itself. Doctor Harold Shipman made a good name in the city. The matter continued like this for the next several years and no one suspected these actions of the doctor.

3) Doctor Linda’s doubt

For the first time in March 1998, Doctor Linda Reynolds, who working in another hospital, Brooke Surgery, opposite Doctor Harold Shipman’s clinic, expressed her concern over the high mortality rate among Doctor Harold Shipman’s patients. She said that Doctor Harold Shipman, who runs only a small clinic, has had 16 patients die in the last three months. Whereas during the same period, Brook Surgery, which has three times more patients than Doctor Harold Shipman’s clinic, had only 14 deaths.

This suspicion grew further when it was found out that 16 of Doctor Harold Shipman’s patients were not buried after their death but were cremated. Doctor Linda expressed her suspicion to the Manchester Coroner in the form of a report. In which, along with all these details, it was also written that most of these 16 patients of Doctor Harold Shipman were old women. Who were found dead in their homes and it cannot be a coincidence every time that at the time of death of most of these patients, Doctor Harold Shipman was be at their homes.

Doctor Harold Shipman’s patients would die in a strange manner while sitting on a chair and in well-worn clothes and at that time Doctor Harold Shipman was be at homes. An investigation was also conducted on the basis of this report but the police did not find any concrete evidence against Doctor Harold Shipman and this investigation was closed after a month.

2) Investigation

After the investigation was closed, Doctor Harold Shipman killed three more people. But the time of getting caught was not far. Doctor Harold Shipman’s last victim was Hyde’s former mayor Kathleen, 81 years old. She died in her house on 24 June 1998. Doctor Harold Shipman signed her death certificate and wrote old age as the cause of death. Kathleen’s daughter Angela Woodruff was herself a lawyer. She became suspicious about her mother’s death when she found her mother’s will.

In the will, Kathleen had written her house in the name of Doctor Harold Shipman. Doctor Harold Shipman was very close to that family and him getting the house in the will did not become the basis for suspicion. In fact, Angela was suspicious about the fact that her mother had two houses while the will mentioned only one house. This shows that the will was written by someone who was unaware of the other house and that person was Doctor Harold Shipman. Angela Woodruff went to the police who started the investigation again.

Kathleen’s body was excavated from the grave and sent for autopsy. Then it was found that a lot of traces of diamorphine i.e. heroine were found in her body. When the police asked Doctor Harold Shipman, he said that Kathleen was addicted to heroine and he had written this fact in his computer before treating her. Doctor Harold Shipman had recently started making entries in the computerized medical journal. But he did not know that although he had entered the date before death in that entry, the last edit date of that file gets saved automatically in the computer.

After checking the entries in the computer, the police also found the typewriter that was used to write the fake will. Some characters in Doctor Harold Shipman’s typewriter were corrupted and the same characters were missing in Kathleen’s will. After this, on 7 September 1998, the police arrested the famous Doctor Harold Shipman of Hyde.

1) Punishment

When people came to know about Doctor Harold Shipman, those people also came forward whose loved ones were killed by Doctor Harold Shipman earlier. They demanded that Doctor Harold Shipman be punished. The police also investigated 15 other patients who had died at the hands of Doctor Harold Shipman some time ago. A special pattern was seen in all these cases in which the patients were given a lethal dose of diamorphine. All the patients of Doctor Harold Shipman were investigated and during this it was found that Doctor Harold Shipman had murdered a total of 218 patients from 1975 till he was caught.

The court sentenced Doctor Harold Shipman to life imprisonment. But Doctor Harold Shipman committed suicide in jail. After his death, one of his jailmates revealed a surprising fact. He said that Doctor Harold Shipman had murdered not 218 but 508 people and Doctor Harold Shipman himself had told him this.

The real reason behind Doctor Harold Shipman committing so many murders has not been revealed till date. Some people call it psycho. Some say it is a way of earning money and some people also think it is the effect of Doctor Harold Shipman’s mother’s death because his mother who was a cancer patient was given Diamorphine as a painkiller. That is why he also treated his patients in the same way.