Killers - The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time (24 page)

There were some odd things about Shipman’s home. The police found mysterious pieces of jewellery, presumable stolen from his victims, and the house was littered with newspapers and filthy old clothes. For a doctor’s home, it was little short of insanitary.

One of the first things the police found was the typewriter Shipman had used to type the fraudulent will. Shipman said that Mrs Grundy sometimes borrowed it. However, Shipman’s fingerprints were found on the document, but there were none of Mrs Grundy’s fingerprints on it – and none belonging to those people who were purported to have witnessed it.

When the toxicology reports came back from the lab, Detective Superintendent Postles realised that he had an open-and-shut case. The cause of death was an overdose of morphine. What’s more, death would have occurred within three hours of receiving the lethal injection.

Postles was astounded. As a doctor, Shipman would have known morphine is one of the few poisons that remains easily identifiable in body tissue for centuries. There were plenty of other drugs that would have been lost against the background. For example, had Shipman used insulin, which the body produces naturally, to kill Mrs Grundy the case would have been impossible to prove. As it was, Shipman’s only defence was to claim that the respectable old lady was a junkie. Psychologists speculate that he wanted to be caught. Why type the forged will on his own typewriter? And why use a drug so easily traced? Others think he saw himself as invincible. As a doctor, he believed, his word would never be questioned.

The publicity surrounding the Grundy case brought a torrent of phone calls from other relatives of Shipman’s patients who had died in similar circumstances. The police immediately broadened the scope of the investigation. A pattern quickly emerged. The cause of death recorded by Dr Shipman often bore no relation to the symptoms the patient had suffered prior to their demise and Shipman was usually present at the death or had visited the patient immediately before. He also urged families to cremate their dead. But clearly the police could only proceed with cases where the relatives had ignored this advice and had buried the body.

In each case, Shipman also insisted that no further investigation into the cause of death was necessary. People trust their doctors. Even if they questioned him, Shipman could show that their loved one had died of a condition consistent with their medical history. His story would be backed by the computerised medical records he kept. Shipman would hurry to his office to rewrite immediately after he had killed one of his patients. Kathleen Grundy’s medical notes, for example, clearly showed that she was a morphine addict. This was clearly ludicrous. From the moment he asserted this, his credibility crumbled.

Convinced of his superiority, Shipman claimed he was a computer expert, but he did not know was that his hard drive recorded every alteration he made to the patient’s record, along with the time it was made. The police called in their own experts to demonstrate that he had fabricated his patients’ medical histories after their deaths to cover his tracks.

One of the earlier cases the police pursued was that of Winnifred Mellor, a healthy 73-year-old who played football with her grandchildren and was planning a trip to the Palestine when she died mysteriously at three in the afternoon on 11 May 1998 after a visit from Shipman.

The police confronted Shipman with the fact that, soon after she was dead, he added to her notes that she had suffered ‘chest pains’ on 1 October 1997 – ten months earlier. Shipman claimed he had no recollection of making that alteration, but the police were able to point out that the addition had been made using his user name and his password.

‘It doesn’t alter the fact I can’t remember doing it’ was Shipman’s feeble reply.

‘You attended the house at three o’clock,’ said the officer interviewing him. ‘That’s when you murdered this lady. You went back to the surgery and immediately started altering this lady’s medical records. You tell me why you needed to do that.’

‘There’s no answer,’ said Shipman.

In a further interview, Shipman was accused of killing Winnifred Mellor with a morphine overdose, then altering her records to show a history of angina.

‘The levels were such that this woman actually died from toxicity of morphine, not as you wrongly diagnosed,’ Shipman was told. ‘In plain speaking you murdered her. One feature of these statements from the family was they couldn’t believe their own mother had chest pains, angina and hadn’t been informed.’

‘By… by whom?’ asked Shipman.

‘By her,’ said the officer.

‘By her, thank you,’ said Shipman, sarcastically.

‘They also found it hard to believe because she didn’t have a history of chest complaints and heart disease and angina, did she, Doctor?’ the officer asked.

‘If it’s written on the records then she had the history and therefore…’

‘The simple truth is you’ve fabricated a history to cover what you’ve done,’ said the officer. ‘You’d murdered her and you make up a history of angina and chest pains so you could issue a death certificate and placate this poor woman’s family, didn’t you?’

‘No,’ said Shipman.

‘We’ve got a statement from a Detective Sergeant John Ashley, who works in the field of computers,’ the officer said. ‘He has made a thorough examination of your computer, doctor, and the medical records contained on it. What he’s found is that there are a number of entries that have been incorrectly placed on this record to falsely mislead and to indicate this woman had a history of angina and chest pains. What have you got to say about that, doctor?

‘Nothing,’ said Shipman.

It was clear that he was not going to co-operate in any way with the police, who found him arrogant and supercilious throughout the investigation. Nevertheless, the evidence against him accumulated. He was charged with 15 counts of murder and one of forgery – over the will – and went to trial in Preston on 5 October 1999.

Shipman’s defence counsel Nicola Davies, a 46-year-old medical lawyer, began the proceedings with an application to have the case thrown out as Shipman could not receive a fair trial because of ‘inaccurate, misleading’ reporting of the case. Taking nearly two days, she reviewed the media coverage of some 150 patients’ cases, the investigation of Shipman himself and intense interest in the exhumations. Richard Henriques, for the crown, countered with the fact that the reports had alerted other families to the possible fate of their relatives.

Ms Davies then asked for the court to hold three separate trials. She argued that the case of Kathleen Grundy should be prosecuted separately as it alone had any alleged motive – that of greed. A second trial should cover only patients who had been buried as only in these cases was there physical evidence of cause of morphine poisoning. A third trial, she said, should cover those who had been cremated, where no physical evidence existed.

Henriques argued that the cases were inter-related and trying them together would present a comprehensive picture.

Ms Davies petitioned for evidence showing how Shipman had accumulated stocks of morphine to be disallowed. In 28 cases, he had continued prescribing for patients after they had died, and kept the drugs for his murderous purposes. He also prescribed morphine to living patients who did not required strong painkillers.

The judge, Mr Justice Forbes, denied all three petitions. The trial would continue with the original 16 charges on the indictment.

On 11 October 1999, the jury was sworn in and the case for the prosecution was made by Richard Henriques. He was one of the top Britain’s barristers and had handled the 1993 Jamie Bulger trial, where two ten-year old boys were found guilty of kidnapping, torturing and murdering the two-year-old on Merseyside.

Henriques’ opening statement in the Shipman case pulled no punches.

‘None of those buried – nor indeed cremated were prescribed morphine or diamorphine,’ he said. ‘All of them died most unexpectedly. All of them had seen Dr Shipman on the day of their death.’

He ruled out the possibility of euthanasia or mercy killing as a motive, as none of those who had died was suffering from a terminal illness. Henriques simply concluded that Shipman killed the 15 patients whose names were on the indictment simply because he enjoyed doing so.

‘He was exercising the ultimate power of controlling life and death,’ Henriques said, ‘and repeated the act so often he must have found the drama of taking life to his taste.’

His first witness was Angela Woodruff, who explained that she had spoken to Dr Shipman after the Hyde Police had phoned to tell her that her mother was dead.

‘Exactly what he said was difficult to remember,’ she said. ‘It’s very hazy because I was very, very upset. Dr Shipman said he had seen my mother on the morning of her death. He said he had seen her at home.’

She was then questioned about the fake will that left everything to Shipman. She dismissed it as a fake, citing her mother’s meticulous attention to detail. This was supported by her mother’s diary, where every event was scrupulously recorded in pristine penmanship.

She also testified to the health of her 81-year-old mother. ‘She was just amazing,’ she said. ‘We would walk five miles and come in and she would say: “Where’s the ironing?” We used to joke she was fitter than we were.’

In the ensuing cross-examination, Ms Davies attempted to show that Mrs Woodruff’s relationship with her mother had been less than harmonious. This impression was totally disproven by the diary and other witnesses.

Government pathologist Dr John Rutherford took the jury through the gruesome details of the post-mortem procedure, explaining how body tissue was collected and analysed. He demonstrated that victims cited in the indictment had not died from old age or disease and that, typically, morphine poisoning was the cause of death.

A fingerprint expert then demonstrated that Mrs Grundy had not handled the ‘will’, though Dr Shipman had. Calligraphy analyst Michael Allen then took the stand and dismissed the signatures on the document as ‘crude forgeries’.

Computer analyst Detective Sergeant John Ashley then testified that Shipman falsified his patients’ medical histories. The recorded interviews showing Shipman’s reaction to being confronted with this was then entered into the record.

In the second week of the trial, district nurse Marion Gilchrist was called. She recalled Shipman’s reaction when he realised he was about to be arrested for the murder of Mrs Grundy. He broke down and said: ‘I read thrillers and, on the evidence they have, I would have me guilty…’

Then he said: ‘The only thing I did wrong was not having her cremated. If I had had her cremated I wouldn’t be having all this trouble.’

At the time, the nurse put this down to black humour.

Another witness testified that Shipman had said: ‘If I could bring her back, I would; look at all the trouble it’s caused.’ As to the will, he had said: ‘I was going to say I didn’t want the money but, because of all this trouble, I will have it.’

Shipman had then claimed he was going to use most of the money for philanthropic purposes.

Dr John Grenville, who had reviewed Shipman’s notes, expressed shock at how quickly Shipman had pronounced Mrs Grundy dead.

 ‘I would examine the body carefully to ensure death had occurred,’ he said. ‘If I found no pulse at the neck, I would look for a more central point.’

Grenville also pointed out that Shipman made no attempt to revive the patient, which would have been standard medical practice.

As the details of each case were presented, other patterns emerged. Shipman told bystanders that he had called 999, but when he checked and found the patient dead, he would pick up the phone and pretend to cancel the ambulance – though none was on its way.

This occurred in the case of Lizzie Adams who was murdered on 28 February 1997. Although she was 77 year old, she still loved dancing. Her dance partner William Catlow dropped in at Mrs Adams’ Coronation Street home the day she died to find Shipman inspecting her magnificent collection of crystal and porcelains. In the next room, Lizzie lay dying.

‘I just burst past him,’ Catlow told the court. ‘She felt warm. I said: “I can feel her pulse.”’

According to Catlow, Shipman said: ‘No, that’s yours. I will cancel the ambulance.’

But telephone records showed that Shipman had not phoned for an ambulance that day. He later persuaded the family to have her body cremated.

Shipman also claimed to have called an ambulance when he killed 64-year-old Norah Nuttall on 26 January 1998. Her son Anthony said he had left his mother alone for just 20 minutes, returning to find Dr Shipman leaving the house.

‘I asked him what was wrong,’ said Anthony. ‘He said: “I have rung an ambulance for her.” I ran in and she looked like she was asleep in the chair. I took her by the hands and shook her, saying, “Mum, Mum.”’

Then Shipman touched her neck and told the son: ‘I’m sorry, she has gone.’

Naturally, the family did not find this at all satisfactory and Norah Nuttall’s sister went to Shipman’s office to examine the dead woman’s records because she wanted more details of her sister’s death. Annoyed, Shipman told his staff: ‘I knew it would happen, I told you it would happen.’

He quickly made up a story of how Norah had phoned his office to say she was ill. Later he claimed he had been paged and, as he happened to be nearby, he made a house call. The telephone records proved that both of these stories were fabrications.

Shipman was caught in another lie. He had said that his reason for visiting Kathleen Grundy was to collect blood samples for a study on ageing. When he was asked what had happened to them, he said they had been sent for analysis. But the prosecution demonstrated that Shipman was not involved in any study on ageing. When confronted, Shipman then remembered that he had left the samples under a heap of notes and, once they were no longer useful, he thrown them away. This did little to bolster his credibility.

The court was also struck by Shipman’s lack of compassion toward the bereaved. Lorry driver Albert Lilley broke down as he told of the way Shipman announced the death of his wife, 58-year-old Jean Lilley, after he had killed her on 25 April 1997.