Killers - The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time (25 page)

‘He said: “I have been with your wife for quite a while now, trying to persuade her to go to the hospital, but she won’t go. I was going to come and have a word with you and your wife, and I was too late,”’ Lilley testified. ‘I said: “What do you mean too late?” He said: ‘You are not listening to me carefully.”’

It seemed Shipman actually took pleasure in forcing Lilley to guess his wife had died. Shipman played a similar guessing game with Winnifred Mellor’s daughter Kathleen.

‘He said: “Did you realise that your mother has been suffering from chest pains?” and I said: “No”,’ Kathleen told the court. ‘He said: “She called this morning and I came to see her and she refused treatment.” So I said well I’ll be up as soon as I can. He said: “No, no there’s no need for that. So I said has she gone to hospital?” And he said: “There’s no point in sending her to hospital.” And I just went silent then, and he didn’t say anything neither. And then I just realised what he was not saying. And I said do you mean my mother’s dead? He said: “I see you understand.”’

Winnifred Mellor’s neighbour Gloria Ellis played a key role in securing his conviction. She had witnessed Shipman’s visit to Winnie Mellor just hours before her death. When he returned later, he knocked on Gloria Ellis’s door. He said he had come to see Winifred Mellor. He could see her sat in a chair and thought she was dead. So the two of them went to Winifred Mellor’s house and found her dead in a chair.

Then, when Gloria asked: “You were here before, weren’t you?” Shipman did not answer.

“Has Gloria had a stroke?” she asked.

Shipman then grew hostile. He called her a ‘stupid girl’. Far from being stupid, she recorded to the minute the times of Shipman’s visits.

Shipman was similarly heartless in the case of 63-year-old Ivy Lomas, the only one of the 15 to have died in his surgery. Detective Constable Philip Reade had gone to the doctor’s office hoping Shipman would help him locate Ivy’s next of kin.

‘He was laughing,’ said Reade. ‘He said he considered her such a nuisance that he was having part of the seating area permanently reserved for Ivy with a plaque to the effect “Seat permanently reserved for Ivy Lomas”.’

Shipman also told Reade that as he left the room Ivy ‘could have taken her last breath’. Once again, he had made no effort to resuscitate the woman. Instead, he left her alone while he attended other patients.

 ‘This was a medical emergency,’ said Dr Grenville. ‘I would have given my entire attention to this particular patient.’

But Shipman knew Ivy was beyond resuscitation. She was dying from an overdose of morphine.

Henriques pointed out that ‘the poisoner fears pathology, ambulances and hospitals’. And Shipman went to great lengths to avoid any sort of investigation. When 68-year-old Pamela Hillier died in mysterious circumstances on 9 February 1998, a paramedic from the ambulance service suggested they call the police. Shipman said simply: ‘I don’t think there is any need to do that.’

Mrs Hillier’s family was also far from happy with Shipman’s cavalier attitude to the diagnosis. When entering the cause of death on the death certificate, he said: ‘Let’s put it down to a stroke.’ This made no sense to the relatives. Pamela Hillier had been both strong and active before Shipman paid a visit. Her son Keith wanted a post-mortem, but Shipman advised against it, saying that it was ‘an unpleasant thing… to put my mum through’.

Shipman also went to great lengths to persuade families to have their loved ones cremated. In the case of Kathleen Grundy, he had even ticked the cremation box on the relevant form. But fortunately Angela Woodruff knew that her mother wanted to be buried.

Shipman’s defence tried, against all odds, to paint a picture of him as an old-fashioned family doctor – one prepared to go the extra mile for his patients – as well as a family man with a loving wife and well-adjusted children (Shipman and his wife had four children in all, but all were grown up before his addiction to murder was uncovered).

Naturally his previous convictions of drug abuse and forgery went unmentioned. But still they had to overturn the forensic evidence.

Davies questioned whether it was possible to tell whether the morphine found in the bodies came from a single overdose – as the prosecution contended – or from multiple doses.

‘I can’t say,’ the forensic analyst replied.

Plainly, the defence hoped that if they could convince the jury that the morphine in the victims’ bodies came from long-term use, they could contend that they had not been murdered by Dr Shipman, but that they were drug addicts who had been killed by their own habit. They were clutching at straws.

The prosecution then put American forensic expert Dr Karch Steven on the stand. He described the technique he had used. It was new and details of the procedure had only been published in
The Lancet
the year before. This technique proved conclusively that none of the victims had been a long-term morphine user. In each case, the narcotic in the tissue came from a single, massive overdose.

Shipman maintained he never carried morphine, so he could not have killed any of his patients. This assertion was overturned by the family of 69-year-old Mary Dudley, who had died on 30 December 1990 – though Shipman had not been charged with her death. Mary’s daughter-in-law Joyce Dudley had received a phone call from Shipman telling her: ‘I’m afraid your mother-in-law has only got about half an hour left to live.’

By the time, Joyce and her husband Jeffery arrived at Mary’s house in Werneth Road, his mother was dead. Shipman told them she had died from a heart attack.

‘And this is when he said to me and Jeff that he “gave her a shot of morphine” for the pain,’ Joyce Dudley recalled.

The records also detailed his over-prescribing of morphine. He said he had prescribed 2,000 milligrams of morphine to Frank Crompton, who was suffering from prostate cancer. Although Mr Crompton was not in pain, Shipman said he wanted to have the morphine on hand in case pain developed later. Crompton, Shipman maintained, was afraid of becoming a drug addict and threw away the ampoules. Later, Shipman said that he talked to Crompton again and persuaded him that it was best if he kept some morphine in the house and ordered another batch. Crompton had since died, but it seems likely that Shipman purloined both consignments.

Shipman’s staff found it difficult to keep track of his drug usage. When a batch of morphine went missing, he said that he had given it to a colleague who had loaned him some in an earlier emergency. He also said he had a supply of diamorphine – that is, heroin – that he had found lying on the office doormat one morning when he arrived at work. It must have been dropped through the letter box, he maintained. Henriques pressed Shipman relentlessly on his ‘magic mat’ where restricted drugs simply materialised overnight. Otherwise Shipman took unused supplies from patients who had died.

‘What he tended to do is over-prescribe to individuals who legitimately required diamorphine, certainly in the days just prior to them dying,’ said Detective Superintendent Bernard Postles. ‘What he would do then is go along to the home, offer to dispose of any excess that was left at the house, and he would take that away.’

In one case, Shipman obtained enough diamorphine to kill 360 people.

Jim King had narrow escape in 1996 when Shipman incorrectly diagnosed cancer. He treated him with massive doses of morphine, saying ‘You can take as much morphine as you wish’ because ‘of course it didn’t really matter, I was dying anyway’.

King then came down with pneumonia and Shipman made a house call. Again he said he had to give King an injection. But King’s wife was wary, perhaps because both King’s father and aunt had died after one of Shipman’s visits. At her insistence, King refused the injection.

‘I kept telling him no, no, I don’t want it,’ said King. ‘He was a bit arrogant about it, a kind of snotty attitude towards me, a little bit.’

This probably saved King’s life and kept more morphine out of Shipman’s hands. Later, the Kings learned that Shipman had indeed killed their relatives.

In his summing up, Mr Justice Forbes urged caution. After all, no one had actually seen Shipman kill any of his patients.

 ‘The allegations could not be more serious – a doctor accused of murdering fifteen patients,’ he said. ‘You will have heard evidence which may have aroused feelings of anger, strong disapproval, disgust, profound dismay or deep sympathy.’

However, he said, common sense must prevail.

At 4:43 p.m. on 31 January 2000, the jury returned a unanimous verdict. Shipman was guilty on all 15 counts of murder and one of forgery.

Shipman betrayed no sign of emotion as the verdict was read. His wife Primrose, wearing black and flanked by her two sons, remained impassive. When his previous convictions – including one for forgery – were read, there was a gasp in the courtroom. Sentence was to be passed immediately.

 ‘You have finally been brought to justice by the verdict of this jury,’ said the judge. ‘I have no doubt whatsoever that these are true verdicts. The time has now come for me to pass sentence upon you for these wicked, wicked crimes.

‘Each of your victims was your patient. You murdered each and every one of your victims by a calculated and cold-blooded perversion of your medical skills, for your own evil and wicked purposes.

‘You took advantage of, and grossly abused their trust. You were, after all, each victim’s doctor. I have little doubt that each of your victims smiled and thanked you as she submitted to your deadly ministrations.’

He handed down a life sentence for each of the murders and a four-year sentence for forgery. Normally a judge writes to the Home Secretary to recommend the length a prisoner sentenced to life should serve. Mr Justice Forbes broke with the tradition and announced his recommendations there and then.

‘In the ordinary way, I would not do this in open court,’ he said. ‘But in your case I am satisfied justice demands that I make my views known at the conclusion of this trial. My recommendation will be that you spend the remainder of your days in prison.’

At the end of the 57-day trial, only 15 murders had been dealt with. There were no immediately plans to try Shipman for any more murders. As he was already serving 15 concurrent life sentences, what was the point?

However, the police were convinced that those 15 were only the tip of the iceberg. The first murder that Shipman had been convicted of happened in 1996, but the police were convinced that Shipman’s killing spree started long before that. An audit conducted by Professor Richard Baker of the University of Leicester estimates that he murdered at least 236 patients over a 24-year period. Professor Baker examined the number and pattern of deaths among Shipman’s patients, and compared them with those of other practitioners’ patients. There was a noticeably higher rate of death among elderly patients. Deaths were often clustered at certain times of the day and they usually occurred when Shipman was present. And his records did not match with the patients’ known symptoms.

Detective Chief Superintendent Bernard Postles, who headed the original investigation, noted the death toll estimated in Baker’s audit was ‘broadly in keeping with the number of deaths investigated by Greater Manchester Police during the course of the investigation’. However, John Pollard once said ‘we might be looking at a thousand’. No one will ever know. Shipman was eventually prosecuted for just 15. Professor Baker’s study made for distressing reading for the friends and relatives of patients who died while in the Shipman’s care and the police started a special helpline for those concerned.

An official inquiry was set up under high court judge Dame Janet Smith. It scrutinised the records of nearly 500 of Shipman’s patients who had died between 1978 and 1998. The inquiry’s report concluded that Shipman had murdered at least 215 of his patients – 171 women and 44 men, between the ages of 41 and 93. However, Janet Smith said, ‘The full toll may be higher’, and cited a real suspicion that Shipman had killed 45 more people, though there was not enough information to be certain. And in another 38 cases, there was too little evidence to form any clear opinion on the cause of death.

Dame Janet found Shipman’s ‘non-violent’ killing almost incredible.

‘The way in which Shipman could kill, face the relatives and walk away unsuspected would be dismissed as fanciful if described in a work of fiction,’ she said.

Even more incredible was that he could murder so many people without arousing suspicion for decades.

Later Dame Janet upped the estimate of how many people Shipman killed by 15 – bringing his total murder toll to an estimated 230 – after investigating his activities during the three years he was a junior house doctor at the Pontefract General Infirmary in the 1970s. She said that Shipman had certainly unlawfully killed three men there and that his death toll at the hospital was ‘between ten and fifteen patients’. Dame Janet had decided to investigate Shipman’s activities in Pontefract when Sandra Whitehead, a student nurse who had worked with him for three years, recalled the high death rate in the hospital and contacted police.

‘In many cases I have been unable to reach a definite conclusion,’ she said. However, of the 137 deaths she investigated at Pontefract – 133 of which Shipman had signed a death certificate or cremation order – she was suspicious about 14 which were ‘probably natural but there is one or more feature of the evidence that gives rise to some suspicion or unease’.

The commission found that Shipman had been present in at least one third of the cases he had certified, compared to an average of 1.6 per cent for other doctors. It was also found that an unusually high percentage of the deaths had occurred between 6 p.m. and midnight.

It now seems that Shipman’s first victim was probably 67-year-old Margaret Thompson, who had been recovering from a stroke. She died in March 1971, and records indicated that Shipman had been alone with her at the time.

Dame Janet said Shipman had murdered 54-year-old Thomas Cullumbine, 84-year-old John Brewster and 71-year-old James Rhodes in April and May 1972. She also had ‘quite serious suspicions’ about the deaths of 74-year-old Elizabeth Thwaites, 72-year-old Louis Bastow, 70-year-old John Auty Harrison and four-year-old Susan Garfitt. She was possible his youngest victim and a break from his normal pattern, as all his other victims were elderly.