When Doctors Kill: Who, Why, and How
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The morning after the wedding, Flora woke up to find that Cream had fled to London, leaving a note promising he would keep in touch, a promise that he kept (unfortunately for her). Shortly after Cream’s departure, Flora once again became severely ill. When her doctor asked her if she had taken any medications for her illness, she mentioned taking some pills her husband had sent her. Flora mysteriously died in 1877, less than 1 year after the nuptials. Dr. Phelan, her personal physician was highly suspicious that the “medication” send by the estranged husband was responsible for her death.
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3 The Alpha Killers: Three Prolific Murderous Doctors
In order to obtain British medical certification, Cream studied and worked at the famous St. Thomas’ Hospital in South London, the hallowed grounds where Dr. Thomas Lister and Florence Nightingale had healed the sick. Lister was the innovative surgeon whose espousal of aseptic procedures during childbirth saved thousands of women from succumbing to puerperal fever and Nightingale was the renowned mother of modern nursing. When Cream arrived, England was at the waning end of the industrial revolution, bringing on one hand prosperity and a better life for the middle class but creating hellish slums rampant with poverty, prostitution and disease in the larger cities. Cream, a mustached, handsome young man accustomed to a rather rustic Canadian environment was dazzled by London’s vibrancy and sophistication. He plunged enthusiastically into the viva-cious nightlife frequenting the bars, music halls and vaudeville theaters while seeking the company of both affluent society women and prostitutes working under the Waterloo Bridge. His voracious sexual appetite ranged from filet mignon to week-old hamburger. This frantic social life, however, allowed him little time for studies and he failed to pass the medical examinations required to obtain his license to practice. Following this devastating failure Cream moved to Edinburgh, Scotland where he successfully completed his studies at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons prior to returning to Canada.
Cream developed a thriving medical practice in Ontario, addressing common ailments by day and performing abortions on the side. However, in 1879 Dr. Cream ran afoul of the Canadian police. A young, pregnant woman, Kate Gardener, was found dead in a shed behind Cream’s office and it was determined that she died of chloroform poisoning. Cream was arrested and under questioning, he confirmed that Gardener had requested an abortifacient from him but claimed that he had refused. He suggested that Gardener must have committed suicide. However, in view of the fact that there was no chloroform container at the scene and that the victim’s face and body were badly scratched, the investigating Coroner’s Jury issued a verdict of homicide. Cream was the obvious prime suspect but somehow he persuaded the Coroner that he had only tried to help the dying girl and successfully avoided murder charges. As soon as he was set free, with his reputation as a physician now in tatters, Cream moved to Chicago and set up a practice not far from the city’s red-light district.
Police quickly suspected him of performing abortions, which were strictly forbidden both morally and legally in the 1880s. The police also knew that women who used the services of non-physician abortionists often died because of bleeding or infections so they tended not to pursue physicians who performed safe abortions.
Cream, who may become addicted to cocaine and morphine, narrowly escaped homicide charges when two prostitutes died after receiving abortions from him.
One simply bled to death and the other was given “anti-pregnancy pills” later discovered to be strychnine (effective, to be sure, but deadly). Police were suspicious of Cream, but they could not positively link him with the crimes. Ironically, Cream’s downfall in Chicago occurred after he poisoned not a woman but a man.
Around the time that he killed the two prostitutes, Cream was selling an elixir supposedly effective in the treatment of epilepsy. One of his patients, Daniel Stott, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream: The Misogynistic Serial Killer
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was very pleased with the medication and would often send his wife to Cream’s office for the pills. Cream started an affair with the Stott’s wife, and as the husband became bothersome and suspicious, Cream added strychnine to Stott’s medication.
The patient obligingly died in June 1881. Cream would probably have got away with this murder had it not been for his unusual compulsive and meddling behavior.
He wrote to the Coroner accusing the pharmacist of poisoning Stott with strychnine.
Having drawn attention to a possible crime, the body was exhumed and the poison detected. However it was Cream, not the pharmacist, who stood trial for murder.
He was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment at Illinois State Penitentiary.
After serving only 10 years of his life sentence, he was set free in 1891 after he bribed Illinois politicians to grant him a pardon. It is hard to believe that such a thing could happen in Chicago.
After his release, he hurriedly returned to London. He visited his old haunts, such as Waterloo Bridge, and took residence in South London near St. Thomas’
Hospital. He posed as a resident doctor from the hospital, signing his name
“Thomas Neill, MD.” In October 1891, Ellen Donworth, a prostitute, was seen walking in the company of a rather elegant gentleman in a top hat. Soon thereafter she was found slumped in her bed, apparently drunk, but experiencing periodic, agonizing convulsions. Between the painful spasms, she was able to tell witnesses that a tall, dark, cross-eyed man had given her something to drink. She died in agony on the way to hospital of what was later shown to be strychnine poisoning.
Just 2 days later Cream killed again, this time another prostitute, Matilda Clover, who had her death incorrectly attributed to alcoholism. The following April, Cream carried out his first double murder. After accompanying two prostitutes to their house, Alice Marsh and Emma Shrivell, he left them to die in excruciating pain.
Autopsies revealed lethal doses of strychnine in both women’s stomachs.
Strychnine, commonly used as a rat poison, produces some of the most painful symptoms of any poison. Within less than half an hour the victim starts to experience very painful and continuous muscular spasms and convulsions, starting at the neck and spreading over the entire body. The convulsions progress, increasing in intensity and frequency, until the backbone arches like a bow. In some instances, the spine may snap. Death comes from asphyxia caused by paralysis of the neural pathways that control breathing or by cardiac arrest due to exhaustion from the convulsions. The subjects usually die after 2–4 hours of unbearable pain. Allegedly, at the point of death the body becomes rigid immediately, even in the middle of a convulsion, resulting in instantaneous rigor mortis. Of all of the poisons available to Dr. Cream, strychnine was a particularly sadistic choice.
Lou Harvey, a smart, Piccadilly prostitute did not fall for Cream’s deadly “medical treatments.” After accosting her, Cream succeeded in convincing her to meet him later that evening for dinner and a night at the theater. Before they parted at the Charring Cross Embankment near the Thames River, “Dr. Neill” gave her some pills which he guaranteed would greatly improve her rather pale complexion caused by the unhealthy London air. With the deeds of Jack the Ripper still reverberating in her mind, the streetwise Ms. Harvey was suspicious of Cream and she tossed the pills into the Thames once he was out of sight. Nevertheless, she showed up at the 24
3 The Alpha Killers: Three Prolific Murderous Doctors
appointed place and time later that evening to meet Cream but he never appeared as he likely assumed she was already dead. It was only after two more prostitutes were found dead from strychnine poisoning that Scotland Yard realized they were dealing with a serial murderer. It is very possible that Cream would have avoided detection if his own meddling did not once again bring him to the attention of the authorities. After committing his crimes, Dr. Cream wrote a blackmailing letter to Dr. Joseph Harper, the father of a medical student in the same rooming-house where he lived, saying he had evidence that his son had commit
ted the murders. Signing his name “W. H. Murray,” Cream said he would destroy the evidence if the father paid him 1,500 pounds. The father sent the letter to his son in the belief it was from an insane person (a very good guess). The son immediately turned it over to Scotland Yard who just happened to be following up on a complaint from Cream that he was being followed and was concerned about his safety. Ordinarily, Scotland Yard ignored such reports since it received so many of them but something about Cream alerted them to follow up in this case. A series of events then transpired which trapped Cream in a web of irrefutable evidence.
A constable who had been on patrol in the neighborhood where the two women (Marsh and Shrivell) were murdered recognized Cream as the man whom he had seen leaving the house where one of the murders had taken place. Dr. Cream also began to discuss the murders in great detail with an acquaintance, John Haynes, a retired New York detective. As a former detective, Haynes was obviously very interested in these conversations and was quite surprised to hear how much this new friend knew about the murders. After the men had supper one night, Cream actually took Haynes on a tour of the murder sites and talked at length about each of the victims, including Lou Harvey. When Haynes asked Cream how he knew so much about the murders, Cream claimed he had just been following the cases closely in the newspapers. So had Haynes, but he did not recall any mention in the newspapers of a victim named Lou Harvey. Whoops! Haynes contacted a friend of his at Scotland Yard, Inspector Patrick, and the Cream investigation began in earnest. His prior convictions were uncovered, a handwriting analyst confirmed that Cream had written the accusatory letters to Dr. Harper, and the passport identifying him as Thomas Neill proved to be a forgery. Police were trailing Cream round the clock while trying to solve the mystery of his missing victim, Lou Harvey. Finally, to their surprise and great relief they found her to be alive and well and willing to cooperate fully with the police.
With mounting evidence against him, Cream was arrested on June 3, 1892.
Further investigation turned up two more murders in the U.S. during a visit by Cream. The doctor confided in someone that he “used strychnine in connection with the prevention of childbirth” of the women he had had relations with. His medical reasoning is quite sound; it cannot be denied that childbirth can be prevented by the murder of the mother. Throughout his incarceration and during the beginning of his inquest, Cream maintained unfazed that he was an innocent man.
He betrayed no emotion and remained composed with a stoic expression on his face, according to many historical accounts. It was not until the bailiff introduced Lou Harvey to the courtroom that Cream appeared suddenly surprised and apprehensive. After Harvey testified about her encounter with “the doctor” and his Dr. Harold Frederick Shipman: The Champion Serial Killer
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pills, Cream was found guilty of murdering four women. He was sentenced to death by hanging.
On November 16, 1892, crowds gathered outside of Newgate Prison calling for Cream’s death. One Canadian newspaper wrote, “Probably no criminal was ever executed in London who had a less pitying mob awaiting his execution.” According to legend, right before the trapdoor released Cream to his death, he supposedly shouted, “I am Jack…” and then was cut off as his neck cracked in the noose. This, of course, implies that Cream was confessing to being Jack the Ripper, although this seems rather implausible because he was jailed in Illinois when the Ripper murders took place. Some researches, however, including the late Canadian writer Donald Bell noted that Dr. Cream and Jack the Ripper shared several similar traits an overlapping modus operandi. In support of his theory, Bell argued that:
– Both chose prostitutes as victims;
– Both wrote letters to authorities boasting about their evil deeds;
– Both were very cruel and merciless in their choice of “weapons” and;
– Their victims, as though intoxicated, nearly never cried out in fear.
Although Cream was apparently in jail at the time when Jack the Ripper murders occurred, Bell points out that prisoners sometimes paid substitutes (men willing to serve a prison sentence for a fee) to serve in jail in their stead. Considering the widespread corruption in Chicago during the 1880s, this was a very attractive arrangement for a man of financial means. A handwriting expert, Derek Davis, corroborated Bell’s assumption by reporting that he found similarities between Cream’s handwriting and the writing in Jack’s letter. Nevertheless, to this very day the identity of the Ripper remains shrouded in secrecy.
The serial murders of Dr. Cream epitomize the characteristics of the sadistic serial killer who enjoys both the suffering of his victims, their powerlessness, and their deaths. His crimes imbue him with a sense of superiority which convinces him he is immune from detection and smarter than the police investigators who he taunts. As is often the case with these types of killers, they are brought down by their own inflated egos. Cream was a misogynist and it was his “mission” to rid society of trashy, perverted women. Yet he also loved the company of his victims and actively sought out their favors. He made his rounds among the prostitutes, slept with them, and then murdered them. A rather incongruous behavior for the self-designed “missioner of virtue.”
Dr. Harold Frederick Shipman: The Champion Serial Killer
The scary image of the mad scientist or the psychopathic doctor is, for horror-loving readers and viewers, a great crowd pleaser. The titillation and fear experienced from the safe haven of a comfortable armchair, a plush theater seat, or a couch in a dark living room is intoxicating and, for some, truly addicting. However, the thought that those imaginary creatures can step into real life and threaten our existence is more frightening than any fiction. Physicians deal with us at times when we are 26
3 The Alpha Killers: Three Prolific Murderous Doctors
very vulnerable, not just physically but emotionally as well. Disease, injury, and the ravages of aging disable many of us to some extent. We look up to the doctor as a figure of wisdom and compassion. The thought that this helping hand can turn into the claws of a monster preying on patients is truly terrifying. Nevertheless, such monsters have existed and likely still practice in the medical profession.
Dr. Harold Frederick Shipman, the champion of serial murder, was born the middle child of a working-class family on June 14, 1946, in Nottingham, England, the old prowling grounds of Robin Hood. Out of the three siblings, Harold (or rather Fred or Freddy as he was commonly called) was clearly the favorite child of his mother Vera, a rather domineering woman. From an early age, she fostered a sense of uniqueness and superiority that engendered in him both arrogance and aloofness while isolating him from other children. In 1963, when he was 16, his beloved mother was stricken with cancer and Shipman devoted a great portion of his free time to being with her. Over several months, he watched her being progressively consumed by the disease often writhing in great pain that could only be miraculously dampened by injections of morphine. Ultimately he watched his mother die peacefully at age 43, after a large morphine injection. His mother’s death greatly affected young Shipman and likely prompted him to choose medicine as a career. After a bumpy start, he was admitted to Leeds University Medical School at age 19 and graduated after 5 years of study. As a student, he did not make any lasting impression on his peers except that he appeared to be a loner, somewhat haughty and patronizing (an attitude not completely foreign to some physicians of our present era). He met his future wife, Primrose Oxtoby, after her father rented him a room and they were married when she was 17 (and 5 months pregnant with his child). Primrose had a family background similar to Shipman’s as her mother had also been very controlling. From Leeds, Shipman moved to Pontefract where he was employed for 12 months as a house officer at the Pontefract General Infirmary before being fully registered with the General Medical Council in August 1971. Thereafter, he continued to work at the same hospital as a senior house officer gaining a diploma in child health in 1972 and a diploma in obstetrics and gynecology in 1974.
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By 1974, he was a father of two and had joined a lucrative medical practice in Todmorden, West Yorkshire. He conducted himself appropriately with his peers and his patients. The senior physicians were pleased with his work, but he clearly antagonized the office staff. He was arrogant, overbearing, aggressive and cantan-kerous, and displayed a belittling behavior to his support staff, deeming assistants
“stupid” if they did not comply exactly with his wishes. Then unexpectedly Shipman started to experience unexplained blackouts that he claimed were due to epilepsy. In 1975, his medical colleagues found out that he had ordered large amounts of Pethidine, a pain-killing narcotic, for the office using fake prescriptions.
When confronted with the incriminating evidence of his likely narcotic addiction, Shipman asked for a second chance. When this was denied he stormed out of the meeting in a violent rage. Shipman refused to resign from the group but eventually was forced to leave and shortly thereafter entered a rehab clinic. Protracted Dr. Harold Frederick Shipman: The Champion Serial Killer
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disciplinary proceedings concluded 2 years later, and he was found guilty of multiple violations of national drugs laws as well as fraudulent behavior and forgery of prescriptions. Surprisingly this resulted only in a small fine of about $1,000.
The BBC reported that the senior partner at the Todmorden practice, Dr. Michael Grieve, explained the light sentence by saying: “If Fred hadn’t at that point gone straight into hospital, perhaps his sentence would have been more than just a fine.