Killers - The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time
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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.
‘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.
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.