00:00:05
- MALE NARRATOR: When
81-year-old Kathleen Grundy was found lifeless in her home
00:00:09
in Hyde, Greater Manchester,
England on the 24th of June, 1998, no one could have foreseen that
her death would lead
00:00:18
to the unearthing
of one of the world's most prolific serial killers. - GEOFFREY: This is not a man
who's hiding in the woodshed
00:00:26
with an axe in his hand,
this is a man who is pretending to be helpful, and consoling,
and compassionate.
00:00:34
- NARRATOR: A popular
local doctor, 52-year-old Harold Shipman, had been
killing his elderly
00:00:40
and vulnerable patients
for over 25 years. But somehow he'd remained
completely undetected.
00:00:49
- That generation particularly
trusted doctors, held them in great esteem, and would have done
anything they asked.
00:00:56
- NARRATOR: Shipman
would eventually be found guilty of 15 murders,
but an inquiry
00:01:01
after his incarceration would
estimate the true number of victims to be well over
200.
00:01:09
- PHIL: You know, he was
a doctor, he had power over life and death and
somehow he seemed
00:01:13
to get some kick from
exploiting that. I mean, it's very hard
to imagine. - NARRATOR: Harold Shipman,
the man nicknamed Dr. Death,
00:01:21
had been unmasked as one of
the world's most evil killers. - ♪ ♪♪ - NARRATOR: When
Dr. Harold Shipman
00:01:47
was found guilty of killing
15 women in January, 2000, the nation was in shock. But investigators had merely
scratched the surface
00:01:58
of his murderous career. The respected general
practitioner, who was once a pillar
of the community in Hyde,
00:02:05
Greater Manchester, England, had been christened
Dr. Death by the British tabloids.
00:02:12
A 2002 inquiry into Shipman's
crimes estimated that the number of deaths
he was responsible for
00:02:19
was at least 215. Detective Bernard Postles
led the investigation into Britain's most prolific
serial killer of all time.
00:02:31
- I don't think that Shipman's
victims knew that they were going to die. As far as they were
concerned, quite often,
00:02:38
Dr. Shipman was treating them,
so people would willingly roll up the sleeve and offer
their arm to him,
00:02:45
and were probably
in the process of chatting to him whilst he was actually
administering the injection
00:02:49
or taking a blood sample. But in actual fact what he was
doing was, he was administering
00:02:54
morphine in sufficient
quantities to kill them. - NARRATOR: Journalist
Mikaela Sitford was working
00:03:01
for the Manchester Evening
News when she first heard about the investigation
into the family GP.
00:03:09
She went to visit him
at his surgery. - When I first met Shipman,
I remember thinking how
00:03:14
reedy and weak his voice
was and how small he was physically, he wasn't
imposing at all.
00:03:20
And I knew from talking
to people later on that he could be quite arrogant
and high-handed.
00:03:26
He knew the effect he was
having on people, he was actually enjoying it
at times, and I just thought
00:03:32
that was evil and cruel. And he just broke the heart
of the whole community. - BERNARD: As the inquiry
went further, as we started
00:03:42
to investigate more deaths,
it was becoming beyond what I could have ever have
believed it was going
00:03:48
to become, which is the
largest serial killer that this country has
ever known. - NARRATOR: Shipman's
story begins
00:03:56
on January the 14th, 1946
in Nottingham, England. The middle child of three
grew up on a council estate
00:04:06
in a working-class
neighborhood. - DR. YARDLEY: Harold Shipman
was one of the post-war
00:04:10
baby boom generation,
and this was a real age of opportunity, where
working-class kids could
00:04:16
become middle-class
professionals. So when he passed the
11-plus exam and went to grammar school,
his mother was very proud of him
00:04:24
and she pushed him
incredibly hard. And I think there was
the expectation that Harold
00:04:30
was the family's gateway
to a middle-class life. And I think that pressure
that was always there for him
00:04:38
really bore down
on him quite heavily because he wasn't naturally
clever, he had to work
00:04:42
incredibly hard to get
where he got. - NARRATOR: Shipman was
particularly close to his mother, Vera.
00:04:51
- DR. YARDLEY: When we
look back at the childhoods of serial killers we look at
their relationships
00:04:55
with their parents and very
often we see an awful lot of abuse, an awful lot
of neglect,
00:05:00
but in this case it seems
to be completely the opposite, Harold Shipman
seems to have been targeted
00:05:05
by his mother
for excessive praise and really becoming very
enmeshed and invested in him.
00:05:13
- GEOFFREY: He identified
with being her blue-eyed boy, and I'm sure that Vera
said to him persistently,
00:05:21
"You're the one that's gonna
make the Shipman name famous." Which in fact he did,
00:05:27
but for perhaps
not the right reasons. - MIKAELA: But when he
was in his teens she developed
00:05:32
lung cancer. And she would sit in
the window and wait for him to return from school
and he'd come in
00:05:37
and make her a cup of tea and,
you know, they'd have a sit and a chat
about their day and, um,
00:05:43
she just looked forward
to that moment. - NARRATOR: In June, 1963,
43-year-old Vera Shipman
00:05:50
succumbed to cancer. Her doting son was devastated. - DR. YARDLEY: Harold
Shipman's mother died
00:05:57
when he was 17, and this was
an incredibly traumatic event for him because
his mother had played
00:06:02
a very significant role
in his life, she was quite controlling,
she was quite domineering,
00:06:07
she would always tell him what
he should be doing, and suddenly she's not there.
00:06:14
- GEOFFREY: But significantly,
Shipman saw how the local GP administered diamorphine
to his mother to help her pain.
00:06:25
It's also possible that, and this is rather a gruesome
way of putting it, that Shipman became fascinated
with watching his mother die.
00:06:39
- DR. YARDLEY: So, you've got
this all-powerful GP who's come into
the family home
00:06:43
and taken control of
the situation. And I think that, perhaps,
did plant a bit of a seed
00:06:48
for Harold Shipman there,
the fact that there's this individual who, who comes in,
they have status,
00:06:54
they have power,
they have authority, and nobody questions them. And I think that's something
that really did lodge
00:06:59
in his mind. - NARRATOR: By the mid '60s,
Shipman had left Nottingham and headed to Leeds
to study medicine.
00:07:08
While living in Yorkshire,
the young student met his future wife. - MIKAELA: Primrose was
Shipman's landlady's daughter,
00:07:17
and he got her
pregnant, and so they had to get married, and Shipman's
carefree student days
00:07:23
were over. - GEOFFREY: In 1970,
Harold Shipman graduated from Leeds
Medical School and got a job
00:07:31
at the Pontefract General
Infirmary in West Yorkshire, he was relatively recently
married, he had one child
00:07:38
and another one was
on the way. But what no one knew
at that point was that Shipman had a completely
different agenda
00:07:47
from the Hippocratic oath,
he wanted to do harm. - NARRATOR: After learning
his trade in Pontefract,
00:07:55
28-year-old Shipman moved
out of a hospital environment to take a role as a general
practitioner.
00:08:03
- MIKAELA: Shipman joined
the Todmorden Group Practice, his first job as a GP, in 1974,
00:08:10
and he was like a breath
of fresh air, he was young, enthusiastic, modern,
he had all these great ideas,
00:08:17
and they thought the world
of him. - BERNARD: But there were
concerns raised by a pharmacy nearby about
the amount of pethidine
00:08:26
that was being prescribed
by him. - NARRATOR: When an
investigation was launched
00:08:30
and Shipman was confronted,
he claimed to be suffering from depression
and said he'd become reliant
00:08:36
on injecting himself
with pethidine, an addictive
opiate-based painkiller. - It is not at all uncommon
for healthcare providers,
00:08:45
physicians, nurses,
and others that might have access to drugs, to become
addicted
00:08:50
because it's right there. Shipman was basically
writing and forging prescriptions for himself.
00:08:57
- BERNARD: But what he
would do would be make prescriptions out
in the name of some of his patients, when
in actual fact they didn't
00:09:04
need it, and he would go
and take the prescription to the pharmacy himself,
and draw it and use it himself.
00:09:11
- DR. YARDLEY: When Shipman's
addiction was discovered, he resigned from the
medical center where he worked,
00:09:16
he was fined £600 by the General Medical Council,
but he wasn't struck off. All he had to do was go
and partake
00:09:23
in some drug rehabilitation
and that was it. And there was never really
any follow-up to that,
00:09:29
so it was almost swept
under the carpet. - I think the view was
that he had a personal problem
00:09:36
and that he wasn't
actually a danger to anyone, which was clearly wrong. - NARRATOR: By 1977,
31-year-old Shipman
00:09:44
was back practicing medicine
across the Pennines in Hyde, Greater Manchester. He spent the next 15 years as a
GP at Donneybrook House Surgery,
00:09:55
where he built up a reputation
as a trusted family physician. - He had a very good bedside
manner, a good ability
00:10:04
to make people feel
good about themselves, and as a result he had
a lot, a lot of patients.
00:10:09
- MIKAELA: They thought
so much of him that when he moved from
the Donneybrook group practice
00:10:12
in Hyde to start his own
single-handed practice, he poached 3,000 of them
and there was a waiting list.
00:10:20
- NARRATOR: Shipman
began his new venture at 21 Market Street,
just across the road
00:10:24
from Donneybrook House,
in August, 1992. - He was literally a pillar
of the local community.
00:10:33
Everybody knew who
Harold Shipman was. - DR. YARDLEY: Because he
would go the extra mile
00:10:38
with his patients, he would
spend time with them, he would sit with them
and have a cup of tea,
00:10:42
he didn't mind doing
home visits. So he gave off the impression
that he was a GP
00:10:46
who genuinely cared,
and I think that's what makes it all the more chilling
when we look at
00:10:50
what he went on to do. - NARRATOR: For the next
six years, Shipman would continue to win praise
from his patients
00:10:58
as a well-respected
and well-liked doctor. Despite being a killer
disguised as a savior,
00:11:05
he forged an unblemished
reputation as one of the most trusted GPs in Hyde,
Greater Manchester, England.
00:11:14
However, by March 1998,
suspicions had been raised about the 52-year-old by another
nearby doctor's surgery.
00:11:28
- MIKAELA: There was
a new GP, Linda Reynolds, who joined the group practice
across the road from Shipman's,
00:11:33
and she'd noticed
that they were signing many more death certificates
for Shipman than any other GP,
00:11:39
and when she researched
it further, she found that his death rate
was three times
00:11:42
that of any
other doctor in town. - BERNARD: As a result of that,
the matter was reported
00:11:47
to the coroner, the coroner
reported it to the police, and an investigation
took place.
00:11:53
- NARRATOR: This first
opportunity to stop Harold Shipman failed due to a lack
of incriminating facts
00:12:00
to support the alligations. - The police investigation
only lasted for four weeks,
00:12:06
and it found that there
was no evidence of wrongdoing on Dr. Shipman's
part, so that was that.
00:12:13
- GEOFFREY: It was to prove
a tragedy because, had they investigated Shipman
more carefully,
00:12:19
they would at least have found
more evidence that things were not
exactly as they seemed.
00:12:26
And perhaps, perhaps,
the abandonment of that investigation
was the catalyst that saw
00:12:34
Shipman take that one step
too far. - NARRATOR: Shipman
had escaped unpunished for now,
00:12:43
but it was only
a temporary reprieve. His real downfall began
with the death of the former mayoress of Hyde,
Kathleen Grundy.
00:12:52
Just like Shipman, the spritely
81-year-old was well-known and popular in the small town.
00:12:59
- MIKAELA: Kathleen Grundy
was found dead on the 24th of June, 1998
by two friends who called
00:13:05
after she didn't turn up
to the lunch club she ran with them. The door was shut, but not
locked, and they walked in
00:13:11
and found her laying
on the settee fully dressed. - NARRATOR: On the day
of her death, Harold Shipman
00:13:18
had visited Kathleen
to carry out a blood test. The news of her passing
came as a total shock
00:13:26
to Kathleen's family,
including her daughter Angela, and son-in-law, Phil Woodruff.
00:13:33
- She distorted my expectation of how an 81-year-old
should be, because she was
just incredibly fit,
00:13:42
she was remarkably
energetic. - NARRATOR: Kathleen
had spoken to her son-in-law about Dr. Shipman
during visits
00:13:50
to Angela and Phil's home
in Warwickshire. - PHIL: She thought he was
a very good doctor.
00:13:55
She, I think consciously,
moved herself onto his list and encouraged various
people, other people, to do so.
00:14:04
- NARRATOR: After Kathleen's
death, Phil finally got to meet this celebrated doctor,
00:14:10
but was far from impressed
with Shipman. - I mean, when we went
to see Shipman immediately
00:14:16
after she died, he--he inferred
that she'd been very frail, and infirm, and not well,
and that she'd died
00:14:27
from old age, and we knew
that was complete nonsense. He was not very sympathetic,
he was rather...
00:14:35
I don't know--exactly know
how to describe it, but, you know, on the basis of
Kathleen's report of him
00:14:41
as such a nice chap,
he seemed sort of rather cold and rather detached,
should I say.
00:14:51
So it was a bit strange. - NARRATOR: Despite
the family's concerns, Shipman had already filed
Kathleen's death certificate.
00:15:00
- PHIL: It was clear that
Shipman was trying to avoid an autopsy. I was naive enough to think
that that was for our benefit,
00:15:08
not for his, so rather stupidly,
we went along with that. And then of course, up turns
this so-called will,
00:15:17
which was just ridiculous, I mean--I mean
not only the content but the way it was done,
it was...it was badly typed
00:15:27
on--on a typewriter,
on a pro forma, you know, the sort of thing
you buy from a stationer's,
00:15:35
and it just was not Kathleen's
style at all, uh, she had a much more,
kind of, professional approach.
00:15:42
If she'd really wanted
to produce a will that we didn't know about--
and that would be very hard
00:15:47
to imagine--she would have
probably handwritten it because she had beautiful
handwriting.
00:15:53
- NARRATOR: Not only did
the scruffy-looking document appear hurried, it also
omitted Angela and Phil.
00:16:00
The will instead instructed
that all of Kathleen Grundy's assets should be left
to Harold Shipman.
00:16:08
- PHIL: Angela, I mean,
obviously she was distraught, I mean, she was going to say,
"Well, look, he can have it,
00:16:16
he can have it," you know. And I said, "That's ridiculous,
that's not your mother's will."
00:16:22
- DR. YARDLEY: In the will,
Kathleen said that she wanted to leave all of her money
and her belongings to her GP,
00:16:28
"To reward him for all of
the care that he's given to me and the people of Hyde."
00:16:32
Now, that really didn't
ring true with Kathleen's family and also in the will
it said, "My family
00:16:38
"don't need this money,
they don't have that kind of urgency for it." So it really was highly
suspicious.
00:16:48
- PHIL: We initially looked
at the signature and compared it with the signatures on--I think
we had a driving license
00:16:53
of hers--it was similar,
but clearly not the same, the alignment
of the capital G was wrong.
00:17:01
- NARRATOR: Phil and Angela
decided to play detectives, they were certain something
was amiss with the will.
00:17:09
Their initial port of call
was to the witnesses who'd countersigned the
document,
00:17:14
both of whom were patients
of Dr. Harold Shipman. - PHIL: We showed her
the signature and so on,
00:17:19
and she said, "Well, it looks
like my signature, but that's not the way I write
my address."
00:17:24
And she said she didn't
know what the document was, she'd just signed
the document.
00:17:28
- NARRATOR:
It was a similar story with the second apparent
witness. - PHIL: I showed him,
not the whole document,
00:17:35
but just the bit with the
signature on it, and his wife or partner sort of
looked over his shoulder
00:17:40
and she said, "Well, that's not
the way you sign your name." 'Cause there was a big flourish
underneath the signature,
00:17:47
and as I understood it,
that is not what he would have done. So we realized that there was
something seriously wrong.
00:17:54
- NARRATOR: Despite
second-guessing themselves, Phil and his wife Angela,
a solicitor, had begun
00:18:00
to believe not only that
Shipman had forged Kathleen's will, but that he
may well have murdered her.
00:18:06
- PHIL: At that point, we
realized that we needed to involve the police, but we
didn't really think it was
00:18:11
terribly realistic to sort of
wander into Hyde Police Station and say, "Oh, by the way,
we think that Dr. Shipman
00:18:16
has killed my mother-in-law." So Angela talked to one
of her partners who did criminal work, and he,
of course, had contacts
00:18:26
in the police at Warwickshire. - NARRATOR: After putting
their concerns in writing
00:18:30
and handing it over to
the local authorities, the complaint soon found
its way to Greater Manchester Police.
00:18:37
- BERNARD: Having received
the report of concern, Greater Manchester Police
launched an inquiry.
00:18:43
What they quickly established
was that the signatures on the will and on the letter
were forgeries.
00:18:52
Forensic scientists were able
to tell just by the way that the signature didn't flow
that it was a forgery in itself.
00:19:00
They were also able to say
the same about the signature on the letter
that accompanied the will,
00:19:05
that purported to have been made
by somebody called J. Smith. Again, because the signature
didn't flow,
00:19:13
it was possible to say
that that was a forgery. - NARRATOR: The will and
accompanying letter were
00:19:19
sent off for forensic testing, and the results link Shipman
to the documents. - BERNARD: What we did
find was that the letter
00:19:28
and the will had been
typed on a typewriter, a portable typewriter,
and when we'd begun
00:19:36
the inquiry and executed
a warrant at Dr. Shipman's surgery, we seized a typewriter
from there.
00:19:43
It turned out the typewriter
from Dr. Shipman's surgery had been the one that
had been used to type
00:19:48
the letter and the will. - MIKAELA: When they asked
Shipman about the typewriter
00:19:53
and the will, he said that
Kathleen Grundy had borrowed the typewriter
off him, and yet there were
00:19:58
no fingerprints on there
from her. - And this was--was somewhat
incredulous, wasn't it, really,
00:20:05
the thought that the GP
is lending a typewriter to a patient, he really is
clutching at straws
00:20:10
at this point in time. But he's so arrogant that
he thinks people will believe him.
00:20:14
- NARRATOR: Shipman
was still free to practice medicine as the investigation
continued around him.
00:20:21
The police knew they needed
some hard evidence to prove Kathleen Grundy's death
was suspicious,
00:20:27
which led to
a difficult decision being made. - No postmortem had taken
place before she had been buried
00:20:35
because Dr. Shipman had issued
her death certificate, which would therefore
preclude the need for it.
00:20:41
But the concerns about
the beneficiary of the will being Dr. Shipman, the timing
of the will being,
00:20:48
coming to light,
all led me to suspect that something
wasn't right here. And so on the 29th of July,
00:20:56
I went to see the local
coroner, John Pollard, and made application
for a warrant
00:21:02
to exhume the body
of Kathleen Grundy. - NARRATOR: Detectives
broke the news to Angela and Phil.
00:21:11
- PHIL: They both sat on
the sofa over behind me and, uh, side-by-side, and told us
what was what,
00:21:18
which is basically
that they had been talking to the coroner
and got this permission
00:21:22
to exhume Kathleen's body. - And in Shipman's mind, after
he gave them the drugs,
00:21:29
and after the person died,
and after the person was buried, he thought he's home free.
00:21:34
Who's gonna exhume
the body? It almost never happens,
but they did in this case,
00:21:39
and that's how they got him. - NARRATOR:
On the 1st of August, 1998, Kathleen Grundy's body
was exhumed.
00:21:48
The postmortem findings
by pathologists stunned investigators. - BERNARD: At first they said
that they believed that
00:21:56
there were opiates in the body,
but with some more sophisticated testing, they
were able to say that
00:22:01
it had been morphine
that had been found in Kathleen Grundy's body. That in itself was a surprise
to us, Kathleen Grundy
00:22:11
had not been suffering from
any condition which necessitated her being
prescribed diamorphine,
00:22:18
and she had been fit and well
up until the days before her death. - NARRATOR: The postmortem
results were staggering,
00:22:25
but they were only possible
due to Kathleen's family going against their late
mother's apparent wishes.
00:22:33
- The fake will had a box
ticked where Kathleen Grundy had seemingly stated
she wanted to be cremated,
00:22:41
and obviously
this would have removed any physical evidence
that Shipman had killed her.
00:22:46
But Angela wanted Kathleen
to be buried near her brother and her parents, and it's
because of this that she
00:22:52
was buried rather than
cremated. - BERNARD: If Kathleen
Grundy had have been cremated,
00:22:58
then of course,
there would have been no remains to be exhumed,
there would have been
00:23:02
no opportunity to examine
tissue, and we would not have discovered
that she had died from
00:23:08
a massive dose diamorphine. - NARRATOR: The net was
closing in on Shipman, but he remained a free man.
00:23:19
Detectives at Greater
Manchester Police were trying to keep the investigation
under wraps, but the press
00:23:25
were about to discover
what was happening. - MIKAELA: I first heard about
Harold Shipman in August 1998,
00:23:33
our news desk at the
Manchester Evening News had got a call overnight
that Kathleen Grundy
00:23:39
had died and her doctor
was being investigated for her murder. So I rang the police to see
if we could
00:23:47
get some background on this. - There is no doubt that
the reporter who raised those queries, Mikaela Sitford,
had most of the story,
00:23:57
and she then embarked on
publishing that story. As a result of the public
becoming aware,
00:24:05
then they raised concerns
by ringing the police about the circumstances of the death
of their loved ones as well.
00:24:14
In some cases, they'd
harbored these concerns for years, but had been
reluctant to raise them
00:24:22
with the police because
they didn't want to challenge what their GP said. But once this came to light,
we started to investigate
00:24:31
those deaths as well. - They came back to me
with this statement saying they were investigating
20 deaths,
00:24:38
and if those 20 deaths
were all true, that made Shipman Britain's
biggest serial killer.
00:24:44
- NARRATOR: Time was running out
for the popular doctor, with evidence
mounting up against him,
00:24:50
the police finally decided
to take action. Five weeks after the
exhumation of Kathleen Grundy,
00:24:57
on the 7th of September, 1998, Shipman was ordered
to speak with detectives. - BERNARD: Shipman was
arrested by appointment,
00:25:06
which sounds like a strange
thing to do. Harold Shipman was aware
of our inquiry,
00:25:10
there was no
surprise element here, there was no early-morning raid like you see on films
and the television.
00:25:17
And so consequently he came
to the police station with a solicitor to answer
questions.
00:25:24
There's no doubt that
he was confident that he was gonna walk out
of that police station
00:25:27
after a few hours. - MIKAELA: On the day
Shipman was arrested, my colleague, Chris Gleave,
and I waited outside
00:25:35
Ashton Police Station,
where he was due to turn up to be interviewed. And as we're walking along,
Shipman turned back
00:25:42
and faced us, and he held
his arms out, almost, you know, like Christ
on the cross, and said,
00:25:48
"Just go on then, take
my picture." And Chris did, and that was
the last time Shipman
00:25:54
was seen outside of custody. - NARRATOR: Detectives
questioned Shipman about the death of 81-year-old
Kathleen Grundy.
00:26:04
- BERNARD: Part of the
interview involved Dr. Shipman telling
outright lies, he sought to...bamboozle
the interviewing officers
00:26:15
with medical terms, he tried to put across
that he was intellectually superior to the officers.
00:26:21
But as far as I was concerned,
this was a fairly simple issue. Who had been the last
person that had been
00:26:28
in the presence of
Kathleen Grundy? What condition was she in
when he'd left her?
00:26:32
What was the cause
of death? And who was most likely
to have administered that cause of death?
00:26:38
And with every one of those
questions, you boil down to the answer being
Dr. Shipman.
00:26:44
- NARRATOR: The interviewing
officers presented Shipman with evidence of the will
tampering.
00:26:50
- Dr. Shipman denied that
he'd ever seen the will, he'd ever been in its
presence.
00:26:56
But what we did find was
that his fingerprint was on the back of the will,
which made it difficult
00:27:03
for him to continue
with that claim. - NARRATOR: Detectives
knew that Shipman had visited Kathleen on the day
of her death
00:27:10
to carry out a blood test, but there appeared to be no
proof of it ever taking place.
00:27:18
- BERNARD: Kathleed Grundy's
blood sample that he said to take didn't exist, it had
never been received
00:27:24
at the pathology lab,
it still wasn't lying in his surgery weeks and weeks
later.
00:27:29
Where was it? And he couldn't explain
those types of things. We concluded at the end
of the interview
00:27:36
that there was sufficient
evidence to charge him with Kathleen Grundy's murder,
and that's what we did.
00:27:42
- NARRATOR: The police
knew they had a strong case against Shipman, but they
were certain that if he'd killed
00:27:48
Kathleen Grundy, it was
possible he'd killed others. - DR. YARDLEY: In order to
build a case against Shipman,
00:27:56
the police needed to get
a different type of evidence, and that would involve
exhuming some of the bodies
00:28:02
of Harold Shipman's recent
victims to see whether there was substances
in those bodies
00:28:07
that really shouldn't be there. - NARRATOR: The
exhumations began on the 21st of September, 1998.
00:28:16
- We then exhumed
the three bodies of Bianka Pomfret,
Winifred Mellor, and Joan Melia over
three days.
00:28:24
We got Dr. Rutherford to conduct
postmortem examinations on each of them,
and we sent the samples off
00:28:32
for examination. On each of those people
Dr. Shipman had issued a death certificate, and
each of those death certificates
00:28:40
suggested that they had died
from heart attacks, but there was
no evidence of that
00:28:46
when Dr. Rutherford carried
out the examination. - NARRATOR: Between
October and December, 1998,
00:28:53
another five bodies were
exhumed, making nine in total. Kathleen Grundy may have
been killed for financial gain,
00:29:01
but it was becoming apparent
that Harold Shipman had used his position of power
to murder the people
00:29:08
who trusted him the most
just because he could. - BERNARD: Quite often
Dr. Shipman would turn up
00:29:14
out of the blue, people had
not sent for him, and within a very short time after they'd
been in his presence,
00:29:21
they were found dead. And they were found dead
in odd places, they were sat up in chairs,
fully dressed,
00:29:28
not in a scene of disarray
as if they'd fallen over, as if they'd knocked
anything over.
00:29:36
- Most of Shipman's victims
were found sitting in the chair, cup of tea by their side,
almost recreating the scene
00:29:43
that used to greet Shipman
when he came home from school with his mother
waiting in the window
00:29:48
while he made her a cup
of tea and looking for him, and waiting for him
to come home from school.
00:29:53
- LOUIS: Shipman is not
a doctor, doctors are people that try to heal others
that try to cure others,
00:29:59
Shipman's a murderer. His goal for the greater
part of his career was to kill patients,
00:30:05
and he did it
for his own gratification. - GEOFFREY: And that's
what makes it so chilling.
00:30:11
This was a man who was
destroying people's lives for his own amusement, as if he were catching
butterflies or crushing insects.
00:30:23
- NARRATOR: One of the
exhumed victims, 73-year-old Winifred Mellor, had supposedly died
of heart-related problems,
00:30:32
but pathologists found no proof
of that in the postmortem. - BERNARD: As inquiries
developed, it proved that...
00:30:40
an examination of the
computer showed that, uh, Dr. Shipman, in actual fact,
had created a false record
00:30:47
to indicate that she had been
suffering from angina over a period of time
in order for him to cover up
00:30:53
the fact that he had
administered an injection to her which had resulted
in her death.
00:31:01
- MIKAELA: I don't think
Shipman's victims would have suffered, not sure that they
would have understood
00:31:07
that they were dying. The drug he used and
the strength he used it at would just send them
very quickly to sleep,
00:31:15
and, you know, that's what
you would hope. But I think the last words
might have been,
00:31:20
"Thank you, Doctor." - NARRATOR: Doctoring
medical records became a common theme in the
investigation into Shipman.
00:31:28
- MIKAELA: So, for example,
Maurine Ward, who he killed when she was just 57,
he changed her medical records
00:31:33
to make it look like
she had had cancer, when she'd actually been
given the all-clear
00:31:38
by hospital doctors. - BERNARD: Although on first
appearance it would appear that he'd made these
weeks before,
00:31:47
the computer expert
that we utilized, when he had a look at them, he was able to examine
the transaction login
00:31:55
within the computer system,
and he was able to determine that they'd actually been made
after he'd been along
00:32:00
and murdered these people. - NARRATOR:
By the 5th of October, 1998, Shipman had been in custody
for almost a month.
00:32:09
As detectives continued
to interview the doctor, cracks in his cold demeanor
began to show.
00:32:16
- MIKAELA: At the end
of the second interview, when the computer records
showed what Shipman was really up to,
00:32:22
in no uncertain detail,
Shipman asked for a break in the interview, and as soon
as the police left,
00:32:29
he fell to his
knees sobbing, he knew it was over. - BERNARD: There's no doubt
that he had come to realize
00:32:34
that, virtually, the game
was up, that he had got no answers to
these questions where we were
00:32:42
presenting him with
documents and he just
couldn't explain things away. - NARRATOR: By February, 1999,
53-year-old Harold Shipman
00:32:53
had been charged
with the murder of 15 women ranging in age from 49 to 81. Postmortems from nine
exhumed bodies confirmed
00:33:02
they were poisoned, while circumstantial evidence
linked the doctor to six other victims, all of whom
were cremated.
00:33:10
Despite all the evidence
that suggested Shipman was a callous killer, it was
difficult to comprehend,
00:33:16
even for a seasoned
detective. - BERNARD: There's no doubt
that on a day-to-day basis,
00:33:21
myself and my deputy, um,
questioned ourselves about whether we were
interpreting this evidence
00:33:27
in the correct way. Did we have this wrong? Was there another
explanation for this?
00:33:32
But the more evidence
we uncovered, the more it corroborated
previous evidence, and there was only one answer
that we could come to,
00:33:39
and that was the fact
that Dr. Shipman had killed these people. - NARRATOR: The trial
of Dr. Harold Shipman
00:33:46
began on
the 5th of October, 1999 at Preston Crown Court. The entire nation wanted
justice served upon the man
00:33:56
the papers were calling
Dr. Death. The 53-year-old general
practitioner pleaded not guilty to 15 counts
of murder
00:34:07
and one count of forging
the will of Kathleen Grundy. The earliest killing, that of
81-year-old Maria West,
00:34:15
dated back to March, 1995. - DR. YARDLEY: It's important
that all cases that go to court
00:34:23
have a realistic chance
of a conviction. So the threshold for evidence,
even for a charge
00:34:29
to be brought, is quite high. And we have to remember
that in this case some of these murders were years
and years old,
00:34:36
the quality of the evidence
would have declined to such a degree, that it would be very, very
difficult to secure
00:34:42
a conviction for murder. So there were only 15
counts of murder in this particular trial,
00:34:48
but that was
just the tip of the iceberg. - NARRATOR: Of the 15
counts of murder,
00:34:53
nine of the bodies had been
exhumed, but prosecutors were confident
they could still get
00:34:59
a guilty verdict on the others. - Six of Shipman's victims
were cremated, but the police
00:35:06
were still able to prove
that Shipman killed them. This again is down to
the computerized medical records
00:35:12
being changed, added to which
there were witness statements, and one of the most moving
things about the court case
00:35:18
was that there were so many
ordinary people who'd never seen the inside
of a courtroom in their lives,
00:35:23
and they were having to stand
there and give their evidence and remember their last moments
with their loved ones.
00:35:29
And it was because of their
strength and their ability
to give that evidence and remember what they
needed to remember
00:35:35
that Shipman was caught
and stopped. - NARRATOR: Phil Woodruff,
the son-in-law of Shipman's final victim,
Kathleen Grundy,
00:35:43
was often in the courtroom
during the three-month trial. - PHIL: He did come over as
very arrogant, yes.
00:35:50
He was very full of himself,
and I think that, I mean, that was obviously part of
his image that he created
00:35:57
in Hyde, that he was
a wonderful doctor, and I think
he took great pleasure in presenting himself
in this way.
00:36:05
So, yeah, he had a high
opinion of himself. - NARRATOR: It was
an attitude that would be
00:36:10
his undoing. When Shipman came under
intense questioning from head prosecutor Sir Richard
Henriques, he buckled.
00:36:20
- BERNARD: He was a worm
wriggling on the end of a hook because with each
question that was put to him,
00:36:25
he was really uncomfortable
at trying to find answers to some of the questions. And some of the answers
that he gave
00:36:32
were pretty ridiculous. And he appeared to be thinking
of some of the answers whilst he was stood
in the witness box.
00:36:42
It was another example
of his arrogance, he appeared to decide that he was going
to go toe-to-toe with
00:36:49
one of the leading barristers
in the country. And it wasn't--it wasn't
a good idea.
00:36:57
- NARRATOR: On the 31st
of January, 2000, Harold Shipman was found guilty
of all 15 murders
00:37:04
and of forging the will
of Kathleen Grundy. He was sentenced to life
in prison, much to the relief
00:37:11
of his victims' family members. - MIKAELA: As each verdict
of guilty was read out,
00:37:18
there'd be, like, a fresh wave
of soft sobbing or gasps, and it kind of built up,
it was really filling the air
00:37:26
of the courthouse, it was
one of the most moving things I've ever seen. - DR. YARDLEY: Harold Shipman
was convicted of all 15 murders
00:37:34
and was sentenced
to life in prison. And you would say,
to a degree, justice has been
00:37:41
done here, but actually
for all of the other victims whose murders were not
having charges associated
00:37:48
with them, this is,
is something that is kind of incomplete. I think that the families
of these victims
00:37:54
don't feel that they got
justice. - NARRATOR: In September 2000,
an investigation was ordered
00:38:02
to delve deeper into the career
of Harold Shipman. High Court judge Dame
Janet Smith led the inquiry.
00:38:11
- MIKAELA: I think the Shipman
inquiry was a brilliant legacy for the families
of Shipman's victims.
00:38:18
They worked really hard,
they fought for a public inquiry because for years, a doctor
had been able to carry on
00:38:24
unnoticed, killing people,
because of the secrecy and the reverence around
the medical profession.
00:38:31
- BERNARD: It was important
to them that somebody carried out that examination
and came to some sort of
00:38:38
verdict about what had
happened, and that's exactly what the public inquiry did.
00:38:43
And I think that in itself
gave some families the reassurance that they'd
done what they could
00:38:49
to find out what the true
circumstances were. - NARRATOR: The results of
the initial inquiry
00:38:55
were released in July, 2002,
and the findings stunned the world. - MIKAELA: The Shipman
inquiry have found that
00:39:05
he's definitely responsible for
215 murders, but there could be
as many as 260. Having said that, not every
death will have been picked up,
00:39:14
and I think there were
many more than 260. - NARRATOR: With so many
victims in such a small area,
00:39:22
it was perhaps inevitable
that the inquiry would reveal some families had lost
several relatives
00:39:27
at the hands of Shipman. Phil Woodruff lost three
members of his extended family.
00:39:33
One of them had only signed
on to Shipman's patient list after a glowing recommendation
from Kathleen Grundy.
00:39:41
- I don't exactly know how many
people she recommended him to, but she certainly
recommended him
00:39:45
to her sister-in-law
Elsie Plant. I remember when Angela
said to me, about her mother,
00:39:52
"Well, you know, old people
don't die just like that." And I said, "Well, they do,
look at Auntie Elsie, right?"
00:40:00
So my example was actually
of somebody else killed by Shipman. - NARRATOR: The inquiry
discovered it was not just
00:40:07
women, but men who were
victims of Shipman, too. As a result of the report,
Shipman was given
00:40:15
a whole life tariff, which
meant he would never be released from prison. Although given a chance to
confess to his numerous murders,
00:40:24
Shipman rejected the opportunity
to speak with detectives. - BERNARD: So they went
to interview him,
00:40:31
they decided to video that
interview. And what that video depicts
is Dr. Shipman standing up,
00:40:39
turning his chair away
from them, and just turning
his back to them, so that although
they ask him the questions,
00:40:47
he refuses to answer, and he also refuses
to look at them. And he never actually disclosed
what had occured
00:40:55
in relation to many of those
offenses before his death. - NARRATOR: In a heartless
move, Shipman decided
00:41:04
to take all his secrets
to the grave. - Shipman committed
suicide by hanging in prison on
the 13th of January, 2004,
00:41:17
um, it was the day before his
58th birthday. So again, it was Shipman
being in control and doing
00:41:23
what he wanted and playing
God, deciding who lived
and who died and when. - LOUIS: And when you have
someone like Shipman,
00:41:32
with his arrogance, in prison,
I'm not surprised at all that he committed suicide,
I would be shocked
00:41:40
if he was gonna live in prison,
living the life of an inmate, he couldn't do it.
00:41:44
He was too grandiose,
too narcissistic, way too arrogant, and he
just killed himself.
00:41:54
- BERNARD: Harold Shipman
never showed any remorse for the murder of all these
people,
00:41:58
he never discussed his involvement in the deaths, he never apologized
to any of the families,
00:42:09
and he decided to take
the circumstances and what
had happened with him when he committed suicide.
00:42:18
- NARRATOR: Even in death,
Shipman continued to haunt the country. A sixth and final report
was published by the inquiry
00:42:26
in January, 2005. - MIKAELA: The Shipman
inquiry found that he'd begun killing as early
as 1971 while he was still
00:42:35
training as a doctor,
he'd not even become a doctor and he was already
killing. The inquiry found that he
was responsible for as many
00:42:42
as 15 deaths at Pontefract
General Infirmary, possibly including that
of a four-year-old girl.
00:42:49
- NARRATOR: Shipman's
suicide in January, 2004 means that hundreds
of family members may never know
00:42:56
what happened to their
loved ones. It was the final callous act
in a callous career.
00:43:03
- PHIL: It's always this
problem about the word "evil," isn't there, how you attach
that to somebody.
00:43:09
But if anybody's evil, I think
he's evil, yes, right. To go around killing people
in cold blood,
00:43:20
apparently just
for the pleasure of it. - MIKAELA: It was a doctor, a doctor who's supposed
to look after you,
00:43:25
who's supposed
to care for you, who's supposed to save your
life, not take it. And I think, you know, as a
nation, that really resonated.
00:43:34
If it could happen in Hyde,
such a close-knit community where families still lived
next door to each other
00:43:40
and looked after each other, then it can happen
anywhere. - PHIL: Probably there aren't
many people who'd lived
00:43:47
in Hyde for a generation
who didn't know somebody who'd been killed by him. - ♪ ♪
00:44:27
♪ ♪ - NARRATOR: It is hard
to picture Harold Shipman as a cold-blooded killer, but that's exactly
what he was.
00:44:52
He was meant to care for people but instead, he was murdering
them, for no other reason
00:44:58
than his own self-gratification. His insatiable appetite
for death spurred Shipman on
00:45:05
to take the lives of over 215
innocent and vulnerable victims. He is without doubt one of
the world's most evil killers.
00:45:15
- ♪ ♪♪ - [whooshing sound]