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Killer
Doc Murdered Over 200
By: Unknown Author
CBS News, July 19, 2002
Harold
Shipman (AP)
Dame
Janet Smith
"He betrayed their trust in a way
and to an extent that I believe is unparalleled in history."
(CBS) Britain's
worst serial killer, convicted of killing 15 patients, murdered more than
200 others, a public inquiry into his crimes reported Friday.
Dr. Harold Shipman was convicted 18 months ago of killing 15 of his
patients, all elderly women, by injecting them with heroin.
He was suspected then of killing many, many more, reports CBS News
Correspondent Charlie D'Agata. Investigators say it was "deeply
disturbing" that the deaths did not arouse suspicion for so many
years.
The inquiry's head, High Court judge Dame Janet Smith, said there was also
a "real suspicion" Shipman had killed 45 more people between
1975 and 1998.
Shipman has maintained his innocence, and no motive for the crimes has
been established.
"I
suppose we should be shocked by the figures really but it was evident from
the start that there were going to be more than 100 cases that were going
to be looked at," said Jane Ashton-Hibbert, whose 81-year-old
grandmother was among the doctor's victims.
"Because he's arrogant, he's never going to talk, he's never going to
admit his guilt, and for him to do that would be too much," Ashton-Hibbert
added. "I don't expect him to talk, it's just enough for me today
that the families have finally had the verdicts that hopefully they
want."
"These families wanted to make sure that lessons would be learned and
systems changed and that in itself would be a fitting memorial for those
they have lost," said Ann Alexander, lawyer who represents the
families of Shipman's victims.
It is the utter normality of Harold Shipman that makes him so terrifying.
If Britain's most prolific serial killer had been outwardly crazed or
violent, driven by sexual perversion, greed, lust or madness, his
decades-long killing spree might be in some way more understandable.
Predictable even.
The sinister truth is that the bearded doctor who snuffed the life out of
up to 260 of his elderly patients with fatal doses of heroin was a quiet
but friendly family doctor, respected by the community, loved by his wife
and children, and — most of all — trusted by his patients.
Grey-haired, bespectacled and softly spoken, Shipman was always known
simply by his middle name Fred to the people of Hyde, a working-class town
of 22,000 just outside Manchester in northwest England, where he had his
one-man doctor's surgery.
When police first began questioning him in 1998 about the suspiciously
high number of deaths among his elderly patients, the tight-knit community
rushed to support him.
One patient remembered him fondly as a lovely man "with twinkly
eyes," others fiercely defended him as a pillar of the community and
a trusted doctor who always went out of his way to make home visits.
Smith's yearlong inquiry has investigated the deaths of 494 of Shipman's
patients between 1974 and 1998.
In her interim report Friday, Smith said Shipman began his killing spree
in 1975, a year after he entered practice. His victims, ranging in age
from 41 to 93, included 171 women and 44 men.
"He betrayed their trust in a way and to an extent that I believe is
unparalleled in history," Smith said.
"Although I have identified 215 victims of Shipman, the true number
is far greater and cannot be counted. I include the thousands of
relatives, friends or neighbors who have lost a loved one or friend before
his or her time in circumstances which will leave their mark
forever."
Smith said she had "reached no clear conclusion" about Shipman's
motive. In all but one case there was no evidence that he killed for
money, and there was "no suggestion of any form of sexual
depravity."
"It is possible that he was addicted to killing," the judge
said.
Shipman, the son of a lorry driver, was born on January 14, 1946 in
Nottingham, central England.
He went on to study medicine at Leeds University, where he did not stand
out in any way. "What I remember about Fred was that he was just so
ordinary," one fellow student said of him.
But while so many patients trusted him, and so many peers found nothing
about him to alert suspicion, Shipman was hiding a dark history of drug
abuse and systematic killing.
He was forced to move to a new area after he was convicted in 1976 of drug
offenses and fraud to feed an addiction to pethidine. He had helping
himself to and injecting himself with between 600 and 700 milligrams of
the drug a day.
Prosecutors at Shipman's trial said his drive to kill was fueled by his
need for a God-like power over life and death.
Others say the killer was profoundly affected by the experience of
watching his own mother die from cancer — and taking diamorphine to ease
her pain.
Psychological profilers who have studied his case found nothing to suggest
the sadism or sexual perversion that drove other notorious British
murderers.
Shipman did not rob, abuse or mutilate his victims, nor did he make them
suffer when he killed them.
He was ever clinical in his deathly trade.
And in always refusing to admit to murder or cooperate with authorities
now, Shipman seems determined to remain true to form — cold and quiet to
the last.
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