"Dr Death" found dead in cell

[Anarchist Patriot]

By Todd Richissin
Tribune Newspapers: The Baltimore Sun
Published January 14, 2004

LONDON -- Dr. Harold Shipman was always going to carry the moniker "Dr. Death," was always going to be known as the man who--for now, anyway--claimed more victims than any serial killer in British history and perhaps in the history of the world.

Shipman, 57, committed suicide in prison Tuesday, hanging himself with bedsheets and taking to his grave any explanation for what drove a trusted physician to murder more than 200 people, one by one, most of them middle-aged women and grandmothers who trusted him with their care.


An investigation completed in 2002 determined that Shipman killed at least 215 people, probably 260 and perhaps more than 300, all undetected for nearly a quarter-century until 1998 when he lapsed into greed and his deeds were exposed.

His reasons were as mystifying as the numbers are terrifying.

He did not kill out of mercy; one victim had called him because her rheumatism was acting up, another because she wanted a flu shot, and few of the dead had been considered seriously ill. He apparently did not kill for money; only when he forged the will of his final victim did his murders become exposed, earning him the name "Dr. Death" in a story that dominated British media for months.

The doctor, who was married with four children, was serving 15 life terms without the possibility of parole. Britain does not have the death penalty.

Shipman never admitted to killing his patients despite mountains of evidence against him. Detectives have said he was wholly without remorse. He was convicted of 15 murders in 1999, but the subsequent investigation exposed hundreds of others. All but 44 were middle-aged or elderly women who lived alone in the small working-class town of Hyde, a suburb of Manchester in northwest England. The youngest was 49, the oldest 81.

"He betrayed their trust in a way and to an extent that I believe is unparalleled in history," said Janet Smith, the High Court judge who ran the inquiry, when she presented her findings.

Shipman, whose 58th birthday would have been Wednesday, did not strike fear the way serial murderers so often do because nobody knew so many people were being killed until after he murdered his last victim. A bespectacled and respected town doctor known to all by his middle name of Fred, he killed during house calls with a deadly injection, most often containing the drug diamorphine, the medical name for heroin. He apparently acquired the drug without suspicion by writing false prescriptions or stealing it from cancer patients.

Often, he would leave his victims sitting in a living room chair for family members to discover. Other times he would report the deaths himself, and always he would convince relatives that no autopsy was necessary. Many of the bodies were cremated, destroying evidence, part of the reason he was convicted in only 15 of the deaths.

Officials said a prison guard making hourly rounds found Shipman at about 6:10 a.m. hanging from a noose he made from bedsheets and attached to window bars in his cell at the Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire. He was pronounced dead about two hours later.

Prison officials said in a statement that Shipman was not considered a suicide threat, though he had been under suicide watch at two previous prisons.

"His behavior was not a cause for concern," the statement said.

His wife, Primrose Shipman, said during his trial and the inquiry that followed that she believed in his innocence, and Tuesday she would not talk to reporters seeking comment.

[G. Adams]

Can't help being cynical but I get the feeling that this is like the 'suicides' at Deepcut Barracks, where the suicidee(?) has shot themselves multiple times in very different areas of the body...

Besides, what are they complaining about? They always want more beds.

[Anarchist Patriot]

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (G. Adams,)
Can't help being cynical but I get the feeling that this is like the 'suicides' at Deepcut Barracks, where the suicidee(?) has shot themselves multiple times in very different areas of the body...

Besides, what are they complaining about? They always want more beds.<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>
Could be one of those hidden executions that you never hear about. You never know.

[G. Adams]

My thoughts exactly, though to call it an execution would suggest it was ordered. I'd think it was more likely just disgruntled guards, and really who is going to stop them killing Shipman?

[white rice]

Being around a guy who has no sense of humanity would probably make me get him out of my sight sooner or later.

[Pooeypants]

I think we need to reexamine our society to see how or why it'd produce these...weird killers such as Shipman.

[G. Adams]

As we never found out why Shipman did what he did it would be difficult to use his case as basis for any studies. He could have been mad, or he may not (excluding him being a sociopath). He may have had a reason good enough for him, that without a sense of morality, he was prepared to act on. Or he may have been totally sane, and he may have had a sense of morality, but his reason was more important, as unlikely as that seems. We'll just never know.

[darwinist]

There must of been some basis of reason. For his killings. He targeted a group of people. All female, all in there middle to old age. What that reason was, we will never know.

[G. Adams]

Nope, he did kill a few men. Mostly women, but some men. So that can't be used as a solid basis for a thesis.

[Pooeypants]

I hate it when ppl die and take their secrets with them...

[blibbka]

I thought he had himself put into the will of quite a few of his victims, who wanted to repay him for his care and attention?

Also, suicides in prisons are relatively common - I think it's not unlikely that Shipman just killed himself because he knew he would be in prison for the rest of his life. He's been showing no suicidal tendencies, i.e. no self-mutilation, no talk of killing himself, which is how prisons judge the "risk factor", but he could still be thinking about it. The guard goes away, he makes the decision, he hangs himself, prison is annoyed at the statistic on their record, Shipmans family are distraught, prison breathes a sigh of relief that they've got another cell free.

[andy]

He took the easy route to freedom, i would have prefered him not commit suicide and suffer for his crimes.

[G. Adams]

Everyone's got a right over their life. If he wants to take it was his choice. It seems kind of strange to me for people who have no connection to the families of the victims of any crime to be so callous as to wish to increase the suffering of criminals. I usually gall at elitism, but not letting such populists near power at least keeps us free from idiocy.

[castille]

Theres something odd about the way he killed.

I think he got bored with life and just snapped.

Or maybe hes actually a member of the Illuminati sent by Bush to assassinate political opponents (old farts in England) and take over the world.

He committed suicide because the Grand Llama told him to.