True Crime With Caledonian Kitty

(Some of the people who died at the hands of Harold Shipman. Picture credit: thesun) 

Continued from part two...

Harold Shipman's trial took place in October of 1999 at Preston Crown Court and the real Dr Harold Shipman was revealed. Harold was a cold, manipulative man who prayed on elderly people for his own gain and because he enjoyed the power of having control over people's lives. He was so heartless that when relatives would ask him to come to the house to check on their relative (the one he had just visited without their knowledge and murdered) he would pretend to phone for an ambulance and act like he was concerned. He was never a caring doctor, he was very good at putting a performance on as a caring doctor but there was something very cold, twisted and dark inside of Harold Shipman. 

He was found guilty on all charges and handed 15 life sentences as well as a four year sentence for one of the forgery's that the evidence could prove and that was the false will of Kathleen Grundy. The judge recommended that Harold should never be released from prison and a few years after this, the British Home Secretary set this in stone, Harold was going to die behind bars for his crimes.

Ten days after he was found guilty of all charges, he was officially removed from the General Medical Council Register.

He never gave off an ounce of remorse and his wife, Primrose was either in denial or she was trying to protect her husband. Nobody can say for sure how much, if anything she knew about what her husband was doing. The fact that he had thousands of pounds worth of items in the garage should have been enough to make her wonder or did she just turn a blind eye because she loved her husband and enjoyed the money and the gifts that he brought her?

Harold really thought he was that clever that he would never get caught and it's frightening that he may be responsible for deaths dating back to the early 1970s. A later investigation titled ''The Shipman Inquiry'' found that he may have been responsible for over 200 deaths. They found that 459 people in total had died under his care throughout his career but they could not prove that every single one of those people had died at his hands or through natural illness. There was some evidence that at least 215 of those people were victims. 

In the early stages of his career he was also suspected of killing a four year old girl at Pontefract General Hospital but this was never proven.

The case sent shockwaves though the UK and was major headlines for a long time. Harold was and is still called one of the UK's most prolific and dangerous serial killers. 

And what of Primrose? Well, she continued to stand by Harold and wrote love letters to him whilst he was in prison. She continued to claim that she knew nothing of his crimes.

Primrose and Harold spent 40 years together and had four children, there was no sign that the bond between them was broken even when the truth of what he had been doing had come to life. Some women would have been traumatised and sickened but Primrose stood by him and reportedly asked him in a letter, why did he do it. Nobody knows if this was just for show, to make people believe that she was innocent. 

Harold didn't cope well in prison, he was a mess and Primrose's letters and phonecalls kept him going. When the prison staff tried to get him to take part in therapy sesssions and discuss his crimes (the police were still investigating into how many other deaths he may have been responsible for and probably hoped that he would give some sort of confession with victims names and details at some point but he never did) but Harold refused and as result, the staff took away the phonecalls from Primrose. Harold battled depression and it's reported that the week before he took his own life, the phonecalls from Primrose were once again allowed.

Harold had previously told his probabtion officer that he was suicidal and that he wanted to take his own life before he turned 60. His reason for this was because he wanted his wife to have a full pension, if he died after the age of 60, she would not have been entitled to one.

On the 13th of January 2004, Harold Shipman, one of the most evil men in history, tied some bedsheets to the window bars of his prison cell and took his own life. It was the eve of his 58th birthday. 

There's still stories around today that he was possibly murdered by fellow inmates but again, how can we ever know the truth? An investigation into his death, came up with nothing and it was determined that he did indeed take his own life.

The newpapers celebrated his death, it was in a similar vein to the way people acted when Ted Bundy was executed. Some people were glad that tax payers money was no longer being wasted on such an evil individual. The families of the victims felt cheated, they wanted him to live out his days and possibly tell everyone why he did what he did one day. They felt that he was getting the easy way out again.

Mystery still surrounds today where is he buried. was he cremated? some people believe his body is still being held somewhere because no funeral director will deal with him. Others believe that he was cremated and his ashes given to Primrose.

Primrose and their children all had their identities changed and are now living somewhere out there probably in fear that one day someone may find out who they are. Primrose got her pension pay out and they vanished, they could all be in a different country, not even in the UK.

The chilling and evil legacy of Dr Harold Shipman will never be forgotten and this case struck fear into the hearts of a lot of us who like to believe that all Doctors are good people, that they have our best interests at heart, that we can trust them with our lives and our loved ones lives. 

Thankfully we have so many amazing Doctors who we take our hats off to, especially right now with this pandemic. Harold Shipman was a rare case, thankfully. 

My heart goes out to all of the victims (may they rest in peace) and their families and I do hope that the families of the 15 people who's deaths he was found guilty of, have finally gotten closer to some compensation like they were fighting for.

Thank you again to Jean Nicolas for requesting this case. I will see you all in the next one x

Further reading & sources:

- Prescription For Murder - Harold Shipman Story
- Harold Shipman News Article
- Harold Shipman News Article
- Harold Shipman | Wikipedia
- Harold Shipman | Murderpedia
- Harold Shipman TV Movie
- Harold Shipman Docu

 (Harold Shipman prison photo. Picture credit: filmdaily.)

Continued from part one...

The undertaker at the family Funeral home was one of the first people to hear alarm bells ringing when he noticed the number of deaths of Harold's patients. They were mostly elderly women of good health and many of them lived on the same street. What was also strange was the manner in which their bodies were found, they all died fully dressed, many of them sat up in chairs. And they all seemed to have one thing in common...Harold Shipman was their Doctor and their death certificates and wills also raised eyebrows.

One of the elderly ladies who had died, Kathleen Grundy, apparently left a will stating that she wanted all of her money to go to Dr Shipman. The lady's daughter, Angela Woodruff, was a lawyer and looked into the situation further, she felt that the will was a forgery she knew there was no way that her mother, whom she was so close to, would leave her and her children out of her will, something did not add up.

The undertaker actually went to see Harold at his practice and asked him about the deaths. Harold made excuses that his patients were mostly elderly people in poor health and there was nothing to worry about. He still felt that something was not right and another Doctor who was aware of the situation decided to contact the coroner's office and the police became involved.

An investigation into Harold's practice and patient medical records ensued. Harold was cool as a cucumber and felt that he had all bases covered. The dark and sickening truth about Harold Shipman was that he was targeting his elderly patients, using a typewiter to falsify their records, claiming that the victims had been in poor health when they were perfectly fine and injecting them with lethal dosages of Diamorphine in order to get his hands on their money and valuables.

Harold tried to make sure that all of his patient's records were in perfect order and that there was a reasonable explanation on each person's file to expain their sudden death. The police found nothing to raise alarm and Harold managed to get away with it....for now.

Angela Woodruff was not about to let things go, she felt in her heart that Harold had murdered her mother and forged her will. At the time of her mother's death, Harold managed to manipulate Angela into refusing an autopsy for her mother. He was very clever at getting around people and one has to wonder how long had he been doing this for? How many other people died at the hands of Harold Shipman?

Harold made sure that his tracks were covered by persuading the families of his victims to have a cremation rather than a burial. Obviously at that point he must have been thinking ahead and wanted to make sure that if his crimes were ever investigated, there would be no remains left to be examined but some relatives were very clear that they wanted their loved ones buried.

(Some of the ladies who died at the hands of Harold Shipman. Picture credit: dailymail.co.uk)

Angela went to the police and the decision was taken that her mother's body must be exhumed for a proper examination. The results concluded that Kathleen had been given a lethal dosage of Diamorphine and this led to a thorough investigation, more victims being exhumed and a search of Harold's home and medical practice.

The cards were falling down around Harold and he didn't know what to do, he couldn't talk or charm his way out of this one. The evidence was now stacked up against him, especially when the police found thousands of pounds worth of jewellery in his garage. Harold even gave Primrose many of the items as gifts. The police also found the typewriter he had used to forge the medical documents and the wills.

There were so many possible victims that the police had to prioritise which cases they could prove with enough evidence. They decided to focus on the victims who had not been cremated and that they could prove that Harold had visited them at home and was the last person to see them alive.

The police managed to gather enough evidence to at least charge him for 15 of the victims even though he was suspected to have killed hundreds over the years. He was also charged with forgery.

It was time for Harold Shipman to face justice once and for all, there was no getting away with it this time.

Continued in part three...

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(Harold Shipman. Picture credit: filmdaily) 

For a lot of people in the UK as well as avid true crime enthusiasts, the name ''Harold Shipman'' needs no introduction. From the picture above you would assume that he seemed like a nice, friendly, family man and that is how a lot of his patients saw him. Harold was a Doctor and a very popular one at that, he was a pillar of the community and nobody had a bad word to say about him, until a large number of his elderly patients started dying in mysterious circumstances.

This case shocked Britain and it still remains fresh in people's memories. Nobody in the UK will ever forget the Shipman case and one of my amazing Top Tier subscriber's, Jean Nicolas requested that I cover this story and I thought I knew a lot about it but during my research I found out a few things I wasn't aware of. I hope you find my coverage of this case informative and don't forget to check out my other cases (some are listed below) as well as my weekly personal blogs

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I know I shouldn't judge on appearance but if someone showed you a picture of Harold and you didn't know who he was or his history, you would probably think he was a decent, well versed Doctor. The scary thing is, I would probably have trusted him. Not only was Harold well presented, always with a shirt and tie, always well spoken, he had a way with people and was able to gain people's trust very easily.

He had the perfect ''bedside manner'' for a doctor and was very popular. 

I want to talk about the beginning like I always do with my true crime cases. So, let's delve into it.....

 Harold Frederick Shipman (some people called him Fred) was born on the 14th of January 1946 in Nottingham, England and he came from a working class background. He was the second of four children and whilst his mother, Vera took care of the house and the children, his father was busy working as a Lorry Driver. 

Up until Harold's teenage years, nothing seemed abnormal. The family were quite close and Harold was very close to his mother who was said to be quite a domineering woman. However, tragedy stuck when Harold was 17 and his mother sadly passed away after a battle with lung cancer. It was a shocking event that would go on to affect him for the rest of his life as it would a lot of people who lose a parent. To lose a parent at the young age of 17 must have been very traumatic for Harold and up until his mother's death he saw a lot of the Nurses and Doctors who would come to the house and administer Morphine to help his mother in the later stages of her illness. He became very interested in how Morphine was able to have a positive affect on his mother at the times that she was in pain and would often try and help her during her illness. 

It's unclear if Vera's death motivated Harold to want to become a Doctor himself but he worked hard at school and did so well that he gained a scholarship to medical school. Harold was never a sociable type of person and he had very few friends but when he was 19 years old he met his future wife, Primrose Oxtoby on a bus when she was 17. The pair would go on to spend the next 40 years together. Primrose quickly fell pregnant with their first child and they married when she was five months pregnant. 

Once he had graduated from the famous Leeds School of Medicine he began working at the General Infirmary in Pontefract in the early 1970s.

In 1974 he moved his medical career onto The Abraham Ormerod Medical Centre where he worked as a GP (General Practitioner/Doctor) in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, England. Everything seemed to be going really well for Harold, he now had two children with Primrose and what seemed like a happy marriage but the first signs of a sinister character were beginning to emerge.

Harold began abusing the painkiller, Pethidine and would use false names on prescriptions for himself in order to gain huge quantities of the pills. He was caught and forced to leave his role and enter rehab and paid a £600 in 1975.

(Harold Shipman. Picture credit: mirror.co.uk) 

Despite this incident, he was able to to return to the medical profession a few years later like nothing ever happened and carried on working as a Doctor at the Donneybrook Medical Center in Hyde. This was a role that he managed to keep for two decades and there was no reported incidents but the younger members of staff found him to be quite arrogant and patronising. Harold would often be sent Christmas, Easter and Thank You cards from his patients whom he had bonded with over the years.

In 1993, Harold founded his own medical practice and a lot of his previous patients carried on seeing him for appointments there. He continued to be a well liked and respected member of the community, however, a local family funeral directors began to notice something very strange and alarming happening with quite a number of Harold's patients, especially elderly female patients.

Continued in part two....