Harold Shipman | Serial killer with the highest known victim Count

He was such a nice man, a pillar of the community, said so many people who knew and trusted the man who became known as Dr. Death. Over decades, this serial killer visited the homes of his patients, and when he left, those patients were perhaps too often no longer breathing.

But how chronic was his compulsion to kill? At first it was thought he had murdered a handful of people, and then it was scores of victims, with the final number still being disputed.

What I think, is that Mr. Shipman could have been the most prolific serial killer of all time.

Harold Shipman was known to a lot of people. He was a family doctor in a small community, and over two decades he became a man whose face most people recognised in the street. This bespectacled, tweed-wearing doctor that looked perhaps what you'd imagine a small town British doctor to look like, was indeed a pillar of the community.

But to say he had a dark secret would be the understatement of the century, because Harold Shipman, aka, the Angel of Death, wasn't just Britain's most prolific killer, but he's up there with the most murderous criminals the world has ever seen.

He was born on 14 January, 1946, with the full name Harold Frederick Shipman. To his friends, patients and colleagues he was simply known as Fred, or Freddie.

Can there be anything about his childhood that converted him to the monster he had become?

For young Freddie, that was the death of his mother when he was 17. His friends in interviews years later said young Fred didn't talk much about his mother's fight with lung cancer, and how he watched when the local doctor used to come around to his house and relieve her pain with morphine, but it's thought young Fred was a very devoted son.

His mother had gone to great pains to make sure her working class boy brought up on a council estate.

Shipman tried in earnest to please his mother, and his mother became very proud of her son. I might also add that some bios said she was domineering and overbearing, sometimes a recipe for disaster.

It's said she pushed him too hard, and in turn he became isolated from other kids. His mother would foster in him a sense of superiority, but this would become a life long problem for Shipman who perhaps could never get his mother out of his head.

Still, perhaps trying to please his mother and with her painful, long drawn out death on his mind, Fred was determined to become a doctor. He would dedicate his life to other people's pain, but as you will see, his method of treatment, I might say, was overboard, a tad too total.

Shipman studied at Leeds University medical school in the north of England and later took on internships at hospitals. He was on his way to becoming a doctor, and a step closer to becoming a serial killer. During this time, even though it's said he was a loner, he would meet his future wife.He was 19 and she was 17 when they had their first child. They would have four kids in total.

In 1974 he would get his first job as a general practitioner. That's basically your run of the mill family doctor. The clinic where he worked was located in a small town called Todmorden in West Yorkshire, which on the outside looks like a beautiful rural town, nestled between valleys, what a poet might have called England's green and pleasant land. But looks can be deceiving, because even though Shipman might have looked like he was living the perfect rural life, he was at that time forging prescriptions of the opioid called pethidine. Yep, he was hooked on a kind of prescription heroin. He was caught and fined, but after some rehab he was back in business. In 1977, he began working in another small community, this time on the other side of those valleys in a place called Hyde, just outside Manchester.

Ok, so I should tell you now, that I don't exactly know when Dr. Shipman consummated his curse and became Dr. Death. It's generally thought he didn't waste much time and was killing when starting out in Todmorden.

How many he killed is a number that changes by the source, but it was a lot-hundreds-but how many hundreds? Nobody knows. This might make him the worst serial killer in history, but getting the exact body count is not always easy. There have been a couple of deranged Colombians that might have a stake in the most kills count, and as historians point out data from some countries might be unreliable. Then you also have some depraved rich Europeans from times past who also took great pleasure in murdering scores of peasants for their amusement.

So, he is now working in this small Lancashire town. He will stay there for around two decades and Mr. Shipman as I have said, will become what's called a pillar of the community.

In fact, one of the senior doctors who worked with him said that Shipman would take on a massive workload, and his patients for the most part adored him. He was said to be the most popular doctor at the medical center.

What could possibly go wrong?

The answer to that is his patients seemed to kick the bucket a lot, perhaps before their time was up. Psychologists have said that he might have murdered some of his patients because of the power it gave him, he became God, and the memory of his dying mother was never far away. According to the Guardian newspaper, most of his victims were old women. That reports says his first victim was a 71 year old woman who Shipman got rid of in 1975. It was the eve of her birthday, too.😔

His youngest victim was a 41-year old man, and his eldest a 93-year old woman. Killing became easier for him when he left that medical center and started his own practice in the same town.

Well, apparently no one could see past the nice man in a tweed jacket. It wasn't until 1998 that the local undertakers in that town of Hyde started saying that it seemed a lot of bodies were coming from him. Indeed, it was soon found out that his death rate was ten times higher than other doctors. On top of that, many of those that died did so in the same position. Like a drug addict that's overdone it, the mostly old women were sat upright, or slumped, on a sofa and they were fully clothed.

The Guardian writes that the police investigation in '98 was a shambles, stating that police didn't check inconsistencies of his medical notes with the deaths of his patients. The police investigation failed to carry out even the most basic checks, including whether Shipman had a criminal record, wrote the Guardian.

But some members of the local community were on to him.

Even a taxi driver came forward and said that Shipman was killing off perfectly healthy individuals.

Then also in 1998 a former mayoress who had a bit of cash stashed away died in Shipman's care. She'd left most of this money to Shipman, but the daughter wasn't having any of that. She ordered that the body be exhumed and Shipman was subsequently charged with his first murder. The coroner of course ruled that the woman had died of a morphine overdose.

What followed you could perhaps call an exhumation sweep.

Low and behold, the notes Shipman had written didn't match what had actually happened. Those bodies showed that morphine toxicity had turned off the life that had once been inside them.

The notes also showed that Shipman had often made up a bunch of ailments patients never had and he'd done that often right before they died.

It was also found out that in some cases he had told the relatives of the deceased that before the old bean had passed he'd called for an ambulance, but phone records showed he had lied about that. The delectable doctor was finally becoming Dr. Death.

Police and people of the town couldn't believe what had been happening right under their eyes.

It turned out that in just an 18-month period, on one street alone, six of Shipman's patients had died in front of him after he'd gone around and done his house visit.

It's said in court he was still possessed with that air of superiority his mother had helped create. He lied, changed his stories, was apparently arrogant and unhelpful and denied everything even though there was so much evidence. In fact, in one documentary, Shipman's former cellmate explains that he never admitted to the crimes. That cellmate had tried to hang himself at one point, and it was Shipman that revived

him. He took lives, but leaving a dying man hanging in his cell was not his modus operandi.Despite this act of kindness, investigators said he tried to belittle police and acted

domineering in interviews. He was treating this as some sort of game, a competition, pitting his, what he considered to be his superior intellect, to those of the officers who were interviewing him, one of those investigators told the BBC.

In 2000, he was convicted of 15 counts of murder and handed a life sentence.

The town of Hyde was in shock, but the story would soon turn even more grim.

A lot of people of course started wondering if their aunt, uncle, or cousin, had actually just passed away on the sofa in their sleep, or whether the now not so nice doctor had given them his most potent life-ending cocktail, The Shipman Sofa Special.

An audit followed which produced a 2,000 page report. It was revealed that over the 24 years Shipman had been taking care of people 500 of those people had died. That report concluded that of those people he had killed 218. Today it's still thought the number could be as high as 250. This is the number given in the sixth and final investigation and report. It was said that Shipman was addicted to killing, and his last victim would be himself.

On January 13, 2004, he was found hanging in his cell. He had used his bedsheets.

The prison was criticized for allowing this to happen, but an investigation proved that the suicide could not have been predicted or prevented. Shipman's wife & children always said they knew nothing about his dark side, but they for the most part avoided talking openly to the media.

So, what do you think about this man?

Does his high body count make him more evil than a sadistic killer, or do you think his crimes were less abhorrent because of the way he ended lives?

Also, be sure to check out my previous blog on Ted Bundy!

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