U.K. Doctor May Have Killed Hundreds

L O N D O N, Jan. 5, 2001 -- Britain’s “Dr Death,” serial killer Harold Shipman, who may have killed nearly 300 of his patients, hid his murder spree behind the mask of a much-loved suburban doctor.

The number of Shipman’s possible victims announced in aBritish government Health Department report today, wouldplace him just behind recent history’s most prolific serial killer, Colombian Pedro Armando Lopez.

Dubbed the “Monster of the Andes,” Lopez allegedly killed300 young girls in Colombia, Peru and Ecuador although he was only convicted of 57 murders in 1980.

A review of the records from Dr. Harold Shipman’s practice, carried out by a University of Leicester professor, found that Shipman, who was convicted in February of killing 15elderly women with injections of heroin, had 297 more deaths over a 24-year period than similar practices in the area. Of those, 236 happened at the patient’s home — causing the greatest suspicion, said Professor Richard Baker.

“The analysis makes chilling read,” said chief medical officer Liam Donaldson today.

The report found that Shipman’s 24-year-long trail of corpses were elderly, female and clothed. Most of the deaths tended to be women over the age of 75 who died in the afternoon and when Shipman was alone with them.He hoarded lethal drugs like candy and often tenderly patted his victims’ hands as he injected them with heroin along with an assurance that it would cure their illness.

“He was hardly Jack the Ripper, bursting through the frontdoor. Everybody has a doctor — it could have been your own,” said one onlooker at the packed northern English courtroom in Manchester last year when Shipman was sentenced to life in jail for murdering 15 patients.

Until his arrest in 1998, Shipman ran a busy practice in Hyde, a small town near Manchester, northwest England.

A Perfect Cover

Shipman went about his business — murder — in a quiet andprofessional way, just as his apparent utter devotion to the job of medicine made him the most popular doctor in the Manchester suburb where he practiced for two decades.

Soft spoken, graying, bearded and bespectacled, Shipmanhad the perfect cover: a white coat and a patient’s trust.

There was no House of Horrors, no Yorkshire Ripper, no Moors Murderer — other cases of serial killing in Britain — in his murders. Just a roster of elderly ladies pronounced dead in their armchairs, shortly after a visit from the good doctor.

Perhaps predictably, Shipman showed no emotion when he wassentenced for a murder spree that took place calmly behind net curtains, over tea and without a whimper of protest.

This, after all, was an Englishman at work.

“I have no doubt that each of your victims smiled andthanked you as she submitted to your deadly ministrations,” said a visibly shaken Judge Thayne Forbes in passing sentence that ensured Shipman would never be set free.

“None of your victims realized yours was no healing touch.”

Pillar of the Establishment

At his trial, Shipman was also found guilty of forging thewill of one of his elderly victims in order to inherit her386,000 pound ($577,500) estate.

But the forgery was an isolated case and money was not themotive for his killings.

Prosecutors at his trial said Shipman’s drive to kill wasfed by a God-like belief that he had power over life and death.

The 55-year-old father of four ran his own one-man generalpractice surgery in Hyde, an old mill town near Manchester.

His murders were never violent nor frenzied — just quietlyclinical.

Nor were the victims any more out of the ordinary.

Irene, Norah, Winifred, Ivy, Muriel: the roll call of deadwomen harks back to a bygone age, when doctors were next togodliness and serial killers were from fiction.

Shipman clung onto his role as a pillar of the Englishestablishment, even as he concealed his colorful past as a drug addict and his years of cold-blooded murder.

Authorities Come Under Fire

British medical authorities came under fire after Shipman’sconviction for failing to protect patients after it wasdisclosed that the doctor had a serious drug addiction and had been convicted in 1976 of forging prescriptions for his own use.

He was caught at the scene of four crimes, but nonchalantlyfalsified medical records and lied about how his patients died.

Maria West had taken tea minutes before Shipman emerged from her room to tell a friend: “She’s collapsed on me. She’s gone.”

In the case of 77-year-old Lizzie Adams, Shipman was foundcalmly admiring her Royal Doulton china collection while hewaited for her to die from the injection he had just given.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.