Latest / The conspiracy / Britain_s Most Infamous Serial Killer _ Dr. Death

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Britain_s Most Infamous Serial Killer _ Dr. Death · The conspiracy

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: His patients loved him. They said he was the best
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: doctor they've ever had. He sat with them, he listened,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: He made house calls without being asked, never seemed to rush,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: and in the small town of Hyde, England, he was
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: more than a family physician. He was a fixture, a
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: trusted presence in living rooms and bedside hospital beds for
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: more than two decades. But at the time no one
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: knew he was one of the most prolific serial killers
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: in history. This is the story of Harold Shipman. Crime, conspiracy, gats,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: serial killers and murder, all things that I love to consume,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: and I know you do too, you sick, twisted, beautiful,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: intellectually minded. Today we are talking about a highly requested
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: serial killer. So without further ado, let's unbuckle our seatbelts,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: go by, fied fro the highways, lamb of the rights,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: and busted this windshield into doctor death. Together. Raise your
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: hand if you've been putting off a doctor's appointment. DS.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: My hands raised too, because when something feels off, I
• 1:16
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• 2:11
  Speaker 1: and let's get back to it. Harold Frederick Shipman nicknamed Fred,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: was born the second of three children on January fourteenth,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty six, in Bestwood, Nottingham, an estate sitting on
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: the northern edge of the city with row after row
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: of council houses built for working families after the war,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: with small gardens and thin walls, and his father, Harold Senior,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: drove lorries or in other words, he was driving trucks basically,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: and his mother, Vera, stayed home, tending to the house
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: and children, and she ran the household the way. She
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: ran everything tightly, and she would decide what the children wore,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: how they behaved, and who they spent time with, because
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: in her mind, the Shipmans were not like other families
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: on the estate. They were better, but their money said otherwise,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: but she didn't care what money said. Her children's clothes
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: were neat and the manners were sharp, and they didn't
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: play in the street with the other kids because Vera
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: didn't allow it, and Harold's father never seemed to push back.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: He simply went to work and came home. So whatever
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Vera decided about the house and the children, that was
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: what happened. Now. Harold was a quiet boy. He did
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: well enough in school, but not remarkably so, and he
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: kind of kept to himself, and the other children on
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: the estate did not know him, because Vera had made
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: sure of it, as we know, and he passed the
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: eleven plus exam and earned a placement at High Pavement
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Grammar School, which was a rather selective school, and Vera
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: was very proud and at high pavement. Harold worked hard
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: and he was diligent, which made up for his apparent
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: lack of brilliance. But still he finished outside the top
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: of his class. But on the rugby pitch something else
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: came out. He was physical, sure of himself, confident in
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: a way that never showed up anywhere else. And the
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: people who knew him during these years all said the
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: same thing. Harold kept his distance, but he wasn't mean
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: about it. He wasn't shy. He simply didn't let anyone in.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: He just had walls built up. But when he did talk,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: there was something behind it that made people feel like
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: he was looking past them, you know, like a psychopath.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: But as Harold grew into his teenage years, Vera would
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: get sick and the diagnosis was terminal lung cancer. Yet
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: she didn't go to the hospital. She stayed home and
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: the illness took its time, months of it, a slow,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: visible decline inside the walls of that house in Bestwood,
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  Speaker 1: and the family doctor began making regular visits, and each
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: time he came carrying a bag and a syringe to
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: administer morphine. Because in nineteen sixties Britain, this was how
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: a dying person was cared for, basically just taking the
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: edge off essentially, as you're just dying over months and months,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: maybe even years at a time, just terre what a
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: terrible time. The general practitioner came to the house. They
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: pushed a needle into the patient's arm, and for a
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: while the suffering was lifted. And Harold was in the
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: room when the doctor arrived, not just once, but again
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: and again, and he watched the doctor come through the
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: front door, and he saw what happened when the morphine
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: entered his mother's body. The tension in her face just
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: loosened and the pain let go. And of all her children,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Vera had given Harold the most, the most attention, the
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: most expectation, and the most of herself. He was the
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: one she chose to build something out of. And when
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: the school day ended, Harold went straight to her side
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: and he took care of her, sitting with her and
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: staying close. But on June twenty first, nineteen sixty three,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Vera Shipman breathed her last breath at the age of
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: forty three, and Harold was just seventeen years old. And
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: he didn't cry where anyone could see, and he didn't
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: talk about her, so whatever moved through him in the
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: weeks and months that followed, he kept it sealed, locked
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: up as tightly as she raised him. But the house
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: had changed. The person who once held everything together was
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: now gone, and Harold Senior seemingly made no attempt to
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: fill the clear void that Vera had left, because he
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: never really shaped the family she did. But time would
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: pass and Harold Senior would remarry, and now it was
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: just a house with people in it, essentially, and Harold
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: and his father had almost nothing to say to each
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: other without the woman who had connected them, so they
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: were left not with a relationship, but essentially silence. And
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: something at this point would shift in Harold. Something would shift.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: When his mother was gone, he just got harder and
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: more focused, and the ambition Vera had put into him sharpened,
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  Speaker 1: and he decided to become a doctor. So he applied
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: to medical school, but he would be rejected. His A
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: level results weren't quite good enough, so he took the
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: exams again. But of course, getting into medical school from
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: a Council of State in the nineteen sixties was no
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: easy task. Nearly every medical student in Britain came from
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: money and Harold had no money, basically, no connections, no
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: family legacy in the field, but still he had that
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: persistence and diligence from his childhood and that was basically
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: all he had. And his social life during these years
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: was almost nonexistent, a few acquaintances but no real friends.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: He just kind of kept his own company, and finally,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty five, Harold was accepted into the School
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: of Medicine at the University of Leeds and he packed
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: his things and went, leaving Bestwood behind him. So it
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: had been just over two short years since his mother's
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: passing as Harold arrived at the University of Leeds and
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: he was now nineteen years old, carrying a Council of
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  Speaker 1: State accent into a profession that did not hand out
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  Speaker 1: many seats to people like him, and Leeds had one
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: of the bigger medical schools outside London, and the program
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: was five years long to earn a Bachelor of Medicine,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Bachelor of Surgery or an MBChB decree. So it was
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: rigorous and structured and designed to weed out anyone who
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: could not keep up with the pace. But Harold kept
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: up with the pace. He studied and attended lectures, and
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: the other students saw what everyone else saw on him.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: He kept to himself, choosing not to go out of
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: his way to make friends. Yet he now carried an
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: air of arrogance, not necessarily hostile, just kind of removed,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: almost like his mother still whispered in his ear, getting
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: the ed geen vibe. If you know what I mean,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: little Mommy's boy. This is never good in a psychopath,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: as we had learned. But when he did talk, there
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: was something in his tone that made people feel like
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: he was looking down on them. Just a classic misogynistic,
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  Speaker 1: narcissistic psychopath, you know what I'm saying. So naturally few
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: tried to get close, but this was some he didn't
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: seem to mind. But it was during this time at
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Leeds that Harold would meet a young woman named Primrose
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: May Aux Toby. And at the time she was seventeen
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: years old and she had grown up in Weatherby, in
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  Speaker 1: a quiet market town in West Yorkshire, and her parents
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: were George and Edna Aux Toby, and Primrose was the
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  Speaker 1: youngest daughter in the family and she had grown up
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: largely on her own because her mother had run a
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: strict household that discouraged socializing sound familiar, and when Primrose
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: finished school at sixteen, she went to work at a
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  Speaker 1: shop in town and she would not go to college.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: So the two met at a bus stop where Harold
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: was staying nearby Weatherby at the time, and things between
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: them seemed to just move quickly, and Primrose would become
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: pregnant at seventeen, and on November fifth, nineteen sixty six,
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  Speaker 1: they married at a registry office and it was just
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: a quiet affair, and Harold's father actually disapproved, and their
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: first child, Sarah, was born in nineteen sixty seven, while
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Harold was in the second year of his medical school
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: and Primro was now eighteen years old, married to a
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: medical student and raising a child. She had no degree,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: no career, and virtually no life outside the one that
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: she had just walked into. And with her family now
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  Speaker 1: her everything, she developed the habit of backing Harold completely.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: But at university nobody saw Harold the husband or Harold
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  Speaker 1: the father. Whatever happened at home just stayed at home,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: and the other students just saw someone who seemed older
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: than he was. He just appeared more serious somehow, as
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: if weighed down by responsibilities. They didn't share and as
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: a student, Harold continued to be what he had always been,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: hard working, diligent and competent. And Harold finished his degree
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy at the age of twenty four, holding
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: an MBChB from Leeds. So the working class kid from
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Bestwood was now a doctor, the very thing his mother
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: had wanted most Now His first posting out of medical
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: school was Pontefract General Infirmary, where he did his preregistration
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: house officer year, and this was pretty unglamorous work, long shift,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: slow pay and the constant hum of a busy hospital,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: and the General Medical Council formally registered him on August fifth,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, meaning he was officially licensed to practice
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: medicine in Britain, and the colleagues who worked alongside him
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: in these early years noted his competence. He knew the medicine,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: but he was short with people and he would talk
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: to colleagues like they were beneath him. On multiple occasions,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: I was gonna say, Ah, you're classic doctor, but that's
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: not true. I've met lots of doctors who are very,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: very nice, but you know, just like that classic, like
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: Gray's Anatomy Senior doctor. I'm just like hoity toity, I'm
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: better than all of you, OLIVI are stupid, you know.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: I don't even want to bother with any of you.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: But the thing is, he's a new doctor here, so
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: that's just it just seems crazy. We love our first
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: responders on this channel a right massive respect. And at
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: home his family was growing. Eventually there would be four children, Sarah, Christopher,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: David and Sam, and Primos stayed home with them and
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: the family lived modestly, and come nineteen seventy four, Harold
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: signed on at the Abraham Omarrod Medical practice in todd Morton,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: which sat in a valley where the Pennine Mountains towered
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: on both sides, straddling the line between West Yorkshire and Lancashire,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: and it had been a mill town for as long
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: as anyone could remember. About three thousand people were on
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: the practice's books and it was a group practice, and
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: Harold was one of the multiple general practitioners working there,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: and his patients were mill workers, pensioners and young families,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: working people who had lived in these hills their whole lives.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: And he settled in quickly and patients took to him
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: almost immediately, because he was thorough during appointments and he
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: paid attention, and he made house calls willingly without being pressed.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: And in a place like tad Morton that mattered because
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: people dependent on their local doctor in a way that
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: was hard to overstate, because the nearest hospital was a
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: ways away, so trust wasn't given casually, but once earned,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: it ran deep, and Harold earned it, and somewhere in
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: those early months in todd Morten, Harold began helping himself
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: to pethidine. Now, pethidine was a synthetic opioid, and in
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies it was one of the most commonly
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: used painkillers in British medicine. General practitioners kept it on
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: hand as a matter of routine, with virtually no system
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: in place to watch how much of it a doctor
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: was using, and the drug would produce a warm rush
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: of euphoria, dulling the user's pain and quieting the mind,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: and when injected, the effect was immediate and consuming. So
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Harold quickly developed the habit of using and he had
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: a simple system to acquire his fix. He put other
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: people's names on the prescriptions. Patients who never asked for
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: pethidine and never received a single dose. And meanwhile, he
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: also inflated the practice's supply order to make sure there
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: was always more than anyone could account for. And the
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: paperwork looked routine, just totally normal. No one was checking
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: closely enough to see that it was not, because on paper,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: no visible changes were seen in his work, and he
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: would still show up on time, and he would still
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: see patients, and he still went home to Primrose and
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: the children at the end of the day. But underneath,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: something was wrong, and Harold was spotted looking unwell on
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: more than one occasion, and once he went down completely
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: unable to function. But these moments came and went, and
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: no one connected them to anything larger until someone finally
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: looked at the books about a year and a half
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: into Harold's time at the practice, around the end of
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, and the controlled drug records showed far
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: more pathodye moving through Harold's prescriptions than his patients could
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: possibly require, prescriptions going out under the names of people
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: who had no business being on pethidine. And this observation
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: made its way to the other doctors, and the partners
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: began looking closer, and the truth was undeniable. So the
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: other doctors sat Harold down to lay out what they
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: had found, and the gap between what ordered and what
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: was used was too wide for anyone to pretend it
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: was not there, and Harold admitted he had been taking pathody. Ah,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: I dug a little bit on drunk, so i'll I
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: was taking care of the patients. I don't know why
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Harold is now from New York City, but anyway, but
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: he would tell them that he wanted help for his problem,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: and he asked for a chance to get better. Because
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: the moment he was pinned down, his defiance disappeared, and
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: he actually turned remorseful, or what appeared as remorseful, playing
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: the part of someone who had tripped once and just
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: needed a hand getting up. And people believed him because
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: he was very convincing. He was a smart fella. But
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: he would still be pushed out of the practice, whether
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: by resignation or dismissal, dependent on who told the story,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: but the result was the same. Harold was gone because
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: what had happened at the practice was passed along the
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: Home Office Drugs branch, and in February of nineteen seventy six,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Harold stood before a magistrate at Halifax Magistrate's Court and
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: the charges were obtaining pathodine by deception, on lawful possession
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: of a controlled drug, and forgery of prescription and the
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: sentence was a fine of six hundred pounds and he
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: paid it and would just walk out. And Harold checked
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: himself into the Retreat, a psychiatric hospital in York that
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: ran a drug rehabilitation program, where he stayed through the
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: winter of nineteen seventy five and into nineteen seventy six,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: completing the program. And despite his crimes and stay at rehab,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: the General Medical Council didn't take his license. Bombastic side
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: eye right there to the Medical Council. Nobody sent his
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: case to the GMC's Professional Conduct Committee, so he was
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: not struck off the medical register. A doctor had been
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: convicted of a drug crime involving a controlled substance and
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: the body responsible for protecting the public did nothing, which
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: sounds like, you know, it sounds bad, it's pretty bad,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: but what happens after is significantly worse. And it's because
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: of this failure. But this was due to the fact
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six, a criminal conviction for drug offenses
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: did not automatically trigger a GMC fitness to practice hearing.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: So Harold passed through the gap and he remained in
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: the eyes of the law and the profession of fully
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: registered medical practitioner, and Primos stayed with him through all
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: of it, the confrontation, the criminal proceedings, the rehabilitation, and
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: the return. She did not leave, and she did not waiver,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: and the family remained intact. And Harold then landed a
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: job in County Durham, where he worked as a clinical
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: medical officer for the local health authority, handling community health duties,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: but the job did not last long. By nineteen seventy seven,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: he applied for a new position and was accepted as
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: a general practitioner at the Donnybrook Medical Center in High
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Greater Manchester, a town that had never heard of him,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: and a practice that was willing to take a chance
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: on a doctor with a difficult past. Because despite his
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: new colleagues at Donnybrook knowing what had happened in Todd Warden,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: it didn't take long for Harold to become the most
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: popular doctor in the building. He was thorough spending real
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: time with his patients, sitting with them, listening to their complaints,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: explaining what was happening inside their bodies, and he continued
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: making house calls gladly as he did before. Word would
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: get around and more and more people asked to be
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: on his books. They wanted Harold over other doctors in
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: the building and furthering his connections, he got involved beyond
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: the surgery walls, and local medical committees brought him on
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: and he joined community groups, including the Rochdale Canal Society,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: and eventually, in nineteen ninety two, Harold left Donnybrook to
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: open his own solo practice at twenty one Market Street
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: in Hyde, and in nineteen ninety three he started off
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: strong with a client list of over two thousand people,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: many of which had followed him from Donnybrook, and the
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: move changed everything about how Harold operated. Now there was
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: no partners to review his prescriptions, no colleagues glancing at
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: his patient's records, no one monitoring how he scheduled appointments
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: or managed drugstock. He controlled it all and was accountable
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: to no one but himself. All right, let's take a
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: quick pause to set the scene. Okay, it's nine pm.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: I'm exhausted from researching cases after cases after cases, and
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: there is something healthy in the fridge that I'm supposed
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: to be making, but I'm not making it. And for me,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: eating healthy isn't necessarily a will power problem. I feel
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: good when I eat it, and I like to eat healthy.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: It's just a set up problem, really, until I found
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: a factor in. Factor solves this problem with fully prepared
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: meals designed by dietitians and crafted by chefs, delivered right
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: to my door, ready in two minutes, and I'm hit
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: the nutrition goals without the planning and the grocery runs
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: or the cooking. I cannot express how much I don't
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: like cooking. Guys. My favorite is the muscle Pro collection.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: High protein keeps me full while I'm researching these cases
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: or just going about my day trying to keep up
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: with my dogs and my four cats. But Factor has
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: meals built around your goals, whether it's weight loss, overall nutrition,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: more protein, or GLP one support. Over one hundred fresh,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: never frozen meals rotating weekly. I use it, and I've
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: used it for a very long time kill and I
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: love it, and you should definitely try it out. But
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: before Hyde, before Market Street, before any of it, there
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: was Eva Lions, seventy years old, living in Todd Morten
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: in early nineteen seventy five, so we're going back almost
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: twenty years terminally ill with cancer, and Harold was her doctor.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: On March seventeenth, nineteen seventy five, Harold visited Eva in
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: her home and he tended to her, sat with her husband,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: talking with him for a short while, and by the
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: time he left, Eva would be dead, and her death
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: certificate listed cancer as the cause, and no one questioned it.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: A dying woman had died and her body was cremated.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: And then there was Mary West who was an eighty
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: one year old widow and she lived alone in her
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: home and hide and she didn't need anyone's help doing it.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: She did have arthritis in her legs, her hips, and
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: her back, poor circulation, and a new inhaler for asthma,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: but none of it slowed her down because she had
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: a busy social life, ran a clothing shop in town,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: and she was even planning to book herself a holiday
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: at Buttland's and her son Christopher had been staying with
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: her for a few days and she seemed fine to him,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: in pretty good shape for eighty one in fact. But
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: in late February she saw Harold about her arthritis, and
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: he prescribed his favorite pethodine tablets, but they just made
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: her feel worse, actually, and by March six, the pain
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: was still bob her, so she asked him to come
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: to the house, and that morning her good friend Marian
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: had Field stopped by and Mary had tea with them
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: and they sat together chatting, watching television, waiting for the doctor.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: And Harold arrived while Marian was upstairs using the bathroom,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: and when she came back down, she heard voices in
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: the living room, so she waited in the kitchen, and
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: after a while the voices stopped and Harold walked into
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: the kitchen, looking surprised to see her, and he said
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Mary had passed on, and Marian asked if there was
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: anything he could do, but Harold said it was too late.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: She was gone, and Marian walked into the living room
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: to see Mary sitting in her chair in the exact
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: same position she had been for a short while before,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: and she looked like she had just nodded off watching television.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: But Harold wouldn't try to resuscitate her. He simply checked
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: her eyes. No sign of life, he said, and he
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: told Marian he had only looked away for a moment
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: to gather his things, and when he looked back, Mary
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: had collapsed, and he called Mary's son, Chris, and the
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: story then changed, and he told Christopher he had taken
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: his mother's blood pressure, went to put the machine back
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: into his car, and when he came back in, she
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: was no longer living. And when Christopher arrived, Harold told
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: him it was a massive stroke. And he said that
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: he had expected this would happen at some point because
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: her arteries had begun hardening, and in this case he
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: didn't try to bring her back because she would have
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: been a quote unquote vegetable, and he did not say
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: a post mortem examination should be done. So three people
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: heard three versions of how Mary West died, and the
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: only thing that stayed the same was the ending. Harold
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: filled out the death certificate with cause of death cerebrovascular accident,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: and on the cremation form he wrote that a neighbor
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: was present at an eighty one year old widow with
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: bad arteries and high blood pressure had died of a
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: stroke in her living room, and her doctor had been
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: right there when it happened. No one questioned it. And
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: then there was Irene Turner, who was sixty seven years old.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: She had diabetes, arterial disease, breast cancer, and had a
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: heart attack two years before, but still she kept herself busy,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: and she got out regularly and stayed active. And she
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: had just come back from a week's holiday in Torque,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: and her friends and family all said the same thing.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Irene was doing well, but after the holiday she did
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: pick up a cold and she was coughing up phlem
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: vomiting even and her daughter Carol and son in law
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Michael told her to call the doctor. So on July eleventh,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: now nineteen ninety six, Irene called Harold's surgery and asked
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: for a visit, and she stayed in bed, telling Michael
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: she wanted to meat and potato pie for lunch and
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: requested he brings some over, and as he dropped it off,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: she told him she would eat it once the doctor
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: had left. And at two fifteen in the afternoon, Irene
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: called Michael again, but Harold still hadn't shown up, and
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: she sounded like herself, but this would be the last
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: time anyone would hear her voice, and at around three
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: twenty five PM, a neighbor named Sheila Ward saw Harold
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: sitting in his car on the street, and he asked
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: her to go into Irene's house, but wait five minutes first,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: he said, he didn't explain why, very extremely odd, but
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: going to her house, but wait five minutes. Give it
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: five minutes to make sure you're gonna get that. She's
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: probably passed away. And when Sheila went in to check
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: on her, Irene was dead in bed and she was
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: on her back, head on the pillows, arms laid on
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: top of the blankets which were pulled smooth and straight
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: up to her chest. And Harold came in behind Sheila
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: to tell her Irene had died of diabetes and it
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: had spread all through her body, and was already too
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: late to take her to the hospital. And he called Michael.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: No need for a post mortem. He said he had
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: told Irene to go to the hospital, but she didn't
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: want to. And he told another son in law, Alfred Isherwood,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: something different this time it was ischemic heart disease, a
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: long convoluted explanation, no pain, he would say, she just
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: went in her sleep. But then he took it a
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: step further, blaming Irene, and she had waited too long
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: to call him and she would have survived if she
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: had called him sooner, he would say, and Alfred would
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: think the situation was odd. But Irene had held Harold's
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: opinions highly so she always took his advice. So if
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Harold had told her to go to the hospital as
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: he said he did, she would have gone. And Harold
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: would fill out the death certificate with the wrong date,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: writing July tenth instead of July eleventh, and claimed to
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: sign it on July tenth, and he listed the cause
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: as circulatory failure with ischemic heart disease and diabetes underneath.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: So just extremely odd in all these circumstances, he's just
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: lying about how they're dying to different people and not
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: really caring because what are they going to do? You know,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: he's a doctor, and they were already sick and they died.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: And that brings us to Lizzie Adams. Now, Lizzie Adams
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: lived alone, and she was a widow, and she had
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: spent her career a ballroom dancer, and at seventy seven
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: she was still at it, and she still had a
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: dancing partner. And she had come back from a holiday
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: in Malta with a group of friends and she was
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: in remarkable shape for her age, and she was home
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: from Malta with a cold and a cough, and the
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: day after returning she spent the whole afternoon shopping in
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Stockport with her daughter Doreen, and by the end of
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: the day she was ready to rest and the cough
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: was bothering her. Doreen picked up an antibiotic from Harold's
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: surgery and dropped it off at her mother's house. So
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: on Friday, February twenty eighth, nineteen ninety seven. The next morning,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Lizzie told Doreen the antibiotic quote unquote, nearly blew her
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: head off, and at twelve ten she called the surgery
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: and the receptionist wrote down her symptoms dizziness and nausea
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: and just unsteady on her feet, and she wanted a visit,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: but she continued on with her day as normal, and
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: that morning she hand washed clothes and hung them dry,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: and she started cooking her evening meal, and when Harold
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: arrived in the early afternoon, un the ironing board was
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: set up in the kitchen with the iron ready to go,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: and sometime in the midafternoon, Lizzie's friend William Cotlow arrived
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: at the house, noticing the front door was unlocked, and
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: he found Harold in the front room standing by a
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: china cabinet looking into it, and Harold told him Lizzie
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: had taken a bad turn and that he was arranging
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: to get her to the hospital. William walked through the
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: back room and Lizzie was in her chair, settled in
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: like she had just closed her eyes for a minute,
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: and he took her hand and it was still warm,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: and he turned to Harold saying, quote unquote, I think
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: she fainted, and Harold walked over saying, quote, she's gone unquote,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: and he would cancel the ambulance, and again he did
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: not examine her, and Harold called the Thoroughly House and
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: told Doreen's husband he had ordered an ambulance to take
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Lizzie to the hospital, and then he called Doreen at
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: work and said her mother needed to go to the hospital,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: and he didn't tell either of them that she was
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: already deceased. Jean rushed to her mother's house and Lizzie
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: was still in her chair, legs crossed in a relaxing position,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: and Harold abruptly told her that her mother had died
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: of pneumonia, and he said there was no need for
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: a post mortem again because he had been present at
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: the death. How convenient. And the next day Lizzie's other daughter, Sonia,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: went to see Harold and he told her he had
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: called an ambulance but canceled it after Lizzie had died.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: But no call to the ambulance service was ever made
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: from that house, and Harold filled up the death certificate
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: with cause of death broncho pneumonia, lasting twelve to twenty
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: four hours, and on the cremation form he put the
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: time of death at two point fifty in the afternoon,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: about fifty minutes after he arrived. And he wrote that
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: a neighbor, missus Catlow, was there when she died as well.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: And that brings us to Jeane Lily, who was fifty
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: eight years old and her husband Albert, drove long distance
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: for a living, and he kept a mobile phone on
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: him at all times, never turned it off. And Jeane's
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: health wasn't the best. She did have heart disease, hypertension,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: and respiratory problems and she got around in a wheelchair
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: anytime she went out, but she managed to at home
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: and for a couple of days she had a cold
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: and a cough, and on the morning of April twenty fifth,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, Albert called her from the road to
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: check in and she told him she had called the
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: doctor and asked him to come by and she was
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: currently waiting for him. And her neighbor, Elizabeth Hunter, came
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: by that morning as well, and they had tea together
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: and just chatted, and Jeane told her the same thing,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: that she wasn't feeling well and was just waiting for
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: the doctor. And from back at her own house, Elizabeth
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: saw Harold show up around noon, and forty five minutes
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: later she would see him leave and she headed over
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: to check on Jean and found her on the sofa
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: and she looked like she had just fallen asleep, but
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: when Elizabeth took her hand, it was ice cold, so
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: she would run outside to try to catch Harold, but
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: he was already gone, so she went back in and
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: try to bring Jean back, but there was nothing to
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: be done. Jean's lips were already blue, and Elizabeth called
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: the surgery and they told her to call for an ambulance,
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: and she did so at one nineteen in the afternoon,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: and the paramedics arrived ten minutes later to pronounce Jean
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: as dead, and they moved her body into the bedroom,
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: and then Harold showed up, but he didn't go into
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: the bedroom. He didn't take a look at Jean. He
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: told the paramedics that he would handle the death certificate.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Jean had been ill for a very long time and
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: he had seen this coming. And Elizabeth was just in tears,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: and Harold was short with her, not good bedside manner
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: as we know, telling her Jeane had just had a
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: bad heart and this was bound to happen soon. And
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: when he talked to Albert, Jean's husband, he said he
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: had tried to get Jean to go to the hospital,
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: but she just wouldn't go. And he said he had
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: been waiting for Albert to come home so he could
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: talk her into it, but by then it was too
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: late her her heart gave out, but Albert didn't buy it.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Jean had respected Harold fully. She had always taken his
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: advice before without hesitation. If Harold had told her to
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: go to the hospital, she would have gone, And if
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: she really wanted to talk it over, she would have
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: picked up the phone and called Albert himself. Because she
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: knew his phone was always on. But Harold filled out
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: the death certificate cause of death heart failure due to
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: ischemic heart disease and hypertension, and he was the last
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: person with her before she passed. And then there was
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Ivy Lomas, who was sixty three years old. She was
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: not well because she had chronic lung disease, depression, and anxiety,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: and she had smoked forty cigarettes a day for years
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: and it had taken a toll and walking any distance
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: winded her and lifting anything with decent weight was just
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: out of the question. And a neighbor took her dog
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: out every day because she wasn't able to do it herself,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: and her adult son had a psychic illness and it
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: weighed on her constantly. So Ivy was a regular at
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: Harold's surgery. And on the morning of May twenty ninth,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, she told a neighbor that she had
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: pains in her chest and arms, but she still went
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: out that morning to arrange care for her son, and
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: in the afternoon she headed into Hide for a four
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: o'clock appointment with Harold, and she got there ahead of schedule,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: looking a bit pale. But on her feet nonetheless, and
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: she made it into the consulting room without help, and
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: after a short time Harold moved Ivy from his consulting
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: room to the treatment room down the hall, and about
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: ten minutes later he appeared at reception, looking red in
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: the face, and he told the waiting room he was
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: sorry for the hold up, saying he had a problem
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: with the ECG machine, and then he called the next
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: patient in, and the next and the next, and then
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: he called in his receptionist, Carol Chapman, and he told
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: her that he had been trying to take an ECG
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: reading on Ivy but thought the machine was just broken,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: and then he realized Ivy had died. He said he
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: tried to bring her back but couldn't, instructing Carol to
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: contact Ivy's son, Jack, but Carroll couldn't reach him, so
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: she called the police instead, and when Constable Reid arrived,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: he found Ivy fully clothed on the treatment room bed,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: and Harold told him he could certify the death as
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: natural causes. But Constable Reid was curious and he asked
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: what had happened, and Harold told him Ivy had come
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: in about bronchial problems, and after treating her, he had
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: shown her into the treatment room to rest, and he
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: kept working through his client list, and when he checked
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: on her fifteen minutes later, she was just dead and
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: he didn't try to resuscitate her, as she was quite
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: beyond that, he would say, and he also didn't call
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: an ambulance either. Now Constable Reid couldn't believe what he
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: was hearing, and Harold joked in bad taste that Ivy
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: had come to the surgery so often he had thought
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: about having a seat specially saved just for her with
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: a plaque, And that evening, Ivy's daughter Carol went to
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: see Harold and he gave her another version, and this
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: time he said that he had taken Ivy to the
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: treatment room because he had to see another patient in
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: the consulting room, no mention of an ECG, and he
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: said when he went back to check on her, she
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: had gone blue around the mouth from a massive heart
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: attack and he tried to revive her but failed, which
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: he did not tell the Constable. He said she died
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: of a completely different reason and he did not try
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: to prosuscitate her. For three people with three different stories,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: and the only consistent thing was that Ivy was deceased.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: But Harold saw in the death certificate saying coronary thrombosis,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: and her medical records contained almost no history of heart disease,
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: just one written note from nineteen ninety one saying IHD,
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: which is ischemic heart disease, no medication for any heart condition,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: no prior complaints about her heart, and then he would
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: just go back to work. And then we have Muriel Grimshaw.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: Now Muriel was seventy six years old and in very
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: good health. She would take medication for her blood pressure
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: and got the occasional bout of back pain, but that
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: was about it. She had had a flare up in
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: May and solved it by buying a new bed. And
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: she saw her daughter Anne every Sunday and Thursday, and
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: they talked on the phone most other dates. So on Sunday,
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: July thirteenth, nineteen ninety seven, they went to church together
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: and afterwards they sat at Muriel's house with a cup
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: of coffee and made plans to have lunch on Wednesday.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: And Muriel was well and she was in great spirits.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: And every Tuesday Muriel went shopping with her friend, Barbara Ryan,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: and on the morning of July fifteenth, Barbara would knock
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: on her door, but there was nothing, no movement inside.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: Barbara contacted Anne and they let themselves in together. Muriel
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: was on top of the bed, still in her clothes
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: she had worn that day, and the television was playing
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: to no one, and the curtains were just left open.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: Muriel always unplugged the television before bed, and she never
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: left it running. And Anne called Harold and he came
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: in and glanced at Muriel and stepped back, and he
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: would not even put a hand on her. And he
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: would place the time of death at about five thirty
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: the evening before, and he told them it was peaceful
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: and there was no need to involve the coroner, and
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: he didn't say what had killed her. And he later
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: signed the death certificate saying cause of death cerebrovascular accident,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: with hypertension as the underlying condition, and he wrote that
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: he last saw Muriel alive on July second, but there
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: was no record of any consultation on July second, and
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Anne said her mother hadn't seen Harold since May, but
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: Harold's computer told a different story, and on July fourteenth,
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: at two six in the afternoon, an entry appeared in
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Muriel's records, and it said only that he saw the
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: patient in her own home, and Harold claimed that he
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: had stopped there around one o'clock and found her having
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: a cup of tea. Her back was fine, routine check
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: and nothing more. But no one had asked him to come,
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: and Muriel hadn't called the surgery at all, and she
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: hadn't requested a visit. Harold just simply showed up at
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: the home of a healthy seventy six year old woman
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: in the middle of a Monday afternoon, and by Tuesday
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: morning she was dead. And then there was Mary Quinn,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: who was sixty seven years old, and she was divorced
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: and she lived alone and hide and her only son,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: John worked in Japan, but they talked often and he
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: kept close tabs on her. And Mary had a condition
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: called systemic slerosis which affected her skin, her esophagus and
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: small blood vessels in her fingers and toes, and she
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: took medication for her blood pressure, but she was managing
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: and her friend saw her regularly and she got on
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: with her life. But on the morning of November twenty fourth,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, Mary attended a funeral in Hyde, and
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: friends who saw her said she looked fine, and at
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: around two thirty in the afternoon, she picked up the
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: phone and called John and Japan and they chatted and
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: he heard nothing in her voice that really worried him.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: But that phone call to Japan was the last anyone
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: heard of Mary Quinn and Harold told people that Mary
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: had called the surgery at around five forty five that evening,
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: reporting weakness down her left side, and he told her
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: to leave the door unlocked and he would just let
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: himself in, and Harold allegedly arrived at the house at
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: around six fifteen after fighting through rush hour traffic, and
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: he let himself in and found Mary on the kitchen
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: floor almost dead, so he would check for a pulse
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: and tested her reflexes, and he said she was deeply
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: unconscious and had a severe stroke, and he decided not
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: to resuscitate her because if he brought her back, she
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: would be brain damaged beyond repair. So he waited a
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: couple of minutes and she didn't move, so he didn't
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: call an ambulance, and at six point thirty two he
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: contacted Marie's friend Ellen Hanratty, listed as her emergency contact,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: and he told Ellen that Marie had phoned the surgery
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: saying she was having a stroke and was paralyzed down
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: one side, and he had rushed over, but by the
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: time he got there, she was breathing her last and
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: he was just too late. And he told John and
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: Marie's friend Cecilia Adshead the same thing for once, and
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Harold signed the death certificate. Cause of death cerebro vascular
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: accident twenty minutes duration and underlying causes were anterioslerosis and hypertension,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: and the medical record showed a single entry from nineteen
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: ninety two mentioning arterioslerosis, and there was no other reference
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: to it anywhere in her records. And then there's Kathleen Weggstaff.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: So Laura, Kathleen Weggstaff was eighty one years old, and
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: she went by Kathleen, and she was in good health.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: She lived in a flat and Hide, and she still
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: did her own shopping, and she thought highly of her doctor.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: And on the morning of December ninth, nineteen ninety seven,
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: Kathleen went into Hide to shop and it was a
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: normal day. She felt fine, not around one forty five
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: in the afternoon. Harold left the surgery without telling anyone
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: where he was going, and a neighbor watched from across
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: the way as Kathleen opened the door for him, and
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: it was somewhere between two and three in the afternoon
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: at this point, but Kathleen wasn't expecting him, but she
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: seemed happy he was there, and another neighbor saw his
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: car in the park, and twenty to thirty minutes later
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: they would see him again, and then Harold knocked on
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: the neighbor's door, telling them Kathleen had died, and he
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: said he would let the family know and left. And
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: he called the wrong person first and told Kathleen's daughter
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: in law that her mother had died, but it wasn't
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: her mother, it was her mother in law, and he
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: only realized the mistake when his receptionist corrected him. And
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: Kathleen's son Peter, went to the flat and found his
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: mother in her chair and she was tilted to one
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: side and there seemed to be some vomit on her,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: and Harold told Peter that Kathleen had called the surgery
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: after a visit citing chest pain, and he had just
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: been close by and came straight over, and he said
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: when he arrived she just looked ill, grey, sweating blew
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: around the mouth, and he said he walked her up
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: to the flat and got her sitting down, and he
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: said her pulse was thready, so he called an ambulance
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: and then he went to get his bag from the car,
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: and when he came back she was dead. So again
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: he called off the ambulance. And he told Peter it
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: was a heart attack, quick with no suffering heart disease
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: that could carry you off without warning. And Peter was shocked.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: He had had no idea his mother had heart problems.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: But Harold signed the death certificate caused a death coronary
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: thrombosis on set thirty minutes before death. Underlying conditions ischemic
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: heart disease of eight to ten years and our medical
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: records showed no sign of heart disease though no medication
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: for a heart condition, and two ratings of raised blood
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: pressure but nothing beyond that. So it was extremely odd.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: And the entry describing the death was five words long
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: call arrive, collapse, died time and on the cremation form
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: Harold wrote that a neighbor was present at the death,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: but no neighbor was present, and then there was Bianca Palmfret,
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: and Bianca Pomfret was forty nine years old, young, but
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: she was divorced. She lived alone and was under the
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: care of consultant psychiatrist, doctor Alan Tate, and she had
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: a community mental health support worker who checked on her regularly.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: And in the days before her death, friends noticed she
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: had a congested cough and she was expecting a visit
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: from the doctor. So in the morning of December tenth,
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, her neighbor Paul Graham, saw her looking
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: out of her lounge window and she was up. She
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: was awake, and she was going about her day. And
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: at some point Harold visited and he said Bianca had
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: called the surgery that morning to say she was unwell
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: and had chest pains, and he said she had episodes
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: like this before, going back months and he said it
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: sounded like angina and offered her medication for it, but
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: she refused because she was taking too many tablets already,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: and he told her she should just see a cardiologist,
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: but she turned that down too, and he advised her
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: to book an appointment for an ECG and then left,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: and she came to the door to wave him off,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: he said, And at around five o'clock that afternoon, Susan Adshead,
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: Bianca's mental health support worker, arrived for a visit and
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: she knocked but there was no answer, and she looked
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: through the window and saw Bianca was on the sofa.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: And when Bianca's son William arrived, his mother was deceased,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: and she was dressed for the day, and her body
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: was settled into the cushions like she had just drifted
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: off in her sleep, and a cup of coffee sat
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: next to her, half drunk, and a cigarette had burned
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: itself out in the astray, and William called an ambulance
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: and the paramedics called Harold, and Harold arrived and told
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: William he had visited Bianca earlier that day for her
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: chest pains. And he told William and his wife that
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: Bianca had been suffering from angina for about ten months,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: and they were stunted. They had no idea, and Harold
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: said her depression, her medication, and her smoking all played
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: a part. And then Harold went back to the surgery
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: and sat down at his computer, and he made several
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: entries in Bianca's medical records. One was for the visit
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: that day and the others were backdated, spread across the
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: previous nine months, and they described episodes of chest pain
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: that were never reported in blood pressure readings. He could
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: not have possibly remembered, and notes like seems better designed
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: to read as though they had been written at the time.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: And the next day Harold called doctor Tate, Bianca psychiatrist,
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: and doctor Tate wrote down what Harold told him, and
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: it was again a completely different story. And this time
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: Harold said he saw Bianca on December eighth chest pains,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: possibly in China, and he arranged an ECG, but the
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: results weren't significant, and he checked on her the following
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: day and she seemed fine, and on the tenth he
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: found her collapsed with a thready pulse. She went into
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: cardiac arrest and he resuscitated her and he used a defibrillator.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: She would die anyway. None of that was what he
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: told William, but Harold signed the death certificate cause a
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: death coronary thrombosis with an underlying condition of ischemic heart disease.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: And next there was Nora Nuddele. Nora was sixty four
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: years old and she lived with her son Anthony, but
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: was still independent, catching the bus and to hide most
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: days to run errands and see friends. And her medical
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: history was complicated though, because a rheumatic fever earlier in
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: life had left her prone to heart valve problems, and
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: there was references to her disease in her records, But
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: in spite of all of it, she lived her life.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: But she would pick up a cough, and on the
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: morning of January twenty sixth, nineteen ninety eight, she went
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: into the surgery and Harold gave her cough medicine and
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: told her to rest, and friends who ran into her
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: said she seemed like her usual self. And Anthony got
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: home from work at two and headed back out just
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: before three to tend to his ponies, But about forty
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: minutes later he returned to find Harold's car outside and
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: Harold walking out of the front door, and Harold told
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: him his mother wasn't well and that he had called
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: an ambulance, but he hadn't, and Anthony ran inside and
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: his mother was on her chair, looking like she was sleeping,
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: and Harold came in behind him, pressed two fingers to
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: her throat, pulled back one eyelid and said she's gone.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: And he told Anthony he had just been close by
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: when a call came in asking him to check on her,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: But that was not true. No one had called Harold.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: He had just come on his own, and he then
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: picked up the phone and pretended to cancel an ambulance
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: that was never coming. It's left ventricle failure, he would
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: tell Anthony. And when the heart goes like that, you
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: just black out twenty minutes and it's over, and there's
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: nothing the paramedics could have done. And Harold signed the
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: death certificate cause a death left ventricular failure fifteen minutes,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: duration underlying cause congestive heart failure three years, and on
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: the cremation form he wrote that her son was present
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: when she died, but as we know, he was not.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: And then there was Pamela Heillier. Now Pamela was a
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: sixty eight year old widow who walked her dog every
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: morning and managed her own life without help. And she
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: took medication for high blood pressure, but was otherwise active
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: and healthy. Recently, hurt knee had become painful when she drove,
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: so on the morning of February ninth, nineteen ninety eight,
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: she called the surgery and the receptionist wrote down one
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: thing painful knee and her daughter, Jacqueline, spent the morning
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: with her, and when she left just before lunch, her
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: mother was fine, and at one o seven they spoke
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: on the phone and everything was normal, and then Harold
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: visited shortly after, and by two o'clock Jacqueline was getting
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: no answer, so a neighbor went in to check and
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: found Pamela on the bedroom floor, face up, not moving,
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: and her account papers were on the table and her
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: lunch was sitting untouched in the microwave. And when Harold arrived,
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: a paramedic told him the police would be notified given
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: it was a sudden death at home, and Harold said
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: that wouldn't be necessary. She had simply just had a stroke,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: and when Jacqueline's husband asked about a post mortem, Harold
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: shut it down, and he could tell from how she
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: was lying. He allegedly said, let's put it down to
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: a stroke. Let's put it down to a stroke. You know,
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: he's just like openly guessing. I mean, we'll talk about
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: what's really happening shortly, but it's just it's disgusting. The
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: next day, Jacqueline and her brother Keith came to see him,
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: and Keith pressed on why the blood pressure medication hadn't
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: been increased, and Harold said you needed three raised readings
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: before adjusting the dose. And Keith brought up the post
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: mortem again, but Harold said it would be unpleasant. She
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: had died instantly, no pain, and Harold signed the death
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: certificate cause of death cerebrovascular accident, underlying cause hypertension of
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: six years, and then he went back to his computer.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: He invented a consultation from February fifth with Pamela complaining
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: of a weak leg and raised blood pressure, and he
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: created a secon entry for the day of her death,
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: noting dangerously high blood pressure and advising her to increase
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: her medication and return on Friday. But she never had
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: the chance. And then there was Maureene Ward. Marine. Ward
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: was fifty seven years old and packing up her life.
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: Boxes lined the walls of her flat in Ogden Court
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: and Hide and she was moving to Southport and had
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: a Caribbean holiday booked for March first. Breast cancer was
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: behind her. She was not winding down, and that morning
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: she had helped an elderly neighbor Carrie laundry and then
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: headed into town to buy a new dress for her trip.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: And at around three point thirty that afternoon, Harold knocked
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: on the ward in Christine Simpson's door and told her
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: Maureen was dead. He had just come from her flat.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: Christine was stunted, and Harold said, well, she did have
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: a brain tumor, you know what. And when Christine asked
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: how he had gotten in, Harold said Maureen had left
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: the lock on the snip that he was dropping off
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: an appointment letter for Stepping Hill Hospital. Christine went to
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: the flat. Moraine was on her bed, fully clothed, eyes shut,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: her body completely straight and tidy, and in the kitchen
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: a tin of cat food was open on the counter
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: with a spoon mid scoop and back of the surgery,
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: Harold told his receptionist Carol a different story entirely, and
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: he had been passing by and seen an ambulance outside.
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: And the next day he told staff yet another version
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: he had gone to deliver an appointment letter, and Carol
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: pointed out that wasn't what he told her yesterday, and
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: Harold then sat at his computer and backdated entries across
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: several months, and in them Maureen complained of headaches, blurred vision,
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: and unsteadiness, and he wrote that she had been found
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: on the floor of the week before, possibly fitting, and
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: her doctor at Stepping Hill confirmed she had never reported
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: any of that, and Harold signed the death certificate caused
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: death carcinematosis of eight weeks duration with the secondary tumor
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: in the brain, and on the cremation form he wrote
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: that the warden was present at the moment of death,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: but as we know she was not. Harold was the
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: only one there, and next there was Winnifred Mehlar now
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: Melar was seventy three years old and young for it.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: She volunteered at a local hospital, helped her church, and
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: kicked a ball around with her grandchildren in the garden,
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: and had a trip to the Holy Land already booked,
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: and she walked into Hyde most days with no trouble,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: and her health was good, but she did pick up
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: a cold, and her daughter Sheila, had lunch with her
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: but didn't think she seemed seriously ill. The next morning,
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: May eleventh, nineteen ninety eight, Mellar called the school to
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: say she couldn't be in, then chatted normally with two
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: friends on the phone, and then walked to Hyde Market
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: and had a cheerful conversation with another friend there, and
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: at around three o'clock a neighbor called Gloria Ellis. That
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: is really weird. I have a cousin named Gloria Ellis.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: I need to look that up if that's associated, because
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: they are from England. That is really weird. Anyway, watched
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: Harold's maroon car park outside and stay for about twenty minutes,
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: and after that there's nothing in the afternoon passed with
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: no word from Mellor, and at six point thirty that evening,
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: Harold knocked on Gloria's door and asked her and her
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: husband to let them into Meler's house. And he said
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: he could see through the window that something was wrong.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: So they went together and Mellor was in her chair,
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: head tilted to one side, a cup of coffee beside her,
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: the shopping still bagged up in the kitchen, and she
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: looked like she had just fallen asleep. So Harold checked
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: her wrist and eyes and she was gone. And he
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: was sharp with Gloria when she became distressed, and he
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: told Mellar's daughters that their mother had suffered from auntngina
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: since nineteen ninety seven and had repeatedly refused treatment. And
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: he said she had called surgery in pain that afternoon,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: that he had rushed back but couldn't get in, so
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: he went to the neighbors for a key, and he
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: asked the daughters if they agreed he should write coronary
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: thrombosis on the certificate, and said nothing about a post mortem.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: And none of the daughters believed it at all, because
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: their mother told them everything. If she had a china,
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: they would have known. And if Harold had told her
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: to go to the hospital, she would have gone because
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: she respected Harold, and if she had been in pain
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: all afternoon, she would have called one of them, but
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: instead she had gone shopping. And they also noticed that
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: Meller's sleeve was rolled up and there was a bruise
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: on her arm. But Harold signed the death certificate cause
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: of death coronary thrombosis. And then there was Joan Melia. Now,
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: Joan was seventy three years old and healthy, though on
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: June eleventh, nineteen ninety eight, she was feeling tired and
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: a little bit under the weather, and the next morning,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: her companion Derek Steele drove her to the surgery, and
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: Harold prescribed her an antibiotic and wrote in her records
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: that she had a chest infection. But when Joan came out,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: she told Derek the doctor had said she had plurisy
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: and pneumonia, and Derek was puzzled because if she had pneumonia,
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: surely she would have to go to the hospital, but
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: Harold was her doctor, so he took her home and
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: left her to rest, and that afternoon he called and
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: got no answer. So I went to check, and Joan
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: was in her chair with her glasses on and a
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: crossword on her knee, cold to the touch, and it
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: was clear she had got up at some point and
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: went to the kitchen to make something to eat after
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: he had left, and Harold arrived at five fifty four,
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: and he glanced at Joan, said the medication hadn't had
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: time to work, and told Derek he would handle the
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: death certificate and was gone in five minutes. Cause of
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: death lowbore pneumonia of two to three days duration, with
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: emphysema as an unrelated contributor condition, and he said nothing
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: about a post mortem and continued on with his work
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: and last there was Kathleen Grundy. Kathleen was eighty one
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: years old and in excellent health. She volunteered at Warneth House,
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: worked with age concern, and had a full social life.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: She showed no signs of slowing down, and Harold approached
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: her about a research project on the aging process and
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: supposedly written by Manchester University, and he had needed her
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: signature and a blood sample taken first thing in the morning.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: So on June twenty third, she came to the surgery
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: for an unrelated appointment and Harold told her he would
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: come by at eight thirty the next morning to collect blood,
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: but there was no research project. In the next morning,
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: June twenty fourth, nineteen ninety eight, Harold arrived at Kathleen's
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: home and she would never show up at Warnith House
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: that day, and by midday two of her friends went
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: to check on her and the door was unlocked, and
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: Kathleen never left it unlocked, and they found her on
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: the sofa, fully dressed and cold, and Harold came to
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: the house a quick lookover cardiac arrest, he said. He
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: called the coroner's office, agreed he could issue the certificate
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: and wrote down old age is the cause of death,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: and when two police officers arrived, Harold mentioned that he
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: had called on her that morning because she was unwell,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: but said nothing about a blood sample or a research project,
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: and the officer saw nothing suspicious and left. The next day,
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: he told Kathleen's daughter Angela he had seen her for
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: a routine thing, and he was vague about it and
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: mentioned possible indigestion. Said he had arranged to collect blood
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: the following morning, but when he arrived, she hadn't been
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: dressed yet, and he handed Angela the death certificate, citing
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: old age, and she took it. So fifteen women, the
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: same doctor, same paperwork, with the same outcome, and everyone
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: believed him. But what was really happening to all of
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: these women? See, Harold kept it simple because simple worked.
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: He carried diamorphine in his bag. Now. Dimorphine is pharmaceutical
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: grade heroine in medicine. It's used for severe pain, terminal cancer,
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: end of life care, and in the right dose it
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: quiets suffering, and in the wrong one it stops a heart.
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: And Harold knew the difference intimately because he had watched
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: it work on his mother when he was seventeen. Years old,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: and he had prescribed it for dying patients and watched
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: it ease them out, and at some point he decided
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: to use it on people who were not dying at all,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: and the mechanics were unremarkable. He knocked on the door.
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: He was welcomed in because he was the doctor, and
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: the doctor was always welcome, and he sat with the
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: patient for a short while, long enough for everything to
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: seem routine, and then he reached into his bag and
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: the injection site was usually the arm. Dimorphine hits the
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: bloodstream fast, and within seconds the drug crosses into the brain,
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: and consciousness dims and breathing slows and the body starts
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: to go still. And most of his victims would not
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: have known what was happening. And there's no dramatic collapse,
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: no struggle, no cry for help. A person who was
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: talking one moment would just simply stop and their eyes
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: would close, and their body would settle into whatever position
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: the chair gave them. And this is what witnesses kept
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: describing again and again, without knowing what they were seeing.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: She looked like he had nodded off, he said, she
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: just went to sleep, and she was sitting exactly the
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: same way she had been a few minutes before. That
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: was the drug, and that was Harold's method. He would
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: wait a short time, check for a pulse he already
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: knew was gone, perhaps check the eyes. Then he would
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: put on the expression of a doctor who had just
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: lost a patient. To begin the performance. He would explain
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: things to whoever was nearby, her heart, her blood pressure,
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: her arteries. He had seen this coming, there was nothing
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: anyone could have done. He would say, the same lies,
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: with the same calm authority that made everyone in hide
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: trust him in the first place, And then he would
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: write the death certificate coronary thrombosis, cerebrovascular accident, left ventricle failure,
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: old age, because he chose didn't need to be consistent,
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: It only needed to sound plausible for someone of that age,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: with that history. And Harold knew his patient's histories because
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: he wrote them and sometimes made them up. And still
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: somehow no one noticed. And Harold killed for twenty three
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: years in the open, wearing a white coat, carrying a
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: black bag and knocking on front doors like a vacuum salesman,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: and every single person who opened that door trusted him,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: and unfortunately the victim count was far far more than
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: fifteen women. But the first person to say something out
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: loud wasn't a police officer or hospital administrator or anyone
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: inside the medical establishment. It was a woman working at
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: a funeral home. Frank Massey and Son was a family
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: run funeral director's firm in Hyde, and Deborah Massey was
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: part of the operation. She handled the dead for a
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: living and so she knew what a normal caseload looked like.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: And she knew that what was coming through her doors
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: did not look normal because she kept seeing the same thing.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: Shipman's patience were showing up far too often, and most
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: of them were women, and most had died alone in
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: their homes, found sitting upright in a chair or something similar,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: or in their lying down on their bed. And Alan Massey,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: Debor's father, who had been running funerals for years, saw
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: it too. The bodies were always dressed, always positioned in
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: a chair, and over and over again. Harold had either
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: been the last one through the door or the one
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: who reported the death. But the Massies didn't have the
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: authority to investigate a doctor, but they knew someone who
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: might listen. So Deborah brought her concerns to doctor Linda Reynolds,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: a general practitioner at the Brook Surgery and Hide, and
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: doctor Reynolds listened and began to look at the numbers herself,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: and on March twenty fourth, nineteen ninety eight, doctor Reynolds
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: contacted John Pollard, the South Manchester Coroner, and she told
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: him what the funeral directors had told her and what
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: she herself had observed. Too. Many of Harold's patients were
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: dying and the pattern pointed to elderly women living on
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: their own turning up dead in their own homes, and
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: Harold was always somewhere at the edges. Pollard passed it
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: along to Greater Manchester Police where it ended up with
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: Detective Inspector David Smith working out of Stallybridge Criminal Investigation
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: Department or CID, and the police looked into it and
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: they examined the death of nineteen of Harold's patients, and
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: they pulled the death statistics from other GP practices locally
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: and nationally and measured Harold's against them. And doctor Allan Banks,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: medical advisor to the West Pennine Health Authority, was asked
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: to go through the clinical files and banks findings were cautious.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: The numbers were much higher than they should have been.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: But on paper, every death lined up with what Harold
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: had written on the certificate. Nothing in the files screamed murder.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: And that was the problem, because the records they were
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: receiving were Harold's records. The notes they were reading were
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: the notes of Harold that he had written in the
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: medical histories they were checking were the history's hair Old
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: had created. So they were asking the Fox to explain
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: what had happened in the Henhouse, essentially, and the Fox
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: had written a very convincing account essentially, if that makes sense.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: And at this point not a single body had been
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: pulled from the ground. No independent doctor was brought in
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: to give a second opinion, and the families of the
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: dead were never contacted, and Harold's controlled drug records went unexamined,
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: and nobody asked where he was getting his diamorphine or
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: how much of it he had, And unfortunately for the investigation,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: by April nineteen ninety eight, the whole thing ended just
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: one month of looking and the police just walked away,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: not enough evidence. Case closed, and doctor Linda Reynolds had
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: raised the alarm, and Deborah and Alan Massey had seen
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: what no one else was willing to see, and the
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: system had taken their concerns, weighed them against a killer's
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: own paperwork and decided back, everything's fine. They're old. Who
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: cares sick? Just absolutely sick. And whether Harold knew the
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: police had been looking at him was unclear at this point,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: but the coroner, John Pollard had started pushing harder on
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: the death certificates Harold was filing, and if Harold picked
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: up on that at all, it made no difference. And
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: in the five months after the closed file, three women died,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: Winifred Mellor in May eleventh, Joan Mellia on June twelfth,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: and Kathleen Grundy on June twenty fourth, the women we
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: spoke about before. So Harold had been killing successfully for
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: twenty three years without a single serious consequence, and he
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: had simply walked into hundreds of homes, ended lives, signed certificates,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: and walked out again. He had never been charged or
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: meaningfully investigated at this point, and he had survived the
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: one moment when someone finally looked in his direction. But
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: then he did something he had never done before. Because
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: when Kathleen died. A document landed at a solicitor's office Hamilton,
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: Wore a law firm received what appeared to be Kathleen
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: Grundy's will, but the typing was kind of sloppy and
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: the grammar was wrong, and the document handed everything she
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: owned around three hundred eighty six thousand pounds to a
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: single beneficiary, Harold Frederick Shipman, and a copy reached Kathleen's daughter,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: Angela Woodruff. Now Angela practice law for a living, and
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: one look at the document told her everything she needed
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: to know. Something was very wrong, because her mother was
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: precise about everything. A will this careless certainly couldn't have
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: come from her hand, and the idea that she would
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: leave her entire fortune to her GP was absurd, and
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: the whole thing was wrong top to bottom, And fraud
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: wasn't the worst of what Angela suspected. She believed Harold
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: Shipman may have murdered her mother to get his hands
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: on the money, and about a month after her mother's
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: funeral in late July nineteen ninety eight, Juela walked into
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: the police station. She handed the will to Greater Manchester
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: Police and told them what she believed had happened, and
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: this time nobody closed the file. Detective Superintendent Bernard Apostles
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: took charge of the investigation because he now had something
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: the first inquiry had never had a forged document with
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: a dead woman's name on it, and a suspect who
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: stood to profit. Guy got greedy, and on August first,
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight, the exhumation of Kathleen Grundy's body was ordered,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: and this was where one decision changed everything, because Kathleen
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: had been cremated like the others, which meant her body
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: was still there, holding evidence that Harold had had no
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: way to reach, and the lab results came back with
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: a definitive answer. Kathleen Grundy's body contained lethal levels of
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: diamorphine pharmaceutical heroine. No doctor had ever prescribed it to her,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: and she had never taken it on her own, so
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: there was no innocent explanation for why it was even
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: in her tissue. Yet it was clearly there, and when
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: forensic analysts examined the will, they matched it to a
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: typewriter sitting inside Harold's surgery on Market Street, and his
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: fingerprints were lifted from the paper itself. So in all
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: his years of killing. Harold had never once tried to
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: take money from a victim. Every death before this one
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: had been committed and walked away from with no financial
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: connection or trail leading back to him. But the will
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: changed that he got sloppy and dumb and greedy and
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: stupid because that's what he is. He's scumm And with
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: the exhumation of Kathleen Grundy confirming lethal levels of dimorphine
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: in her body, Detective Superintendent Bernard pulled together a team
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: of officers assigned to the case around the clock, and
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: the question was no longer whether Kathleen Grundy had been murdered,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: The question was how many others had been too. So
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: Apostles ordered more exhumations, and over the course of the
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: criminal investigation, twelve of Harold's former patients were pulled from
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: the ground, and one by one the bodies went to
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: the lab, and for nine of them the results came
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: back the same. When dimorphine breaks down inside the body,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: it leaves behind morphine, and that morphine does not disappear
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: after someone is buried, and body after body showed morphine
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: levels through the roof high enough to kill. So these
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: were women who had had no reason to have the
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: drug in their system, and it had not been prescribed
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: to them and they were not using it, and yet
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: it was there, soaked into the remains like a signature.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: And at the same time, investigators began pulling apart Harold's
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: patient records because he had kept both handwritten notes and
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: computerized system at the Market Street practice, and the computer
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: records were damning because again, poor old man didn't know
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: how to work in computer, didn't know how computers worked.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: Poor guy, just kidding up, this guy. And they found
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: that Harold had been going back into patient files and
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: changing them after the fact, because he had been adding
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: entries that did not exist at the time of treatment,
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: fabricating symptoms, and building fake paper trails so that when
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: a healthy patient dropped dead, the records made it look
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: like it had been coming for months, and a patient
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: who was healthy on Monday was given a backdated record
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: showing chest pains and heart trouble, as though the writing
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: had already been there. But again, Harold didn't understand how
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: computers work. Well mop the system logged metadata for every entry, edition,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: and edit, and the machine stamped the real date and
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: time on everything, so regardless of Harold's efforts, technology remembered
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: what he tried to erase, and the investigation also dug
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: into the drug locks and every controlled substance record at
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: Harold's surgery and pharmacies around Hyde was pulled and examined,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: discovering a stockpile built in plain sight, and he wrote
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: prescriptions for dying cancer patients massive amounts of diamorphine, far
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: more than any person could ever use, and when those
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: patients passed away, whatever was left over went straight into
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: Harold's bag, And other times he put a patient's name
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: on a prescription, even though that person never saw a
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: single dose, and the excess again went straight into his
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: bag and was carried right into the homes of the
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: women who trusted him. So this emerging pattern was undeniable.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: The dead were overwhelmingly older women who lived by themselves,
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: and Harold was the last person through each of their doors,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: and he was the last one there when they stopped breathing.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: Not to mention, he signed the death certificates and ordered
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: no post mortem for any of them, and would often
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: recommend cremation, and he would move to the next name
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: on his list. So the investigation then expanded at a
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: pace no one had anticipated, because once the first toxicology
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: reports came back, the case blew wide open and dozens
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: of deaths landed on the detective's deaths in a matter
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: of weeks, and the names started to pile up, and
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: what had started with one suspicious will was turning into
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: something British policing had rarely seen. And in Hyde, the
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: mood turned as the investigation progressed and his patients pushed back,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: unable to accept the allegations they were hearing. Not their doctor.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: He cared for them, he sat with them, he was kind,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: and some even went on record for him, standing up
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: in front of cameras to say this just could not
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: be true. But his more bodies were exhumed and more
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: names surfaced. That loyalty began to crack, and family members
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: started doing the math, and the doctor who had comforted
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: them after their loved ones had passed might have been
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: the reason they were no longer there at all. The
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: horror was right there inside their own homes, sitting in
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: the chair where their loved one had been found. The
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: first time officers showed up at Market Street asking for
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: Kathleen Grundy's file, Harold handed it over without breaking a sweat.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: He was very cooperative, almost pleasant, and he told the
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: officers that Kathleen Grundy was a drug Oh no, was
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: that in her file too, And even while under scrutiny,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: Harold kept the surgery open. Patients came in and he
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: treated them business as usual. But he carried on working
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: as the so the walls were not closing in on him,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: and they were closing in on him past. And he
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: also did not try to run. He didn't destroy records
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: or take any visible steps to prepare for in the
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: event he could be caught. He seemed to believe his
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: word would be enough, just as it always had been before.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: And Primrose's wife stood by his side at every moment
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: because she wouldn't hear a word of it. Her belief
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: in his innocence was absolute and unwavering. Let's take a
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: quick pause to talk about something that is important to
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: quite literally every human being, and that is sleep. And
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: what do you sleep on? A mattress? And I sleep
• 1:12:35
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  Speaker 1: And let's get back to the video. But on September seventh,
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight officers from Greater Manchester Police arrived at
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: Harold's door in row Cross Green, a short drive from Hyde.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: Harold was arrested on suspicion of murder of Kathleen Grundy
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: and the forgery of her will, and at the time
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: search teams moved through both of his homes and Market street, surgery, files,
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: controlled substances, equipment, everything they could carry went into evidence bags.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: But one item stood out, a typewriter sitting inside the house,
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: and forensic analysis confirmed it was the same machine that
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: had typed Kathleen Grundy's fake will. And in the interview room,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: though Harold stayed true to form when someone pushed back
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: at him, just arrogant, a f and evasive, just contemptuous,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: and he denied everything. Every death was natural, every certificate
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: was accurate, the will was genuine, and Kathleen Grundy had
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: brought it to him herself. And the tox collegy results
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: were laid in front of him, lethal diamorphine in a
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: woman who had never used the drug, and to this
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: Harold had nothing, nothing to say, No answers had held up.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: The detectives laid out the deaths name by name, and
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: Harold sat there just with a blank expression. It seemed
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: as though they were wasting his time, looking at the
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: officers the way he had always looked at people who
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: questioned him, just like go away, little human, I don't
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: care what you have to say, just like they were
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: beneath him. And he still repeated the same claim that
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: Kathleen Grundy was a drug here. But nothing in her
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: medical history, her personal life, or her reputation supported it.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: It was a lie built on nothing, and Harold told
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: it with same steady confidence he had once used to
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: tell families their mothers died at natural causes. And Primrose
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: was completely shocked by the arrest, but she still remained
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: unwaveringly supportive her husband was innocent, even any suggestion otherwise
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: was absurd. But Harold was charged with the murder of
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: Kathleen Grundy and with forging her will. So Harold was
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: taken to h M Prison Manchester also called Strange Ways
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: to await trial, and it was one of the most
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: notorious prisons in England. And though he was a prisoner,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: he was not yet convicted, but the charges against him
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: were growing, and inside Strange Ways Harold continued to carry
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: himself with calm air arrogance, and he projected the image
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: of a man who believed a mistake had been made
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: and that lesser minds were responsible for it. And he
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: showed zero remorse, and instead of distress, he radiated indignation,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: and everyone around him heard the same thing. He didn't
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: know it. There was no moment where his certainty wavered,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: no crack that let anything human through. And Primrose's wife
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: visited and still believed him, and she stood by her husband,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: just as she had through every crisis since they were teenagers.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: This was just a miscarriage of justice, and nothing she
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: heard would change that. But while Harold sat in his cell,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: the investigation continued to expand there were more names and
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: more cases, and prosecutors settled on fifteen murder counts and
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: a single forger recharge tied to Kathleen Grundy's will. And
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: these fifteen were not the only women Harold was suspected
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: of killing, though they were just the ones prosecutors believed
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: they could prove beyond any reasonable doubt. Where bodies had
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: been buried, not cremated, where the labs found poison in
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: the remains, and the facts around each death locked together.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: Many other suspected victims had gone into the fire, and
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: the fire left nothing to test because he ordered cremations
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: for majority of them. Hundreds hundreds of women were talking
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: about by the way. So the families waited, and more
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: than twelve months passed between Harold's arrest and the opening
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: of the trial, and some had watched their loved ones
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: pulled from the earth so a pathologist could search for
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: poison in their bones, and others sat with a new
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: and unbearable knowledge. The death they had accepted, the grief
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: they had processed, the funeral they had attended. All of
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: it had been rewritten and it felt like losing someone twice.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: So on October fifth, nineteen ninety nine, in Preston Crown Court, Lancashire,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: Harold stood trial, and the venue had been moved from
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: Manchester as the case was too large and too public
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: for a local jury to be considered impartial. The presiding
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: judge was mister Justice Forbes. That is the coolest name
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: for a judge I've ever heard in my life. Now.
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: The prosecution was led by Richard henriq q C. Henrik
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: laid out the case in four categories. The first was toxicology.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: Nine of Harold's former patients had been exhumed with foul
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: play confirmed, and in body after body, lethal or dangerously
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: elevated levels of morphine had been found, as we know.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: And the second was the computer. Harold's patients records had
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: been torn apart by forensic analysts, and the metadata told
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: a story. Harold did not know it was writing, as
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: we know, in the computer's work, so it was clear
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: he typed in stuff after the fact, like months before,
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: to make it look like how they died was made sense,
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: you know. And the third was the will. Kathleen Grundy
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: supposed last testament named Harold Frederick Shipman as the sole
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: beneficiary of her small fortune, which made no sense, and
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: it was obviously typed by him, because they had forensic
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: analysts look at the typewriter and he clearly wrote it.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: And the fourth was the pattern itself, deaths stacking up
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: at a rate no coincidence could explain, the same method,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: repeated over and over, the same doctor at every center,
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: at every single one. The defense was led by Nikola Davies, QC.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: And her options were pretty limited. You know, the evidence
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: is stacking up against Harold, all right, but she changed
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: the toxicology, arguing a beery body could generate morphine naturally
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: as it decomposed. Bitch what and the crown's forensic witnesses
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: shut that down immediately, and she suggested the women may
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: have had access to opiates. Harold knew nothing about and
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: there was no evidence to support it for any of
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: the fifteen victims at all. And she challenged the computer
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: evidence as sloppy record keeping and the metadata said otherwise, though,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: and Harold would eventually take the stand and as normally
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: arrogant demeanor kind of seemed to crack, and court adjourned
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: twice due to emotional breakdowns, and when he finally spoke,
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: his voice trembled, which he attributed to medication. And he
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: insisted every patient had died of natural causes, every altered
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: record was legitimate, and the will was genuine. And Kathleen
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: had sometimes borrowed his typewriter. Okay, whatever helps you sleep
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: at night, but but by the time he stepped down,
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: the damage was already done. The trial ran fifty seven days,
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: one of the longest murder cases in English court had
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: ever seen, and Harold sat through all of it pen
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: in hand, scribbling notes, and he appeared unmoved, and at
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: times he appeared bored, and he watched evidence of what
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: he had done to fifteen women presented in meticulous detail,
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: and reacted as though it had nothing to do with him.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: And on January thirteenth, two thousand, the jury was sent
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: to deliberate, and on January thirty first, two thousand, the
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: jury returned a unanimous verdict guilty on all fifteen counts
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: of murder, guilty of forging the will of Kathleen Grundy,
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: and mister Justice Forbes I love that name, delivered the
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: sentence fifteen concurrent life sentences for additional years for the forgery,
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: and a recommendation that Harold Frederick Shipman never be released.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: The judge spoke directly to him, saying, you have finally
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: been brought to justice by the verdict of this jury.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: I have no doubt whatsoever that these are true verdicts.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: The time has now come for me to pass sentence
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: upon you for these wicked, wicked crimes. Each of your
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: victims was your patient. You murdered each and every one
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: of your victims by a calculated and cold blooded perversion
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: of your medical skills for your own evil and wicked purposes.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: You took advantage of and grossly their trust. You were,
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: after all, each victim's doctor. I have little doubt that
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: each of your victims smiled and thanked you as she
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: submitted to your deadly ministrations. Harold listened to this and
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: didn't even flinch. And in the gallery the families broke
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: with a sense of relief because someone had finally said
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: out loud that what was done to their mothers and
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: grandmother and wives was not natural, was not peaceful, and
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: was not God's timing. It was murder, and underneath the
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: relief there was obviously grief, and the verdict did not
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: bring anyone back, It only confirmed what was taken. And
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: the press just went wild with this, and headlines focused
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: on the deep betrayal of a trusted doctor, and the
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: outrage directed not only at Harold but at every institution
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: that had failed to stop him, because there were so
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: many failures that could have prevented this, and calls for
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: a formal public inquiry grew louder by the day, and Primrose,
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: Harold's wife, was there every day in court, sometimes with
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: their children beside her, and as he was taken away,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: she smiled at him weakly, and she would continue to
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: maintain that Harold did not do this. You know, near
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: the start, I was like, ah, I feel bad. You know,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: he's really manipulative and all this stuff. But like, if
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: that evidence is shown to you, there's something wrong with you.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: You know, there's something wrong with you to not realize
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: how Hey, maybe he did do it. And the conviction
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: may have answered fifteen questions, but there were hundreds more
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: because in the wake of the trial, Secretary of State
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: for Health Alan Milburn announced a formal public inquiry into
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: the full scope of what had actually happened, established on
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: February first, two thousand and one. It was initially private,
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: but families and the press pushed back hard because what
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: Harold did and what the system failed to prevent could
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: not be examined behind closed doors. And by September two
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: thousand and one, the government listened and it became a
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: full public inquiry and the families had forced the door
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: to open, and the women appointed to lead it was
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: Dame Janet Smith and a High Court judge, and the
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: process took nearly four years and hundreds of witnesses gave
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: testimony and Janet Smith and her team combed through approximately
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: eight hundred and eighty eight death certificates bearing Harold's signature,
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: each one reviewed on its own evidence, and the first
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: report was published on July nine, eighteen, two thousand and two,
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: and its findings made the fifteen convictions look like the
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: visible tip of something enormous. There was an iceberg under
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: these fifteen victims, because there were at least two hundred
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: and fifteen patients dead at Harold's hands across a span
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: from nineteen seventy five to nineteen ninety eight, suspicion in
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: an additional forty five cases, so one hundred and seventy
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: one confirmed victims were women and forty four or men,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: and the youngest were Peter Lewis at forty one years old,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: killed in nineteen eighty five, and the oldest was Anne
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: Cooper at ninety three years old, killed in nineteen eighty eight.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: And five more reports followed, and the second report examined
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: the police investigation and was blunt in its conclusion the
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight inquiry had not been good enough and
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: Harold could and should have been caught sooner. And the
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: third report turned to the NHS and the General Medical Council,
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: neither of which had caught what was happening under their
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: no And the fourth report exposed the gaping holes in
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: how controlled drugs were tracked, laying out step by step
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: how Howard had stockpiled a lethal supply of diamorphine while
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: every safeguard just stayed silent. And the fifth report pulled
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: apart the complaints system, where the answer in Harold's case
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: had always been the same nothing. Essentially, the sixth report
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: asked the question that should have been asked decades earlier,
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: when someone died outside a hospital, who made sure the
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: cause of death was real? And Janet Smith's answer was
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: to recommend scraping the coroner system entirely and replacing it
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: with an independent medical examiner who did not rely on
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: the word of a single doctor. And for hundreds of
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: families whose loved ones never made it to the courtroom,
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: the inquiry provided the closest thing to an answer they
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: would ever receive, and Harold offered nothing during this He
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: just sat in a cell and maintained the same silence
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: he had kept since the verdict. Now after sentencing, Harold
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: was moved hm prison Franklin in County Durham, a category
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: a facility nicknamed quote unquote Monster Mansion for the caliber
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: of men at housed, and in June of two thousand
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: and two, a whole life tariff was formally confirmed and
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: Harold would never be a free man again. But inside
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: he still found a way to play doctor, and other
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: inmates came to him with their aches and questions, and
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: he obliged, and prison officers saw the same man his
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: colleagues in Hide had seen, cunning and distant, still carrying
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: himself like the smartest person in the room. And his wife,
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: Primrose visited regularly, desperately in love with a man she
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: could not reconcile with what he had done, and psychological
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: assessments described him as controlling and emotionally cold, with no
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: remorse or empathy, and a familiar word kept appearing in reports, arrogant.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: No formal psychiatric diagnosis was ever made, but the pattern
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: experts identified from the outside was consistent narcissism in unwavering
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: belief in his superiority, a need to control those four
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: walls had done nothing to diminish, and in two thousand
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: and three Harold was transferred to HM Prison Wakefield in
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: West Yorkshire, a high security facility housing some of the
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: most dangerous criminals in the country. But on the morning
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: of January thirteenth, two thousand and four, a routine five
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: am check found Harold in his bed, seemingly sleeping. But
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: at six point twenty am the officer returned and found
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: Harold Shipman from the bars of his cell window courtesy
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: of his bed sheets, and attempts to resuscitate him had failed,
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: and Harold Frederick Shipman was pronounced dead inside the prison.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: And he was fifty seven years old. And he left
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: no note, no letter to Primrose or to his children,
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: no confession, and no explanation. Whatever he knew he took
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: with him, and Primrose was informed that morning, and the
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: timing of his death carried an unexpected consequence because had
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: Harold reached sixty the Pincher rules would have worked differently.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: Because he didn't, Primrose was entitled to receive a full
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: NHS pension and a tax free lump sum. So there
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: was unconfirmed reports that Primrose had begun to doubt Harold
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: in his final moments and that made his death may
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: have been partly motivated by ensuring she received that money,
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: but neither was ever verified. In an official review led
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: by Prisons and Probation ombudsman Stephen Shaw concluded that officers
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: had followed every procedure correctly and that there were no
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: warning signs, and naturally the public response was furious. And
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: Danny Mellor, whose mother Winifred Mellor, was among the fifteen,
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: spoke for many when he said, quote, I always harbored
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: the remote possibility that one day I could confront him
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: and ask him why now that's been taken away from
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: me unquote. And Alexander, the lawyer representing some two hundred
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: of Harold's victims, said her clients felt cheated, and many
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: had believed that one day he would explain what he
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: did and most importantly why, But that resolution would never come.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: But Janet Smith would press forward, and the last two
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: reports were published after Harold was already in the ground,
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: and she acknowledged that with Harold gone, the inquiry was
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: all that remained, and it was the only official record
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: of what he had done. The man who had killed
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: more of his patients than any doctor in recorded history,
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: took the last thing he had left to the grave
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: and kept it buried with him. So with over two
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: hundred victims. No one will ever know if there were more,
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: But behind the numbers were real people, grandparents who kept
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: their gardens tidy and their front steps swept, women who
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: walked to the shop every morning because the routine gave
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: the day its shape, and they'd played games, they went
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: to church, and they doted on grandchildren who thought they
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: would be around forever. And they were people with plans,
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: and they certainly were not ready to go. And the
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: families they left behind carried something that would never fully heal.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: Guilt first, and the questions that refused to leave. Should
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: I have asked more questions? Should I have pushed back?
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: Should I have known? And then just anger at Harold,
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: at every institution that stood by while he kept killing,
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: At the investigation that came and went in nineteen ninety
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: eight and found nothing, And underneath it all a grief
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: that was forced to happen twice. And the families organized
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: demanded answers and pushed for systemic change, and refused to
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: let the government handle any of it quietly, And they
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: fought to have the inquiry held in the open and
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: kept pressing until the laws changed and the town of
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: Hyde set aside a space in Hyde Park in two
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: thousand and five and called it the Garden of Tranquility,
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: and arose for each of the two hundred and fifteen victims.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: But Harold Frederick Shipman never confessed, and he maintained his
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: innocence from the moment he was arrested until he was
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: found dead. And during the trial, prosecutors put forward a
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: theory that Harold got something out of holding the line
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: between life and death, that the control itself was the reward.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: And Dame Janet Smith never arrived at a single explanation,
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: and she believed he started with patients who were already dying,
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: people whose death he could frame as mercy, and that
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: he genuinely believed he knew when the right time had come.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: But she also found something darker than misplaced compassion, a
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: fascination with drugs, a pattern of pushing doses past safe limits,
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: and some patients may not have been murdered at all,
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: and they may have just been experiments. And over time
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: the boundaries just dissolved, and the terminally ill gave way
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: to the elderly, then to the healthy, and then there
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: was vera The image of a seventeen year old boy
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: watching a doctor push morphine into his dying mother's arm
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: and seeing the pain, just let go, And the inquiry
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: asked whether that moment had lodged something deep enough to
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: become something else entirely now after the conviction, forensic psychiatrist
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: doctor Richard Badcock evaluated Harold and found no psychosis and
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: no diagnosable psychiatric illness. What he identified instead were narcissistic
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: personality traits, superiority, and lack of empathy. And criminologist Professor
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: David Wilson proposed that every killing was the same scene
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: played again his mother's death on repeat, with Harold casting
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: himself as the man with the bag and the needle
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: who walks through the door and decides when the pain stops,
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: a loop that never resolved, run through in living room
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: after living room for twenty three years. The inquiry also
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: noted that some victims appeared to have done something to
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: get under his skin, suggesting some sort of narcissistic rage,
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: a need to reassert dominates when someone challenged him even slightly,
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: and money entered the picture exactly one time, and that's
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: what got him caught luckily. But Dame Janet Smith's six
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: reports did more than document what Harold had done. They
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: dismantled the systems that had allowed him to do it,
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: and she recommended removing the treating doctor from the death
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: certification process entirely, in replacing them with an independent medical
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: examiner like we talked about before, and Parliament passed the
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: Coroners and Justice Act in two thousand and nine, but
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: the system it created did not go live until September ninth,
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. Why is that taken so long? So
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: two full decades after the verdict and more than twenty
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: years after the family started asking how it was allowed
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: to happen? And the fourth Report's findings on controlled drug
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: monitoring led directly to the Health Act two thousand and six,
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: which overhauled how those substances were regulated across the health system,
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: and the Controlled Drugs Regulations of twenty thirteen added another layer,
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: requiring healthcare organizations to appoint accountable officers and maintain running balances.
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: And the fifth reports conclusion that the GMC had failed
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: led to a structural split between the body that investigated
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: complaints and the body that decided outcomes, and starting in
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: December of twenty t t twelve, every doctor in the
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: country was required to prove competency once every five years,
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: literally bare minimum. I know stuff has to change, but
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: it's crazy that that wasn't part of it. Oh my god.
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: You have to get old people to get new driver's
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: license every some odd years, but not an old medical professional. Bah.
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: Just give them the license SEBII for the rest of
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: their lives. It'll be fine. Because before shipmen no such
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: requirement existed, and the cremation regulations of two thousand and
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: eight made it harder for a single doctor to send
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: a body to the furnace without independent scrutiny, and solo
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: GP practices were flagged as structurally dangerous and the NHS
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: began steering away from them. Every safeguard that was supposed
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: to protect patients had failed for the same reason, the
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: assumption that a doctor would act in good faith. But
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: around the world, the shipment case became a reference point
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: for what broken systems look like and what they allow.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: The reforms are now in place, but it took two
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifteen deaths, maybe even more over twenty three
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: years and a forged will typed on a surgery typewriter
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: to build the world where those safeguards exist, and even
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: now the question that started everything remains exactly where Harold
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: left it unanswered. But that is the case of Harold. Shitman,
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: what a monster. Holy crap. It's crazy to just somebody
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: you trust with your health and your well being to
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: take a loved one's life or your life is just
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: it's hard to wrap your head around, but it is
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: something that does happen. There are many cases you guys
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: have told me to cover where it is some sort
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: of medical professional doing this, and I have other ones
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: on the list to deep dive into. But let me
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: know if there are other people you want me to
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: deep dive into. I always read the comments and until
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: then I will see your beautiful face. All right, stay safe,
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: love you bye.