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

Transcript

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, cults,
• 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 friend. Today, we are talking about a highly requested
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: serial killer. So without further ado, let's unbuckle our seat belts,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: come off right from the highway, slam on the brakes,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: and bust through this windshield into Dr. Death together. Raise
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: your hand if you've been putting off a doctor's appointment. Yes,
• 1:12
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• 1:16
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• 1:19
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  Speaker 1: the video and supporting the channel, and let's get back
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: to it. Harold Frederick Shipman, nicknamed Fred, was born the
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: second of three children on January 14th, 1946 in Bestwood, Nottingham,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: an estate sitting on the northern edge of the city.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: with row after row of council houses built for working
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: families after the war, with small gardens and thin walls.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: And his father, Harold Senior, drove lorries, or in other words,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: he was driving trucks, basically. And his mother, Vera, stayed home,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: tending to the house and children. And she ran the
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: household the way she ran everything, tightly. And she would
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: decide what the children wore, how they behaved, and who
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: they spent time with. Because in her mind, the Shipmans
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: were not like other families on the estate. They were better,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: but their money said otherwise. But she didn't care what
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: money said. Her children's clothes were neat, and the manners
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: were sharp. And they didn't play in the street with
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: the other kids because Vera didn't allow it. And Harold's
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: father never seemed to push back. He simply went to
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: work and came home. So whatever Vera decided about the
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: house and the children, that was what happened. Now, Harold
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: was a quiet boy. He did well enough in school,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: but not remarkably so. And he kind of kept to himself.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: And the other children on the estate did not know
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: him because Vera had made sure of it, as we know.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: And he passed the 11 plus exam and earned a
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: placement at High Pavement Grammar School, which was a rather
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: selective school. And Vera was very proud. And at High Pavement,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Harold worked hard. And he was diligent, which made up
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: for his apparent lack of brilliance. But still, he finished
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: outside the top of his class. But on the rugby pitch,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: something else came out. He was physical, sure of himself,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: confident in a way that never showed up anywhere else.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: And the people who knew him during these years all
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: said the same thing. Harold kept his distance, but he
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: wasn't mean about it. He wasn't shy. He simply didn't
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: let anyone in. He just had walls built up. But
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: when he did talk, there was something behind it that
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: made people feel like he was looking past them. You know,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: like a psychopath. But as Harold grew into his teenage years,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Vera would get sick. and the diagnosis was terminal lung cancer.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Yet she didn't go to the hospital. She stayed home,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: and the illness took its time. Months of it. A slow,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: visible decline inside the walls of that house in Bestwood.
• 4:43
  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 1960s Britain, this was how a
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: dying person was cared for. Basically just Taking the edge off, essentially,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: as you're just dying over months and months, maybe even
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: years at a time. Just terrible. What a terrible time.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: The general practitioner came to the house. They pushed a
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: needle into the patient's arm. And for a while, the
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: suffering was lifted. And Harold was in the room when
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: the doctor arrived. Not just once, but again and again.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: And he watched the doctor come through the front door.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: And he saw what happened when the morphine entered his
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: mother's body. The tension in her face just loosened, and
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: the pain let go. And of all her children, Vera
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: had given Harold the most. The most attention, the most expectation,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: and the most of herself. He was the one she
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: chose to build something out of. And when the school
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: day ended, Harold went straight to her side, and he
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: took care of her, sitting with her and staying close.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: But on June 21st, 1963, Vera Shipman breathed her last
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: breath at the age of 43. And Harold was just
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: 17 years old. And he didn't cry where anyone could see.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: And he didn't talk about her. Whatever moved through him
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: in the weeks and months that followed, he kept it sealed.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Locked up as tightly as she raised him. But the
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: house had changed. The person who once held everything together
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: was now gone. And Harold Sr. seemingly made no attempt
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: to fill the clear void that Vera had left. Because
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: he never really shaped the family. She did. But time
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: would pass and Harold Sr. would remarry. And now it
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: was just a house with people in it, essentially. And
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Harold and his father had almost nothing to say to
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: each other without the woman who had connected them. So
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: they were left not with a relationship, but essentially silence.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: And something at this point would shift in Harold. Something
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: would shift when his mother was gone. He just got
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: harder and more focused. And the ambition Vera had put
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: into him sharpened, and he decided to become a doctor.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: So he applied to medical school, but he would be rejected.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: His A-level results weren't quite good enough. So he took
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: the exams again. But of course, getting into medical school
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: from a council estate in the 1960s was no easy task.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Nearly every medical student in Britain came from money. And
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Harold had no money, basically. No connections, no family legacy
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: in the field. But still, he had that persistence and
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: diligence from his childhood. And that was basically all he had.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: And his social life during these years was almost non-existent.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: A few acquaintances, but no real friends. He just kind
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: of kept his own company. And finally, in 1965, Harold
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: was accepted into the School of Medicine at the University
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: of Leeds. And he packed his things and went, leaving
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Besswood behind him. So it had been just over two
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: short years since his mother's passing as Harold arrived at
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: the University of Leeds. And he was now 19 years old,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: carrying a council estate accent into a profession that did
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: not hand out many seats to people like him. And
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Leeds had one of the bigger medical schools outside London.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: And the program was five years long to earn a
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery, or an M.B.C.H.B. degree.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: So it was rigorous and structured and designed to weed
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: out anyone who could not keep up with the pace.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: But Harold kept up with the pace. He studied and
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: attended lectures, and the other students saw what everyone else
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: saw in him. He kept to himself, choosing not to
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: go out of his way to make friends. Yet he
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: now carried an air of arrogance, not necessarily hostile, just
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: kind of removed, almost like his mother still whispered in
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: his ear, getting the Ed Gein vibe, if you know
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: what I mean, little mommy's boy. Yeah. This is never
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: good in a psychopath, as we have learned. But when
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: he did talk, there was something in his tone that
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: made people feel like he was looking down on them.
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  Speaker 1: Just your classic misogynistic, narcissistic psychopath, you know what I'm saying?
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: So naturally, few tried to get close. But this was
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: something he didn't seem to mind. But it was during
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: this time at Leeds that Harold would meet a young
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: woman named Primrose May Oxtoby. And at the time, she
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: was 17 years old. And she had grown up in Weatherby,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: in a quiet market town in West Yorkshire. And her
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: parents were George and Edna Oxtoby. And Primrose was the
• 9:18
  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 16, she went to work at a
• 9:31
  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 17. And on November 5th, 1966, they married
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: at a registry office. And it was just a quiet affair.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: And Harold's father actually disapproved. And their first child, Sarah,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: was born in 1967, while Harold was in the second
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: year of his medical school. And Primra was now 18
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: years old, married to a medical student and raising a child.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: She had no degree, no career, and virtually no life
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: outside the one that she had just walked into. And
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: with her family, now her everything, she developed the habit
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: of backing Harold completely. But at university, nobody saw Harold
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: the husband or Harold the father. Whatever happened at home
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: just stayed at home. And the other students just saw
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: someone who seemed older than he was. He just appeared
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: more serious somehow, as if weighed down by responsibilities they
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: didn't share. And as a student, Harold continued to be
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: what he had always been, hardworking, diligent, and competent. And
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Harold finished his degree in 1970 at the age of 24,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: holding an MBCHB from Leeds. So the working class kid
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: from Bestwood was now a doctor, the very thing his
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: mother had wanted most. Now his first posting out of
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: medical school was Pontefract General Infirmary, where he did his
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: pre-registration house officer year. And this was pretty unglamorous work,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: long shifts, low pay, and the constant hum of a
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: busy hospital. And the General Medical Council formally registered him
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: on August 5th, 1971, meaning he was officially licensed to
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: practice medicine in Britain. And the colleagues who worked alongside
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: him in these early years noted his competence. He knew
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: the medicine, but he was short with people and he
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: would talk to colleagues like they were beneath him on
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: multiple occasions. I was going to say, ah, you're a
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: classic doctor, but that's not true. I've met lots of
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: doctors who are very, very nice, but you know, just
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: like that classic, like Grey's Anatomy senior doctor, just like,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: I'm just like hoity-toity. I'm better than all of you.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: All of you are stupid. You know, I don't even
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: want to bother with any of you. But the thing is,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: he's a new doctor here. So that's just, it just
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: seems crazy. We love our first responders on this channel.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: All right. Massive respect. And at home, his family was growing. Eventually,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: there would be four children, Sarah, Christopher, David, and Sam.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: And Primrose stayed home with them. and the family lived modestly.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: And come 1974, Harold signed on at the Abraham Omerod
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Medical Practice in Toddmorden, which sat in a valley where
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: the Pennine Mountains towered on both sides, straddling the line
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: between West Yorkshire and Lancashire. And it had been a
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: mill town for as long as anyone could remember. About 3,000
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: people were on the practice's books. And it was a
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: group practice. And Harold was one of the multiple general
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: practitioners working there. And his patients were mill workers, pensioners,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: and young families. Working people who had lived in these
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: hills their whole lives. And he settled in quickly. And
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: patients took to him almost immediately, as he was thorough
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: during appointments. And he paid attention. And he made house
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: calls willingly without being pressed. And in a place like Tadmorden,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: that mattered. Because people depended on their local doctor in
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: a way that was hard to overstate. Because the nearest
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: hospital was a ways away. So trust wasn't given casually,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: but once earned, it ran deep. And Harold earned it.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: And somewhere in those early months in Tadmorden, Harold began
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: helping himself to pethidine. Now, pethidine was a synthetic opioid.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: And in the 1970s, it was one of the most
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: commonly used painkillers in British medicine. General practitioners kept it
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: on hand as a matter of routine, with virtually no
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: system in place to watch how much of it a
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: doctor was using. And the drug would produce a warm
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: rush 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,
• 14:09
  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 and 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 1975.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: And the controlled drug records showed far more pethidine moving
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: through Harold's prescriptions than his patients could possibly require. Prescriptions
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: going out under the names of people who had no
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: business being on pethidine. And this observation made its way
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: to the other doctors, and the partners began looking closer.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: And the truth was undeniable. So the other doctors sat
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Harold down to lay out what they had found. And
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: the gap between what ordered and what was used was
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: too wide for anyone to pretend it was not there.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: And Harold admitted he had been taking pethidine. I took
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: a little bit of drugs while I was taking care
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: of the patients. What are you gonna do? I don't
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: know why Harold is now from New York City. But anyway,
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: but he would tell them that he wanted help for
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: his problem. And he asked for a chance to get better.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Because the moment he was pinned down, his defiance disappeared.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: And he actually turned remorseful, or what appeared as remorseful,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: playing the part of someone who had tripped once and
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: just needed a hand getting up. And people believed him
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: because he was very convincing. He was a smart fella.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: But he would still be pushed out of the practice,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: whether by resignation or dismissal, depending on who told the story.
• 15:54
  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 1976, Harold
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: stood before a magistrate at Halifax Magistrates Court. And the
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: charges were obtaining pethidine by deception, unlawful possession of a
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: controlled drug, and forgery of prescription. And the sentence was
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: a fine of 600 pounds. and he paid it and
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: would just walk out. And Harold checked himself into The Retreat,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: a psychiatric hospital in York that ran a drug rehabilitation
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: program where he stayed through the winter of 1975 and
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: into 1976, completing the program. Despite his crimes and stay
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: at rehab, the General Medical Council didn't take his license.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Bombastic side-eye right there to the Medical Council. Nobody sent
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: his case to the GMC's Professional Conduct Committee. So he
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: was not struck off the medical register. A doctor had
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: been convicted of a drug crime involving a controlled substance,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: and the body responsible for protecting the public did nothing.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Which 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 1976, a criminal conviction for drug offenses did not
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: automatically trigger a GMC fitness to practice hearing. So, Harold
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: passed through the gap, and he remained, in the eyes
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: of the law and the profession, a fully registered medical practitioner.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: And Primrose stayed with him through all of it. The confrontation,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: the criminal proceedings, the rehabilitation, and the return. She did
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: not leave and she did not waver. The family remained intact.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: And Harold then landed a job in County Durham, where
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: he worked as a clinical medical officer for the local
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: health authority, handling community health duties. But the job did
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: not last long. By 1977, he applied for a new
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: position and was accepted as a general practitioner in at
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: the Donnybrook Medical Center in Hyde, Greater Manchester, a town
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: that had never heard of him and a practice that
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: was willing to take a chance on a doctor with
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: a difficult past. Because despite his new colleagues at Donnybrook
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: knowing what had happened in Toddwarden, it didn't take long
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: for Harold to become the most popular doctor in the building.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: He was thorough, spending real time with his patients, sitting
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: with them, listening to their complaints, explaining what was happening
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: inside their bodies. And he continued making house calls gladly
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: as he did before. Word would get around. And more
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: and more people asked to be on his books. They
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: wanted Harold over other doctors in the building. And furthering
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: his connections, he got involved beyond the surgery walls. And
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: local medical committees brought him on. And he joined community groups,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: including the Rochdale Canal Society. And eventually, in 1992, Harold
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: left Donnybrook to open his own solo practice at 21
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Market Street in Hyde. And in 1993, he started off
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: strong with a client list of over 2,000 people, many
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: of which had followed him from Donnybrook. And the move
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: changed everything about how Harold operated. Now, there was no
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: partners to review his prescriptions, no colleagues glancing at his
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: patients' records, no one monitoring how he scheduled appointments or
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: managed drug stock. He controlled it all and was accountable
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: to no one All right, let's take a quick pause
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: to set the scene, okay? It's 9 p.m. I'm exhausted
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: from researching cases after cases after cases. And there is
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: something healthy in the fridge that I'm supposed to be making,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: but I'm not making it. And for me, eating healthy
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: isn't necessarily a willpower problem. I feel good when I
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: eat it and I like to eat healthy. It's just
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: a setup problem, really. Until I found Factor. And Factor
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: solves this problem with fully prepared meals, designed by dieticians
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: and crafted by chefs, delivered right to my door, ready
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: in two minutes. And I'm hitting the nutrition goals without
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: the planning and the grocery runs or the cooking. I
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: cannot express how much I don't like cooking. Guys, my
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: favorite is the Muscle Pro Collection. High protein keeps me
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: full while I'm researching these cases or just going about
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: my day trying to keep up with my dogs and
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: my four cats. But Factor has meals built around your goals,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: whether it's weight loss, overall nutrition, more protein, or GLP-1 support.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: Over 100 fresh, never frozen meals rotating weekly. I use
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: it and I've used it for a very long time.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Caleb and I love it and you should definitely try
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: it out. But before Hyde, before Market Street, before any
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: of it, there was Eva Lyons, 70 years old, living
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: in Toddmorden in early 1975. So we're going back almost
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: 20 years. Terminally ill with cancer, and Harold was her doctor.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: On March 17th, 1975, Harold visited Eva in her home.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: And he tended to her, sat with her husband, talking
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: with him for a short while. And by the time
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: he left, Eva would be dead. And her death certificate
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: 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 81-year-old widow.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: And she lived alone in her home in Hyde, and
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: she didn't need anyone's help doing it. She did have
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: arthritis in her legs, her hips, and her back, poor circulation,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: and a new inhaler for asthma. But none of it
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: slowed her down, because she had a busy social life,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: ran a clothing shop in town, and she was even
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: planning to book herself a holiday at Butlin's. And her son, Christopher,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: had been staying with her for a few days, and
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: she seemed fine to him. in pretty good shape for 81,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: in fact. But in late February, she saw Harold about
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: her arthritis, and he prescribed his favorite, pethidine tablets, but
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: they just made her feel worse, actually. And by March 6th,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: the pain was still bothering her, so she asked him
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: to come to the house. And that morning, her good friend,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Marion Hadfield, 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 Marion 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 Marion 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, Christopher, 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
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: been a quote-unquote vegetable. And he did not say a
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: post-mortem examination should be done. So three people heard three
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: versions of how Mary West died. And the only thing
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: that stayed the same was the ending. Harold filled out
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: the death certificate with cause of death, cerebrovascular accident. And
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: on the cremation form, he wrote that a neighbor was
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: present at the death. An 81-year-old widow with bad arteries
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: and high blood pressure had died of a stroke in
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: her living room. and her doctor had been right there
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: when it happened. No one questioned it. And then there
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: was Irene Turner, who was 67 years old. Now, she
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: had diabetes, arterial disease, breast cancer, and had a heart
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: 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 Torquay,
• 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 phlegm,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: vomiting even. And her daughter Carol and son-in-law Michael told
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: her to call the doctor. So on July 11th, now 1996,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Irene called Harold's surgery and asked for a visit. And
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: she stayed in bed telling Michael she wanted a meat
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: and potato pie for lunch and requested he bring some over.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: And as he dropped it off, She told him she
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: would eat it once the doctor had left. And at 2.15
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: in the afternoon, Irene called Michael again. But Harold still
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: hadn't shown up and she sounded like herself. But this
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: would be the last time anyone would hear her voice.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: And at around 3.25 p.m., a neighbor named Sheila Ward
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: saw Harold sitting in his car on the street and
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: he asked her to go into Irene's house. But wait
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: five minutes first, he said. He didn't explain why. Very
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: extremely odd. But go into her house. But wait five minutes.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Give it five minutes to make sure you're going to
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: get that she's probably passed away. And when Sheila went
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: in to check on her, Irene was dead in bed.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: And she was on her back, head on the pillows,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: arms laid on top of the blankets, which were pulled
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: smooth and straight up to her chest. And Harold came
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: in behind Sheila to tell her Irene had died of
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: diabetes and it had spread all through her body and
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: was already too late to take her to the hospital.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: And he called Michael. No need for a postmortem, he said.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: He had told Irene to go to the hospital, but
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: she didn't 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
• 25:56
  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. She had waited too long to
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: call him and she would have survived if she had
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: called him sooner, he would say. And Alfred would think
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: the situation was odd, but Irene had held Harold's opinions highly.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: She always took his advice. So if Harold had told
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: her to go to the hospital as he said he did,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: she would have gone. And Harold would fill out the
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: death certificate with the wrong date, writing July 10th instead
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: of July 11th, and claimed to sign it on July 10th.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: And he listed the cause as circulatory failure with ischemic
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: heart disease and diabetes underneath. So just extremely odd in
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: all these circumstances. He's just lying about how they're dying
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: to different people and not really caring because what are
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: they going to do? You know, he's a doctor and
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: they were already sick and they died. And that brings
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: us to Lizzie Adams. Now, Lizzie Adams lived alone and
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: she was a widow and she had spent her career
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: as a ballroom dancer. And at 77, she was still
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: at it. And she still had a dancing partner. And
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: she had come back from a holiday in Malta with
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: a group of friends. And she was in remarkable shape
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: for her age. And she was home from Malta with
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: a cold and a cough. And the day after returning,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: she spent the whole afternoon shopping in Stockport with her
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: daughter Doreen. And by the end of the day, she
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: was ready to rest and the cough was bothering her.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Doreen picked up an antibiotic from Harold's surgery and dropped
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: it off at her mother's house. So on Friday, February 28th, 1997,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: the next morning, Lizzie told Doreen the antibiotic, quote unquote,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: nearly blew her head off. And at 1210, she called
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: the surgery and the receptionist wrote down her symptoms, dizziness
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: and nausea and just unsteady on her feet. And she
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: wanted a visit. But she continued on with her day
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: as normal. And that morning, she hand-washed clothes and hung
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: them dry. And she started cooking her evening meal. And
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: when Harold arrived in the early afternoon, the ironing board
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: was set up in the kitchen with the iron ready
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: to go. And sometime in the mid-afternoon, Lizzie's friend William
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Cotlow arrived at the house, noticing the front door was unlocked.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: And he found Harold in the front room standing by
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: a china cabinet looking into it. And Harold told him
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: Lizzie had taken a bad turn and that he was
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: arranging to get her to the hospital. William walked through
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: the back room and Lizzie was in her chair, settled
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: in 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 Thorley 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
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: hospital and he didn't tell either of them that she
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: was already deceased. And Doreen rushed to her mother's house
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: and Lizzie was still in her chair, legs crossed in
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: a relaxing position. And Harold abruptly told her that her
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: mother had died of pneumonia. And he said there was
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: no need for a post-mortem, again, because he had been
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: present at the death. How convenient. And the next day,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Lizzie's other daughter, Sonia, went to see Harold. And he
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: told her he had called an ambulance, but canceled it
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: after Lizzie had died. But no call to the ambulance
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: service was ever made from that house. And Harold filled
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: out the death certificate with cause of death, bronchopneumonia lasting
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: 12 to 24 hours. And on the cremation form, he
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: put the time of death at 2.50 in the afternoon,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: about 50 minutes after he arrived. And he wrote that
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: a neighbor, Mrs. Catlow, was there when she died as well.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: And that brings us to Jean Lilly, who was 58
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: years old. Now her husband, Albert, drove long distance for
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: a living. And he kept a mobile phone on him
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: at all times. Never turned it off. And Jean's health
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: wasn't the best. She did have heart disease, hypertension, and
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: respiratory problems. And she got around in a wheelchair any
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: time she went out. But she managed at home. And
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: for a couple of days, she had a cold and
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: a cough. And on the morning of April 25, 1997,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Albert called her from the road to check in. And
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: she told him she had called the doctor and asked
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: him to come by and she was currently waiting for him.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: And her neighbor, Elizabeth Hunter, came by that morning as well.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: And they had tea together and just chatted. And Jean
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: told her the same thing, that she wasn't feeling well
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: and was just waiting for the doctor. And from back
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: at her own house, Elizabeth saw Harold show up around noon.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: And 45 minutes later, she would see him leave. And
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: she headed over to check on Jean and found her
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: on the sofa. And she looked like she had just
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: fallen asleep. But when Elizabeth took her hand, it was
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: ice cold. So she would run outside to try to
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: catch Harold, but he was already gone. So she went
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: back in and tried to bring Jean back, but there
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: was nothing to be done. Jean's lips were already blue.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: And Elizabeth called the surgery and they told her to
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: call for an ambulance. And she did so at 1.19
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: in the afternoon. And the paramedics arrived 10 minutes later
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: to pronounce Jean as dead. And they moved her body
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: into the bedroom. And then... Harold showed up, but he
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: didn't go into the bedroom. He didn't take a look
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: at Jean. He told the paramedics that he would handle
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: the death certificate. Jean had been ill for a very
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: long time, and he had seen this coming. And Elizabeth
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: was just in tears. And Harold was short with her,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: not good bedside manner, as we know, telling her Jean
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: had just had a bad heart. And this was bound
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: to happen soon. And when he talked to Albert, Jean's husband,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: he said he had tried to get Jean to go
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: to the hospital, but she just wouldn't go. And he
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: said he had been waiting for Albert to come home
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: so he could talk her into it. But by then,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: it was too late and her heart gave out. But
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: Albert didn't buy it. Jean had respected Harold fully. She
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: had always taken his advice before without hesitation. If Harold
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: had told her to go to the hospital, she would
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: have gone. And if she really wanted to talk it over,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: she would have picked up the phone and called Albert
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: himself because she knew his phone was always on. But
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Harold filled out the death certificate, cause of death, heart
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: failure due to ischemic heart disease, and hypertension. And he
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: was the last person with her before she passed. And
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: then there was Ivy Lomas, who was 63 years old.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: She was not well, because she had chronic lung disease, depression,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: and anxiety. And she had smoked 40 cigarettes a day
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: for years, and it had taken a toll. Walking any
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: distance winded her, and lifting anything with decent weight was
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: just out of the question. And a neighbor took her
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: dog out every day because she wasn't able to do
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: it herself. And her adult son had a psychiatric illness,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: and it weighed on her constantly. So Ivy was a
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: regular at Harold's surgery. And on the morning of May 29th, 1997,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: she told a neighbor that she had pains in her
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: chest and arms, but she still went out that morning
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: to arrange care for her son. And in the afternoon,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: she headed into Hyde for a four o'clock appointment with Harold.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: She got there ahead of schedule, looking a bit pale,
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: but on her feet nonetheless. And she made it into
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: the consulting room without help. And after a short time,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Harold moved Ivy from his consulting room to the treatment
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: room down the hall. And about 10 minutes later, he
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: appeared at reception looking red in the face. And he
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: told the waiting room he was sorry for the holdup,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: saying he had a problem with the ECG machine. And
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: then he called the next patient in. And the next.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: And the next. And then he called in his receptionist,
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Carol Chapman. And he told her that he had been
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: trying to take an ECG reading on Ivy, but thought
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: the machine was just broken. And then he realized Ivy
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: had died. He said he tried to bring her back,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: but couldn't, instructing Carol to contact Ivy's son, Jack. But
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Carol couldn't reach him, so she called the police instead.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: And when Constable Reed arrived, he found Ivy fully clothed
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: on the treatment room bed. And Harold told him he
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: could certify the death as natural causes. But Constable Reed
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: was curious, and he asked what had happened, and Harold
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: told him Ivy had come in about bronchial problems. And
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: after treating her, he had shown her into the treatment
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: room to rest, and he kept working through his client list.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: And when he checked on her 15 minutes later, she
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: was just dead. And he didn't try to resuscitate her,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: as she was quite beyond that, he would say. And
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: he also didn't call an ambulance either. Now, Constable Reed
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: couldn't believe what he was hearing. And Harold joked, in
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: bad taste, that Ivy had come to the surgery so often,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: he had thought about having a seat specially saved just
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: for her with a plaque. And that evening, Ivy's daughter, Carol,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: went to see Harold. And he gave her another version.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: And this time, he said that he had taken Ivy
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: to the treatment room because he had to see another
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: patient in the consulting room. no mention of an ECG.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: And he said when he went back to check on her,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: she had gone blue around the mouth from a massive
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: heart attack. And he tried to revive her, but failed,
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: which he did not tell the constable. He said she
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: died of a completely different reason and he did not
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: try to resuscitate her. So three people with three different stories.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: And the only consistent thing was that Ivy was deceased.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: But Harold signed the death certificate saying coronary thrombosis. And
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: her medical records contained almost no history of heart disease.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: Just one written note from 1991 saying IHD, which is
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: ischemic heart disease. No medication for any heart condition. No
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: prior complaints about her heart. And then he would just
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: go back to work. And then we have Muriel Grimshaw. Now,
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: Muriel was 76 years old. and in very good health.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: She would take medication for her blood pressure and got
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: the occasional bout of back pain, but that was about it.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: She had had a flare up in May and solved
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: it by buying a new bed. And she saw her daughter, Anne,
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: every Sunday and Thursday. And they talked on the phone
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: most other days. So on Sunday, July 13th, 1997, they
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: went to church together. And afterwards, they sat at Muriel's
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: house with a cup of coffee and made plans to
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: have lunch on Wednesday. And Muriel was well. She was
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: in great spirits. And every Tuesday, Muriel went shopping with
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: her friend Barbara Ryan. And on the morning of July 15th,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Barbara would knock on her door. But there was nothing.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: No movement inside. Barbara contacted Anne, and they let themselves
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: in together. Muriel was on top of the bed, still
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: in her clothes she had worn that day. And the
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: television was playing to no one and the curtains were
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: just left open. Muriel always unplugged the television before bed
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: and she never left it running. And Anne called Harold
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: and he came in and glanced at Muriel and stepped back.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: And he would not even put a hand on her.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: And he would place the time of death at about 5.30
• 37:12
  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 2nd, but there
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: was no record of any consultation on July 2nd. 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 14th
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: at 2.06 in the afternoon, an entry appeared in Muriel's records.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: And it said only that he saw the patient in
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: her own home. And Harold claimed that he had stopped
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: there around 1 o'clock and found her having a cup
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: of tea. Her back was fine, a routine check and
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: 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 76-year-old woman in the middle
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: of a Monday afternoon. And by Tuesday morning, she was dead.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: And then there was Mary Quinn, who was 67 years old.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: And she was divorced, and she lived alone in Hyde.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: And her only son, John, worked in Japan, but they
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: talked often. And he kept close tabs on her. And
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: Mary had a condition called systemic sclerosis. which affected her skin,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: her esophagus, and small blood vessels in her fingers and toes.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: And she took medication for her blood pressure, but she
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: was managing. And her friends saw her regularly, and she
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: got on with her life. But on the morning of
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: November 24, 1997, 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 2.30 in the afternoon, she picked up the phone
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: and called John in Japan. And they chatted and he
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: heard nothing in her voice that really worried him. But
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: that phone call to Japan was the last anyone heard
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: of Mary Quinn. And Harold told people that Mary had
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: called the surgery at around 5.45 that evening, reporting weakness
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: down her left side. And he told her to leave
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: the door unlocked and he would just let himself in.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: And Harold allegedly arrived at the house at around 6.15
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: after fighting through rush hour traffic. And he let himself
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: in and found Mary on the kitchen floor almost dead.
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: So he would check for a pulse and tested her reflexes.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: And he said she was deeply unconscious and had a
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: severe stroke. And he decided not to resuscitate her because
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: if he brought her back, she would be brain damaged
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: beyond repair. So he waited a couple of minutes and
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: she didn't move. So he didn't call an ambulance. And
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: at 6.32, he contacted Marie's friend, Ellen Hanready, listed as
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: her emergency contact. And he told Ellen that Marie had
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: phoned the surgery saying she was having a stroke and
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: was paralyzed down one side. And he had rushed over,
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: but by the time he got there, she was breathing
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: her last. And he was just too late. And he
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: told John and Marie's friend, Cecilia Adshead, the same thing.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: For once. And Harold signed the death certificate, cause of death,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: cerebrovascular accident, 20 minutes duration. And underlying causes were arteriosclerosis
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: and hypertension. And the medical record showed a single entry
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: from 1992 mentioning arteriosclerosis. And there was no other reference
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: to it anywhere in her records. And then there's Kathleen Wagstaff.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: So Laura Kathleen Wagstaff was 81 years old. And she
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: went by Kathleen and she was in good health. She
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: lived in a flat in Hyde and she still did
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: her own shopping. And she thought highly of her doctor.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: And on the morning of December 9th, 1997, Kathleen went
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: into Hyde to shop. And it was a normal day
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: and she felt fine. And at around 1.45 in the afternoon,
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: Harold left the surgery without telling anyone where he was going.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: And a neighbor watched from across the way as Kathleen
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: opened the door for him. And it was somewhere between
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: two and three in the afternoon at this point. But
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: Kathleen wasn't expecting him, but she seemed happy he was there.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: And another neighbor saw his car in the park, and
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: 20 to 30 minutes later, they would see him again.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: And then Harold knocked on the neighbor's door, telling them
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: Kathleen had died. And he said he would let the
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: family know and left. And he called the wrong person
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: first and told Kathleen's daughter-in-law that her mother had died.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't her mother, it was her mother-in-law. and
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: he only realized the mistake when his receptionist corrected him.
• 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 side,
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: and there seemed to be some vomit on her. And
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: Harold told Peter that Kathleen had called the surgery after
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: a visit citing chest pain, and he had just been
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: close by and came straight over. And he said when
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: he arrived, she just looked ill, gray, sweating, blue around
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: the mouth. And he said he walked her up to
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: the flat and got her sitting down, And he said
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: her pulse was thready, so he called an ambulance. And
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: 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.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: But Harold signed the death certificate, cause of death, coronary
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: thrombosis onset 30 minutes before death. Underlying conditions, ischemic heart
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: disease of eight to 10 years. And our medical records
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: showed no sign of heart disease though. No medication for
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: a heart condition and two readings of raised blood pressure,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: but nothing beyond that. So it was extremely odd. And
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: the entry describing the death was five words long. Call, arrive, collapse, died, time.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: And on the cremation form, Harold wrote that a neighbor
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: was present at the death, but no neighbor was present.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: And then there was Bianca Pomfret. Now Bianca Pomfret was
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: 49 years old, young, but she was divorced. She lived
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: alone and was under the care of consultant psychiatrist, Dr.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: Alan Tate. And she had a community mental health support
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: worker who checked on her regularly. And in the days
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: before her death, friends noticed she had a congested cough
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: and she was expecting a visit from the doctor. So
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: on the morning of December 10th, 1997, her neighbor, Paul Graham,
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: saw her looking out of her lounge window. And she
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: was up, she was awake, and she was going about
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: her day. And at some point, Harold visited. And he
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: said Bianca had called the surgery that morning to say
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: she was unwell and had chest pains. And he said
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: she had episodes like this before going back months. And
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: he said it sounded like angina and offered her medication
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: for it, but she refused because she was taking too
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: many tablets already. And he told her she should just
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: see a cardiologist, but she turned that down too. And
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: he advised her to book an appointment for an ECG
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: and then left. And she came to the door to
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: wave him off, he said. And at around five o'clock
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: that afternoon, Susan Atzhead, Bianca's mental health support worker- arrived
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: for a visit. And she knocked, but there was no answer.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: And she looked through the window and saw Bianca was
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: on the sofa. And when Bianca's son, William, arrived, his
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: mother was deceased. And she was dressed for the day,
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: and her body was settled into the cushions like she
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: had just drifted off in her sleep. And a cup
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: of coffee sat next to her, half drunk, and a
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: cigarette had burned itself out in the ashtray. And William
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: called an ambulance and the paramedics called Harold. And Harold
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: arrived and told William he had visited Bianca earlier that
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: day for her chest pains. And he told William and
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: his wife that Bianca had been suffering from angina for
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: about 10 months. And they were stunned. They had no idea.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: And Harold said her depression, her medication, and her smoking
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: all played a part. And then Harold went back to
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: the surgery and sat down at his computer. and he
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: made several entries in Bianca's medical records. One was for
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: the visit that day, and the others were backdated, spread
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: across the previous nine months, and they described episodes of
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: chest pain that were never reported, blood pressure readings he
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: could not have possibly remembered, and notes like, seems better,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: designed to read as though they had been written at
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: the time. And the next day, Harold called Dr. Tate,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: Bianca's psychiatrist, And Dr. Tate wrote down what Harold told him.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: And it was, again, a completely different story. And this time,
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: Harold said he saw Bianca on December 8th, chest pains,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: possibly angina, and he arranged an ECG, but the results
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: weren't significant. And he checked on her the following day,
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: and she seemed fine. And on the 10th, he found
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: her collapsed with a thready pulse. She went into cardiac arrest,
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: and he resuscitated her, and he used a defibrillator, She
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: would die anyway. And none of that was what he
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: told William. But Harold signed the death certificate, cause of death,
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: coronary thrombosis with an underlying condition of ischemic heart disease.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: And next, there was Nora Nuttall. Nora was 64 years old,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: and she lived with her son Anthony, but was still independent,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: catching the bus into Hyde most days to run errands
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: and see friends. And her medical history was complicated, though,
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: because rheumatic fever earlier in life had left her prone
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: to heart valve problems. And there was references to heart
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: disease in her records. But in spite of all of it,
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: she lived her life. But she would pick up a cough,
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: and on the morning of January 26, 1998, 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 2 a.m. and headed back out
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: just before three to tend to his ponies. But about
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: 40 minutes later, he returned to find Harold's car outside
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: and Harold walking out of the front door. And Harold
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: told him his mother wasn't well and that he had
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: called an ambulance, but he hadn't. And Anthony ran inside
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: and his mother was on her chair, looking like she
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: was sleeping. And Harold came in behind him, pressed two
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: fingers to her throat, pulled back one eyelid and said,
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: she's gone. And he told Anthony he had just been
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: close by when a call came in asking him to
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: check on her. But that was not true. No one
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: had called Harold. He had just come on his own.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: And he then picked up the phone and pretended to
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: cancel an ambulance that was never coming. It's left ventricle failure,
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: he would tell Anthony. And when the heart goes like that,
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: you just black out. 20 minutes and it's over. And
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: there's nothing the paramedics could have done. And Harold signed
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: the death certificate. Cause of death, left ventricular failure, 15
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: minutes duration. Underlying cause, congestive heart failure, three years. And
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: on the cremation form, he wrote that her son was
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: present when she died. But as we know, he was not.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: And then there was Pamela Hillier. Now, Pamela was a
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: 68-year-old widow who walked her dog every morning and managed
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: her own life without help. And she took medication for
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: high blood pressure, but was otherwise active and healthy. A
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: recently hurt knee had become painful when she drove. So
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: on the morning of February 9th, 1998, she called the
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: surgery and the receptionist wrote down one thing, painful knee.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: And her daughter, Jacqueline, spent the morning with her. And
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: when she left just before lunch, her mother was fine.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: And at 1 0 7, they spoke on the phone
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: and everything was normal. And then Harold visited shortly after.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: And by two o'clock, Jacqueline was getting no answer. So
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: a neighbor went in to check and found Pamela on
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: the bedroom floor, face up, not moving. And her account
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: papers were on the table and her lunch was sitting
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: untouched in the microwave. And when Harold arrived, a paramedic
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: told him the police would be notified given it was
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: a sudden death at home. And Harold said that wouldn't
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: be necessary. She had simply just had a stroke. And
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: when Jacqueline's husband asked about a post-mortem, Harold shut it down.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: And he could tell from how she was lying He
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: allegedly said, let's put it down to a stroke. Let's
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: put it down to a stroke. You know, he's just
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: like openly guessing. I mean, we'll talk about what's really
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: happening shortly, but it's just, it's disgusting. The next day,
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: Jacqueline and her brother Keith came to see him and
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: Keith pressed on why the blood pressure medication hadn't been increased.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: And Harold said you needed three raised readings before adjusting
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: the dose. And Keith brought up the post-mortem again, but
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: Harold said it would be unpleasant. She had died instantly.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: No pain. And Harold signed the death certificate. Cause of death,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: cerebrovascular accident. Underlying cause, hypertension of six years. And then
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: he went back to his computer. He invented a consultation
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: from February 5th with Pamela complaining of a weak leg
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: and raised blood pressure. And he created a second entry
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: for the day of her death, noting dangerously high blood
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: pressure and advising her to increase her medication and return
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: on Friday. But she never had the chance. And then
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: there was Maureen Ward. Maureen Ward was 57 years old
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: and packing up her life. Boxes lined the walls of
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: her flat in Ogden Court in Hyde. And she was
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: moving to Southport and had a Caribbean holiday booked for
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: March 1st. Breast cancer was behind her. She was not
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: winding down. And that morning, she had helped an elderly
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: neighbor carry laundry and then headed into town to buy
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: a new dress for her trip. And at around 3.30
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: that afternoon, Harold knocked on the warden Christine Simpson's door
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: and told her Maureen was dead. He had just come
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: from her flat. Christine was stunned. And Harold said, well,
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: she did have a brain tumor, you know. What? And
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: when Christine asked how he had gotten in, Harold said
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: Maureen had left the lock on the snip, that he
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: was dropping off an appointment letter for Stepping Hill Hospital.
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: Christine went to the flat and Maureen was on her bed,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: fully clothed, eyes shut, her body completely straight and tidy.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: And in the kitchen, a tin of cat food was
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: open on the counter with a spoon mid-scoop. And back
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: at the surgery, Harold told his receptionist, Carol, a different
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: story entirely. And he had been passing by and seen
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: an ambulance outside. And the next day, he told staff
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: yet another version. He had gone to deliver an appointment letter.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: And Carol pointed out that wasn't what he told her yesterday.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: And Harold then sat at his computer and backdated entries
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: across several months. And in them, Maureen complained of headaches,
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: blurred vision, and unsteadiness. And he wrote that she had
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: been found on the floor the week before, possibly thitting.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: And her doctor at Stepping Hill confirmed she had never
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: reported any of that. And Harold signed the death certificate,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: cause of death, carcinomatosis of eight weeks duration with a
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: secondary tumor in the brain. And on the cremation form,
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: he wrote that the warden was present at the moment
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: of death. But as we know, she was not. Harold
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: was the only one there. And next there was Winifred Mellor.
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: Now Mellor was 73 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 11th, 1998, Mellor called the school to say she
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: couldn't be in, then chatted normally with two friends on
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: the phone, and then walked to Hyde Market and had
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: a cheerful conversation with another friend there. And at around
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: three o'clock, a neighbor called Gloria Ellis, that is really weird,
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: I have a cousin named Gloria Ellis, I need to
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: look that up, if that's associated because they are from England,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: that is really weird. Anyway, watched Harold's maroon car park
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: outside and stay for about 20 minutes. And after that...
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: There was nothing. And the afternoon passed with no word
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: from Melor. And at 6.30 that evening, Harold knocked on
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: Gloria's door and asked her and her husband to let
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: them into Melor's house. And he said he could see
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: through the window that something was wrong. So they went together.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: And Melor was in her chair, head tilted to one side,
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: a cup of coffee beside her, the shopping still bagged
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: up in the kitchen, and she looked like she had
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: just fallen asleep. So Harold checked her wrist and eyes,
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: and she was gone. And he was sharp with Gloria
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: when she became distressed. And he told Miller's daughters that
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: their mother had suffered from angina since 1997 and had
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: repeatedly refused treatment. And he said she had called the
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: surgery in pain that afternoon, that he had rushed back
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: but couldn't get in, so he went to the neighbors
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: for a key. And he asked the daughters if they
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: agreed he should write coronary thrombosis on the certificate and
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: said nothing about a post-mortem. And none of the daughters
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: believed it at all. Because their mother told them everything.
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: If she had a vagina, they would have known. And
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: if Harold had told her to go to the hospital,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: she would have gone because she respected Harold. And if
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: she had been in pain all afternoon, she would have
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: called one of them. But instead, she had gone shopping.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: They also noticed that Miller's sleeve was rolled up and
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: there was a bruise on her arm. But Harold signed
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: the death certificate cause of death. coronary thrombosis. And then
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: there was Joan Melia. Now, Joan was 73 years old
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: and healthy, though on June 11th, 1998, she was feeling
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: tired and a little bit under the weather. And the
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: next morning, her companion, Derek Steele, drove her to the surgery.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: And Harold prescribed her an antibiotic and wrote in her
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: records that she had a chest infection. But when Joan
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: came out, she told Derek the doctor had said she
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: had pleurisy and pneumonia. And Derek was puzzled, because if
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: she had pneumonia, surely she would have to go to
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: the hospital. But Harold was her doctor, so he took
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: her home and left her to rest. And that afternoon,
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: he called and got no answer, so went to check.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: And Joan was in her chair with her glasses on
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: and a crossword on her knee, cold to the touch.
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: And it was clear she had got up at some
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: point and went to the kitchen to make something to
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: eat after he had left. And Harold arrived at 5.54.
• 55:10
  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 death,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: low-bore pneumonia of two to three days, duration with emphysema
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: as an unrelated contributor condition. And he said nothing about
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: a postmortem and continued on with his work. And last,
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: there was Kathleen Grundy. Kathleen was 81 years old and
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: in excellent health. She volunteered at Werneth House, worked with
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: age concern, and had a full social life. She showed
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: no signs of slowing down. And Harold approached her about
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: a research project on the aging process, and supposedly run
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: by Manchester University. And he had needed her signature and
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: a blood sample taken first thing in the morning. So
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: on June 23rd, she came to the surgery for an
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: unrelated appointment. And Harold told her he would come by
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: at 8.30 the next morning to collect blood. But there
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: was no research project. The next morning, June 24th, 1998,
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: Harold arrived at Kathleen's home. And she would never show
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: up at Werneth House that day. And by midday, two
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: of her friends went to check on her. And the
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: door was unlocked and Kathleen arrived. never left it unlocked.
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: And they found her on the sofa, fully dressed and cold.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: And Harold came to the house, a quick look over,
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: cardiac arrest, he said. He called the coroner's office, agreed
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: he could issue the certificate and wrote down old age
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: as the cause of death. And when two police officers arrive,
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Harold mentioned that he had called on her that morning
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: because she was unwell, but said nothing about a blood
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: sample or a research project. and the officers saw nothing
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: suspicious and left. The next day, he told Kathleen's daughter, Angela,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: he had seen her for a routine thing, and he
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: was vague about it. He mentioned possible indigestion, said he
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: had arranged to collect blood the following morning, but when
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: he arrived, she hadn't been dressed yet, and he handed
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: Angela the death certificate citing old age, and she took it.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: So 15 women, the same doctor, same paperwork, with the
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: same outcome, and marriage. Everyone believed him. But what was
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: really happening to all of these women? See, Harold kept
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: it simple because simple worked. He carried diamorphine in his bag. Now,
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: diamorphine is pharmaceutical-grade heroin. In medicine, it's used for severe pain,
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: terminal cancer, 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 17 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, and dimorphine hits
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: the bloodstream fast. And within seconds, the drug crosses into
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: the brain and consciousness dims and breathing slows and the
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: body starts to go still. And most of his victims
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: would not have known what was happening. There was no
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: dramatic collapse, no struggle, no cry for help. A person
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: who was talking one moment would just simply stop. And
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: their eyes would close and their body would settle into
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: whatever position the chair gave them. And this is what
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: witnesses kept describing again and again without knowing what they
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: were seeing. She looked like she had nodded off. He
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: said she just went to sleep and she was sitting
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: exactly the same way she had been a few minutes before.
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: That was the drug. and that was Harold's method. He
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: would wait a short time, check for a pulse he
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: already knew was gone, perhaps check the eyes, then he
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: would put on the expression of a doctor who had
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: just lost a patient to begin the performance. He would
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: explain 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 Hyde
• 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. The cause he chose didn't need to be consistent.
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: It only needed to sound plausible for someone of that
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: age with that history. And Harold knew his patients' histories
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: because he wrote them and sometimes made them up. And still, somehow,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: no one noticed. And Harold killed for 23 years in
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: the open, wearing a white coat, carrying a black bag,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: and knocking on front doors like a vacuum salesman. And
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: every single person who opened that door trusted him. And unfortunately,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: the victim count was far, far more than 15 women.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: But the first person to say something out loud wasn't
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: a police officer or hospital administrator or anyone inside the
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: medical establishment. It was a woman working at a funeral home.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: Frank Massey and Son was a family-run funeral director's firm
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: in Hyde. And Deborah Massey was part of the operation.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: She handled the dead for a living. And so she
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: knew what a normal caseload looked like. And she knew
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: that what was coming through her doors did not look normal.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: She kept seeing the same thing. Shipman's patients were showing
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: up far too often, and most of them were women,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: and most had died alone in their homes, found sitting
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: upright in a chair or something similar, or lying down
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: on their bed. And Alan Massey, Deborah's father, who had
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: been running funerals for years, saw it too. The bodies
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: were always dressed, always positioned in a chair, and over
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: and over again, Harold had either been the last one
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: through the door or the one who reported the death.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: But the Masseys didn't have the authority to investigate a doctor.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: but they knew someone who might listen. So Deborah brought
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: her concerns to Dr. Linda Reynolds, a general practitioner at
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: the Brooks Surgery in Hyde. And Dr. Reynolds listened and
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: began to look at the numbers herself. And on March 24th, 1998, Dr.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: Reynolds contacted John Pollard, the South Manchester coroner. And she
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: told him what the funeral directors had told her and
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: what she herself had observed. Too many of Harold's patients
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: were dying. And the pattern pointed to elderly women living
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: on their own, turning up dead in their own homes.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: And Harold was always somewhere at the edges. Pollard passed
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: it along to Greater Manchester Police, where it ended up
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: with Detective Inspector David Smith, working out of Stalley Bridge
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: Criminal Investigation Department, or CID. And the police looked into it,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: and they examined the death of 19 of Harold's patients,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: And they pulled the death statistics from other GP practices
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: locally and nationally and measured Harold's against them. And Dr.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: Alan Banks, medical advisor to the West Penean Health Authority,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: was asked to go through the clinical files. And Banks'
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: findings were cautious. The numbers were much higher than they
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: should have been. But on paper, every death lined up
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: with what Harold had written on the certificate. Nothing in
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: the files screamed murder. And that was the problem because
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: the records they were receiving were Harold's records. The notes
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: they were reading were the notes of Harold that he
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: had written. And the medical histories they were checking were
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: the histories Harold had created. So they were asking the
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: Fox to explain what had happened in the hen house, essentially.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: And the Fox had written a very convincing account, essentially,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: if that makes sense. And at this point, not a
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: single body had been pulled from the ground. No independent
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: doctor was brought in to give a second opinion, and
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: the families of the dead were never contacted. And Harold's
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: controlled drug records went unexamined, and nobody asked where he
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: was getting his diamorphine or how much of it he had.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: And unfortunately for the investigation, by April 1998, the whole
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: thing ended. Just one month of looking and the police
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: just walked away. Not enough evidence. Case closed. And Dr.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: Linda Reynolds had raised the alarm. And Deborah and Alan
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: Massey had seen what no one else was willing to see.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: And the system had taken their concerns weighed them against
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: a killer's own paperwork, and decided, bah, everything's fine, they're old,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: who cares? Sick, just absolutely sick. And whether Harold knew
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: the police had been looking at him was unclear at
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: this point, but the coroner, John Pollard, had started pushing
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: harder on the death certificates Harold was filing. And if
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: Harold picked up on that at all, it made no difference.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: And in the five months after the closed file, three
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: women died. Winifred Mellor in May 11th, Joan Melia on
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: June 12th, and Kathleen Grundy on June 24th, the women
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: we spoke about before. So Harold had been killing successfully
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: for 23 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.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: Hamilton Ward, a law firm, received what appeared to be
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: Kathleen Grundy's will, but the typing was kind of sloppy
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: and the grammar was wrong. And the document handed everything
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: she owned, around 386,000 pounds, to a single beneficiary, Harold
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: Frederick Shipman. And a copy reached Kathleen's daughter, Angela Woodruff.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: Angela practiced law for a living, and one look at
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: the document told her everything she needed to know. Something
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: was very wrong, because her mother was precise about everything.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: A will this careless certainly couldn't have come from her hand,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: and the idea that she would leave her entire fortune
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: to her GP was absurd. The whole thing was wrong
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: top to bottom. And fraud wasn't the worst of what
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: Angela suspected. She believed Harold Shipman may have murdered her
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: mother to get his hands on the money. And about
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: a month after her mother's funeral in late July 1998,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: Angela walked into the police station. She handed the will
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: to Greater Manchester Police and told them what she believed
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: had happened. And this time, nobody closed the files. Detective
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: Superintendent Bernard Postles took charge of the investigation because he
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: now had something the first inquiry had never had, a
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: forged document with a dead woman's name on it and
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: a suspect who stood to profit. Guy got greedy. And
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: on August 1st, 1998, the exhumation of Kathleen Grundy's body
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: was ordered. And this was where one decision changed everything
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: because Kathleen hadn't been cremated like the others. which meant
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: her body was still there, holding evidence that Harold had
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: had no way to reach. And the lab results came
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: back with a definitive answer. Kathleen Grundy's body contained lethal
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: levels of dimorphine, pharmaceutical heroin. No doctor had ever prescribed
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: it to her, and she had never taken it on
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: her own. So there was no innocent explanation for why
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: it was even in her tissue, yet it was clearly there.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: And when forensic analysts examined the will, they matched it
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: to a typewriter sitting inside Harold's surgery on Market Street.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: and his fingerprints were lifted from the paper itself. So
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: in all his years of killing, Harold had never once
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: tried to take money from a victim. Every death before
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: this one had been committed and walked away from with
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: no financial connection or trail leading back to him. But
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: the will changed that. He got sloppy and dumb and
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: greedy and stupid because that's what he is. He's scum.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: And with the exhumation of Kathleen Grundy, confirming lethal levels
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: of dimorphine in her body, Detective Superintendent Bernard pulled together
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: a team of officers assigned to the case around the clock.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: And the question was no longer whether Kathleen Grundy had
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: been murdered. The question was how many others had been too.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: So Postles ordered more exhumations. And over the course of
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: the criminal investigation, 12 of Harold's former patients were pulled
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: from the ground. And one by one, the bodies went
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: to the lab. And for nine of them, the results
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: came 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 a computer, didn't know how computers worked.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: Poor guy. Just kidding. This guy. And they found that
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: Harold had been going back into patient files and changing
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: them after the fact. because he had been adding entries
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: that did not exist at the time of treatment, fabricating
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: symptoms and building fake paper trails so that when a
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: healthy patient dropped dead, the records made it look like
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: it had been coming for months. And a patient who
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: was healthy on Monday was given a backdated record showing
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: chest pains and heart trouble as though the writing had
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: already been there. But again, Harold didn't understand how computers work.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: And the system logged metadata for every entry, addition, and edit.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: And the machine stamped the real date and time on everything.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: So regardless of Harold's efforts, technology remembered what he tried
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: to erase. And the investigation also dug into the drug logs.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: and every controlled substance record at Harold's surgery and pharmacies
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: around Hyde was pulled and examined, discovering a stockpile built
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: in plain sight. And he wrote prescriptions for dying cancer patients,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: massive amounts of diamorphine, far more than any person could
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: ever use. And when those patients passed away, whatever was
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: left over went straight into Harold's bag. And other times,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: he put a patient's name on a prescription, even though
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: that person never saw a single dose. And the excess, again,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: went straight into his bag, and was carried right into
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: the homes of the women who trusted him. So this
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: emerging pattern was undeniable. The dead were overwhelmingly older women
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: who lived by themselves, and Harold was the last person
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: through each of their doors. And... He was the last
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: one there when they stopped breathing. Not to mention he
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: signed the death certificates and ordered no post-mortem for any
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: of them and would often recommend cremation and he would
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: move to the next name on his list. So the
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: investigation then expanded at a pace no one had anticipated
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: because once the first toxicology reports came back, the case
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: blew wide open. And dozens of deaths landed on the
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: detective's desk in a matter of weeks. And the names
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: started to pile up. And what had started with one
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: suspicious will was turning into something British policing had rarely seen.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: And in Hyde, the mood turned as the investigation progressed.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: And as patients pushed back, unable to accept the allegations
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: they were hearing. Not their doctor, he cared for them,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: he sat with them, he was kind. And some even
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: went on record for him, standing up in front of
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: cameras to say, this just could not be true. But
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: as more bodies were exhumed and more names surfaced, that
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: loyalty began to crack. And family members started doing the math,
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: and the doctor who had comforted them after their loved
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: ones had passed might have been the reason they were
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: no longer there at all. The horror was right there
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: inside their own homes, sitting in the chair where their
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: loved one had been found. And the first time officers
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: showed up at Market Street asking for Kathleen Grundy's file,
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: Harold handed it over without breaking a sweat. He was
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: very cooperative, almost pleasant. And he told the officers that
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: Kathleen Grundy was a drug abuser. Oh no, was that
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: in her file too? And even while under scrutiny, Harold
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: kept the surgery open. Patients came in and he treated
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: them business as usual. But he carried on working as
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: though the walls were not closing in on him and
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: they were closing in on him fast. And he also
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: did not try to run. He didn't destroy records or
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: take any visible steps to prepare for in the event
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: he could be caught. He seemed to believe his word
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: 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: She wouldn't hear a word of it. Her belief in
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: his innocence was absolute and unwavering. Let's take a quick
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: pause to talk about something that is important to quite
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: literally every human being, and that is sleep. And what
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: do you sleep on? a mattress and I sleep on
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: a Casper. Thank you to Casper for sponsoring this video.
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  Speaker 1: a really good night's sleep And let's get back to
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  Speaker 1: the video. But on September 7th, 1998, officers from Greater
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: Manchester Police arrived at Harold's door in Rowcross Green, a
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: short drive from Hyde. And Harold was arrested on suspicion
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: of murder of Kathleen Grundy and the forgery of her will.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: And at the time, search teams moved through both of
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: his homes and Market Street Surgery. Files, controlled substances, equipment,
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: everything they could carry went into evidence bags. But one
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: item stood out. a typewriter sitting inside the house. And
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: forensic analysis confirmed it was the same machine that had
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: typed Kathleen Grundy's fake will. And in the interview room though,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: Harold stayed true to form when someone pushed back at him.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: Just arrogant AF and evasive. Just contemptuous. And he denied everything.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: Every death was natural. Every certificate was accurate. The will
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: was genuine. And Kathleen Grundy had brought it to him herself.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: And the toxicology results were laid in front of him.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: Lethal diamorphine in a woman who had never used the drug.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: And to this, Harold had nothing. Nothing to say. No
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: answers that held up. The detectives laid out the deaths
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: name by name. And Harold sat there just with a
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: blank expression. It seemed as though they were wasting his time,
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: looking at the officers the way he had always looked
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: at people who questioned him, just like, go away, little human,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: I don't care what you have to say. Just like
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: they were beneath him. And he still repeated the same
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: claim that Kathleen Grundy was a drug user, but nothing
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: in her medical history, her personal life, or her reputation
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: supported it. It was a lie built on nothing, and
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: Harold told it with the same steady confidence he had
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: once used to tell families their mothers died of natural causes.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: And Primrose was completely shocked by the arrest, but she
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: still remained unwaveringly supportive. Her husband was innocent. Even any
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: suggestion otherwise was absurd. But Harold was charged with the
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: murder of Kathleen Grundy and with forging her will. So
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: Harold was taken to HM Prison, Manchester, also called Strangeways,
• 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 Strangeways, Harold continued to carry himself
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: with calm arrogance, And he projected the image of a
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: man who believed a mistake had been made and that
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: lesser minds were responsible for it. And he showed zero remorse.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: And instead of distress, he radiated indignation. And everyone around
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: him heard the same thing. He didn't do it. There
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: was no moment where his certainty wavered. No crack that
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: let anything human through. And Primrose's wife visited and still
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: believed him. And she stood by her husband just as
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: she had through every crisis since they were teenagers. This
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: was just a miscarriage of justice and nothing she heard
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: 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 15 murder counts and
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: a single forgery charge tied to Kathleen Grundy's will. And
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: these 15 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 a majority of them, Hundreds, hundreds of women we're
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: talking about, by the way. So the families waited. And
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: more than 12 months passed between Harold's arrest and the
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: opening of the trial. And some had watched their loved
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: ones pulled from the earth so a pathologist could search
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: for poison in their bones. And others sat with a
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: new and unbearable knowledge. The death they had accepted, the
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: grief they had processed, the funeral they had attended, all
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: of it had been rewritten. and it felt like losing
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: someone twice. So on October 5th, 1999, 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 Mr. 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 Henrique QC. Henrique laid
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: 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.
• 1:18:19
  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. He didn't know how computers worked, so it
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: was clear he typed in stuff after the fact, like
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: months before, to make it look like how they died
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: made sense. And the third was the will. Kathleen Grundy's
• 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 Nicola
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: Davies QC. And her options... We're pretty limited, you know?
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: The evidence is stacking up against Harold, all right? But
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: she changed the toxicology, arguing a buried body could generate
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: morphine naturally as it decomposed. Bitch, what? And the Crown's
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: forensic witnesses shut that down immediately. She suggested the women
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: may have had access to opiates Harold knew nothing about.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: There was no evidence to support it for any of
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: the 15 victims at all. And she challenged the computer
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: evidence as sloppy record-keeping. The metadata said otherwise, though. And
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: Harold would eventually take the stand. And his normally arrogant
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: demeanor kind of seemed to crack. And court adjourned twice
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: due to emotional breakdowns. And when he finally spoke, his
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: voice trembled, which he attributed to medication. And he insisted
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: every patient had died of natural causes. Every altered record
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: was legitimate and the will was genuine, and Kathleen had
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: sometimes borrowed his typewriter. Okay, whatever helps you sleep at night, bud.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: But by the time he stepped down, the damage was
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: already done. And the trial ran 57 days, one of
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: the longest murder cases an English court had ever seen.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: And Harold sat, through all of it, pen in hand,
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: scribbling notes. And he appeared unmoved and at times he
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: appeared bored. And he watched evidence of what he had
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: done to 15 women presented in meticulous detail and reacted
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: as though it had nothing to do with him. And
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: on January 13th, 2000, the jury was sent to deliberate.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: And on January 31st, 2000, the jury returned a unanimous verdict.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: guilty on all 15 counts of murder, guilty of forging
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: the will of Kathleen Grundy. And Mr. Justice Forbes, God,
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: I love that name, delivered the sentence. 15 concurrent life sentences,
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: four additional years for the forgery, and a recommendation that
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: Harold Frederick Shipman never be released. The judge spoke directly
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: to him saying, you have finally been brought to justice
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: by the verdict of this jury. I have no doubt
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: whatsoever that these are true verdicts. The time has now
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: come for me to pass sentence upon you for these wicked,
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: wicked crimes. Each of your victims was your patient. You
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: murdered each and every one of your victims by a
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: calculated and cold-blooded perversion of your medical skills for your
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: own evil and wicked purposes. And Harold listened to this
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: and didn't even flinch. And in the gallery, the families
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: broke with a sense of relief. Because someone had finally
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: said out loud that what was done to their mothers
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: and grandmothers and wives was not natural, was not peaceful,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: and was not God's timing. It was murder. And underneath
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: the relief, there was obviously grief. 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 of him. There
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: were so many failures that could have prevented this. And
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: calls for a formal public inquiry grew louder by the day.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: And Primrose, Harold's wife, was there every day in court,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: sometimes with their children beside her. And as he was
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: taken away, she smiled at him weakly. And she would
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: continue to maintain that Harold did not do this. You know,
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: at the end, Near the start, I was like, ah,
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: I feel bad. You know, he's really manipulative and all
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: this stuff. But like, if that evidence is shown to you,
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: there's something wrong with you. You know, there's something wrong
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: with you to not realize, oh, hey. Maybe he did
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: do it. And the conviction may have answered 15 questions,
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: but there were hundreds more. Because in the wake of
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: the trial, Secretary of State for Health Alan Milburn announced
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: a formal public inquiry into the full scope of what
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: had actually happened. Established on February 1, 2001, it was
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: initially private. But families and the press pushed back hard.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: Because what Harold did and what the system failed to
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: prevent could not be examined behind closed doors. And by
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: September 2001, the government listened and it became a full
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: public inquiry. And the families had forced the door to open.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: And the women appointed to lead it was Dame Janet
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: Smith and a high court judge. And the process took
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: nearly four years. And hundreds of witnesses gave testimony. And
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: Janet Smith and her team combed through approximately 888 death
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: certificates bearing Harold's signatures. each one reviewed on its own evidence.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: And the first report was published on July 19th, 2002,
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: and its findings made the 15 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 15 victims because there were at least 215 patients
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: dead at Harold's hands across a span from 1975 to 1998.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: Suspicion in an additional 45 cases So 171 confirmed victims
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: were women and 44 were men. And the youngest were
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: Peter Lewis at 41 years old, killed in 1985. And
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: the oldest was Ann Cooper at 93 years old, killed
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: in 1988. And five more reports followed. And the second
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: report examined the police investigation and was blunt in its conclusion.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: The 1998 inquiry had not been good enough and Harold
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: could and should have been caught sooner. And the third
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: 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 noses.
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: And the fourth report exposed the gaping holes in how
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: controlled drugs were tracked, laying out step-by-step how Howard had
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: stockpiled a lethal supply of diamorphine while every safeguard just
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: stayed silent. And the fifth report pulled apart the complaint
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: system where the answer in Harold's case had always been
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: the same. Nothing, essentially. And the sixth report asked the
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: question that should have been asked decades earlier. When someone
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: died outside a hospital, who made sure the cause of
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: death was real? And Janet Smith's answer was to recommend
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: scraping the coroner system entirely and replacing it with an
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: independent medical examiner who did not rely on the word
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: of a single doctor. And for hundreds of families whose
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: loved ones never made it to the courtroom, the inquiry
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: provided the closest thing to an answer they would ever receive.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: And Harold offered nothing during this. He just sat in
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: a cell and maintained the same silence he had kept
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: since the verdict. Now, after sentencing, Harold was moved to
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: HM Prison, Franklin, in County Durham, a Category A facility nicknamed, quote-unquote,
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: Monster Mansion, for the caliber of men it housed. And
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: in June of 2002, a whole life tariff was formally confirmed.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: And 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 Hyde had seen, cunning and distant. still carrying
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: himself like the smartest person in the room. And his
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: wife Primrose visited regularly, desperately in love with a man
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: she could not reconcile with what he had done. And
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: psychological assessments described him as controlling and emotionally cold with
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: no remorse or empathy. And a familiar word kept appearing
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: in reports, arrogant. No formal psychiatric diagnosis was ever made
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: but the pattern experts identified from the outside was consistent. Narcissism,
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: an unwavering belief in his superiority, a need to control
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: those four walls had done nothing to diminish. And in 2003,
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: Harold was transferred to HM Prison, Wakefield in West Yorkshire,
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: a high security facility housing some of the most dangerous
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: criminals in the country. But on the morning of January 13th, 2004,
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: a routine 5 a.m. check found Harold in his bed,
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: seemingly sleeping. But at 6.20 a.m., the officer returned and
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: found Harold Shipman hanging from the bars of his cell window,
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: courtesy of his bedsheets. 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 57 years old. And he left no note,
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: no letter to Primrose or to his children, no confession
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: and no explanation. Whatever he knew, he took with him.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: And Primrose was informed that morning. And the timing of
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: his death carried an unexpected consequence. Because had Harold reached 60,
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: the pension rules would have worked differently. Because he didn't,
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: Primrose was entitled to receive a full NHS pension and
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: a tax-free lump sum. So there was unconfirmed reports that
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: Primrose had begun to doubt Harold in his final moments.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: and that made his death may have been partly motivated
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: by ensuring she received that money, but neither was ever verified.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: In an official review led by Prisons and Probation, Ombudsman
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: Stephen Shaw concluded that officers had followed every procedure correctly
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: and that there were no warning signs. And naturally, the
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: public response was furious, and Dani Mellor, whose mother, Winifred Mellor,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: was among the 15, spoke for many when he said, quote,
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: I always harbored the remote possibility that one day I
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: could confront him and ask him why, now that's been
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: taken away from me, unquote. And Anne Alexander, the lawyer
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: representing some 200 of Harold's victims, said her clients felt cheated.
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: And many had believed that one day he would explain
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: what he did, and most importantly, why. But that resolution
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: would never come. But Janet Smith would press forward, and
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: the last two reports were published after Harold was already
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: in the ground. And she acknowledged that with Harold gone,
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: the inquiry was all that remained, and it was the
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: only official record of what he had done. The man,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: who had killed more of his patients than any doctor
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: in recorded history, took the last thing he had left
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: to the grave. and kept it buried with him. So
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: with over 200 victims, no one will ever know if
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: there were more. But behind the numbers were real people.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: Grandparents who kept their gardens tidy and their front steps swept.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: Women who walked to the shop every morning because the
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: routine gave the day its shape. And they played games
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: and they went to church and they doted on grandchildren
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: who thought they would be around forever. And they were
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: people with plans and they certainly were not ready to go.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: And the families they left behind carried something that would
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: never fully heal. Guilt first and the questions that refused
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: to leave. Should I have asked more questions? Should I
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: have pushed back? Should I have known? And then just anger.
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: At Harold, at every institution that stood by while he
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: kept killing. At the investigation that came and went in
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: 1998 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 2005
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: and called it the Garden of Tranquility and arose for
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: each of the 215 victims. But Harold Frederick Shipman never confessed,
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: and he maintained his innocence from the moment he was
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: arrested until he was found dead. And during the trial,
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: prosecutors put forward a theory that Harold got something out
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: of holding the line between life and death. That the
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: control itself was the reward. And Dame Janet Smith never
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: arrived at a single explanation. And she believed he started
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: with patients who were already dying, people whose death he
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: could frame as mercy, and that he genuinely believed he
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: knew when the right time had come. But she also
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: found something darker than misplaced compassion. fascination with drugs, a
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: pattern of pushing doses past safe limits. And some patients
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: may not have been murdered at all, and they may
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: have just been experiments. And over time, the boundaries just
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: dissolved and the terminally ill gave way to the elderly,
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: then to the healthy. And then there was Vera, the
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: image of a 17-year-old boy watching a doctor push morphine
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: into his dying mother's arm and seeing the pain just
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: let go. The inquiry asked whether that moment had lodged
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: something deep enough to become something else entirely. After the conviction,
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: forensic psychiatrist Dr. Richard Badcock evaluated Harold and found no
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: psychosis and no diagnosable psychiatric illness. What he identified instead
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: were narcissistic personality traits, superiority, and lack of empathy. And
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: criminologist professor David Wilson proposed that every killing was the
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: same scene played again. His mother's death on repeat. with
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: Harold casting himself as the man with the bag and
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: the needle who walks through the door and decides when
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: the pain stops. A loop that never resolved, run through
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: in living room after living room for 23 years. And
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: the inquiry also noted that some victims appeared to have
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: done something to get under his skin, suggesting some sort
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: of narcissistic rage, a need to reassert dominance when someone
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: challenged him even slightly. And money entered the picture exactly
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: one time. And that's what got him caught, luckily. But
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: Dane Janet Smith's six reports did more than document what
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: Harold had done. They dismantled the systems that had allowed
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: him to do it. And she recommended removing the treating
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: doctor from the death certification process entirely and replacing them
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: with an independent medical examiner, like we talked about before.
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: And Parliament passed the Coroners and Justice Act in 2009,
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: but the system it created did not go live until
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: September 9th, 2024. Why is that taking so long? So
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: two full decades after the verdict and more than 20
• 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 2006, which overhauled
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: how those substances were regulated across the health system. And
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: the controlled drugs regulations of 2013 added another layer, requiring
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: healthcare organizations to appoint accountable officers and maintain running balances.
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: And the fifth report's 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. Starting in December
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: of 2012, every doctor in the country was required to
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: prove competency once every five years. Literally bare minimum. I
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: know stuff has to change, but it's crazy that that
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: wasn't part of it. Oh my God. You have to
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: get old people to get new driver's license every some
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: odd years, but no, an old medical professional, just give
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: them the license, that'd be all right for the rest
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: of their lives. It'll be fine. Because before Shipman, no
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: such requirement existed. And the cremation regulations of 2008 made
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: it harder for a single doctor to send a body
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: to the furnace without independent scrutiny. And solo GP practices
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: were flagged as structurally dangerous, and the NHS began steering
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: away from them. Every safeguard that was supposed to protect
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: patients had failed for the same reason. The assumption that
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: a doctor would act in good faith. But around the world,
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: the shipment case became a reference point for what broken
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: systems look like and what they allow. The reforms are
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: now in place, but it took 215 deaths, maybe even more,
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: over 23 years, and a forged will typed on a
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: surgery typewriter to build the world where those safeguards exist.
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: And even now, the question that started everything remains exactly
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: where Harold left it. Unanswered. But that is the case
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: of Harold Shipman. What a monster. Holy crap. It's crazy
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: to just somebody you trust with your health and your
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: well-being to take a loved one's life or your life
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: is just, it's hard to wrap your head around, but
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: it is something that does happen. There are many cases
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: you guys have told me to cover where it is
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: some sort of medical professional doing this. And I have
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: other ones on the list to deep dive into, but
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: let me know if there are other People you want
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: me to deep dive into, I always read the comments.
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: And until then, I will see your beautiful face. All right?
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: Stay safe. Love you. Bye.