Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now.
To get people excited about Boost Mobile's new nationwide 5G network, we're offering unlimited talk, text, and data for $25 a month. Forever. Even if you have a baby. Even if your baby has a baby. Even if you grow old and wrinkly and you start repeating yourself. Even if you start repeating yourself. Even if you're on your deathbed and you need to make one last call. Or text. Right, or text. The long lost son you abandoned at birth. You'll still get unlimited talk, text, and data for just $25 a month with Boost Mobile. Forever. Forever.
After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers will pay $25 a month as long as they remain active on the Boost Unlimited plan. Millions of people have lost weight with personalized plans from Noom. Like Evan, who can't stand salads and still lost 50 pounds. Salads generally for most people are the easy button, right? For me, that wasn't an option. I never really was a salad guy. That's just not who I am. But Noom worked for me. Get your personalized plan today at Noom.com.
Real Noom user compensated to provide their story. In four weeks, the typical Noom user can expect to lose one to two pounds per week. Individual results may vary. Hey, it's Sharon, and here's where it gets interesting. Raise your hand if you want salon-perfect nails for just $2 a manicure.
Yeah, me too. With the Olive and June Manny system, you can say goodbye to expensive services that take hours and hours and love your nails more than ever. I would know. I've been doing it for years. Get 20% off your first Manny system with code PerfectManny20 at OliveandJune.com slash PerfectManny20. That's PerfectManny20 at OliveandJune.com slash PerfectManny20.
Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did and how. Episode 197. Three more to go until 200, dear listener.
last episode ended with the young dr shipman getting his future wife pregnant to-night we'll dive deeper into his early life and career as well as his increasing dark signs of something wicked alongside him came enjoy
As always, I want to publicly thank my elite TSK Producers Club. Their names are...
D-Mac Emily Fawn Florida Man James Janine Jennifer John Johnny Jonathan Caitlin Kathy Christina Kylie Lance Lisa Lizbeth Magic Man Madeline Meow Missy Nick Oakley Anjay Operation Brownie Pockets Roberto Robert R. Russell Sabina Skortnia Scott Sputnik The Radio
Susanna, The Duggletons, Trent, Val, and Vanessa. You are the backbone of the Serial Killer podcast, and without you, there would be no show. You have my deepest gratitude. Thank you.
I am forever grateful for my elite TSK Producers Club, and I want to show you that your patronage is not given in vain. All TSK episodes will be available 100% ad-free to my TSK Producers Club on patreon.com slash the serial killer podcast. No generic ads, no ad reads, no jingles. I promise.
And of course, if you wish to donate $15 a month, that's only $7.50 per episode, you are more than welcome to join the ranks of the TSK Producers Club too. So don't miss out and join now.
As part of Shipman and his fellow students' physiology coursework, these students carried out experiments on themselves, usually working in pairs. They measured each other's oxygen consumption. There were unpleasant experiments which involved swallowing tubes to measure gastric juices, one which entailed drinking gallons of water to see whether it had an intoxicating effect, another
in which blood was taken from air lobes. It was while doing these experiments that Fred again encountered Morphy. When the students did double-blind tests, some taking it, some taking placebos, to monitor its effects, nobody remembers him taking any particular interest in it. But Shipman was already expert at keeping a lid on his reactions.
Harold Fred Shipman was a diligent student. He was not particularly noticed by other students, but it was common knowledge that he had a girlfriend, and when she got pregnant, everyone quickly caught up to the news. Back then, having a child out of wedlock was not as big a scandal as it would have been maybe twenty, thirty years earlier.
But it was still frowned upon, especially if you got pregnant at a young age. The proper thing to do was to get married. And so the happy young couple did. Most working-class mothers with ambitions for their girls would have been delighted, but Edna was not.
She disliked Fred Shipman from the word go, and nothing she learned about him since, even before his crimes, gave her any reason to change her mind. As far as the wedding was concerned, she and George were prepared to stand by their daughter and do their duty. It was a joyless occasion, a quick legalizing ceremony in a register office at Barkston Ash,
10 miles from Wetherby, on the 5th of November 1966, with the bride six months pregnant. The two fathers were witnesses at the ceremony, which was not attended by any of the young couple's friends.
Fred Shipman used the Copley's address in Weatherby Road, which gave him the required residential qualifications for a ceremony in a registered office away from both Weatherby and Leeds. Less than two months into his second year as a medical student, Harold Fred Shipman was a married man.
What more, on the 14th of February 1967, at Harrogate General Hospital, Primrose presented him with a baby daughter, Sarah Rosemary. For the final weeks of her pregnancy and the first months of motherhood, she lived at her parents' home in Weatherby. Both Edna and George melted towards their beautiful little baby granddaughter.
but relations with Fred and Primrose remained strained, and before long the young couple had found a flat near Blackman Lane, in the Woodhouse district of Leeds. The area was, and still is, classic student territory, a warren of narrow streets with two- and three-story houses split into flats and bedsits.
the flat was barely half a mile thats maybe just under half a kilometer or maybe a bit more than half a kilometer from the medical school and not isolated then as it is now by the fast moving traffic of the inner ring road
It cannot have been easy for Shipman. His student grant of three hundred and forty pounds a year was barely enough for a student to live on, but hardly adequate for a wife and baby as well. Primrose had to give up her job soon after the wedding, when she became too big to climb her in and out of shop windows, and without the support of the Oxtobies, they would have been in serious financial trouble.
While his fellow students could relax over a pint in the evenings at the Wick, the medic's favorite pub, only a few hundred meters from the medical school, or go to see groups like the Hollies, appearing at the Union, or use the discounts given to students for theater and cinema seats, Shipman went home to a flat full of damp nappies and the demands of a tiny baby.
with a heavy workload for his cause finding time to put in enough study must have been hard and no doubt there were times when he resented the way his life had changed he was just twenty-one the month before his daughter sarah was born but instead of celebrating in time-honored tradition with lashings of alcohol he typically said nothing to his fellow-students
Family celebrations back in Nottingham would also be muted. Any spare money from presents was needed for the baby. At the end of their second year, the students crowded on to the steps of the medical school to hear the results of their exams being read out by the dean. It was a moment of great tension, made more so by the archaic ritual.
Some of them had fortified themselves with a trip to the nearest pub, the George, just across the road. The dean, an elderly orthopedic surgeon called Payne, read the results out slowly, to cries of relief from the majority, and quiet despair from those few who faced having to take the exams again. Shippen had, unsurprisingly, passed all his exams.
He never achieved any academic distinctions during his time at university, but his work was always solid and reliable, and he had his second MB, Bachelor of Medicine, the first component of the right A-levels, the second comes after two years at medical school, and the third on completion of three years of clinical work.
for clinical work these students were put into groups usually of four and the make-up of these was changed every two months or so so that students got to work with a cross-section of their contemporaries those who worked with shipman remember him as diligent hard-working amenable and easy to work with
not very sociable, and he never had any money or time to go partying, but that was understandable considering his family situation. After having passed the clinical work exams as well, Shipman was registered as a medical doctor. He took up work at a satellite hospital, to Leeds Hospital, where there were more accommodation for doctors with families such as him.
the place he ended up in was pontefract general infirmary the life of a junior doctor is notoriously hard they work long shifts and have to deal with all sorts of medical emergencies and procedures
A one-year hospital appointment is compulsory. At the beginning of it, a young doctor only has a provisional registration with the General Medical Council, made up into a full registration at the end of the year. The year is divided into two, six months medical work and six months surgical work, under a firm of consultants who are responsible for the supervision and training of the junior doctor.
harold fred shipman stayed on in pontefract for another two years and seven months after he was fully qualified doing what is known as a senior housemanship during this time he acquired a diploma in child health and a diploma in obstetrics and gynecology
It was during his first year in Pontefract, almost exactly nine months after passing his final exams at Leeds, that the Shipman's second child arrived. Christopher Frederick Shipman was born at Wakefield Maternity Hospital on the 21st of April 1971, while the family were living in a house within the hospital grounds at Pontefract.
It was the accommodation that had first attracted them to the hospital. They lived in a solid red-brick 1930s part of a complex of a dozen houses. At the time, it was very idyllic. Shipman's work colleagues viewed Shipman in various ways. His peers viewed him as arrogant and aloof, but a very hard and disciplined worker.
Staff, such as nurses and senior doctors, viewed him more favourable. They knew him as caring, polite, and very dependable. Among patients, especially women, he was very popular. In hindsight, it would appear that Shipman had a chameleon behaviour, appearing borderline rude and arrogant to those below him on the career ladder, and ingratiating and overly polite to those above him.
His arrogance could tip over into downright rudeness. On one occasion he snubbed Dr. Surinder Ahuja publicly at a meeting attended by doctors of all levels of seniority. It was such an embarrassing incident that one of the consultants apologized to Dr. Ahuja, describing Shipman's behavior as unacceptable. On another occasion Shipman, as a very junior doctor,
carried out a defibrillating treatment on a patient that had been arranged for the consultant and a registrar to carry out. The consultant was furious. This overconfidence was observed at first hand by Margaret Calvert, a nurse who was on duty in the incident and emergency department during one of Shipman's brief stints filling in there.
She was with him when he administered four times the normal dose of diazepam to a girl in her teens who had a badly cut leg following a road accident. She needed a sedative to calm her before her wound could be stitched. Although the nurse mouthed to Shipman that he was already well over the recommended dose, he carried on giving her the drug. The patient suffered no side effects, luckily—
but the incident made mrs calvert realize that shipman was overconfident and did not have a sliver of fear regarding possible negative results from his treatment
Get unlimited talk, text, and data for just $25 a month with Boost Mobile. Forever.
After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers will pay $25 a month as long as they remain active on the Boost Unlimited plan. At BlueNile.com, you can find endless ways to make your moments sparkle. From classic and timeless jewelry gifts to creating the custom engagement ring of her dreams. All at prices you won't find at a traditional jeweler.
And right now, you can save up to 40% on fine jewelry and 25% on engagement ring settings during the Blue Nile Anniversary Sale. Going on now. Go to BlueNile.com to shop the Blue Nile Anniversary Sale and save up to 40%. That's BlueNile.com. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. As a family man with three kids, I know firsthand how extremely difficult it is to make time for self-care.
But it's good to have some things that are non-negotiable. For some, that could be a night out with the boys, chugging beers and having a laugh. For others, it might be an eating night. For me, one non-negotiable activity is researching psychopathic serial killers and making this podcast. Even when we know what makes us happy, it's often near impossible to make time for it.
But when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Everyone needs someone to talk to, even psychopaths, even your humble host.
Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash serialkiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash serialkiller.
Whatever the opinions his colleagues had of him at the time, it is fair to say that none of them suspected him of murdering patients. Even when, thirty years later, they had learned all about his exploits as a general practitioner, a GP, none of them had any fears that he had started to kill while at Pontefract General Infirmary. None, that is, except Sandra Whitehead.
who, as a student nurse, worked with him during his second stint on the medical wards. It was not until after his suicide that Mrs. Whitehead realized for the first time that he was the doctor she had known during a three-month period about which she has always had quote-unquote bad memories because of the high number of deaths.
She remembered one particular day when there were three deaths. She also recalled that, on many occasions when patients had died, there would be an empty injection pack by the bed, a sign that an injection had been given shortly before death, and a hallmark of what became Harold Fred Shipman's classic killing pattern.
The realization that she had worked with Shipman left her shocked, and she described it all those years later as follows, and I quote, End quote.
it was this very strong feeling that prompted her to go to the police who took her evidence to the shipman inquiry the twenty one million pound four year investigation into who he killed and how he got away undetected for so long mrs whitehead's information reopened the investigation
At the beginning of the investigation, it was assumed that Shipman began his murderous activities in general practice in Todd Morden and later in Hyde. A few inquiries were carried out initially by the Shipman inquiry into his time as a hospital doctor, particularly after the relative of a patient who died in his care at Pontefract came forward.
but there appeared to be no obvious evidence of any crime in the hospital, other than his own abuse of drugs in the six months prior to him leaving. It was initially a fair presumption that he was not killing, bearing in mind it is much harder for a doctor in a hospital to be alone with a patient than it is in general practice, and it would also be harder for him to obtain controlled drugs.
However, as a result of Mrs. Whitehead's evidence, a much more detailed investigation was made into Shipman's years at Pontefract. It soon became clear that it would not have been difficult for Dr. Shipman to have been on his own with patients, especially when the nursing staff were busy. It would have been very unusual, but not impossible, for him to be alone with the patients at the time of their death.
it also became clear that he could obtain the drugs needed to kill patients without too much trouble although in later years diamorphine became his drug of choice for disposing of his victims the strict procedures within the hospital would have made it hard to obtain
But there were plenty of non-controlled drugs much more freely available, and several of these — potassium chloride, digoxin, largactyl, aminophylline, and valium — could, administered in sufficient doses, have caused or accelerated death. Note that several of those mentioned drugs would not have caused a painless death, quite the contrary.
The question of when Shipman committed his first murder is a notoriously difficult question. Shipman himself certified 133 deaths in his 43 months at the hospital. That's three every month, and he was recorded as present at the deaths of another four.
Of this total of 137, medical records only exist for 28, and some of these are only partial records. His first six months at the hospital, during his pre-registration year, were spent on the surgical wards. Of the 14 deaths he certified during this period, all were almost certainly natural deaths.
There are limited records available, but there are no suspicious circumstances, and as a very junior doctor, Shipman would have been under close supervision. He moved to the medical wards in February 1971, and it is here, while he was still not a fully registered doctor, that he may have killed his first victims.
There were twenty-five deaths involving him during this period, and four of them have been classified as raising cause for suspicion. In each of the four cases, there is not enough evidence to decide definitively whether Shipman actually killed the patient.
It is clear, though, from these and subsequent deaths in the hospital, is that his killing began as a means of hastening deaths that were already on their way. This may have been done altruistically to lessen the suffering of the patient. However, it is more likely they were done to satisfy Shipman's own fascination with death and with the effects of drugs.
It was also a safe and easy initiation into murder. By choosing patients who were expected to die, he avoided all suspicion. The first of these suspicious deaths is that of Mrs. Margaret Thompson, a 67-year-old about whom there is very little information. The second, Wilfred Sanderson, a 62-year-old hard-working blacksmith,
had had a serious stroke, and the conclusion of the inquiry is that, and here I quote, if Shipman did do anything to hasten Mr. Sanderson's death, the effect could only have been to bring forward the death by a short period, end quote. Similarly with Mrs. Ethel Follon, a six-year-old widow with an inoperable brain tumour,
The report reads, and again I quote, "...there are grounds to suspect that Shipman may have entered her room alone late in the evening, and knowing that she was likely to die soon, given her something that hastened her death." The fourth death during this period is that of 49-year-old Mrs. Edith Swift.
Unlike the others, Mrs. Swift's family were not expecting her to die. There is no evidence that Shipman administered a drug to her himself, but he prescribed drugs for her, a condition that were completely wrong. It may have been a death caused by his negligence or by his ongoing experimentation with drugs, rather than by outright murder.
already a pattern of killings was emerging it was easier to spot because although these were his first murders they were the last to be investigated and the pattern in many ways follows that which characterized so many of shipman's murders while he was in general practice
as in later years he certified far more deaths as being due to cardiac or cerebrovascular causes than other doctors did he also recorded himself as present at many of the deaths in the hospital a very rare event for other doctors
Shipman claimed to have been alone at 33% of all deaths he certified, compared to 1.6% claimed by other doctors. He also claimed in a further 19.6% of cases to have been present with a nurse or relative, compared to 5.7% of other doctors. And he had a much higher number of patients dying in the evening,
An analysis of deaths comparing those he was involved with to those of other doctors shows that Shipman's patients were almost twice as likely to die between 6 p.m. and midnight than other doctors. Instead of having roughly a square of his patients die in this quarter of the day, Shipman recorded 42% of deaths in this period.
This parallels with the murders he committed in general practice, which were substantially also done in the evening. This was the period of the day when he was free to have unrestricted access. In the hospital, the wards were quiet after visitors left. The patients who died were usually being nursed in individual side rooms, and Shipman was known to be a doctor who was constantly present on the wards.
It was unusual for other doctors to be on the wards after 8 p.m., unless specifically called to see a patient. But Shipman was around after his time. His presence was put down by other staff to him being hard-working and caring. But authorities now believe that he cultivated a reputation for being hard-working and caring as a guise for his monstrous, murderous activities.
after working in various other sections of the hospital shippen moved in february nineteen seventy two to the medical wards for six months it was during this time that sandra whitehead worked there as a student nurse in march april and may
and she was right to remember it at a time when an unusually large number of deaths occurred there were one hundred and twenty-six deaths in the six months that shipman was there with him personally involved in seventy-six of them
To compare, analysis of 10 other six-month periods shows that the number of deaths varied between 49 and 103. The Shipman period exceeded the maximum 103 number by 22%. Out of all the deaths of Shipman's patients,
Twenty-four were from natural causes, and there were thirty-four where there was insufficient evidence to draw any conclusion about the death of the rest. Twelve gave cause for some suspicion, usually because of the recognizable shipment pattern of the time of death, his presence at or near the time of death, and his characteristic method of certifying it.
of the remaining deaths three gave cause for significant suspicion and three more are clearly designated as murders five of these six deaths are of men and the suspicious deaths split almost equally between men and women busting the myth that has grown that shipman only killed women it is clear from his time at the hospital that he killed opportunistically regardless of gender
And with that, we come to the end of part three in this sojourn into the life and crimes of Harold Fred Schippen. I hope you enjoyed listening to me telling it to you. Next episode, we'll continue his saga. So, as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned. What follows is a message to my dear Norwegian listeners in Norwegian.
The most powerful designer drugs are the digital ones we use daily. And we get high off them. One touch, tap, like, scroll at a time.
You know, just like tech creators want us to. Use digital without digital using you. Learn more at sync.ithra.com. Need new glasses or want a fresh new style? Warby Parker has you covered. Glasses start at just $95, including anti-reflective, scratch-resistant prescription lenses that block 100% of UV rays.
Every frame's designed in-house with a huge selection of styles for every face shape. And with Warby Parker's free home try-on program, you can order five pairs to try at home for free. Shipping is free both ways too. Go to warbyparker.com slash covered to try five pairs of frames at home for free.
Hi, this is Jonathan Fields, host of The Good Life Project, where each week I talk to listeners about investing in their future by increasing their own vitality. But when it comes to those financial goals, whether it be saving for a home renovation, growing your child's college fund, or travel, life can make it difficult to stay the course. By working with a dedicated Merrill advisor, you get a personalized plan and a clear path forward. Having the bull at your back helps your whole financial life move with you. So when your plans change, Merrill's with you every step of the way.
Go to ml.com slash bullish to learn more. Merrill, a Bank of America company. What would you like the power to do? Investing involves risk. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated, registered broker-dealer, registered investment advisor, member SIPC.
