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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did, and how. Episode 198. The previous episode in this series ended when we started to rise on the massive tsunami that was Shipman's wave of death.
starting in the late 60s. Tonight we continue on our voyage across his sea of depravity. Enjoy. As always, I want to publicly thank my elite TSK Producers Club. Their names are Amy, Boo, Brenda, Cassandra, Christy, Cody, Colleen, Connor, Corbin, Craig, Sid, Derek,
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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. The first of the murders authorities have ascertained with certainty was committed by Schimpman was that of Thomas Columbine.
With it, we see another of Shipman's lifelong characteristics. He often murdered patients simply because they annoyed him. Mr. Columbine, who was fifty-four when he died in April 1972, was known among hospital staff as a difficult patient. His own son and daughter made it clear that he had no trust in doctors, and frequently ignored medical advice.
He had worked as a bus driver and a lorry driver, but for a few years before his death had been unable to work because of his chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Four weeks before Mr. Columbine's death, and a couple of days after he was admitted to hospital, it is clear from Shipman's notes on his medical records that Shipman was irritated by the patient. He describes him as complaining of sleeplessness, yet Shipman had seen him asleep.
He also notes that, despite his breathlessness, Mr. Columbine would roam the ward looking for cigarettes. After Shipman suggested to Mr. Columbine that he should be transferred to another hospital, the patient refused and discharged himself. He was readmitted two days later in a state of very ill health. Over the next two weeks his condition did not improve, and his family stayed all night at his bedside on the 11th of April.
By the next morning, his condition was described as quieter, and his family did not stay the following night. Shipman was the doctor on duty, and he made extensive notes in Mr. Columbine's records, including several crossed-out and altered comments. This was yet another trait that would be refined and used throughout his killing career.
Careful analysis of the attention he claimed to have given, the fact that no nurse was called to the deteriorating patient, and the fact that Shipman had prescribed morphine for Mr. Columbine that day, although he claimed on the notes to have used another drug, make it clear that Thomas Columbine was unlawfully killed with an injection of morphine.
It is also clear that Shipman discouraged the family from staying that night, suggesting some premeditation.
Sandra Whitehead remembered particularly a day when there were three deaths. This was probably the day, two days after the murder of Mr. Columbine, when three women on the medical wards died. Two of these deaths were found to give cause for some suspicion, and one to give cause for significant suspicion.
Another Shipman characteristic is for deaths to occur in clusters. It is likely that he was in the midst of a killing spree, because there was yet another suspicious death two days later. The first of the three women to die was 74-year-old Mrs. Agnes Davidson, who had been admitted as an emergency after a heart attack, but was recovering well.
She died at 10.15 p.m., with only Shipman in attendance, enough to make her death suspicious. Fifteen minutes after Mrs. Davidson died, Shipman was certifying the death of another 74-year-old widow, Mrs. Elizabeth Twaites. She had several serious medical problems and probably did not have long to live.
but on the night she died shipman went to her bedside without being summoned by a nurse and administered an injection he claimed it was digoxin but as after her death he wrote on her notes that her death was not to be reported to the coroner he may well have been covering his own tracks having injected a different drug or a much larger quantity
Shortly afterwards, 80-year-old Mrs. Alice Smith died. Her family were informed at 11 pre-M, presumably soon after her death. No medical notes have survived. It is possible it was a natural death, but the family had not been warned that death was imminent, and because of its closeness to the other two deaths, there are grounds for suspicion.
It is more than likely that, within the space of three quarters of an hour, Shipman murdered three women. The next murder came two weeks later, with three suspicious deaths in between. The victim was 84-year-old John Brewster, a professional gardener who did not retire until he was 70. He was admitted at lunchtime with a serious heart condition, arriving in an ambulance arranged by his GP.
Shipman admitted him, and may well have been irritated by the fact that the local geriatric unit had refused to take him through lack of a bed. At six p.m., Mr. Brewster's wife, daughter, and son-in-law left his bedside to collect toiletries he would need, and to get themselves something to eat. They were telephoned just before nine p.m. to say that Mr. Brewster had died.
There were many inconsistencies in Shipman's behavior and recording of the death. He said the patient had been in a coma for forty-five to fifty minutes, yet no nursing staff were called. He said that he had attended to Mr. Brewster for the last eighteen hours of his illness, yet the patient had still been at home nine hours earlier.
he said the patient had deteriorated in the ambulance en route to the hospital yet this had not been noted when mr brewster was admitted by the family the nursing staff or by mr shipman himself in his admission notes the family had not been called which they probably would have been had mr brewster been in a coma
Shipman specifically recorded the phrase, no need to report to Karana, despite the fact that there was a ruling by the local Karana that all deaths within 24 hours of admission to hospital should be reported. All of these inconsistencies, coupled with the fact that Shipman was again present at the death, and the time of death was in the evening, led to the conclusion that this death was a murder.
Ten days later, two men died within ten minutes of each other, in adjoining cubicles. John Harrison, a seventy-year-old retired miner, who had suffered from chest problems for some years, and Thomas Ridge, an eighty-one-year-old retired railway plate-layer. Both men were admitted to the hospital on that day, and therefore both of their deaths should have been reported to the coroner. They were not.
Although Mr. Harrison was in ill health, his death shocked his family, who had seen him recover from worse illnesses. In a reprise of the murder of Mr. Brewster, Shippen exaggerated how long he had been caring for the patient, claimed the patient had been in a coma for some time, and claimed to have been with him at the moment of death.
Not much is known about the circumstances of Mr. Ridge's death, as no medical records exist, and the only information comes from the death and cremation certificates. But the pattern is there. Death inside room of the ward, where Shipman would not be observed, death in the evening, and death with Shipman present.
Another two men died within forty-five minutes of each other, two weeks later. Again, both were being nursed inside rooms. Again, despite the fact that there is no record of him being called by a nurse, Shipman was with them either at the moment of death or shortly before. Seventy-two-year-old Louis Bastow, a retired railway engineer, was very ill, and his death surprised nobody.
But it is one of the cases of significant suspicion because of the Shippen pattern. Alone with the patient, in the quiet of the evening, no nursing staff called. Shippen recorded that he was present when Mr. Barstow suffered a heart attack, which he originally claimed lasted one to two hours.
But the word hours was scrawled out on the medical records, and minutes substituted. Perhaps because he realized that, in falsifying patient records, he at least had to provide something plausible, and a death lasting a couple of hours would certainly have been noticed by the nurses.
Three quarters of an hour later, Shipman murdered James Rhodes, a 71-year-old coal miner, who only three hours earlier had been laughing and joking with his family and asking who was going to drive him home from hospital when he was discharged. Nonetheless, the fact that he was in a side room means the staff were concerned about him.
He had been admitted to the hospital 20 hours before his death, which should therefore have been reported to the coroner. Shipman wrote, not reported to coroner on the death certificate, and lied that he had been looking after Mr. Rhodes for over 24 hours. He said no one was present at the time of death, but also claimed to have observed Mr. Rhodes in a coma for 20 to 30 minutes. Yet there is no record of this by the nurses.
The conclusion from the inquiry is that Shipman secretly visited Mr. Rhodes in his room and killed him there. On the day that these two patients died, Shipman certified another two deaths, but in both of these cases there was insufficient evidence to come to any conclusion about his involvement. It could easily have been, though, another day on which his need to kill overwhelmed him.
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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.
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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. For the final two months of his stint on the medical ward, Schippen appears to have reined in his need to kill.
The explanation, again, tallies with the way he behaved in general practice. Whenever he had a scare, he believed he was being watched more closely. He managed to go for a substantial period without killing anyone. This may have been easier for him as a young man. In his final twenty months at the hospital, there is only one death that he almost certainly hastened.
The incidents which caused him to rein himself in came with the death of Mrs. Phyllis Cooling, a 58-year-old widow who was admitted to the hospital with breathing difficulties. She died three hours later to the utter astonishment of her sons, who left her sitting in an easy chair, talking to the woman in the next bed.
Her sons arranged to come back later with some snacks and food, and were shocked to be telephoned and informed that she was dead. There are no medical records, but the sons were told their mother had been given an injection, to which she had not responded. Shipman had given her the injection, but without records we do not know what the drug was.
but he must have known that at least one other doctor and probably several of the nursing staff realized that her unexpected death was connected to an injection he gave. It scared him, and although in a pattern to be repeated over the years he talked his way out of any suspicion of malpractice or negligence, it was a narrow escape. Shippen's next posting was in the paediatric department.
He stayed there for thirteen months. In that time, he certified the deaths of seven babies or children. One of these, the death of four-year-old Susie Garfit, was found, thirty-two years later, to cause significant suspicion that Shipman had a hand in the death.
Again, as in many of the deaths so far in his career, it was a case of him hastening an inevitable end, as Susie was very ill and was not expected to survive. But the suddenness of her death meant that her mother was cheated of being with her daughter for the last few minutes of her life. Susie had been diagnosed with cerebral palsy at six months old and was quadriplegic.
She had poor vision, could not talk, and it was very difficult to feed her. She had severe epilepsy, and her condition was deteriorating. She went into hospital two weeks before her death, and was being nursed in a side room, probably because the medical staff were expecting her to die. Her mother, Anne Garfit, was at the hospital on the day of her death with her friend Barbara.
They both stood by Susie's cot when Shipman came into the room. The doctor came over to the women and told them Susie was very, very poorly. He spoke in a soft voice and was very gentle and sympathetic. He said she had pneumonia and her lungs were filling up. The mother thinks the doctor also said that if Susie was not so severely disabled, they could give medication to treat her pneumonia.
"'It is likely, by these comments, "'that Shipman was trying to see "'whether the mother really wanted to keep Susie alive at all. "'The mother could see that little Susie was dying. "'She told the doctor to be kind to Susie, "'then gave Susie a kiss and said a little prayer for her. "'The two women then went outside for a cup of tea. "'They were back inside ten minutes later "'and found the door to Susie's room closed.'
A nurse came out and said she was sorry, but Susie had died. Although Susie clearly was very ill, Shipman's presence at her death and the speed of her death make it likely that he gave her a lethal injection. Even though Shipman killed several children, he knew that he could not keep it up. Killing kids simply cost far too much attention and investigation.
He moved posting yet again, this time to the obstetric and gynecology department, women care and helping deliver babies. Helping to bring life into the world was never Shipman's forte, and he became known as one of the worst obst doctors ever to serve at the hospital. His stay in this department was not long-lasting, but he did develop an interesting characteristic that followed him throughout his life there.
his addiction to pethidine. Pethidine is an opioid analgesic with similar properties to morphine. It was synthesized in the 1930s and was hailed initially as a wonder drug because it was believed to have no addictive properties. Even when it was discovered to be potentially addictive, it remained, and remains, very popular as a painkiller in childbirth.
occasionally midwives who had access to it and believing it to be free of addictive properties took it for all of their own aches and pains and became dependent on it
For longer-term use, for instance for gallstones and renal colic, it can still be prescribed with care because much larger dosages are required than for morphine, making it easier to fine-tune treatment and avoid addiction. Staff at the hospital at the time
said it would have been easy for Shipman to prescribe larger doses than were necessary for the patients in the obstetrics unit, and by administering the injections to the patients himself, the nursing staff would have been grateful, and would have simply assumed he was being his usual helpful self.
As the whole department was new, there was no established track record for how much pethidine was routinely used. Nobody noticed anything about his behavior that would suggest he was an addict. But, as he only had started taking the drug towards the end of his time at Pontefract, this was not surprising.
It took more than a year for his addiction to become apparent when he had moved to Todmorden, his first GP practice. Todmorden is an attractive town situated at a meeting of three valleys formed by the hills of the Pennine Chain. The River Calder, which runs beneath the impressive town hall, used to form the boundary of Yorkshire and Lancashire.
leaving the town split between the two counties. But since the latter years of the 19th century, it has been wholly in Yorkshire. At least it has been administratively in Yorkshire. The postal district is still Lancashire. The cricket teams play in the Lancashire League, and with its history of cotton mills, it has more affinity, perhaps, with Lancashire than West Yorkshire.
Todd people are Yorkshire folk who think Lancashire is a common expression in the area. Whichever direction they choose to face, Todd folk can be either in Manchester or Bradford in 35 minutes by train or in a slightly longer time by road. Shippen arrived to join a busy group practice with three full-time colleagues.
Dr. Michael Greve, Dr. John Dacre, and Dr. David Bunn, and one part-timer, Dr. Brenda Levin. The Abraham Ormerod Center, named after the local benefactor who paid for the original building, is well placed in the center of the town and serves the whole of Todmorden apart from a couple of outlying districts.
The practice was one of only two in the town and had between 9,000 and 12,000 of the town's 17,000 population on its books. The doctors were overstretched and delighted to welcome such a hard worker as Harold Fred Shipman. The Shipman family found a house to buy on mortgage, an attractive stone-built single-family duplex dwelling house that shared one common wall with the next house.
the house was located on a road with the appropriate name of sunnyside the road is little more than a terrace of houses set into a steep tree-clad hillside facing south with nothing but the hills to obscure the sun
The road twists round a scruffy low-rise British telecom building and peters into a neglected narrow lane which rouses steeply and bends under a railway bridge, emerging at the solidly built row of homes. It truly was a very idyllic place to raise a family. Primrose found the house, which was called Sunnybank.
She was driven around looking at properties by the wife of one of the other doctors, who was surprised by her. She was then, as she is now, not what people expect of a doctor's wife. Being a family doctor's wife is a strange position in any society, tending to distance the wives from some normal friendships, especially in a traditional community where a GP is regarded with godlike awe.
By the time Primrose reached Todd Morden, she was plump, but not fat. She appeared not to care about her dress. She was loud and slightly coarse. In other words, to the other local women, she seemed an odd choice for a successful and rather handsome doctor such as Harold Fred Shipman.
Other neighbors got to know the couple socially. The shipmen did not go out much, but enjoyed entertaining friends at their home. Primrose, always a good cook, reveled in laying on first-class meals. The house was untidy, and the open shelves in the kitchen were always cluttered with the ingredients and utensils Primrose needed for her cooking.
But it was not dirty, and the children were well behaved and had been taught good manners. The other mothers along the row got on well with Primrose, who had already smiled. Fred Shipman was harder to get to know, partly because of the long hours he worked, and partly because there was an aloofness, a sense of superiority about him.
But those neighbours who did get close to him were impressed. Unlike most doctors, who prefer not to discuss medical matters socially, Shipman was always willing to listen to anyone's catalogue of ailments and hand out advice. He was seen as an exceptionally dedicated and compassionate doctor. One friend remembers him talking movingly about the experience of seeing patients.
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See how we're answering the questions of tomorrow at southerncompany.com. And with that, we come to the end of part four in this sojourn into the life and crimes of Harold Fred Shipman. I hope you enjoyed listening to me telling it to you. Next episode will 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. I remind you that my Norwegian-language podcast, Seriemorderpodden, is available to listen to both on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all other places you listen to podcasts. As they say in Radio Land, follow along.
