The Man who Killed 215 People... and nobody noticed.

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UNPREDICTABLE to get your first 3 months free! Christopher West had received a phone call on 

March 6th, 1995. He’d been expecting one from his mother all day so he picked up the phone without 

checking who it was. He says, "Hi Mum" But he was surprised when his mother didn’t respond. Instead, 

he heard an old man’s voice. Although it’s not what he expected, the voice sounded familiar. 

It was his mother’s doctor, Dr. Harold Shipman, he replies, "Dr. Shipman here, I'm phoning to tell 

you your mother is dead" Christopher’s mother, Maria or Marie West, was a lively woman. Although 

she was 81, she was described as very active, usually going to the Lake District and 

doing Mr. Motivator sessions every morning. Maria West did, however, have two hip replacement 

operations around fifteen years earlier. She’d expressed discomfort with her ‘new’ hips, 

for which she had a doctor, Dr. Harold Shipman. Christopher West, in shock, responded, 

"You're joking" To which Dr. Shipman had said, "No Mr. West I don't joke about things like 

this" Dr. Shipman explained that he had come to do a routine checkup in Maria West’s home. He’d 

taken her blood pressure, went out to his car, and when he came back, Maria had gone unconscious. 

Confused, Christopher West told the doctor he’d come straight away. Christopher had later said 

he remembered arriving at his mother’s house to see her sitting on a chair in her living room, 

almost as if she was sleeping. She’d been wearing a red tracksuit with the sleeves rolled up. After 

being asked if there was anything he could do, Dr. Shipman had said that if he resuscitated 

her now, she’d, quote, “be a cabbage”. Dr. Shipman didn’t call an ambulance, nor 

did he call the police. He’d only given Christopher the phone number to a funeral 

home and filled out a cremation form a few days later. Although there was much that 

Dr. Shipman had seemed to gloss over, Christopher West had shrugged it off. He’d 

convinced himself that, because his mother was old and hadn’t been active for a week or so, 

it could be possible she died spontaneously. [Music] Harold Fredrick Shipman was born in 1946. As 

the second of three children and growing up in a working class family in Nottingham, Shipman 

often found himself playing sports like rugby and track and field, although, most sources 

say he didn’t have many friends in school. By his last year in high school, Shipman had 

become a semi-accomplished athlete and was bright academically. However, when Shipman had turned 17, 

his mother, whom he’d gotten particularly close to, had gotten lung cancer. It’s impossible to 

know exactly what Shipman was feeling during this pivotal time in his life, but sources say that, 

between his mother’s episodes of agony and pain, Shipman had seen how morphine could calm her 

down, an observation that we’ll come back to later on. Shipman’s mother would later succumb 

to her illness, only two years before he would be admitted into the Leeds School of Medicine at 19 

years old. During his time at university, Shipman would meet his soon-to-be wife, Primrose Oxtoby, 

whom he had gotten pregnant and then married. He would later graduate from the university 

in 1970, quickly getting an internship in a nearby hospital, all while continuing 

to study obstetrics and gynecology. After a few years of hospital work, Shipman would 

move to Todmorden to work in a medical center and hopefully become a family doctor, at the time 

this position was called a general practitioner. But it was in this city where Shipman would 

start to unravel. His colleagues had always seen him as hard-working and enthusiastic, he 

was popular with patients and always seemed to take initiative when needed. It was this 

status that landed Shipman in charge of ordering controlled drugs for the medical 

center. But this position didn’t last long. Within a year, Shipman was under suspicion for 

ordering unusually large quantities of Pethidine from local pharmacies. Drug inspectors and squads 

had initially dismissed Shipman because of the high praise he’d received from his colleagues 

but it became obvious when Shipman started having blackouts and seizures, that he had 

indeed been stealing the drug, and abusing it. Upon the revelation that Shipman, the man who’d 

been so highly regarded in the medical center, was addicted to drugs, he resigned and was 

fined around 600 pounds. But, because his crime hadn’t affected any of his patients, he 

was allowed to continue handling, prescribing, and even administering controlled drugs. 

Which, as we’ll soon see, was a grave mistake. Looking back at his time at Todmorden, patients 

under Shipman’s care had also died under strange circumstances. Now, it’s impossible to say what 

exactly was happening in the years Shipman was working in Todmorden or if all the patients 

that died under Shipman’s care were his fault, at the time, nobody even noticed. But, years 

later, this detail would raise eyebrows. After his first run-in with the law, 

Shipman was free to pursue another job, this time at the Donneybrook medical 

center in Hyde. During his time here, Shipman established his position as a general 

practitioner, or family doctor and built trusting relationships with his patients, even 

doing an interview for a documentary in 1982. -"If you can stay in the community, receive 

your treatment in the community with your family around you, your usual friends, then this 

all adds to the speed of recovery from the..." However, in 1992, Shipman then started his own 

“surgery”, which is the generic UK term for where a local doctor sees his patients, but just 

for clarity, we’ll refer to it as his “medical practice”. It’s not entirely known why Shipman 

quit his established job at the Donneybrook house to start his own practice. Colleagues later 

said in witness statements that, quote, “...there was a disagreement between the Partners…” or 

“[he] thought he could do better by himself…”. Whatever the case was, in 1992, Shipman moved 

to his new practice, taking his client list along with him. In the following years, 

Shipman’s practice would thrive. By many, he was seen as a caring and attentive doctor, 

not only because of the quality of his treatment, but also because he would visit elderly patients 

in their homes, something that was considered old school at the time. By 1998, Shipman was 

considered “the best doctor in Hyde.” But, anyone who really paid attention to Shipman’s daily 

routine, would notice that something was off. [Music] Receptionists who worked at Shipman’s practice 

have said he would usually show up at around 8:30 am before seeing patients and filling out 

paperwork until lunch, which was usually from 12-1pm. After lunch, he would usually visit an 

elderly patient, preferably one that was living alone, either by appointment or just checking up 

on them. During these visits, Shipman would claim, and most likely tell the patient that he was just 

taking blood samples or providing prescriptions. For example, in the case of Maria West, the 

81-year old woman who we talked about at the start of the video, Shipman claimed he was just 

checking up on her to see how she was doing with the pethidine he’d prescribed her. During 

the course of these visits though, the patient would sometimes quickly and inexplicably fall 

unconscious and die. Although, sometimes Shipman would claim he arrived at a patient’s house and 

found them dead or ‘breathing their last breaths’. Sometimes Shipman would finish the visit and claim 

the patient was doing fine, before being called back later the same day to “find out” that they 

had died. For example, Maria West had died in 1995 while Shipman claims he went to his car, later 

he said he’d said he never went to his car and that she died simply while his back was turned, 

but that’s another topic. Likewise, Irene Turner, in 1996, was found dead by Shipman in her bed. 

Laura Wagstaff, 1997, dead after Shipman went to his car and came back. Norah Nuttall, 1998, dead 

while Shipman was leaving her house after a visit. It’s safe to say that it became common 

for Shipman’s patients to die abruptly, so much so that residents of the town 

had started calling him Dr. Death. Afterwards, Shipman would almost never 

call an ambulance or police, typically claiming that there was nothing he could do or 

that the death was completely expected. After signing cremation forms and death certificates, 

Shipman would promptly leave his practice at 4pm. [Music] Although Dr. Shipman was considered a top-tier 

family doctor; people had begun to notice the number of seemingly healthy elderly patients that 

were dying in Shipman’s care. One of these people was Dr. Linda Reynolds, who had been working as 

a general practitioner at the medical center just across the street from Shipman for two years. The 

two medical centers had formed an agreement to cosign all of Dr. Shipman’s cremation forms but 

Reynolds had begun to get suspicious about the unusually large number of forms that were being 

signed. Not only this, but because Shipman would frequently show up to his patients' houses, he was 

also present at the time of death for an unusual number of his patients. So, Reynolds voiced 

this observation with her colleagues, and to her surprise, they had actually been discussing 

this issue for some time, they’d noticed that most of Shipman’s deceased patients were female, 

living alone, and all found by the doctor himself. The workers at the Brooke Surgery now had 

an interesting dilemma. Do they speak out about this observation and make the 

horrible accusation that it implies, or do they ignore their suspicions and potentially 

let the deadliest serial killer of all time walk free? They debated any potential explanations 

about why Shipman’s patients might be dying more than others. Maybe it was because he had a large 

patient list, or maybe it was because he had a larger than average number of elderly people to 

tend to. Eventually, and with much anxiety, Dr. Reynolds had called Stockport Coroner. The Coroner 

later recalled his conversation with Reynolds: “Dr. Reynolds told me that they were concerned 

that the ‘place of death’, ‘time of death’ and presence of Shipman all seemed strange. [She] 

said during our conversation that there were two explanations for the high number of deaths. Either 

Shipman was a very good doctor who called on his patients without an appointment on a regular 

basis and therefore as a matter of coincidence happened to be present at the time of death... 

Alternatively, that he was killing his patients.” But by this point, Reynolds was still afraid that 

she was just overreacting: “...she expressed her concerns that, if the result of the investigation 

was that Shipman was a caring doctor, and he got to know that [Reynolds] had ‘shopped’ him, it 

would ruin their professional relationship.” And so, a very discreet investigation 

was carried out, but within a month, it was concluded that, because of 

the lack of evidence and motive, and the fact that most causes of death were 

consistent with their medical records, they had no grounds for continuing an investigation. 

Until, Shipman started getting sloppy. [Music] Angela Woodruff had received a phone call from 

a policeman in Hyde. She’d been told that her mother, 71-year old Kathleen Grundy, had been 

found by two men from her luncheon club after she failed to show up. Curiously, the door to her 

house wasn’t locked and the men that found her could walk right in. “I walked into the lounge and 

saw Mrs. Grundy lay on the settee, she was fully clothed with even her shoes on and appeared to be 

sleeping. I went over to her and tried to rouse her but immediately saw that she was very gray 

in color and I realized that she must be dead.” Many who knew Kathleen Grundy had described 

her as leading an extraordinarily active life, her daughter later said that “One could 

easily imagine that she was 20 years younger.” But naturally, upon receiving this devastating 

news, Woodruff and her husband had called her mother’s doctor to find out what happened. 

Shipman spoke vaguely about the death, saying that Grundy had been complaining of chest 

pains and indigestion for the past couple days, and said that an autopsy wouldn’t reveal much. 

Shipman had visited Grundy that morning at her house but he’d said it was just to take a blood 

sample. On the death certificate, Shipman wrote ‘old age’ as the cause of death. Now, instead 

of finding this suspicious, Woodruff had thought that Shipman was actually doing them a favor, 

Woodruff’s father had died in a similar way, from a sudden heart attack and she’d had to identify 

his body at the autopsy. She’d thought that, by avoiding an autopsy, Shipman was sparing her from 

having to experience another traumatic event. But, as Kathleen was buried and the dust had started to 

settle, Woodruff had to admit that things seemed strange. Everything had pointed to Grundy being 

fit and well right up until her supposed death, and the fact that her door was found unlocked was 

very strange, as Woodruff pointed out she would always lock the door, even if had guests over. 

But, all these suspicions started boiling to the surface when, weeks later, a new will had emerged. 

Supposedly signed a few weeks before her death, it says that her family isn’t in need and that she 

leaves all her estate to her doctor, Dr. Shipman. Woodruff, confused as to where this rushed 

and poorly typed document had come from, she decided to talk to the witnesses who’d 

signed it and after figuring out that their signatures had been forged, only then did she 

suspect that Shipman might be behind it. And so, she reported her suspicions to police, where it 

quickly became known that the same doctor had been suspected of foul play just a few months earlier, 

back when Reynolds had voiced her suspicions. So, a few days later, police had obtained a warrant to 

exhume Grundy’s body as well as search Shipman’s practice and home. In his practice, police found 

an old typewriter, the one used to write Grundy’s will, and upon toxicology tests of Grundy’s body, 

levels of morphine were found that were consistent with an overdose. At this point, reporters 

had started to show up to Shipman’s surgery. All this, paired with the police’s discovery 

of Shipman’s previous criminal history, led him to be arrested in September 

1998, three months after Grundy’s death. Upon realizing that other patients of Shipman had 

also died in similar ways, police in Warwickshire and now, the Greater Manchester Police, exhumed 8 

more bodies in the next 5 months. After multiple ‘no comment’ interviews with Shipman, he was 

charged with the murders of 15 of his patients, 9 that had been exhumed and 6 that had previously 

been cremated. Dr. Shipman’s trial, which was now a city-wide spectacle for the people of Hyde, 

began around a year after Grundy’s murder. The prosecution had to prove that Shipman 

had indeed murdered these patients, but, what proved to be much harder 

was establishing a motive. - "There are many people who feel very very 

guilty that they didn't do something about, or report it and whenever you said 'why didn't 

you', they say 'well who would believe me?'" [Music] In all nine bodies that had been exhumed, 

there was strong medical evidence that the patients had suffered morphine 

poisoning shortly before their death. This, along with evidence that Shipman was with 

these patients on the day of their deaths and that he couldn’t explain the presence of morphine in 

their bodies, led the jury to believe that Shipman had indeed injected them with either morphine 

or diamorphine. The reason for the distinction is because when diamorphine is injected into 

the body, it turns into morphine in about 30 seconds. So, it’s impossible to say whether 

morphine in a body was originally injected as morphine or diamorphine, but an assumption can 

be made after taking a look at the diamorphine register from the years Shipman was active, 

his name shows up more than a few times. However, for the patients that had been cremated, 

medical evidence couldn’t be taken, but because of the circumstances around the other deaths, 

the jury was convinced Shipman played a role. Then comes the problem of motive, the murder 

of Kathleen Grundy was of course motivated by monetary gain because of the forged will. 

But in all of the murders, there’s no evidence that Shipman had taken anything, money or 

otherwise. There’s also no evidence that the motive was related to any sadistic or erotic 

desires as Shipman hadn’t touched the bodies after he’d injected them with diamorphine, he 

would occasionally set the scene up as if the patient had died unexpectedly but it seemed that 

that was only so people wouldn’t get suspicious. Psychiatrists who’ve studied Shipman’s 

actions have suggested that he might have had an obsessive personality, or poor self-esteem 

that was masked by arrogance and self-confidence. They suggest that Shipman might have had a need 

to control people or events, and that the death of his mother as a teenager might have instilled 

a fear of death, and the need to control it, thus killing other people as a result. According 

to a woman who worked for Shipman as home help, he’d asked her whether or not she got a ‘buzz’ 

from finding people deceased in their homes. Perhaps our assumption is wrong and Shipman 

did indeed get a sort of sadistic pleasure out of these murders. The psychiatrists who 

came to these conclusions stressed that because Shipman didn’t participate in any 

psychological and psychiatric assessments, we’ll really never know what was going on in 

Shipman’s head and what exactly he got out of these murders. Another interesting 

move by Shipman was the forged will. The previously mentioned psychiatrists found that 

it was hard to believe Shipman really thought he could get away with Grundy’s estate, especially 

with such an obvious badly written forgery. They say he might have had a subconscious desire 

to be caught, maybe the pressure was getting more and more intense and he needed to find a way 

to stop himself or absolve himself of guilt. - "He sentenced Shipman to 15 concurrent life 

sentences, 'and in your case' the judge said 'life must mean life, my recommendation', Mr. 

Justice Forbes said, 'is that you spend the rest of your life in prison'. With that, 

Dr. Harold Shipman was taken down..." In the end, Shipman pleaded not guilty to his 

crimes but was eventually given 15 life sentences, one for each patient he was charged for, plus four 

years for the forged will. But as the scope of the case widened, it became clear that Shipman‘s kill 

count wasn’t just these 15 people. Reports later made by the British government have tried to 

come to a final kill count, but it’s proven hard because of the lack of evidence for certain 

cases, and some documents being lost to time. It’s unlikely that Shipman had murdered 

any patients before his time in Todmorden, where he most likely killed Mrs. Eva 

Lyons but his motives remain unclear. Some of the other deaths during that period 

are very suspicious but not enough to be sure Shipman had killed them. During his time at 

Donneybrook in Hyde, he killed 71 people, but after he’d started his own practice from 

1992-’98, he killed a total of 143 people. With a total suspected body count of almost 

215 people over 2 decades, Harold Shipman is arguably the most prolific modern serial 

killer in the world based on confirmed killings. In 2004, having spent 4 years in prison, Shipman 

hung himself in his cell using his bed sheets.