All language subtitles for Britains.Most.Evil.Killers.S04E01.WEBRip.en

- MALE NARRATOR: When
81-year-old Kathleen Grundy

was found lifeless in her home

in Hyde, Greater Manchester,
England

on the 24th of June, 1998,

no one could have foreseen that
her death would lead

to the unearthing
of one of the world's

most prolific serial killers.

- GEOFFREY: This is not a man
who's hiding in the woodshed

with an axe in his hand,
this is a man who is pretending

to be helpful, and consoling,
and compassionate.

- NARRATOR: A popular
local doctor, 52-year-old

Harold Shipman, had been
killing his elderly

and vulnerable patients
for over 25 years.

But somehow he'd remained
completely undetected.

- That generation particularly
trusted doctors,

held them in great esteem,

and would have done
anything they asked.

- NARRATOR: Shipman
would eventually be found

guilty of 15 murders,
but an inquiry

after his incarceration would
estimate the true number

of victims to be well over
200.

- PHIL: You know, he was
a doctor, he had power

over life and death and
somehow he seemed

to get some kick from
exploiting that.

I mean, it's very hard
to imagine.

- NARRATOR: Harold Shipman,
the man nicknamed Dr. Death,

had been unmasked as one of
the world's most evil killers.

- ♪

♪♪

- NARRATOR: When
Dr. Harold Shipman

was found guilty of killing
15 women in January, 2000,

the nation was in shock.

But investigators had merely
scratched the surface

of his murderous career.

The respected general
practitioner,

who was once a pillar
of the community in Hyde,

Greater Manchester, England,

had been christened
Dr. Death

by the British tabloids.

A 2002 inquiry into Shipman's
crimes estimated

that the number of deaths
he was responsible for

was at least 215.

Detective Bernard Postles
led the investigation

into Britain's most prolific
serial killer of all time.

- I don't think that Shipman's
victims knew

that they were going to die.

As far as they were
concerned, quite often,

Dr. Shipman was treating them,
so people would willingly

roll up the sleeve and offer
their arm to him,

and were probably
in the process of chatting

to him whilst he was actually
administering the injection

or taking a blood sample.

But in actual fact what he was
doing was, he was administering

morphine in sufficient
quantities to kill them.

- NARRATOR: Journalist
Mikaela Sitford was working

for the Manchester Evening
News when she first heard

about the investigation
into the family GP.

She went to visit him
at his surgery.

- When I first met Shipman,
I remember thinking how

reedy and weak his voice
was and how small

he was physically, he wasn't
imposing at all.

And I knew from talking
to people later on that

he could be quite arrogant
and high-handed.

He knew the effect he was
having on people,

he was actually enjoying it
at times, and I just thought

that was evil and cruel.

And he just broke the heart
of the whole community.

- BERNARD: As the inquiry
went further, as we started

to investigate more deaths,
it was becoming beyond

what I could have ever have
believed it was going

to become, which is the
largest serial killer

that this country has
ever known.

- NARRATOR: Shipman's
story begins

on January the 14th, 1946
in Nottingham, England.

The middle child of three
grew up on a council estate

in a working-class
neighborhood.

- DR. YARDLEY: Harold Shipman
was one of the post-war

baby boom generation,
and this was a real age

of opportunity, where
working-class kids could

become middle-class
professionals.

So when he passed the
11-plus exam

and went to grammar school,
his mother was very proud of him

and she pushed him
incredibly hard.

And I think there was
the expectation that Harold

was the family's gateway
to a middle-class life.

And I think that pressure
that was always there for him

really bore down
on him quite heavily

because he wasn't naturally
clever, he had to work

incredibly hard to get
where he got.

- NARRATOR: Shipman was
particularly close

to his mother, Vera.

- DR. YARDLEY: When we
look back at the childhoods

of serial killers we look at
their relationships

with their parents and very
often we see an awful lot

of abuse, an awful lot
of neglect,

but in this case it seems
to be completely the opposite,

Harold Shipman
seems to have been targeted

by his mother
for excessive praise

and really becoming very
enmeshed and invested in him.

- GEOFFREY: He identified
with being her blue-eyed boy,

and I'm sure that Vera
said to him persistently,

"You're the one that's gonna
make the Shipman name famous."

Which in fact he did,

but for perhaps
not the right reasons.

- MIKAELA: But when he
was in his teens she developed

lung cancer.

And she would sit in
the window and wait for him

to return from school
and he'd come in

and make her a cup of tea and,
you know, they'd have

a sit and a chat
about their day and, um,

she just looked forward
to that moment.

- NARRATOR: In June, 1963,
43-year-old Vera Shipman

succumbed to cancer.

Her doting son was devastated.

- DR. YARDLEY: Harold
Shipman's mother died

when he was 17, and this was
an incredibly traumatic event

for him because
his mother had played

a very significant role
in his life,

she was quite controlling,
she was quite domineering,

she would always tell him what
he should be doing,

and suddenly she's not there.

- GEOFFREY: But significantly,
Shipman saw how the local GP

administered diamorphine
to his mother to help her pain.

It's also possible that,

and this is rather a gruesome
way of putting it,

that Shipman became fascinated
with watching his mother die.

- DR. YARDLEY: So, you've got
this all-powerful GP

who's come into
the family home

and taken control of
the situation.

And I think that, perhaps,
did plant a bit of a seed

for Harold Shipman there,
the fact that there's this

individual who, who comes in,
they have status,

they have power,
they have authority,

and nobody questions them.

And I think that's something
that really did lodge

in his mind.

- NARRATOR: By the mid '60s,
Shipman had left Nottingham

and headed to Leeds
to study medicine.

While living in Yorkshire,
the young student met

his future wife.

- MIKAELA: Primrose was
Shipman's landlady's daughter,

and he got her
pregnant, and so they had

to get married, and Shipman's
carefree student days

were over.

- GEOFFREY: In 1970,
Harold Shipman

graduated from Leeds
Medical School and got a job

at the Pontefract General
Infirmary in West Yorkshire,

he was relatively recently
married, he had one child

and another one was
on the way.

But what no one knew
at that point was that

Shipman had a completely
different agenda

from the Hippocratic oath,
he wanted to do harm.

- NARRATOR: After learning
his trade in Pontefract,

28-year-old Shipman moved
out of a hospital environment

to take a role as a general
practitioner.

- MIKAELA: Shipman joined
the Todmorden Group Practice,

his first job as a GP, in 1974,

and he was like a breath
of fresh air, he was young,

enthusiastic, modern,
he had all these great ideas,

and they thought the world
of him.

- BERNARD: But there were
concerns raised

by a pharmacy nearby about
the amount of pethidine

that was being prescribed
by him.

- NARRATOR: When an
investigation was launched

and Shipman was confronted,
he claimed to be

suffering from depression
and said he'd become reliant

on injecting himself
with pethidine,

an addictive
opiate-based painkiller.

- It is not at all uncommon
for healthcare providers,

physicians, nurses,
and others that might have

access to drugs, to become
addicted

because it's right there.

Shipman was basically
writing and forging

prescriptions for himself.

- BERNARD: But what he
would do would be

make prescriptions out
in the name of

some of his patients, when
in actual fact they didn't

need it, and he would go
and take the prescription

to the pharmacy himself,
and draw it and use it himself.

- DR. YARDLEY: When Shipman's
addiction was discovered,

he resigned from the
medical center where he worked,

he was fined £600

by the General Medical Council,
but he wasn't struck off.

All he had to do was go
and partake

in some drug rehabilitation
and that was it.

And there was never really
any follow-up to that,

so it was almost swept
under the carpet.

- I think the view was
that he had a personal problem

and that he wasn't
actually a danger to anyone,

which was clearly wrong.

- NARRATOR: By 1977,
31-year-old Shipman

was back practicing medicine
across the Pennines

in Hyde, Greater Manchester.

He spent the next 15 years as a
GP at Donneybrook House Surgery,

where he built up a reputation
as a trusted family physician.

- He had a very good bedside
manner, a good ability

to make people feel
good about themselves,

and as a result he had
a lot, a lot of patients.

- MIKAELA: They thought
so much of him

that when he moved from
the Donneybrook group practice

in Hyde to start his own
single-handed practice,

he poached 3,000 of them
and there was a waiting list.

- NARRATOR: Shipman
began his new venture

at 21 Market Street,
just across the road

from Donneybrook House,
in August, 1992.

- He was literally a pillar
of the local community.

Everybody knew who
Harold Shipman was.

- DR. YARDLEY: Because he
would go the extra mile

with his patients, he would
spend time with them,

he would sit with them
and have a cup of tea,

he didn't mind doing
home visits.

So he gave off the impression
that he was a GP

who genuinely cared,
and I think that's what

makes it all the more chilling
when we look at

what he went on to do.

- NARRATOR: For the next
six years, Shipman would

continue to win praise
from his patients

as a well-respected
and well-liked doctor.

Despite being a killer
disguised as a savior,

he forged an unblemished
reputation as one of the most

trusted GPs in Hyde,
Greater Manchester, England.

However, by March 1998,
suspicions had been raised

about the 52-year-old by another
nearby doctor's surgery.

- MIKAELA: There was
a new GP, Linda Reynolds,

who joined the group practice
across the road from Shipman's,

and she'd noticed
that they were signing

many more death certificates
for Shipman than any other GP,

and when she researched
it further, she found

that his death rate
was three times

that of any
other doctor in town.

- BERNARD: As a result of that,
the matter was reported

to the coroner, the coroner
reported it to the police,

and an investigation
took place.

- NARRATOR: This first
opportunity to stop

Harold Shipman failed

due to a lack
of incriminating facts

to support the alligations.

- The police investigation
only lasted for four weeks,

and it found that there
was no evidence of

wrongdoing on Dr. Shipman's
part, so that was that.

- GEOFFREY: It was to prove
a tragedy because,

had they investigated Shipman
more carefully,

they would at least have found
more evidence

that things were not
exactly as they seemed.

And perhaps, perhaps,
the abandonment

of that investigation
was the catalyst that saw

Shipman take that one step
too far.

- NARRATOR: Shipman
had escaped unpunished for now,

but it was only
a temporary reprieve.

His real downfall began
with the death

of the former mayoress of Hyde,
Kathleen Grundy.

Just like Shipman, the spritely
81-year-old was well-known

and popular in the small town.

- MIKAELA: Kathleen Grundy
was found dead

on the 24th of June, 1998
by two friends who called

after she didn't turn up
to the lunch club

she ran with them.

The door was shut, but not
locked, and they walked in

and found her laying
on the settee fully dressed.

- NARRATOR: On the day
of her death, Harold Shipman

had visited Kathleen
to carry out a blood test.

The news of her passing
came as a total shock

to Kathleen's family,
including her daughter Angela,

and son-in-law, Phil Woodruff.

- She distorted my expectation

of how an 81-year-old
should be,

because she was
just incredibly fit,

she was remarkably
energetic.

- NARRATOR: Kathleen
had spoken to her son-in-law

about Dr. Shipman
during visits

to Angela and Phil's home
in Warwickshire.

- PHIL: She thought he was
a very good doctor.

She, I think consciously,
moved herself onto his list

and encouraged various
people, other people, to do so.

- NARRATOR: After Kathleen's
death, Phil finally got to meet

this celebrated doctor,

but was far from impressed
with Shipman.

- I mean, when we went
to see Shipman immediately

after she died,

he--he inferred
that she'd been very frail,

and infirm, and not well,
and that she'd died

from old age, and we knew
that was complete nonsense.

He was not very sympathetic,
he was rather...

I don't know--exactly know
how to describe it, but,

you know, on the basis of
Kathleen's report of him

as such a nice chap,
he seemed sort of rather cold

and rather detached,
should I say.

So it was a bit strange.

- NARRATOR: Despite
the family's concerns,

Shipman had already filed
Kathleen's death certificate.

- PHIL: It was clear that
Shipman was trying

to avoid an autopsy.

I was naive enough to think
that that was for our benefit,

not for his, so rather stupidly,
we went along with that.

And then of course, up turns
this so-called will,

which was just ridiculous,

I mean--I mean
not only the content

but the way it was done,
it was...it was badly typed

on--on a typewriter,
on a pro forma,

you know, the sort of thing
you buy from a stationer's,

and it just was not Kathleen's
style at all, uh,

she had a much more,
kind of, professional approach.

If she'd really wanted
to produce a will

that we didn't know about--
and that would be very hard

to imagine--she would have
probably handwritten it

because she had beautiful
handwriting.

- NARRATOR: Not only did
the scruffy-looking document

appear hurried, it also
omitted Angela and Phil.

The will instead instructed
that all of Kathleen Grundy's

assets should be left
to Harold Shipman.

- PHIL: Angela, I mean,
obviously she was distraught,

I mean, she was going to say,
"Well, look, he can have it,

he can have it," you know.

And I said, "That's ridiculous,
that's not your mother's will."

- DR. YARDLEY: In the will,
Kathleen said that she wanted

to leave all of her money
and her belongings to her GP,

"To reward him for all of
the care that he's given to me

and the people of Hyde."

Now, that really didn't
ring true with Kathleen's family

and also in the will
it said, "My family

"don't need this money,
they don't have

that kind of urgency for it."

So it really was highly
suspicious.

- PHIL: We initially looked
at the signature and compared it

with the signatures on--I think
we had a driving license

of hers--it was similar,
but clearly not the same,

the alignment
of the capital G was wrong.

- NARRATOR: Phil and Angela
decided to play detectives,

they were certain something
was amiss with the will.

Their initial port of call
was to the witnesses

who'd countersigned the
document,

both of whom were patients
of Dr. Harold Shipman.

- PHIL: We showed her
the signature and so on,

and she said, "Well, it looks
like my signature,

but that's not the way I write
my address."

And she said she didn't
know what the document was,

she'd just signed
the document.

- NARRATOR:
It was a similar story

with the second apparent
witness.

- PHIL: I showed him,
not the whole document,

but just the bit with the
signature on it,

and his wife or partner sort of
looked over his shoulder

and she said, "Well, that's not
the way you sign your name."

'Cause there was a big flourish
underneath the signature,

and as I understood it,
that is not

what he would have done.

So we realized that there was
something seriously wrong.

- NARRATOR: Despite
second-guessing themselves,

Phil and his wife Angela,
a solicitor, had begun

to believe not only that
Shipman had forged

Kathleen's will, but that he
may well have murdered her.

- PHIL: At that point, we
realized that we needed

to involve the police, but we
didn't really think it was

terribly realistic to sort of
wander into Hyde Police Station

and say, "Oh, by the way,
we think that Dr. Shipman

has killed my mother-in-law."

So Angela talked to one
of her partners

who did criminal work, and he,
of course, had contacts

in the police at Warwickshire.

- NARRATOR: After putting
their concerns in writing

and handing it over to
the local authorities,

the complaint soon found
its way

to Greater Manchester Police.

- BERNARD: Having received
the report of concern,

Greater Manchester Police
launched an inquiry.

What they quickly established
was that the signatures

on the will and on the letter
were forgeries.

Forensic scientists were able
to tell just by the way

that the signature didn't flow
that it was a forgery in itself.

They were also able to say
the same about

the signature on the letter
that accompanied the will,

that purported to have been made
by somebody called J. Smith.

Again, because the signature
didn't flow,

it was possible to say
that that was a forgery.

- NARRATOR: The will and
accompanying letter were

sent off for forensic testing,

and the results link Shipman
to the documents.

- BERNARD: What we did
find was that the letter

and the will had been
typed on a typewriter,

a portable typewriter,
and when we'd begun

the inquiry and executed
a warrant at Dr. Shipman's

surgery, we seized a typewriter
from there.

It turned out the typewriter
from Dr. Shipman's surgery

had been the one that
had been used to type

the letter and the will.

- MIKAELA: When they asked
Shipman about the typewriter

and the will, he said that
Kathleen Grundy

had borrowed the typewriter
off him, and yet there were

no fingerprints on there
from her.

- And this was--was somewhat
incredulous, wasn't it, really,

the thought that the GP
is lending a typewriter

to a patient, he really is
clutching at straws

at this point in time.

But he's so arrogant that
he thinks people

will believe him.

- NARRATOR: Shipman
was still free to practice

medicine as the investigation
continued around him.

The police knew they needed
some hard evidence to prove

Kathleen Grundy's death
was suspicious,

which led to
a difficult decision being made.

- No postmortem had taken
place before she had been buried

because Dr. Shipman had issued
her death certificate,

which would therefore
preclude the need for it.

But the concerns about
the beneficiary of the will

being Dr. Shipman, the timing
of the will being,

coming to light,
all led me to suspect

that something
wasn't right here.

And so on the 29th of July,

I went to see the local
coroner, John Pollard,

and made application
for a warrant

to exhume the body
of Kathleen Grundy.

- NARRATOR: Detectives
broke the news

to Angela and Phil.

- PHIL: They both sat on
the sofa over behind me and, uh,

side-by-side, and told us
what was what,

which is basically
that they had been talking

to the coroner
and got this permission

to exhume Kathleen's body.

- And in Shipman's mind, after
he gave them the drugs,

and after the person died,
and after the person was buried,

he thought he's home free.

Who's gonna exhume
the body?

It almost never happens,
but they did in this case,

and that's how they got him.

- NARRATOR:
On the 1st of August, 1998,

Kathleen Grundy's body
was exhumed.

The postmortem findings
by pathologists

stunned investigators.

- BERNARD: At first they said
that they believed that

there were opiates in the body,
but with some more

sophisticated testing, they
were able to say that

it had been morphine
that had been found

in Kathleen Grundy's body.

That in itself was a surprise
to us, Kathleen Grundy

had not been suffering from
any condition which

necessitated her being
prescribed diamorphine,

and she had been fit and well
up until the days before

her death.

- NARRATOR: The postmortem
results were staggering,

but they were only possible
due to Kathleen's family

going against their late
mother's apparent wishes.

- The fake will had a box
ticked where Kathleen Grundy

had seemingly stated
she wanted to be cremated,

and obviously
this would have removed

any physical evidence
that Shipman had killed her.

But Angela wanted Kathleen
to be buried near her brother

and her parents, and it's
because of this that she

was buried rather than
cremated.

- BERNARD: If Kathleen
Grundy had have been cremated,

then of course,
there would have been no remains

to be exhumed,
there would have been

no opportunity to examine
tissue,

and we would not have discovered
that she had died from

a massive dose diamorphine.

- NARRATOR: The net was
closing in on Shipman,

but he remained a free man.

Detectives at Greater
Manchester Police were trying

to keep the investigation
under wraps, but the press

were about to discover
what was happening.

- MIKAELA: I first heard about
Harold Shipman in August 1998,

our news desk at the
Manchester Evening News

had got a call overnight
that Kathleen Grundy

had died and her doctor
was being investigated

for her murder.

So I rang the police to see
if we could

get some background on this.

- There is no doubt that
the reporter who raised

those queries, Mikaela Sitford,
had most of the story,

and she then embarked on
publishing that story.

As a result of the public
becoming aware,

then they raised concerns
by ringing the police about

the circumstances of the death
of their loved ones as well.

In some cases, they'd
harbored these concerns

for years, but had been
reluctant to raise them

with the police because
they didn't want to challenge

what their GP said.

But once this came to light,
we started to investigate

those deaths as well.

- They came back to me
with this statement saying

they were investigating
20 deaths,

and if those 20 deaths
were all true,

that made Shipman Britain's
biggest serial killer.

- NARRATOR: Time was running out
for the popular doctor,

with evidence
mounting up against him,

the police finally decided
to take action.

Five weeks after the
exhumation of Kathleen Grundy,

on the 7th of September, 1998,

Shipman was ordered
to speak with detectives.

- BERNARD: Shipman was
arrested by appointment,

which sounds like a strange
thing to do.

Harold Shipman was aware
of our inquiry,

there was no
surprise element here,

there was no early-morning raid

like you see on films
and the television.

And so consequently he came
to the police station

with a solicitor to answer
questions.

There's no doubt that
he was confident

that he was gonna walk out
of that police station

after a few hours.

- MIKAELA: On the day
Shipman was arrested,

my colleague, Chris Gleave,
and I waited outside

Ashton Police Station,
where he was due to turn up

to be interviewed.

And as we're walking along,
Shipman turned back

and faced us, and he held
his arms out, almost,

you know, like Christ
on the cross, and said,

"Just go on then, take
my picture."

And Chris did, and that was
the last time Shipman

was seen outside of custody.

- NARRATOR: Detectives
questioned Shipman about

the death of 81-year-old
Kathleen Grundy.

- BERNARD: Part of the
interview involved

Dr. Shipman telling
outright lies,

he sought to...bamboozle
the interviewing officers

with medical terms,

he tried to put across
that he was intellectually

superior to the officers.

But as far as I was concerned,
this was a fairly simple issue.

Who had been the last
person that had been

in the presence of
Kathleen Grundy?

What condition was she in
when he'd left her?

What was the cause
of death?

And who was most likely
to have administered

that cause of death?

And with every one of those
questions, you boil down

to the answer being
Dr. Shipman.

- NARRATOR: The interviewing
officers presented Shipman

with evidence of the will
tampering.

- Dr. Shipman denied that
he'd ever seen the will,

he'd ever been in its
presence.

But what we did find was
that his fingerprint was

on the back of the will,
which made it difficult

for him to continue
with that claim.

- NARRATOR: Detectives
knew that Shipman

had visited Kathleen on the day
of her death

to carry out a blood test,

but there appeared to be no
proof of it ever taking place.

- BERNARD: Kathleed Grundy's
blood sample that he said

to take didn't exist, it had
never been received

at the pathology lab,
it still wasn't lying

in his surgery weeks and weeks
later.

Where was it?

And he couldn't explain
those types of things.

We concluded at the end
of the interview

that there was sufficient
evidence to charge him

with Kathleen Grundy's murder,
and that's what we did.

- NARRATOR: The police
knew they had a strong case

against Shipman, but they
were certain that if he'd killed

Kathleen Grundy, it was
possible he'd killed others.

- DR. YARDLEY: In order to
build a case against Shipman,

the police needed to get
a different type of evidence,

and that would involve
exhuming some of the bodies

of Harold Shipman's recent
victims to see whether

there was substances
in those bodies

that really shouldn't be there.

- NARRATOR: The
exhumations began

on the 21st of September, 1998.

- We then exhumed
the three bodies

of Bianka Pomfret,
Winifred Mellor,

and Joan Melia over
three days.

We got Dr. Rutherford to conduct
postmortem examinations

on each of them,
and we sent the samples off

for examination.

On each of those people
Dr. Shipman had issued

a death certificate, and
each of those death certificates

suggested that they had died
from heart attacks,

but there was
no evidence of that

when Dr. Rutherford carried
out the examination.

- NARRATOR: Between
October and December, 1998,

another five bodies were
exhumed, making nine in total.

Kathleen Grundy may have
been killed for financial gain,

but it was becoming apparent
that Harold Shipman

had used his position of power
to murder the people

who trusted him the most
just because he could.

- BERNARD: Quite often
Dr. Shipman would turn up

out of the blue, people had
not sent for him,

and within a very short time

after they'd
been in his presence,

they were found dead.

And they were found dead
in odd places,

they were sat up in chairs,
fully dressed,

not in a scene of disarray
as if they'd fallen over,

as if they'd knocked
anything over.

- Most of Shipman's victims
were found sitting in the chair,

cup of tea by their side,
almost recreating the scene

that used to greet Shipman
when he came home from school

with his mother
waiting in the window

while he made her a cup
of tea and looking for him,

and waiting for him
to come home from school.

- LOUIS: Shipman is not
a doctor, doctors are people

that try to heal others
that try to cure others,

Shipman's a murderer.

His goal for the greater
part of his career

was to kill patients,

and he did it
for his own gratification.

- GEOFFREY: And that's
what makes it so chilling.

This was a man who was
destroying people's lives

for his own amusement,

as if he were catching
butterflies or crushing insects.

- NARRATOR: One of the
exhumed victims,

73-year-old Winifred Mellor,

had supposedly died
of heart-related problems,

but pathologists found no proof
of that in the postmortem.

- BERNARD: As inquiries
developed, it proved that...

an examination of the
computer showed that, uh,

Dr. Shipman, in actual fact,
had created a false record

to indicate that she had been
suffering from angina

over a period of time
in order for him to cover up

the fact that he had
administered an injection to her

which had resulted
in her death.

- MIKAELA: I don't think
Shipman's victims would have

suffered, not sure that they
would have understood

that they were dying.

The drug he used and
the strength he used it at

would just send them
very quickly to sleep,

and, you know, that's what
you would hope.

But I think the last words
might have been,

"Thank you, Doctor."

- NARRATOR: Doctoring
medical records became

a common theme in the
investigation into Shipman.

- MIKAELA: So, for example,
Maurine Ward, who he killed

when she was just 57,
he changed her medical records

to make it look like
she had had cancer,

when she'd actually been
given the all-clear

by hospital doctors.

- BERNARD: Although on first
appearance it would appear

that he'd made these
weeks before,

the computer expert
that we utilized,

when he had a look at them,

he was able to examine
the transaction login

within the computer system,
and he was able to determine

that they'd actually been made
after he'd been along

and murdered these people.

- NARRATOR:
By the 5th of October, 1998,

Shipman had been in custody
for almost a month.

As detectives continued
to interview the doctor,

cracks in his cold demeanor
began to show.

- MIKAELA: At the end
of the second interview,

when the computer records
showed

what Shipman was really up to,

in no uncertain detail,
Shipman asked for a break

in the interview, and as soon
as the police left,

he fell to his
knees sobbing,

he knew it was over.

- BERNARD: There's no doubt
that he had come to realize

that, virtually, the game
was up,

that he had got no answers to
these questions where we were

presenting him with
documents

and he just
couldn't explain things away.

- NARRATOR: By February, 1999,
53-year-old Harold Shipman

had been charged
with the murder of 15 women

ranging in age from 49 to 81.

Postmortems from nine
exhumed bodies confirmed

they were poisoned,

while circumstantial evidence
linked the doctor to six

other victims, all of whom
were cremated.

Despite all the evidence
that suggested Shipman

was a callous killer, it was
difficult to comprehend,

even for a seasoned
detective.

- BERNARD: There's no doubt
that on a day-to-day basis,

myself and my deputy, um,
questioned ourselves

about whether we were
interpreting this evidence

in the correct way.

Did we have this wrong?

Was there another
explanation for this?

But the more evidence
we uncovered,

the more it corroborated
previous evidence,

and there was only one answer
that we could come to,

and that was the fact
that Dr. Shipman

had killed these people.

- NARRATOR: The trial
of Dr. Harold Shipman

began on
the 5th of October, 1999

at Preston Crown Court.

The entire nation wanted
justice served upon the man

the papers were calling
Dr. Death.

The 53-year-old general
practitioner pleaded

not guilty to 15 counts
of murder

and one count of forging
the will of Kathleen Grundy.

The earliest killing, that of
81-year-old Maria West,

dated back to March, 1995.

- DR. YARDLEY: It's important
that all cases that go to court

have a realistic chance
of a conviction.

So the threshold for evidence,
even for a charge

to be brought, is quite high.

And we have to remember
that in this case

some of these murders were years
and years old,

the quality of the evidence
would have declined

to such a degree,

that it would be very, very
difficult to secure

a conviction for murder.

So there were only 15
counts of murder

in this particular trial,

but that was
just the tip of the iceberg.

- NARRATOR: Of the 15
counts of murder,

nine of the bodies had been
exhumed,

but prosecutors were confident
they could still get

a guilty verdict on the others.

- Six of Shipman's victims
were cremated, but the police

were still able to prove
that Shipman killed them.

This again is down to
the computerized medical records

being changed, added to which
there were witness statements,

and one of the most moving
things about the court case

was that there were so many
ordinary people

who'd never seen the inside
of a courtroom in their lives,

and they were having to stand
there and give their evidence

and remember their last moments
with their loved ones.

And it was because of their
strength

and their ability
to give that evidence

and remember what they
needed to remember

that Shipman was caught
and stopped.

- NARRATOR: Phil Woodruff,
the son-in-law

of Shipman's final victim,
Kathleen Grundy,

was often in the courtroom
during the three-month trial.

- PHIL: He did come over as
very arrogant, yes.

He was very full of himself,
and I think that, I mean,

that was obviously part of
his image that he created

in Hyde, that he was
a wonderful doctor,

and I think
he took great pleasure

in presenting himself
in this way.

So, yeah, he had a high
opinion of himself.

- NARRATOR: It was
an attitude that would be

his undoing.

When Shipman came under
intense questioning from

head prosecutor Sir Richard
Henriques, he buckled.

- BERNARD: He was a worm
wriggling on the end

of a hook because with each
question that was put to him,

he was really uncomfortable
at trying to find answers

to some of the questions.

And some of the answers
that he gave

were pretty ridiculous.

And he appeared to be thinking
of some of the answers

whilst he was stood
in the witness box.

It was another example
of his arrogance, he appeared

to decide that he was going
to go toe-to-toe with

one of the leading barristers
in the country.

And it wasn't--it wasn't
a good idea.

- NARRATOR: On the 31st
of January, 2000,

Harold Shipman was found guilty
of all 15 murders

and of forging the will
of Kathleen Grundy.

He was sentenced to life
in prison, much to the relief

of his victims' family members.

- MIKAELA: As each verdict
of guilty was read out,

there'd be, like, a fresh wave
of soft sobbing or gasps,

and it kind of built up,
it was really filling the air

of the courthouse, it was
one of the most moving things

I've ever seen.

- DR. YARDLEY: Harold Shipman
was convicted of all 15 murders

and was sentenced
to life in prison.

And you would say,
to a degree, justice has been

done here, but actually
for all of the other victims

whose murders were not
having charges associated

with them, this is,
is something that is

kind of incomplete.

I think that the families
of these victims

don't feel that they got
justice.

- NARRATOR: In September 2000,
an investigation was ordered

to delve deeper into the career
of Harold Shipman.

High Court judge Dame
Janet Smith led the inquiry.

- MIKAELA: I think the Shipman
inquiry was a brilliant legacy

for the families
of Shipman's victims.

They worked really hard,
they fought for a public inquiry

because for years, a doctor
had been able to carry on

unnoticed, killing people,
because of the secrecy

and the reverence around
the medical profession.

- BERNARD: It was important
to them that somebody

carried out that examination
and came to some sort of

verdict about what had
happened, and that's exactly

what the public inquiry did.

And I think that in itself
gave some families

the reassurance that they'd
done what they could

to find out what the true
circumstances were.

- NARRATOR: The results of
the initial inquiry

were released in July, 2002,
and the findings stunned

the world.

- MIKAELA: The Shipman
inquiry have found that

he's definitely responsible for
215 murders,

but there could be
as many as 260.

Having said that, not every
death will have been picked up,

and I think there were
many more than 260.

- NARRATOR: With so many
victims in such a small area,

it was perhaps inevitable
that the inquiry would reveal

some families had lost
several relatives

at the hands of Shipman.

Phil Woodruff lost three
members of his extended family.

One of them had only signed
on to Shipman's patient list

after a glowing recommendation
from Kathleen Grundy.

- I don't exactly know how many
people she recommended him to,

but she certainly
recommended him

to her sister-in-law
Elsie Plant.

I remember when Angela
said to me, about her mother,

"Well, you know, old people
don't die just like that."

And I said, "Well, they do,
look at Auntie Elsie, right?"

So my example was actually
of somebody else

killed by Shipman.

- NARRATOR: The inquiry
discovered it was not just

women, but men who were
victims of Shipman, too.

As a result of the report,
Shipman was given

a whole life tariff, which
meant he would never

be released from prison.

Although given a chance to
confess to his numerous murders,

Shipman rejected the opportunity
to speak with detectives.

- BERNARD: So they went
to interview him,

they decided to video that
interview.

And what that video depicts
is Dr. Shipman standing up,

turning his chair away
from them,

and just turning
his back to them,

so that although
they ask him the questions,

he refuses to answer,

and he also refuses
to look at them.

And he never actually disclosed
what had occured

in relation to many of those
offenses before his death.

- NARRATOR: In a heartless
move, Shipman decided

to take all his secrets
to the grave.

- Shipman committed
suicide by hanging

in prison on
the 13th of January, 2004,

um, it was the day before his
58th birthday.

So again, it was Shipman
being in control and doing

what he wanted and playing
God,

deciding who lived
and who died and when.

- LOUIS: And when you have
someone like Shipman,

with his arrogance, in prison,
I'm not surprised at all

that he committed suicide,
I would be shocked

if he was gonna live in prison,
living the life of an inmate,

he couldn't do it.

He was too grandiose,
too narcissistic,

way too arrogant, and he
just killed himself.

- BERNARD: Harold Shipman
never showed any remorse

for the murder of all these
people,

he never discussed

his involvement in the deaths,

he never apologized
to any of the families,

and he decided to take
the circumstances

and what
had happened with him

when he committed suicide.

- NARRATOR: Even in death,
Shipman continued

to haunt the country.

A sixth and final report
was published by the inquiry

in January, 2005.

- MIKAELA: The Shipman
inquiry found that

he'd begun killing as early
as 1971 while he was still

training as a doctor,
he'd not even become

a doctor and he was already
killing.

The inquiry found that he
was responsible for as many

as 15 deaths at Pontefract
General Infirmary,

possibly including that
of a four-year-old girl.

- NARRATOR: Shipman's
suicide in January, 2004

means that hundreds
of family members may never know

what happened to their
loved ones.

It was the final callous act
in a callous career.

- PHIL: It's always this
problem about the word "evil,"

isn't there, how you attach
that to somebody.

But if anybody's evil, I think
he's evil, yes, right.

To go around killing people
in cold blood,

apparently just
for the pleasure of it.

- MIKAELA: It was a doctor,

a doctor who's supposed
to look after you,

who's supposed
to care for you,

who's supposed to save your
life, not take it.

And I think, you know, as a
nation, that really resonated.

If it could happen in Hyde,
such a close-knit community

where families still lived
next door to each other

and looked after each other,

then it can happen
anywhere.

- PHIL: Probably there aren't
many people who'd lived

in Hyde for a generation
who didn't know somebody

who'd been killed by him.

- ♪

♪

♪

♪

- NARRATOR: It is hard
to picture Harold Shipman

as a cold-blooded killer,

but that's exactly
what he was.

He was meant to care for people

but instead, he was murdering
them, for no other reason

than his own self-gratification.

His insatiable appetite
for death spurred Shipman on

to take the lives of over 215
innocent and vulnerable victims.

He is without doubt one of
the world's most evil killers.

- ♪

♪♪

- [whooshing sound]