Transcript of Harold Shipman (Part 2)

Hey, weirdos, I'm Ash.

And I'm Elena.

And this is Morbid.

This is Morbid.

And we're in November, folks.

We are in November. Halloween happened, it was great.

Yeah.

And here we are.

It really, it really happened this time.

It happened.

Because last time it was November, but Halloween hadn't happened yet.

Exactly.

I hope you guys all had a good Halloween like we. It really actually did.

Yeah, it was actually a nice Halloween.

And I hope today everybody went out and voted.

Yes.

Well.

And I know it'll be after that that this comes in.

We'll find out if you voted or not.

You know what, everybody? We did great.

Yeah.

Good job. We did great.

I'm wearing blue to manifest.

We're manifesting. We're doing great.

And that's that.

Use your, your, your right to vote.

Wisely.

Do it.

Thank you. And thank you for being here today.

Thank you. And with that, we can probably just get right into it.

Yeah.

Because it's part two, and I want to know what the fuck is up, Carter.

Part two, and this is a kooky, kooky case.

Yeah.

Uh, it's crazy. And when we last left you, a Dr. Linda Reynolds had started to be like, "Huh, what's going on over there?"

I love a bad bitch stepping in and taking, taking survey.

Taking survey.

So she, and hey, you can clock it. We're starting the story.

Oh, honey, that's a quick clock.

That's a quick one.

Gerald.

So let's talk about Linda Reynolds. She moved to the area in late 1996.

The year of Ash.

There you go. Taking a position as one of the partners at Brooks Surgery, not far from where Shipman was practicing. Uh, prior to that, she'd spent 20 years treating patients in another part of England. And that meant that while she might not have been familiar with the patients in her new practice, she was very familiar with the patterns of declining health and death among a population. And it wasn't long before she got the feeling that something wasn't adding up here.

Something is not right.

Not wanting to cause any problems so early on at a new practice. She didn't voice her concerns right away, which is understandable. Then near the end of 1997, she decided it was time. She was going to start sharing her thoughts with the other partners.

She Mariah carried it. She said, "It's time."

She did. Um, Dr. Jeremy Dirks, I think his name is, she told us that it became very apparent to her that there was certainly more deaths than she would expect.

Hmm.

Uh, and Dr. Jeremy there was one of the partners at Brooks Surgery at the time.

I don't trust a single man named Jeremy, and it's your fault.

I love that. I've ruined all Jeremys.

You literally have.

That's my job.

Sorry, Jeremys. Sorry, good Jeremys.

Sorry, sorry, good Soramies.

Soramies.

All that to say, Soramies.

Soramies.

If you're out there.

Yeah, you know.

I don't know.

Have we seen him? I don't know.

I don't know.

Well, Dr. Jeremy here said she wasn't particularly aware at the time of the circumstances of each death, but it was the numbers, and that raised definite suspicions in her mind.

That makes sense.

Now, the other partners at the center listened to these concerns, but they simply couldn't fathom that Shipman was doing something to actually cause the death of his patients.

Yeah.

Which.

Why would you think that a doctor would do that?

Yeah. So the same, our Dr. Jeremy there said, "Dr. Reynolds was quite sure there was something more sinister to it. The rest of us didn't dare think that. You know, instead, they did their best to kind of just like, you know, like kind of like pet her concerns a little bit, trying to rationalize things, coming up with reasonable explanations like, there's got to be some reason that the deaths are this high. It can't be that he's doing something."

People love to try to, to try to pet a woman.

Yeah. It's like pull the wool over your eyes.

It's okay, girl. You're wrong.

Yeah, you're wrong on this.

Stop it.

But despite their resistance, Reynolds' fellow partners wanted to be supportive though.

Okay.

So they all agreed that it would be best to take their concerns to the coroner.

All right.

Who would be most knowledgeable about this matter and would know what, if anything, should or could be done.

Okay.

Not surprisingly, the coroner was shocked by what Reynolds told him and agreed this was a very serious matter. But he explained that the only way he could investigate the situation would be to report it to police, who would act on his behalf. That in itself seemed a little risky since it would immediately alert Shipman to their suspicions. There was also a question of libel.

Yeah.

If Reynolds and the others made us, you know, serious allegations and turned out to be wrong, there could be serious personal and professional consequences here.

Yeah.

Dr. Jeremy said, "Dr. Shipman was the most well-respected doctor in Hyde, and calling into question any colleague's practices and behavior is a major step. It could have backfired."

That's tough. They were up against a lot here.

Yeah. But still, the matter was serious enough that they felt obligated to go forward with their complaint.

Wow, okay.

Yeah. And so the Greater Manchester Police opened up their investigation.

I did not expect this.

Badass.

Very.

They really, they put it all on the line here.

Like in every sense of the phrase.

Literally.

Yeah.

Years later, when the Crown launched an inquiry into the systems that allowed Shipman.

I love the Crown.

The Crown.

Just like the Crown, like I literally picture a Crown launching an investigation.

Just like a Crown being like, "Time to investigate."

Do it. Go forth.

Well, years later, when the Crown did launch an inquiry into the systems that honestly allowed Shipman to avoid detecting for so long, an investigation committee would conclude that the Greater Manchester Police had never taken the initial reports very seriously.

Oh.

Yeah. Uh, Dr. Jeremy said, "I believe it was generally held by the police that the concerns were purely those expressed by Dr. Reynolds and not the rest of the practice. That certainly wasn't the case."

Damn.

Now, the investigators assigned to look into the matter never bothered to interview the other doctors at Brooks Surgery. In fact, it seems that they had more of an investigative interest in Dr. Reynolds than they did in Dr. Shipman.

Of course.

Among other things, they questioned her about why she'd left her previous practice, implying that she had been resentful of a male doctor in a more senior position and that she must have left due to repeated conflicts with him.

You ever just want to punch a, punch ahead?

And Dr. Jeremy said they were almost hinting that she had a similar problem with Dr. Shipman.

Fuck off with that.

Fuck.

These people off with that.

Sexist.

The male ego.

Exactly. So sexist investigators weren't only the problem here. They were not the only problem.

Okay.

There was also the fact that they never bothered to collect all the documentation on recent deaths, and the fact that in a small town like Hyde, many of the investigators knew and revered Fred Shipman.

Uh-huh.

Uh, Anne Alexander, who was a solicitor for one of the families, said, "The most significant thing for me was that I had always believed it was a policeman's job to ask questions. And in this particular case, the lead investigators didn't ask questions. He sat and waited for information to be given to him."

That's not how investigating works.

Sat on his ass. Yeah, that's the laziest shit I've ever heard. After just a few weeks, the cursory investigation came to nothing and was just quickly closed without any determination.

Of course it came to nothing because they did nothing.

They didn't investigate. The local police might not have taken Dr. Reynolds' concerns seriously, but as it turned out, the doctors at Brooks Surgery weren't the only ones who had started to become suspicious.

It was like too bad nobody talked to them.

Exactly. After retiring from the police force in 1988, John Shaw opened up K-Cabs, a one-man cab company that consisted of Shaw and his blue Volvo.

I'm obsessed with the fact that he was like retiring, not for me.

No, gonna cab.

Gonna drive a cab.

Drive a cab, just one cab.

It's my cab.

Almost immediately, Shaw saw a gap in the local market and he seized on it to great success.

Very smart.

And he said, "I found that there was a niche in the market of elderly people who wanted just short journeys and who wanted to be able to afford to do it in a taxi."

Nice.

So he framed the situation as purely opportunistic, but whether because of his personality or the fact that he was a retired police officer, elderly clients were immediately at ease with him.

Oh.

And he quickly gained a very good reputation and a very large clientele. He's like, "Oh, it was just because people needed it." And it's like, "No, you were just really good at that."

You were good at it. Yeah.

Uh, he said, "All my customers I classed as friends."

Aw.

I love him.

That's really sweet.

Before long, John Shaw became more than just a cab driver for the elderly. He would help them inside, listen to them when others wouldn't, and even fix little problems around their houses whenever he could.

He's a straight-up caretaker. This motherfucker's an empath.

He is. As a result, he became very familiar with their lives, and as their driver, he knew their patterns and routines.

Yep.

It was because of these things that Shaw began to notice when customers of his began dying in surprising numbers. He said, "I noticed that various ladies were dying suddenly, ladies that I'd seen possibly days before their death when they seemed in good health."

Oh.

Now, after years of losing clients one after the other, Shaw grew suspicious that something was going on here.

He's also a police officer.

Yeah, he's got that nose. When John, when Joan Harding died suddenly in January 1994, he decided to start keeping a list of the deaths. He said, because again, he's organized, he's a police officer.

Yeah.

The thing that made me suspicious, he said, was my customers had all been in good health prior to their deaths. So by 1998, he comprised a list of 20 names of elderly customers who died unexpectedly.

Wow.

Because he'd been driving for many, you know, driving the same people for many years, including to their appointments, when he looked over the list, he noticed that they all shared one thing in common.

They had the same doctor.

Dr. Fred Shipman.

And that was likely the last place he ever drove them.

Yep.

Wow.

John Shaw suspected that the city's most well-respected doctor might be hiding a very dark, very nefarious secret.

Wow.

But the problem was, no matter how confident he was, he realized the theory was quote unquote "fantastic," and even coming from a former police officer, they were still unlikely to be believed.

Mm-hmm.

He said, "They were so fantastic, I couldn't grasp what my mind was telling me. I was equally frightened of being right as I was of being wrong."

Yeah, I can see that. Absolutely.

Like Linda Reynolds before him, John Shaw was conflicted about what he should do. Then came the death of Kathleen Grundy. By all accounts, Kathleen was a lively and relatively healthy woman in the spring of 1998. Shaw said, "She was a 25-year-old in an 80-year-old body."

Oh.

Despite her age as the former mayor of Hyde.

Wow.

Grundy kept a fairly full social calendar.

Period.

And regularly went out on Saturday nights.

Obsessed.

When the evening events had come to an end, Grundy would always call John Shaw for a ride home, and when he'd drop her off, Kathleen would always flash the light on the front porch to let him know she'd gotten in the house safely.

That is the sweetest.

Right?

Yeah.

Given how spry and just full of life and independent Kathleen had been, it came to a big shock to everyone when in June 1998, Kathleen died unexpectedly. Um, her daughter, Angela, said, "I was very shocked because I had spoken to her a few days before on the phone, and she was always very well." So Angela called Dr. Shipman to find out what the fuck had happened to her mom, but he was vague, saying he hadn't seen her the day before she died and mentioned something about, uh, or excuse me, saying he'd seen her the day before she died and had mentioned something about chest pains.

Hmm.

It was only later that Angela learned from her mother's friend that Shipman had actually called on Grundy because he wanted her to sign some papers.

Interesting.

So he was now, like, it sounds like he was now like bringing them, bringing the lambs to the slaughter, essentially.

Yeah.

He was bringing them in. It's not like they were coming in for an appointment.

Right.

He was actually like reaching out to get them.

And like choosing who he was going to do this to ahead of time.

Now, in the days that followed, the story from Shipman became even more opaque. He said she died of cardiac arrest, but she had no history of heart disease.

Okay.

Even more concerning was the fact that on Grundy's death certificate, the registrar's office had listed the cause of death as simply "old age," a decision they'd arrived at with significant input from Shipman.

Hmm.

Angela recalled later, "It was all very strange. I couldn't understand how she died. It just didn't make any sense to me."

Right.

Like, which one is it?

Yeah, old age or heart attack.

Yeah.

Those are two very different things.

A few days after her mother's death, Angela and her husband arrived at her mother's house to, you know, start dealing with her affairs. And what they found there made even less sense. Looking around the house, there was no signs that a chronically ill person resided there.

No.

The garden was perfectly tended to, something Kathleen always did herself.

Mm-hmm.

The lawn was perfectly mowed, and there was no medications.

She was on no medications.

No medications.

Wow.

Angela pushed her suspicions aside, you know, she's going through grief.

Of course.

But, and she, she set about making plans for the funeral, but a few weeks later, things got even more confusing. One afternoon, Angela was at home when she got a call from a solicitor in Hyde that she didn't know.

Okay.

The man said that he didn't know her mother, but he had been tasked with executing her mother's will, which she had filed on June 9th, 1998, just a few days before she died.

Okay.

It had arrived at their office with a typewritten letter asking that they be her executors, and it was simply signed "K. Grundy."

Weird.

When Angela was finally able to review this will and the accompanying letter a few days later, she knew immediately this was not written by her mother.

Really?

Kathleen Grundy had been known, among other things, for having beautiful handwriting.

She's also the mayor, so there had been.

Yeah.

Right?

Her signature was probably gorge.

And not only that, there's probably so many accounts of her handwriting.

Yeah.

Like.

And this letter was typewritten, and quite badly at that, something Angela knew her mother never would have done.

Yeah.

Even more surprising was the fact that in her final days, Angela's mother had changed her will and was now leaving everything to her doctor, Fred Shipman.

In what world?

That is an incredibly bold thing to do.

I'm also like, are you completely dumb at this point?

That's like.

You lost your mind to that level?

Yeah.

That you thought you were gonna get away with that? She has a daughter, she has friends, she has family, and she's gonna leave everything to her doctor?

And you already know people are suspicious of you, babe.

Yeah, that's not, I'm like.

Are you serious?

Jeez.

Yeah.

That's not walking a fine line. That's.

Yeah.

That's stomping around town in your big boots, brother.

Exactly. Now, among the things that allowed him to go on killing undetected for so long was the fact that he would sign, he would often sign off on cremation of his victims before anyone in the family could say otherwise.

Yeah.

This time, however, Grundy's daughter, Angela, had arranged for a burial.

Good.

After all the odd interactions with Shipman, and especially this discovery of a new will naming Shipman as the sole fucking heir, Angela had started to wonder whether her mother's doctor might actually be responsible for her death.

I'm also like, dude, did you not realize she had a daughter?

Yeah.

And like that was gonna look sus.

I have no idea, but it's, it's hubris.

Yeah.

It's just they think they're above everything.

Yeah. Well, and he's been getting away with it for so long.

Well, so she did something really bold.

She made an appointment.

She asked that her mother's body be exhumed and subjected to a postmortem examination.

Okay.

She said, "Let's go."

And you have to point out too, like, the, the heartache that would come along with already having buried your parent.

To dig them out.

And now you're digging them back up.

And then have them go through an autopsy when you don't, that isn't necessarily what you wanted.

That is so traumatic.

Yeah.

To have to, to have to even do that. I'm like, ugh.

Yeah. For more than a decade, Fred Shipman had managed to avoid questions from suspicious family members by just feigning outrage at their disbelief and shaming them for, "How could you not trust my expertise?"

Shit gas.

By exploiting some of the most difficult human emotions to navigate, he was easily able to manipulate anyone who questioned his authority and make them feel like the guilty ones, like bad people.

Yep.

One of the keys to his survival as a serial killer was the fact that his victims' families knew next to nothing about medicine and lacked the confidence necessary to really, like, confront someone with any serious accusations.

I mean, what are you gonna say?

When you don't have the knowledge and the background, and something especially medicine is so complex.

Complex, yep.

And it's like, they, you do feel stupid sometimes, like questioning a doctor.

We've been in positions where we've questioned doctors before.

For sure.

And you end up like feeling silly sometimes.

Yeah, because sometimes if like, you know, you, if you got a good doctor, which a lot of doctors are great.

Oh, yeah.

They're gonna be like, "You know what, I understand that you wanna know more about this or that you're confused by this."

But sometimes they'll just write you off.

But sometimes they can be like real shitty sometimes.

Yeah.

When if you get the wrong one, that's like, you had a bad day or something.

How dare you?

Yeah.

Yeah.

But Angela was a highly respected professional in her own right and a lawyer at that.

Oh.

And she wasn't easily intimidated by the likes of little Fred Shipman.

He done fucked up this time.

Yeah, you fucked with the wrong.

I'm like, you didn't do your research, babe.

Oh.

Which thank goodness.

Yeah. Also, Angela's confidence made John Shaw feel like he might not be alone after all in thinking this.

Yeah.

And in August, Shaw went to the police to add his concerns to the growing cloud of suspicion on Fred Shipman.

And good for him too to put his neck out there.

Yeah, because he said, "Well, you know what, Angela's out here going through grief and sticking her neck out. She's a professional. She could lose stuff doing this."

Yeah.

Like, I'm gonna do it too.

Yeah.

And he cared about, you know, he cared about Kathleen.

Yeah.

Now, Fred Shipman had already avoided capture once when the investigation prompted by Reynolds and the other doctors at Brook Surgery didn't even start, essentially. And it seemed likely that he, um, that had he not changed his routine, he probably would have kept going on killing for a long time.

Mm-hmm.

But for reasons that like are pretty unclear still, when it came to the murder of Kathleen Grundy in the summer of 1998, he did something he'd never done before. He tried to profit from the crime.

Yeah.

When the coroner examined Kathleen's body after she was exhumed, he found a large quantity of morphine in her muscle tissues. And for years, Shipman had been altering his patient's medical records to support whatever cause of death he put on the certificate, but this time, he made a mistake.

Oh my gosh.

He altered Kathleen's medical records to indicate that, quote, "She was overdosing on codeine," which might have made sense if the coroner had found codeine in her body. Instead.

He didn't.

They found morphine. The morphine discovered in the body of a woman who is not known to use or need morphine only added to the suspicion that he had killed Kathleen.

Not only morphine, but any other. She didn't have any other medicines.

No, and it's also, it's adding to the suspicion that he not only killed Kathleen, but killed her to inherit the money left to him.

Yeah.

In this questionable ass will.

Your motive is right there.

Yeah. A few weeks later, investigators obtained a search warrant for Shipman's house.

Stop it.

Where they found, among other things, a large supply of morphine, the typewriter that matched the letter that accompanied the will when it was sent to the solicitor's office.

Dude.

They also found evidence that Shipman had forged Grundy's signature on a number of documents, and his fingerprint was found on the letter and the will that was sent to the lawyers.

Shut the fuck up.

On September 7th, 1998, Fred Shipman was arrested and charged with murdering Kathleen Grundy. And a few days later, a second charge was added for his attempts to forge her will.

Good, finally.

Yeah. Now, the evidence against Fred Shipman and the death and attempted defrauding of Kathleen Grundy was like pretty immense. It was pretty considerable.

Yeah, I would say so.

But after hearing what John Shaw had to say, investigators began to wonder whether, uh, there might be some more names to this.

Did investigators begin to investigate?

They actually were like, "Hmm, maybe there could be more to this."

Maybe we should have done something about them.

Maybe, maybe to give it a shot. I don't know. But when the news of the arrest broke, investigators were quick to caution the press and the public against reading too much into their actions.

Of course.

This early in the investigation. Detective Superintendent Bernard Postel said, "I can confirm an investigation is being undertaken into the circumstances surrounding Mrs. Grundy's death. I would like to stress that people should not panic about our investigation."

Okay, Bernard.

Which like, I guess that makes sense because it's like, this is a prominent doctor, so it's like.

Yeah.

Everyone chill. Now, while investigators made a point of staying tight-lipped about the case with the press, behind the scenes, the evidence against Shipman was piling up. Following the exhumation of Kathleen, uh, court orders for additional exhumations were being made for patients who died under Shipman's care.

Okay.

Each one revealing new evidence of foul play.

Which again, horrific for the family members.

Yes. Oh my God, it's awful. In early October, three additional murder charges were added following the exhumation of 73-year-old Joan Malia, 73-year-old Winifred Meller, and 49-year-old Bianca Pomfret.

49.

Following the arraignment, Bernard Postel gave a statement to the press indicating that the Greater Manchester Police expected the, quote, "lengthy inquiry with many difficult areas of investigation." Although the investigation appeared to be moving along, it was like relatively slow because of the sensitive nature of the accusations.

Mm-hmm.

And the general difficulty of dealing with such a large number of victims here.

Yeah.

This was all made exponentially more difficult by the media, who had seized on the story.

That's crazy.

With the less reputable outlets harassing family members for comment or additional information.

Go away.

You, that's so gross.

It's really fucked up.

In the days and weeks that followed, investigators worked tirelessly to track down patients and family members, but Shipman had altered or destroyed so many records that it made it so difficult.

Yeah.

When they would come across a patient who was determined to have died under maybe suspicious circumstances, the remains would need to be exhumed, which was a process they chose to do under cover of night to avoid curious members of the press and public.

Yeah.

Although they were a necessary part of the investigation, the seriousness of the exhumations was not lost on any of the detectives or the forensic technicians. Uh, Father Dennis Marr told reporters, "There's a finality to a burial. You are saying goodbye, and there is a healing in that. Now we have to go back and do that. It's terribly upsetting."

It is.

And it is. Like there really is like a finality in closing that coffin lid and saying goodbye.

It's, there's like a ritual that comes along with death, and that's part of it.

Yeah. Now, given how many patients Shipman served since opening his practice in the early '90s, it seemed entirely possible to detectives that they were looking at one of the worst cases of serial murder in England's history.

Wow.

Yet no one on the case dared even to guess a potential number of victims.

Well, how can you even at that point?

Yeah. Instead, they continued digging through the evidence, which included years' worth of complex medical records and more than 3,000 prescriptions for morphine.

Wow.

By mid-November, their work was continuing to show results. On November 13th, two more murders were added to the charges. After the bodies of 63-year-old Ivy Lomas and 67-year-old Marie Quinn were found to contain large amounts of morphine. By that time, Shipman had been denied bail, and a tentative trial date for the Grundy murder had been set for January 1999. Um, but there were more discoveries that were gonna come.

Mm-hmm.

In January, uh, Shipman's trial date came and went, with the prosecutor's office asking for additional time to complete the investigation because, again, new information was surfacing rapidly.

Yeah.

A judge granted the request, and in late February, an additional eight murder charges were added to the following victims: Muriel Grimshaw, age 76; Nora Nuttall, age 65; Laura Wagstaff, age 81; Maureen Alice Ward, age 57; Pamela Hillier, age 68; Marie West, age 81; and Lizzie Adams, age 77.

My God.

When asked whether they expected to find additional victims or would continue digging into his patient files, Detective Superintendent Postel said, "We will not enter into speculation about whether there will be any further charges or whether we have drawn a line under the inquiry now." Whether or not there would be additional charges or victims, the prosecution was expected to go to trial against Shipman for 15 murders.

15.

That was just what they, like, definitively connected.

Okay.

So his trial began October 5th, 1999, at Preston Crown Court, where he repeatedly and strenuously denied killing any of his patients, and he definitely didn't forge Kathleen Grundy's will. She just, she did that.

Why's your fingerprint on it?

No idea. Now, jury selection took more than a week, and once they were finally sworn in, members of the jury were warned that due to the size and scope, the case could potentially last as long as five months.

Wow.

In fact, opening statements from the prosecutor, Richard Henriquez, uh, lasted three days as he laid out the evidence in all 15 murders. He said, "All of them died most unexpectedly. All of them had seen Dr. Shipman on the day of their death. There is no question of euthanasia. The defendant killed these 15 patients because he enjoyed doing so. He was exercising the ultimate power of controlling life and death and repeated the act so often he must have found the drama of taking life to his taste."

That's an opening statement.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, for real.

Among other things, he walked through the evidence showing how Shipman had forged his medical records to align with whatever circumstances of death he decided, and explained that they would hear testimony from family members who were convinced or bullied into foregoing postmortem examinations.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, he said, of course, from Dr. Shipman's perspective, it was imperative in each case that he avoid a postmortem. In other cases, he used his position of power and authority to manipulate others. When paramedics arrived at the home of 68-year-old Pamela Hillier, they suggested someone needed to report the death to the police, but Shipman told them, "I don't see there's a need to do that."

Why?

Now, the evidence against him was persuasive, but his case was made all the more compelling by the testimony from the victim's friends and family regarding his callousness after the deaths. In the case of Marie West's murder, Shipman wasn't aware that as he was killing Marie, his, her friend, Marion Hadfield, was waiting for her in the next room.

What?

Mm-hmm. According to Hadfield, when Shipman realized she was there, he said, "She's collapsed on me. She's gone."

What the fuck?

Mm-hmm.

One room away.

Yeah.

And he didn't even realize it, and.

Yeah, and then he just didn't give a shit.

Had the gall to just be like, "Yep, is what it is, bye."

Yeah, whoops. When Hadfield expressed her shock and disbelief, Shipman grabbed West's head and opened her eyes, and he said, "See? There's no life in there."

Oh my God.

Then he let the woman's head fall back against her shoulder.

Oh my God.

Literally opened her eyes, "See? There's no life in there."

God.

To her friend.

That is so fucked up.

Callous as fuck.

Imagine how traumatizing that must have been for her friend.

In each instance, Henriquez walked the jury through what he called Shipman's, quote, "far-fetched explanations for the deaths and the circumstances surrounding his presence." In the case of 67-year-old Marie Quinn, for example, Shipman claimed that she had called him at his office to say she thought she was having a stroke. Shipman claimed he told her to leave the door unlocked and he would be over immediately, but when he arrived, she was, quote, "breathing her last." But investigators checked the phone records on both ends, and wouldn't you know, no such call took place.

Dude, how are you, like, how do you think you're gonna get away with that?

Yeah.

And like nobody's gonna check into it.

That's what I don't get. And the details provided by Shipman seemed entirely unlikely, if not impossible. He said, "It is," um, so he, the, uh, prosecutor said, "It is inconceivable that Mrs. Quinn, partially paralyzed, went from her living room to open the door, then went to the kitchen where Shipman found her."

Right.

Like, let's be real. The stories about the lives and deaths of Shipman's patients and his behavior before and after their deaths were a large part of the Crown's case, but they had the evidence to back their theories up.

Mm-hmm.

In mid-November, uh, Detective Constable Dave O'Brien told the jury that during the search of Shipman's home, they discovered a massive, like a ton of morphine and diamorphine stored in a bedroom. When they ran the numbers of each vial, investigators discovered that the drugs had been recorded by Shipman as having been destroyed as far back as 1995.

Dude.

Yeah.

Meanwhile, you just have a legit stockpile in your home.

Yeah.

Like.

Now, the defense put forth by Shipman's lawyer, Ian Winter, was very simple. There was no murder. The women had heart disease or other illnesses, and that led to their deaths.

But they didn't, babe.

Yeah.

That's like the worst defense I've ever heard.

Yeah. Winter said Bianca Pomfret and Winifred Meller complained to him of chest pains on the day they died. Joan Malia complained of a severe cough on the day she died. And as for backdating and altering the records, Shipman told the court he did that because, quote, "it helped him to research effective treatments."

I don't, you can't.

He literally said, "Don't worry about it."

Change your records.

Don't worry about it.

Like you could, you can maybe update them.

Yeah.

With new information.

No.

But you're acting like that was information that previously existed.

Well, and he's also using that whole, like, "Don't question me."

I'm a doctor.

Yeah.

Okay.

In early December, when he took the stand in his own defense.

I sh, how did I know you were gonna say that?

Shipman had weak or somewhat, somewhat implausible explanations for pretty much everything that made him look guilty. And Richard Henriquez had no trouble poking holes in his story.

But he just thinks he's so much smarter than everybody else.

He thinks he's got it. On several occasions, Shipman was interviewed by police and gave his account of the treatments and his proximity to the patients at or around the time of death. But, as Henriquez pointed out repeatedly, when Shipman was testifying in court, his story didn't match his early interviews.

Mm.

Yeah, Shipman claimed, "I was considerably stressed at the time of the police interviews. I agree the version taken down in the police station was different in what I said today."

Like, so did you lie because you were stressed out?

Well, once again, he always has an answer for why it is the way it is.

Yep.

The arguments from both sides finally came to an end in late January 2000, and that's when Justice Forbes began his summation of the case to the jury. He said, "This is a tragic and deeply disturbing case. You will have heard evidence which may have aroused feelings of anger, strong disapproval, disgust, profound dismay, or deep sympathy. You must put all of such feelings or emotions to one side and not allow it to influence your judgment. You must decide this case only on the evidence you have heard, seen, and read in court."

Okay.

They deliberated for 34 hours before emerging to find Shipman guilty on all 15 murders.

Wow.

And the forgery of Kathleen Grundy's will.

Good.

As the foreman read through each verdict, Shipman stared straight ahead. He had no emotional response.

I've, inside of his head must have just been.

Fuck.

Racing now.

Yeah.

Like, how do I get out of this?

Yeah.

How did I get myself into this?

Mm-hmm.

Like, you know, 'cause he just, he thought he was gonna.

Oh, yeah.

Pull the wool over everybody's eyes forever.

Oh, yeah. Justice Forbes said, "Each of your victims was your patient, and you killed each and every one of your victims by a calculated and cold-blooded perversion of your medical skills. Yours was not a healing touch. None of them knew that it brought them death, which was disguised as the caring attention of a good doctor." With that said, he sentenced Fred Shipman to 15 life sentences and announced he would be recommending a whole-life tariff, meaning that Shipman would spend the rest of his natural life in prison, never to be released.

Bye-bye.

As soon as the case ended, the speculation about just how many victims Shipman had killed began.

Of course.

In addition to the 15 victims for which he had been clearly found guilty of and sentenced, the prosecution had prepared files on 23 other victims.

Wow.

Whose cases weren't seen as strong enough to bring to trial.

That's always so frustrating.

Yeah. On top of that, sources within the Greater Manchester Police Force told reporters detectives had looked into 141 other deaths.

Holy shit.

By the time the investigation and inquiry concluded, Fred Shipman would be suspected of killing more than 250 people.

That is insane.

Making him England's most prolific serial killer.

Yeah.

What shocked the press and the public more than the number of victims was the fact that the murders had happened at all, and that Shipman had gone on killing out in the open for so fucking long.

And that he was a doctor.

Yeah.

Imagine, like, people are already afraid of dentists and doctors in general.

Yeah, just for.

Imagine the fear that must have ignited in everybody after this.

And especially as, like, an elderly person, like, yeah, you have to go to the doctor.

Yeah.

You're supposed to trust that your doctor's gonna do the best for you.

And it's like you're so, like, and people take advantage of them so easily. It's so sad.

Yeah. Now, just days after the trial ended, the police began reporting that Shipman had, in fact, been under investigation 18 months earlier when Dr. Reynolds reported her fucking suspicion to the coroner, but nothing had been done.

Yikes.

You know Linda's sitting there like, "Told ya."

Mm-hmm.

"That's a real, I told you so." In response, the assistant chief constable of the Greater Manchester Police, Vincent Sweeney, released a statement saying, essentially dodging responsibility.

That's nice.

He said, "Decisions were made and conclusions reached about the investigation by the police and the health authority that were based upon information and records which we now know we have been fra to have been fraudulently altered by Dr. Shipman." He said, "The absence of any evidence to support a concern effectively meant that the investigation could go no further. Without evidence, there can be no criminal investigation."

Thank you. We know that.

Well, what's crazy, though.

That there was plenty of evidence.

Is they had a butt ton of evidence.

Yeah.

That they found when they actually looked into it.

Right.

Whether or not the police or the health authority wanted to take any responsibility, Shipman's 15-year killing spree revealed a seemingly endless list of problems within England's healthcare system that, though not responsible for the murders themselves, certainly allowed Shipman to go on killing undetected.

Really?

Following his conviction, a committee was formed to evaluate the case and make recommendations for changes that could prevent anything like this from happening again.

Oh, that's good.

In February 2000, it was announced that the Shipman inquiry would be conducted in, uh, in private, much to the surprise and much to the great frustration of the victims' families, who had lobbied hard for the inquiry to be fucking public.

Public.

And transparent.

Yeah, we just don't know what's gonna happen now.

In July of that year, the families won a court battle to force the government to hold the hearings and release the findings to the public.

Good.

The families didn't quit.

Yeah.

They did not quit. In July 2002, the first phase of the report was released, finding that Fred Shipman had likely caused the death of 215 patients.

Wow.

171 women and 44 men.

That's crazy.

Between the ages of 47 and 93 years old.

Wow. Imagine, first of all, 47 is so young.

Yeah.

And then you make it to 90.

93.

3 years old, and this motherfucker is what takes you out?

Yeah.

That is.

Like, like so unfair.

Like, truly so unfair.

Now, in July of the following year, the second and third reports were released containing recommendations for reform. And among other things, the committee found that the coroner systems in both England and Wales was horribly outdated and in need of radical changes that included better training, multiple sign-offs on death certificates, which would prevent, like, any unauthorized revisions.

Mm-hmm.

And the use of fucking vague-ass terms like "natural causes." Finally, the committee called the major reforms to the oversight of GPs, general practitioners, arguing that the General Medical Council was an organization designed to look after the interests of doctors.

Mm-hmm.

Not patients.

Mm-hmm.

In addition to the procedural and systematic changes brought about by this inquiry, the report, and perhaps even the case itself, spurred a change in the way doctors and other medical staff were perceived in the UK. Dr. Ian, um, Ian Kerr said there was certainly a more relaxed attitude before Shipman's conviction. There was more respect for the doctor's autonomy, whether they deserved it or not. The Shipman case made people more uncomfortable about the control doctors can have over the end of someone's life.

Mm-hmm.

The release of the Shipman inquiry reports signaled a kind of, like, finality to the case, a more genuine sense of justice than can be found in a simple conviction, I think. But it turned out that there was one more chapter to the story that was going to unfold in 2004 that truly brought it to a close.

Oh, God.

On January 13th, 2004, just one day before his 58th birthday, Fred Shipman hanged himself with his bedsheets in his cell at Wakefield Prison. When the news of his death was reported to the press, it was, quote, "greeted with shock and disgust by relatives of the victims, some of whom said he had, quote, 'taken the easy way out.'"

Yep.

At no time did Shipman express any remorse for the lives he'd taken.

Lovely.

And he went to his grave insisting he was innocent.

He was not.

In speaking with the press, lead investigator in the Shipman case, Bernard Postel, said, "I'm shocked and surprised by his death. I think there was a real possibility he would confess. There are killers in prison who take 10 to 15 years to admit their part in serial killings. I always thought there was a chance that would happen. Unfortunately, that never came to pass. And in fact, with so many of his medical files and patient information having been altered or destroyed, any chance of identifying additional Shipman victims may have died with him."

That's awful.

And that is.

I don't know.

The Shipman case.

It's, it's hard to imagine that he would have given anybody anything.

Who knows?

I know.

After years of sitting in prison.

That's the thing.

You know, but.

I hate that there isn't a chance now.

He just seems like such a jackass.

He is, but, you know, prison can break up.

Prison does change people.

Break a fuck up, yeah.

So, it's true.

It's a, it's a horrific case.

It's insane.

And it's, I mean, they can, they definitively think, like, 215.

That's crazy.

That's unbelievable.

It really is.

And he just, and why?

Just playing God, I think.

Just playing God.

Yeah.

That's it. And using, like.

Just, like, a weird, like.

And using such a position of where you have people in such a vulnerable state, people just surrend to a doctor, you know? Like, when you're sick or something's, you just surrend to, you surrender yourself to a doctor.

When it's just such a, I don't know the right word to use, but it's somewhat fascinating to me that he killed people by injection.

Yeah.

And got something out of that.

That's.

Do you know what I mean?

That's the thing, yeah.

It's, it's almost such a passive way to kill someone.

Yeah.

Did you know what I mean?

Yeah, exactly.

It's, it's strange.

Mm-hmm.

There's not a lot of cases that we've heard like this.

Yeah.

Because even poisoning feels so much different.

Yeah.

You know?

I know, it's strange.

Yeah.

It's.

It's a, it's a very strange thing.

Yeah, there's not, there's not a lot of cases we've talked about where, where it's been injections. I find that.

I know.

I find that interesting.

I hate, I hate Fred Shipman.

I do too.

Rest in distress.

Yeah, the fact that.

You fucker.

Yeah, it pisses me off that.

Yeah.

He didn't have to rot in jail.

No, pissed.

Yeah. Do you have a fun fact?

People believe that a radio station in Russia is haunted.

Shut up.

The station UVB-76 broadcasts white static noises, but no one knows where it comes from. And it's been broadcasting since 1982.

I'm obsessed with that.

I would like to look further into that. So that's my fucked weird fact that.

That we will be looking forward to.

The next episode on.

That is so fun.

Yeah.

That's a fucked up fun fact.

But also, like.

Where is it?

A fun fucked fact.

I don't like it, but I love it.

I love it.

Eh.

Ah, I wanna know more.

Oh, I can't wait to go down the rabbit hole.

Yeah, we're gonna go down that one.

That one.

All right. Well, you guys, we love you. We hope you came to listening.

And we hope you.

Keep it weird.

Weird.

But not so weird that you don't follow us down the rabbit hole of what the fuck is going on with that radio station.

Let's go.

Bye.