Shipman: The silent suburban slayer

Harold Shipman: Britain's most prolific serial killer

By Avril Stephens, CNN.com Europe writer

LONDON, England -- Harold Shipman was the silent suburban killer, targeting elderly women with names like Norah, Winifred, and Irene and killing them behind the lace curtains of their own homes.

Almost from the beginning of his 24-year career as a general practitioner in Hyde on the outskirts of Manchester, England, Shipman is believed to have started administering his deadly doses.

He would inject his patients, mainly women aged between 75 and 84, with diomorphine -- the medical term for heroin -- during his afternoon rounds.

The 55-year-old father of four was well versed in the administration of drugs having been an addict during the 1970s, leading to his conviction in 1976 for forging prescriptions for his own use.

More than half of the 521 death certificates Shipman wrote out were likely to have been premature, according to a British government audit report.

Of the 297 deaths deemed in "excess" by Professor Richard Baker, 236 took place at the women's homes, although six died in his own one-man surgery.

He was present at the death in 20 percent of cases, compared with just 0.8 percent in the cases of other local GPs in the survey.

He last saw his patients just 49 hours before they died on average, compared with 88 hours for other GPs.

Relatives were kept at bay by Shipman -- it was 50 percent less likely that a husband, wife or sibling would be present at a patient's bedside in their dying moments when he was around.

Softly spoken, greying , bearded and bespectacled, Shipman would pat the hand of each victim and offer comforting assurances before their death. Later, he would enter the fatal words heart problems, stroke or old age on the death certificate.

Sometimes, with chilling calmness, he would then take a look around the deceased's home, admiring furnishings and china.

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He forged the will of his last victim, 81-year-old Kathleen Grundy, so he could inherit £386,000, but it was this final crime which tripped Shipman.

The alarm was raised after Grundy's daughter, a lawyer, became suspicious about her mother's will bestowing her entire estate to Shipman, and this led to his conviction in January, 2000, for murdering 15 women, crimes which he repeatedly denied.

When passing sentence on Shipman, Judge Thayne Forbes, said: "None of your victims realised yours was no healing touch."

He was given 15 life sentences and remains in prison at Frankland jail in County Durham.

But it was not a love of money or greed which had been his motive, but rather his lust for power over life and death and a desire to "play God," prosecutors said.

If the additional 297 deaths are included, the toll puts him among the world's most notorious murderers, alongside "Monster of the Andes" Pedro Armnado Lopez, who killed 300 young girls in Columbia, Peru and Ecuador before being convicted in 1980.

But it is still a long way behind the historical Transylvanian vampire Elizabeth Bathory, who between 1560 and 1615, killed around 650 girls so she could drink and bathe in their blood.

Indian killer Behram strangled at least 931 victims with his yellow and white cloth strip, or ruhmal, in the Uttar Pradesh district between 1790 and 1840.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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