Dr. Harold Shipman is one of the United Kingdom's most dangerous killers to ever live. And this is his life story. Shipman was born in England on January 14, 1946 as a middle child to a working class family. He became his mother's favorite which negatively impacted him having friends, so he grew up isolated as an adolescent. When his mother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, he willingly oversaw her care as she declined, fascinated by the positive effect that the administration of morphine had on her suffering, until she died to the disease on June 21,1963. Devastated by her death, he was determined to go to medical school, and he was admitted to Leeds University medical school for training two years later. Although he failed the …show more content…
By 1974, Shipman was a father of two and had joined a medical practice in Todmorden, Yorkshire, where he initially succeeded as a family practitioner, before allegedly becoming addicted to the painkiller Pethidine. He forged prescriptions for large amounts of the drug, and later was forced to leave the practice when caught by his medical colleagues in 1975, at which time he entered a drug rehab program. In the subsequent inquiry he received a small fine and a conviction for forgery. A few years later Shipman somehow got accepted onto the staff at Donneybrook Medical Centre in Hyde, where he proved himself as a hardworking doctor, who enjoyed the trust of patients and friends alike, although he had a reputation for ignorance amongst junior staff. He remained on staff there for almost two decades, and his behavior exposed only minor interest from other healthcare …show more content…
The investigation failed to contact the General Medical Council, or check criminal records, which would have yielded evidence of Shipman's previous record. Later, a more detailed investigation revealed that Shipman faked the medical records of his patients to represent their causes of death. Hiding behind his status as a caring, family doctor, it is almost impossible to exactly know when Shipman began killing his patients, or how many died at his hands, plus his denial of all charges did nothing to assist the authorities. However, his killing spree was brought to an end thanks to the determination of Angela Woodruff, the daughter of one of his victims, who refused to accept the explanations given for her mother's death. (Kathleen Grundy, an active, wealthy 81-year-old woman, was found dead in her home on June 24, 1998, following an earlier visit by Shipman. Woodruff was advised by Shipman that an autopsy was not required, and Kathleen Grundy was buried in her daughter's wishes.) Woodruff was luckily a lawyer that had always handled her mother's problems, so it was with some surprise that she discovered another will existed. Woodruff was convinced the document was a forgery and that Shipman had murdered her mother by forging the will to benefit from her death. She alerted the local police, where Detective