Hello everyone, I'm Wang Dali. The case I will introduce to you today is related to the profession of doctor.
When it comes to doctors, I'm sure most people will feel that this is a noble profession.
Before graduating, every medical student takes an oath to dedicate their life to serving humanity and never to use what they have learned to harm human rights and justice.
The selflessness of this profession makes us respect doctors extraordinarily. 23 years ago, it was also the attitude of the residents of the British town of Hyde to dr. Harold Shipman.
As a general practitioner, Shipman has practiced medicine in Hyde, UK, for over 20 years, with over 3,000 patients. Local residents generally trust him and like him.
(Harold Shipman Image from BBC News Network)
It wasn't until Shipman was convicted of 15 murders and a forged will that hyde residents realized that the respected doctor was a ruthless, cruel, lying serial killer.
And this white-clad demon, using the cover of his position, killed more than 200 people in a row in 28 years, the highest number of serial killers in British history.
If it weren't for a forgery case, no one knows how long Shipman would have been at large, and how many people would have been killed.
Accidental death
The town of Hyde is located 7 miles east of the city of Manchester. At the time of the 1998 incident, there were about 35,000 residents living there, and Kathleen Grundy was one of them.
(Catherine photo screenshot from the documentary "The Shipman Files")
Catherine Grande was born in 1916 as the widow of Former Hyde Mayor John Grundy. As a Conservative MP, Catherine worked for many years at City Hall and as chair of the Local Community Health Council.
When her husband died, Catherine lived alone. Her only child, Angela Woodruff, lives in Warwick, two hours' drive away.
(The Angelas are screenshot from the documentary Harold Shipman: Doctor Deadly)
In 1998, despite being 81 years old, Catherine was still energetic, sober-minded and quick-witted.
She volunteers at a charity store every week, and in addition to organizing three weekly lunch parties for the elderly in the town, and helping to prepare and distribute food.
She is energetic, loves to socialize and has almost no problems with her body. Daughter Angela described her as "more like a 60 than an 80".
On June 24, 1998, Catherine was supposed to go to the Warners Center, where the elderly gathered, as usual, to help prepare food. But colleagues waited until noon and didn't see her, and no one answered her home calls, which was never the case.
Out of concern, the two colleagues went to Catherine's house. At 11:55, when they found Catherine, she was well dressed and curled up on the couch.
Catherine looked calm, as if asleep. But her bloodless, blue face made the two colleagues realize that the energetic old lady was probably dead.
(The house where Catherine lived before her death, screenshot from the documentary "The Shipman Archives")
Catherine's colleagues informed her doctor, Harold Shipman. After examining Catherine's body, Shipman announced to her colleagues that Catherine had died of cardiac arrest.
Shipman lamented that he had seen Catherine between 8:30 a.m. and 9:00 a.m., and had a brief chat with her.
He also told Catherine's colleagues they could call hamton, the town law firm, which would take care of the next thing, and then leave the scene.
But when Catherine's colleagues contacted the firm, they denied being Catherine's surrogate and advised them to contact Catherine's relatives. Because Catherine's daughter Angela could not be contacted, colleagues had to call the police.
Two officers then conducted an inspection of Catherine's home. After finding no suspicious traces, they contacted Shipman. Shipman confirmed to them on the phone that Catherine had died of natural causes. Police then informed Angela of her mother's death.
For Angela, the news of her mother's death came particularly suddenly.
Catherine had just come to Warwick a few weeks earlier to see her and her husband, and the three of them had gone out for a walk together. When she got home, the very energetic old lady even ironed her clothes while the Angelas were sitting on the couch.
Angela couldn't understand, good manners, how could her mother suddenly die?
Driven by grief and shock, Angela and her husband drove to Hyde early the next morning, hoping to talk to Shipman.
(Screenshot of Shipman's private clinic from the documentary Shipman Archives)
When they arrived at the clinic, Shipman told them he had Katherine's death certificate ready. In the cause of death column, Shipman filled in the "advanced age" column.
Shipman advises Angela not to perform an autopsy, as the process only adds to grief and suggests that catherine's death was not as sudden as they thought, and that she had actually been feeling uncomfortable for some time.
Shipman's explanation did not convince Angela and her husband, after all, there was no direct causal relationship between old age and death. But because the police didn't find anything suspicious, they had to give up.
On July 1, 1998, grief and confusion, Angela buried her mother in the cemetery of Hyde Church.
(Hyde Church Cemetery image from the documentary Doctor Death: Harold Shipman)
will
The turn of events took place on the twelfth day after the funeral.
On this day, Angela received a phone call from hamton law firm in Hyde, where, according to whom Catherine had sent them a will and a letter of explanation.
In this will, Catherine stated that her family did not need her wealth. She wanted to leave all her possessions, money, and house to Dr. Harold Shipman to thank him for his care for her and the residents of Hyde.
Because they had never met Catherine herself, the law firm was reluctant to execute the will directly, so they contacted Angela.
Holding the phone, Angela was confused.
As a lawyer, almost all of my mother's legal documents were handled by her. No one knows better than she does that the mother made a will as early as 12 years ago, listing her only daughter Angela as the main beneficiary. If the mother wants to change her will, why doesn't she come to herself first?
What's more, Angela and her husband are not in a bad financial situation (her husband is a physics professor at the University of Warwick), and even if her mother wants to donate part of her inheritance to Dr. Shipman, this will not cause a strong conflict between mother and daughter. Why did she go out of her way to leave a will at an unfamiliar law firm?
Two days later, Angela received a copy of her will.
(Details of the Will Image from volume 1 Shipman Investigation Report)
From the photocopies, it appears that the will was printed by a typewriter. The typewriter was in such bad condition that some of the letters could not be read clearly.
In addition, there is a typo in the text. Under this will, Catherine wanted to leave her house (odd) to Dr. Shipman, but in reality, Catherine owned two properties.
Angela knew that with her mother's meticulous character, in her will she would definitely list what assets she had and how she would like to distribute them.
What's more, Catherine had worked as a secretary in her lifetime, specializing in printing documents, and she could not accept that documents were printed so badly.
The moment she saw the copy of her will, all of Angela's confusion vanished. She was sure that the will had been forged.
Although Harold Shipman was the direct beneficiary of the will, Angela and her husband did not immediately suspect him. After all, Shipman has been working in Hyde For 21 years, and he has always been remembered as a dedicated, patient-friendly doctor.
Angela and her husband felt that someone might have forged a will in order to frame Shipman.
survey
In order to find out what happened, Angela found two testament witnesses. According to Paul Spencer, he did witness a document, but he didn't know it was a will.
(Paul Spencer from the documentary Doctor Death)
He was lining up at Shipman's clinic with another woman that day. Shipman suddenly poked his head out of his office and asked them if they would do him a favor to witness a document.
Because the document was folded, Paul didn't know what he was signing, and he estimated that it was probably a routine medical document. Out of trust in Shipman, he signed.
Because he didn't see the visitors in the clinic, he wasn't sure it was Catherine who was in Shipman's office that day.
Paul also mentions that the signature on the will does not resemble his.
The words of the second witness of the testament were basically the same as Paul's. She added that the way her address was written on her will was inconsistent with the way she usually wrote it.
In addition to contacting witnesses, Angela obtained a certificate of deposit with her mother's recent signature from a bank in Hyde. Compared with the signature on the will, the signature on the certificate of deposit is much smaller.
After investigation, Angela became more convinced that her mother's will had been forged and called the police at her place of residence.
Because Catherine lived in HydeTown, the case was soon referred to the Great Manchester Police Department in charge of the Hyde Town area by the Warwickshire Police Department.
On the morning of July 31, Inspector Stan Egerton and Officer Dave O'Brien from Manchester came to Warwick from Manchester to ask Angela about the situation.
(The Ngutan policeman, who was still the inspector at the time of the crime, is from the documentary "Doctor Death")
Because Shipman was the only beneficiary of the will, and because he was likely to be the last person Catherine had ever met, Inspector Ngertan believed that Hipman was suspected of murdering Catherine.
But beyond that, another, more terrible thought hovered uncontrollably in his mind: if Shipman had actually killed Catherine, would he have killed more?
doubt
Inspector Engetan had this idea because in March the police had only quietly investigated Shipman, and the purpose of the investigation was to determine whether he had murdered his own patient.
The police investigation into Shipman was commissioned by local coroner John Pollard. In March, another doctor in Hyde, Linda Reynolds, told Polly that she suspected Shipman had been murdering his patients.
Dr. Linda thinks so because the death toll of Shipman's patients is simply too high.
In the UK, general practitioners (GPs) are eligible to issue death certificates to their patients, but this requires a second doctor to sign for review.
In addition, the general practitioner (GP) also signs the patient's cremation consent form, which also requires a second doctor to review the signature.
Because Hepman's private clinic had only one doctor, whenever a second doctor was needed to review and sign, he would always go to another clinic across the street and ask the doctor there to sign, and Dr. Linda was one of them.
(The image of the clinic opposite the Shipman Clinic is from the documentary Doctor Who Died: Harold Shipman)
At that time, Dr. Linda had just arrived in Hyde Town not long ago. During the months of her tenure, she noticed that Shipman alone signed a cremation consent form almost as many as the six doctors at their clinic combined.
In addition to Dr. Linda, the number of deaths and unusual deaths of Shipman's patients also attracted the attention of Alan Massey and his daughter, Deborah, who runs the family funeral business.
(Messi Family Funeral Company Image from the documentary Doctor Who Died: Harold Shipman)
The father and daughter found that too many of Shipman's patients died in the afternoon, dressed. Their lives are like someone suddenly pressing the pause button, and most of them are even doing other daily activities before they die.
This situation is very unusual. According to the experience of the father and daughter, most of the people who died at home have been sick for a while and died in bed, and few people who are dressed properly but die suddenly.
Suspected of Shipman's murder, Allen went straight to Shipman to question him. But Shipman took out detailed records of his condition and explained to him why the patient had died seemingly suddenly.
Deborah spoke to Linda's clinic about her concerns. Linda then vented their concerns to the local coroner in charge of Hyde Town, who commissioned the Greater Manchester Police Department to investigate Shipman.
At the time of the first investigation, police obtained medical records of patients who had died in The past 6 months.
But they never spoke to Shipman or the families of the deceased patients.
Although the mortician had the body of Shipman's patient on hand, the police did not perform an autopsy on the body.
The only thing they did was consult another hospital about the cases, and after receiving no unusual feedback, police told the coroner that Shipman was innocent.
(The first police investigation of all the files, the picture is from the documentary "Doctor Death")
They didn't even find out that Shipman actually had a criminal record!
In 1974, Shipman, who had just become an assistant general practitioner, forged many prescriptions and illegally obtained a large amount of durandine for his own use.
The following year, seeing his drug abuse effects becoming more apparent, Shipman admitted to his colleagues that he was addicted to Durandin. He was immediately expelled and sent to York for compulsory drug rehabilitation.
Shipman was also charged with falsifying medical records and illegal possession of contraband, leaving a record. However, after determining that he had successfully rehabilitated from drugs, the Medical Association did not revoke his medical qualifications.
Police acted so hastily in their first investigation, perhaps because they could not find any motive to explain why a well-respected doctor would murder his own patient.
But this time, as the sole beneficiary of the will, Shipman had a clear motive to kill — the inheritance. After talking to Angela, Detective Engetan asked Coroner Polled for an open coffin autopsy.
At 3 a.m. on August 1, 1998, police excavations at the Hyde Church cemetery began.
(Hyde Church Cemetery in Twilight Image from the documentary Shipman Archives)
But little did they know at the time that in addition to Catherine's coffin, they would dig up the largest serial killer in British history.
(Police excavation of the scene Image from the documentary Doctor Death: Harold Shipman)
evidence
On August 1, 1998, forensic pathologist John Rutherford performed an autopsy on Catherine's body at Tamside Hospital.
Soon, an autopsy ruled out all physical causes of death. Catherine's heart was not at all wrong, and the other organs were intact.
Meanwhile, tissue samples of the remains were sent to the North West Forensic Laboratory in Lancashire. Because the police could not provide any clues to the forensic doctor in charge of testing the samples, the test took a while.
On the same day, in addition to an autopsy on Catherine, police searched Shipman's private clinic and his home.
At Shipman's private clinic, police found a Brother portable typewriter. The typewriter was submitted by Shipman on his own initiative. He told police that Catherine would occasionally borrow the typewriter.
(Typewriter of the same model, image from Getty Images)
After forensic document identification experts, the will and explanatory letter are printed on this typewriter. Experts also affirm that the signature on the will was forged.
In addition, the police also found a half-cut fingerprint of The little finger of Shipman's left hand on the will. But no fingerprints of Catherine and the two witnesses were found on the will.
On the other hand, according to the recollections of the police officers who went to Search Shipman's house, Shipman's house was very dirty and smelly.
(Shipman's home in Hyde, image from BBC News Network)
In the garage of Shipman's house, police found a large amount of jewelry that clearly did not belong to Mrs. Shipman (Mrs. Shipman was very fat, and many of the rings were significantly too small in size for her). Some of them, while not invaluable, certainly have special significance for the holder.
Police also found a staggering number of patient records at Shipman's home. The cases were very messy, some were stuffed in a briefcase in the garage, and the rest were packed in a large box.
The police commissioned a senior nurse to classify and identify the notes, and found Catherine's case.
In Catherine's case, Shipman recorded his suspicions of Catherine's drug use, and the case also recorded some sequelae of drug use.
In 1996, Shipman wrote that Catherine had gastrointestinal discomfort, as well as miosis. In 1997, he wrote, "At this age, I still take drugs!" I don't know if I should give her a blood pressure and a urine test. “
After the identification of document experts, this part of the content belongs to the additional additions later, and is not written at the same time as the original content of the page.
In addition, John Ashley, a police computer expert, also downloaded the background records of the computer and the electronic medical records of Shipman's patients from Shipman's computer.
(Shipman's patient's office photo from BBC News Network)
By comparing the two, Ashley found that Shipman had repeatedly revised patients' medical records shortly after their deaths, inserting symptoms and physical problems that had never existed before at some point in the past.
Computer records show that after Catherine's death, Shipman similarly modified her case. He added 4 new records, two of which suggested catherine abusing drugs.
14 days after the police opened the coffin for an autopsy, the forensic doctor detected that Catherine's body contained opioids. On Aug. 28, forensic doctor Julie Evans notified police that they had detected a lethal amount of morphine in Catherine's body.
Based on morphine dosage, the forensic doctor speculated that Catherine would have died within about 3 hours.
Because opioids are not naturally broken down by the human body, if Catherine had really been in drug use before she died, as Hipperman suspected, morphine should have been detectable in her hair.
After a test of Catherine's hair, the medical examiner determined that Catherine had not abused drugs before her death.
In addition, Catherine's neighbors told police that Catherine had told her a day before her death that Dr. Shipman had made an appointment with her and would go to her house the next morning to draw her blood.
On the day of the crime, Shipman told Catherine's colleagues that he had seen Catherine during the crime time, which means that Shipman was probably the last person to see Catherine alive.
Based on the evidence available, police speculate that Shipman forged a will and used Catherine's trust in doctors to kill her on the morning of the 24th by injecting her with a lethal amount of morphine.
Because Catherine's body had begun to decompose at the time of the autopsy, the forensic doctor failed to find needle holes on the body left by blood drawn or injection, nor could the capillary stasis traces caused by injection in the body.
arrest
Although police had sufficient evidence to arrest Shipman on August 28, because Shipman had a large number of patients, police gave him time to hand over to other doctors while being confident that he would not pose a further threat to the community. They informed Shipman in advance of the date of his arrest.
On September 7, Shipman, accompanied by a lawyer, walked into the police station and accepted arrest.
(The reporter who rushed to take pictures outside the police station before Shipman entered the police station impatiently opened his arms Image from BBC News Network)
The police then interrogated Shipman, hoping that he would voluntarily confess guilt and confess his modus operandi, process, and motives.
During the first interrogation, although Shipman was contemptuous, the good guys would also respond to police questions.
When police told Shipman during the second interrogation that they had evidence that he had modified Catherine's electronic medical records, Shipman suddenly fell silent. He expressed to his lawyer that he wished to suspend the trial.
After returning to his cell, Shipman collapsed. In the ensuing interrogation, he sat with his hands in his hands and his back to the police with his eyes closed. He refused to answer all questions from the police and to look at the photographs shown to him by the police.
(Shipman refused to cooperate with the interrogation, image from Manchester Evening News Network)
More autopsies
On August 19, while police were still waiting for the results of a poison test on Catherine's tissue sample, the media reported on the case that was still under investigation.
(The news report at the time is from the documentary "The Shipman Archives")
The report caused an uproar in the local area. Many found that the deaths of their relatives, friends, and neighbors were almost identical to Catherine's.
They all died suddenly at home dressed, looking calm, and the last person to see or find the body before they died was Shipman.
Soon, calls from all directions poured into the police station. According to the head of the police media, the police station received about 300 calls a day.
The police glued the names, home addresses, and other information of these possible victims to a large whiteboard. In the blink of an eye, the first whiteboard was full. Then there was the second, the third, the fourth, until the police had to move to their biggest major investigation room.
Even if the scope of the investigation is narrowed down to patients who have died within a year, there are still too many cases to be investigated. To screen for the first-looking subjects, Superintendent Bernard Postles, who directs the investigation, created a scorecard.
The table has a total of five items, with a maximum score of five, and cases with five points will be prioritized for investigation. The contents of the table are as follows:
1. Was the body buried or cremated? (One point of burial)
2. Does the circumstances of the death arouse suspicion among the family? (One point for doubt)
3. Are the police suspicious of the case? For example, are medical records reasonable, and are there financial losses at the scene of the crime? (One point for doubt)
4. Have medical records been modified after the patient's death? (One point for doubt)
5. Give an extra point to all 4-point cases and give priority to investigating the case.
Over the next 4 months, based on the screening of this table, the police dug up 8 bodies in a row, and the victims were all elderly women. After forensic testing, they all had lethal amounts of morphine in their bodies, and they had no history of morphine abuse during their lifetime.
In addition, by collecting peripheral evidence, such as neighboring eyewitness testimony, altered electronic cases, or falsified medical records, the police concluded that 6 cremated victims also died of murder. These victims are also women.
Based on the results of the autopsy, the police deduced that Shipman was a serial killer whose modus operandi was to inject the victim with a lethal amount of morphine into the victim's home or in his clinic.
Shipman had almost everything a serial killer wanted: he had a good reputation as a cover, unsuspecting access to the murder scene, reasonable access to the murder weapon, signing the victim's death certificate, and someone to help him dispose of the victim's body.
trial
On October 5, 1999, Shipman was charged with murdering 15 victims, with forging Catherine Grande's will. Seapman, who refuses to admit guilty of these crimes, argues that Catherine has been abusing drugs but cannot explain why morphine was also detected in the other 15 patients.
On January 31, 2000, the judge pronounced convictions on all 15 counts. Shipman was sentenced to 15 life sentences and 1 to 4 years in prison. The judge advised the Home Secretary to let Shipman spend the rest of his life in prison (at the time the Home Secretary also had the power to decide on the minimum length of time a convict sentenced to life in prison would have to serve).
(Shipman and the 15 victims, image from Thames's view)
In 2001, a year after Shipman's sentencing, the British government commissioned a High Court judge, Janet Smith, to conduct a thorough investigation into Shipman's crimes.
In the first phase of the investigation report released in 2002, Judge Smith judged that there was clear evidence that Shipman had murdered at least 215 patients. She suspects that the Shipman case actually killed 260 people, but there is not enough evidence to prove that the other 45 deaths were also murders.
Of the 215 identified victims, more than 80 per cent were elderly women living alone, including healthy elderly people, and the youngest victim was a 41-year-old man.
Judge Smith suspected that Shipman had already started killing people when he first became an assistant general practitioner at the age of 28. By 1977, after he joined Donnie Bullock Medical Center in Hydetown, Shipman's murders began to become more and more systematic.
In his first few years on the job, Shipman was still groping for the dose of morphine needed to kill people. By 1984, he would murder 8 to 12 people a year.
In the 15 years from joining Johnny Brook Medical Center in Hyde Town to announcing his going it alone in 1992, Shipman murdered 71 people and 30 more suspicious cases.
During the year he waited from 1992 to 1993 for his clinic to open, Shipman suspended murder. But he wasn't idle. Taking advantage of this time, he quietly amassed a large amount of morphine—enough to kill 700 people.
Some of these morphines were recycled from the homes of deceased cancer patients, some were prescribed in the name of the patient, or some were collected from the pharmacy in the name of the patient after the patient's death.
By 1993, when Shipman moved into his own private clinic, his murders began to become unbridled. In just 6 years, Shipman murdered 144 people.
In the early morning of January 13, 2004, four years after his imprisonment, Shipman hanged himself in prison. With Shipman's death, no one knows exactly how many people died in his murder.
disguise?
Shipman's murder count was frighteningly high, with nearly 30 percent of all his patients who died. In the year of his arrest, only 3 of the 18 patients died of natural causes.
(Shipman's march 1998 crime date)
The mortality rate of patients is so high, Shipman's behavior should have aroused everyone's suspicions long ago.
In fact, two years before the crime, Shipman's nickname of "Doctor Death" had already spread among the elderly women of Hyde.
But why has almost no one suspected Shipman except for a small number of professionals?
Even before Shipman was arrested but not even before he was tried, many residents sent flowers and cards to his clinic to encourage him, including unsuspecting families of victims.
An important reason, I think, is probably because Shipman looks so much like a good doctor who cares about his patients.
To clarify Shipman's disguise, I'm going to give you a little bit of knowledge. Unlike the domestic "go to the hospital - registered - see the doctor" process, except for the emergency department, it is not possible to go directly to the hospital in the UK (except for private hospitals with expensive fees).
Residents need to register with a general practitioner (GP) in charge of their area to become a patient under his/her management before making an appointment with a general practitioner. Because GPs are divided by blocks, families often register with the same doctor.
In the UK, all people who want to see a doctor must first make an appointment with their GP. Only after he/she is unable to handle the patient's condition will the patient be referred to the hospital or referred to a specialist.
As a result, the number of GPs in the UK has been strained. In addition to the long queues of general practitioners, the time for general practitioners to consult patients is also quite short, and the average number of minutes at that time is 6 minutes.
Most GP-patient relationships are like machines and products on an industrial assembly line: I don't care about you per se, I'm only responsible for judging if something is wrong with your body and fixing you. If I don't feel necessary, I don't even need to listen to what you want to say.
At Shipman's clinic, the opposite is true.
Shipman is happy to take the time to chat with patients. He would patiently listen to patients talk about their concerns, their symptoms, and never urge them. This makes the patient feel valued and feel that Shipman really cares about them.
He would also pull out medical manuals and patiently explain to them what their problems were and what caused them.
In addition, he always made small talk with patients, asking them how their holidays were going, whether their work was going well, or mentioning what happened to them last time they were sick. He will try to make these conversations appear sincere, not just perfunctory.
If the patient feels particularly uncomfortable, Shipman will also squeeze out extra time outside of the appointment to see them. Whenever there is a need, he will go to work on Saturdays and even Sundays. Most GPs only work on weekdays and only receive patients who have appointments.
For elderly patients, Shipman also offers on-call services that allow them to see a doctor at home. But other GPs will basically ask patients to go to the clinic. Shipman is therefore very popular with the elderly.
For patients with chronic diseases, Shipman will often remind them to review. If the patient cannot come to the clinic, or if the patient is old, he will arrange a time to go to the patient's home regularly to measure their blood pressure and draw blood.
When passing through the area where the patient lives, Shipman will visit his patients without an appointment to see how they are doing and if everything is normal (although this was not uncommon in the 80s and 90s). ）
In addition to this, Shipman does a lot of extra things to make patients feel that he cares about them. For example, After someone dies, Shipman will go to see how other family members are doing to make sure they are okay.
Shipman almost created the image of a perfect doctor in Hyde. On the surface, he cares about patients, is dedicated, and has a gentle and humorous attitude, not to mention his actual level of medical care.
On top of that, Shipman's personal life also seemed normal. He and his wife, who have four children, are supporters of a local rugby club and usually walk around with their neighbors.
(A group photo of Shipman and his family, image from Jingjing News Network)
Who would have thought that such a seemingly normal model doctor would also be a serial killer who murders patients?
Because the exemplary doctor Shipman was so good that even after his criminal facts shattered the trust of the residents of Hyde, many people could not regard him as a beast in human skin.
Victim Jack Jack Shelmerdine's son, Jack The Younger Semolding is one of them.
(Semolding, a family member of the victim, is from the documentary Harold Shipman: The Deadly Physician)
He once revealed in the documentary Harold Shipman: The Fatal Doctor, and although he also understands that the logic of thinking like this is very problematic, emotionally, he still has an uncontrollable feeling that Shipman is a good doctor.
And this contradiction is the most thought-provoking part of this case: what makes a seemingly perfect doctor the most notorious serial killer in British history? And his seemingly paid for the patient's behavior, is it out of truth, or is it to facilitate the cover-up of his crime?
Below I will present the hidden face of Dr. Shipman under the mask of Good Doctor Anderson, as well as an analysis of his possible motives for killing.
(Shipman photo from the Sun website)
Narcissistic personality disorder
While Shipman was popular with most hyde residents, not everyone liked him. These people who hated him sketched an image that was very different from the perfect doctor.
He is arrogant, conceited, and can hurt others at will in order to make a splash.
While there is no definitive diagnosis, many psychologists suspect that Shipman has narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), which usually has the following characteristics:
If you think you are superior, you will exaggerate your achievements or efforts.
On the basis of a complete departure from the objective situation, believe that you have certain advantages, such as thinking that you are the smartest/most attractive/successful person you know.
They think that they are superior to others, and they are only willing to communicate with people who match their status.
Desperate for praise, need a lot of praise.
There is a sense of entitlement that they are entitled to let others serve them, that they should serve themselves.
Exploit others at will for their own purposes, such as manipulating others.
Lack of empathy, can understand and understand the feelings of others, but can not empathize.
Be jealous of others, or think that others are jealous of themselves.
There are other arrogant or conceited behaviors. For example, belittling others at will, interrupting conversations at will, and not missing any opportunity to make a splash.
Hidden behind the self-righteous and conceited appearances of people with narcissistic personality disorder is a long-term low sense of self-worth and persistent doubts about self-worth.
They are particularly sensitive to criticism and the shame that comes with it. But in the face of other people's "offense", narcissistic personalities are usually not as irritable and irritable as antisocial personalities, and they are more likely to show contempt, arrogance, and appear very indifferent.
Many of Shipman's behaviors made him feel like he had narcissistic personality disorder.
Shipman would often interrupt other doctors during their speeches, challenge their views, and debate with them. （9）
He especially likes to harass medical representatives at drug introduction meetings.
Once the medical representatives were not so skilled in the business, Shipman would begin to scornfully ridicule and ridicule them. He once cried in public about a girl who had just started working. （3、7、9）
Many of the patient's families reported that when Shipman's patient died, Shipman's compassion and kindness seemed to disappear suddenly. His actions were sometimes shockingly cruel.
For example, he once murdered a patient in his own clinic and informed his wife's family that she was "not in good shape."
When the patient's family asked Shipman what was wrong with his wife, Shipman actually said, "How bad do you want to be?" Unless the mortician carried her out, she wouldn't go out on her own. ” （7）
I would like to add here that Dr. Todd Grande once listed several ways of thinking that people with narcissistic personality disorder may have.
One is that they irrationally think that other people should automatically understand what they mean and understand their needs, and when others fail to understand, they will feel offended.
From this point of view, Shipman's cruel way of expressing it may be his reaction to the anger of the patient's family's "dullness".
(Shipman's operating room image from Telecom News Network) (Shipman's operating room image from Telecom News Network)
Shipman also often exaggerated the patients' symptoms and their problems, then claimed to have cured them. （1）
In addition, he once boasted to the media that his clinic was doing a very good job of preventing accidental deaths caused by chronic heart disease. （1、2）
Shipman enjoys his stardom treatment in Hyde Town (4)
In his police investigation and interrogation, Shipman treated the officers at the grass-roots level with great arrogance, contempt and self-righteousness. He felt that only inspectors and important police figures were worthy of interrogating him. In order to provoke Shipman, the police deliberately selected two young policemen during the interrogation. （3、9）
As mentioned earlier, people with narcissistic personality disorder can be very arrogant in the face of criticism or accusation. Shipman's attitude toward the police looks very much like a self-defensive approach for people with narcissistic personality disorder in the face of blame.
Doctors are a dedicated profession, but for Shipman, who has narcissistic personality disorder, the motivation for his behavior is probably more to meet his own needs.
In order to get the praise of his patients, Shipman pretended to care about them. He pretended to be their friend besides their doctor.
But as soon as he found the patient annoying, such as mental illness or emotional problems, he would kill them.
After one of his patients became very depressed because of widowhood, Shipman once told her son that if she (the patient) needed it, he would always be there. But three weeks later, fed up with her constant frustration, Shipman killed her.
In addition to this, he will get rid of patients who do not heed his advice. He would kill the relatively healthy couple so that their sick partner would have to be admitted to a nursing home as he had hoped.
Perhaps in Shipman's eyes, the whole value of his patients lies in providing him with the praise and gratitude that he depends on for his survival.
He took care of them like a herding animal. Once their praise and gratitude meant that he needed to expend extra energy, the patient was not far from death.
As for his looks like he's going to facilitate home visits to serve patients? It was just a cover for his crime: to allow himself to come and go as he pleased with his patients' homes and not to be suspected.
According to statistics, Shipman's chances of appearing at the scene of a patient's death are 25 times higher than other doctors.
There may be another reason why Shipman is happy to go to the doctor: the visit helps him collect the controlled items he needs to kill. When cancer patients die, Shipman collects their leftover morphine from their homes and stores them for use in killing people.
(Medical Morphine Appearance Image from Manchester Evening News Network) (Medical Morphine Appearance Image from Manchester Evening News Network)
But Shipman didn't just collect morphine, he would prescribe large amounts of morphine to dying patients and kill them to get the rest of the dose.
From Shipman's behavior, in addition to having narcissistic personality disorder, he also seems to be psychopathic, more accurately like a type of primary psychopath.
He is cruel and cold-blooded, manipulative, free to hurt others in order to achieve his own ends, and lacks guilt, regret, or compassion.
I think you already have an answer to whether Shipman cares about his patients. If it is necessary to say that Shipman cares about his patients, his so-called concern is nothing more than a mood of reviewing the inventory and inspecting his own goods.
He picked up these cheap praise-making machines from the shelf and listened to their voices of "thank you," "You're so nice," and "Thank you so much," while reveling in his self-illusion—"I'm the best doctor in Hydetown."
Early experience
There is not much information on Shipman's early life on the Internet, but from this limited information, we may be able to glimpse why he may have narcissistic personality disorder.
Born into an ordinary working family in Nottingham, England in 1946, Shipman was the second of three children.
(Shipman's childhood photo credit BBC News Network)
Shipman's father was a truck driver and his mother was a housewife. Shipman's parents had a terrible relationship, his mother was very self-motivated, and his father was happy to be an ordinary worker.
Because Shipman was very smart and had very good grades at an early age, his mother transferred all her hopes of success to him.
Of her three children, she favored Shipman the most, always instilling in him the idea that he was superior and different.
In addition, Shipman's mother would control his relationships, allowing Himman to associate only with the friends she identified with.
According to some sources, Shipman's relationship with his mother was too close. The two men are inseparable. Shipman is said to have slept with his mother after entering puberty at the age of 13.
But for his father, Shipman had little affection, and when his father died, Shipman did not even attend his funeral.
According to the recollections of Shipman's high school classmates, Shipman was an introvert and a serious learner. In addition to this, he is also the vice captain of the rugby team and plays very hard.
(Shipman high school graduation photo picture from the serial killer information network)
Although Shipman did not have a deep friendship with the other players and had no friends, his classmates respected him.
This relationship accompanied Shipman throughout his life. In Hyde, Shipman was equally respected, but also had few close friends.
When Shipman was 15 years old, his mother developed lung cancer, and Shipman took on the responsibility of caring for her mother.
At the end of the cancer, nurses came to Shipman's house twice a day in the morning and evening to inject morphine into his mother to relieve the pain, and Shipman was present.
When Shipman was 17, his mother died. On the night of his mother's death, Shipman ran all night in the heavy rain.
But during Shipman's time at school, he never told any of his classmates that his mother had cancer.
On the Monday after his mother's death, when a classmate asked him how he was doing over the weekend, he only said it lightly: My mother has died.
But the impact of his mother's death on Shipman was undoubtedly enormous. Two years after his mother's death, Shipman was admitted to the University of Leeds Medical School, and until then he had never shown any interest in medicine.
From Shipman's early life, we can see many factors that lead to the formation of narcissistic personality disorder.
For example, narcissistic personality disorder is greatly affected by heredity (according to the study, this probability is between 40% and 65%), while Shipman's mother seems to be a narcissistic personality.
In addition to this, excessive praise for children's abilities or appearance, repeated emphasis on achievement and status, and lack of empathy with parents can also lead to the formation of narcissistic personality disorder, and Shipman's mother's behavior almost fits all of these descriptions.
Most patients with narcissistic personality disorder do not recognize and understand their emotions well, let alone express them. Judging by Shipman's reaction to his mother's death, perhaps he had a tendency to have narcissistic personality disorder at a very young age and was plagued by this problem.
motivation
In the first volume of Shipman's investigative report, Judge Smith also explored what Shipman's motives were as a serial killer, and why he forged Catherine's will. But because of the limited information, criminal psychologists cannot come up with a professional opinion.
In this section, I'll start by showing you 1000s of Shipman's possible motives as a serial killer, and only by understanding Shipman's inner world can we better judge which of his motives for forging his will is the most credible.
There are three main speculations on the Internet about Shipman's motives for murder, but due to the lack of information, most of them are very brief. In the following speculative part, I will combine my own views and the information I have gathered to try to present a more complete explanation for you.
According to the first view online, the reason for Shipman's murder was to ease the financial burden of state health care.
I find this explanation very unconvincing.
Although from Shipman's words and deeds, this explanation is not completely unfounded, for example, most of Shipman's patients are elderly people who no longer create economic value.
He also cruelly joked with a patient that if his grandparents were animals, he would take them to euthanasia.
But if Shipman really decided to murder patients for such rational reasons, he would have targeted, and only, those who "wasted" medical resources. Examples include diagnosed patients with advanced cancer (regardless of age), or all older people (regardless of gender).
But the reality is that most of Shipman's victims are healthy elderly people living alone, and 80% of his victims are women.
(Shipman and 15 female victims image from Thames' point of view)
In addition, as a doctor, Shipman had no need to choose morphine, such an easily detectable drug as his own murder weapon.
And, starting from the point that Shipman reproduces the scene of his mother's death over and over again, I think That Shipman's murder should have been motivated by a more personal motive.
Motivation 2: Jealousy
According to the second theory, Shipman's motive for killing was jealousy.
From Shipman's early experience, we can see that Shipman was close to his mother, and the loss of his mother caused him great pain.
As a result, Shipman is jealous that other people's mothers can live longer than their own and remain healthy even at a very old age.
This jealousy brought a sense of extreme imbalance and pain to Shipman, so he copied the death scene of his mother in these old people, hoping to kill them so that the children of these old people would also taste the loss of their mothers and get pleasure from them.
And from the point of view that most of Shipman's victims are elderly people living alone, perhaps in addition to jealousy, Shipman's murder is a malicious, self-righteous act of punishment.
Perhaps Shipman felt that the mother he had cared for so much and still lost her, in contrast to him, the children who left the mother alone did not care enough for their mother, and therefore did not deserve a healthy mother.
(Victims of the Shipman case)
The second interpretation is clearly more convincing than the first.
This motivation, in addition to matching the psychological characteristics of people with narcissistic personality disorder, easy jealousy, lack of empathy, and having a sense of entitlement (entitled to punish them), also explains why Shipman chose morphine as his weapon.
But while 80 percent of Shipman's victims were women, he killed more than 40 men. So I don't think jealousy was Shipman's only motivation.
Motivation 3: Enhance self-worth
In addition to jealousy, there is another interpretation of Shipman's motives.
According to the third interpretation, Shipman killed his own patients because the process satisfied his fantasies about self-worth.
According to this interpretation, controlling the life and death of the patient gives the pretentious Shipman a sense of superiority over worldly life.
It's up to him to decide who will die, when they'll die, and where they'll die. And in the process, he experienced a God-like, omnipotent sense of success.
Meanwhile, after the patient's death, Shipman is often seen as an authority. He would direct others to tell them what to do next, and the family would rely on him to explain the cause of death.
This further satisfies his fantasy of the self: feeling that he is the most special and important.
Following the third line of thought, Shipman's murder is more like an extreme extraction of patient value.
Usually, they are the ones he creates "cheap" praise, but when this ordinary praise does not satisfy his extremely inflated ego, he uses this destructive means to squeeze out a huge value from the patient at one time and then discard it.
According to this interpretation, Shipman's act of taking the patient's life has the same root cause as his desire for praise and his arrogant attitude: both in order to maintain his inflated and fragile sense of self-worth.
Motivation 4: Death anxiety
In addition to the above three speculations about Shipman's motives, it seems to me that Shipman's murder may also be a means of resolving death anxiety.
Wapi once wrote an article about why some people treat their peers cruelly. One such argument is that abuse may be a means for such people to manage their fear of death. Friends who are interested in the article can poke here. (Essay |.) Why are some people so cruel to their kind? ）
In this article, Wapi talks about the process by which these people abuse their peers and the process by which they construct power structures. In the process, they develop the illusion that they are omnipotent, even beyond the human species, beyond death.
Shipman's murder apparently recreates his mother's death over and over again. This behavior is easily reminiscent of the psychological phenomenon of "compulsive repetition".
Patients with repetitive compulsions will revisit some traumatic experience or experience repeatedly, or deliberately put themselves in the same situation.
Perhaps watching her mother die of cancer caused 17-year-old Shipman a strong sense of helplessness and fear of death.
From these two points, we may understand Shipman's motive for murder: Shipman's repeated reproduction of his mother's death scene is a kind of catharsis of death anxiety. He tried to create a sense of control over death for himself by controlling the life and death of the patient, thus dissolving his anxiety about death.
Motives for forging wills
If it weren't for the forgery of Catherine's will, no one knows how long Shipman would have gone unpunished.
On the face of it, Shipman's purpose in forging Catherine's will appears to be to seize her property. But if that were the case, at Shipman's intelligence, his method of forging the will would be too bad and clumsy.
Thus, in the first phase of Shipman's investigation report, Judge Smith ruled out the possibility that Shipman was murdered for money. She thought how could Shipman believe that such a fake will would accomplish his purpose unless he had lost his mind.
But Judge Smith also failed to find a reasonable motive to explain why Shipman forged the will. In the end, she tended to conclude that, perhaps subconsciously, Shipman wanted someone to stop his murder.
Here, I have a slightly different view from Judge Smith.
I think that Shipman's clumsy, crude means of falsification do not prove that money is not necessarily his target, and it may also be that After a series of murders have been committed without being discovered, Shipman's mind has entered a state of disorder.
This state of mind does not mean that we cannot complete daily social interactions and cannot carry out complex reasoning, it only affects our ability to objectively evaluate problems.
In fact, in daily life, I think everyone has more or less fallen into this state. For example, I fell into extreme anxiety because of a problem that seemed very small in hindsight. When I woke up the next morning, I didn't understand why I was so worried last night.
In this state, although we seem to be normal, we may do some completely irrational behavior because of emotions.
It seems to me that After committing more than 200 murders and repeatedly experiencing the illusion of omnipotence, Shipman may have fallen into such a semi-aberrant state of mind and lost the ability to objectively evaluate things.
Beyond that, there are two other things that might underpin my speculation that Shipman was murdering Catherine for money.
First, according to the first volume of the Shipman Survey Report, Shipman is very eager to upgrade the equipment of his own private clinic.
Before the crime, Shipman's private clinic was comparable to a small hospital, far beyond the average general practitioner's office.
But that didn't satisfy Shipman, who set up a donation box to encourage patients to donate to him to upgrade his office further.
In addition, he posted a notice in the clinic encouraging patients to leave a small inheritance for his office in their will.
Second, Shipman murdered a patient after he learned that she had left him an inheritance.
Of Shipman's more than 3,000 patients, Bianka Pomfret made a will on impulse to donate all of her estate to Shipman.
Bianca was born in Germany and has a child with her ex-husband. In the late 1970s, Bianca was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. In addition to taking medication, she would meet with Shipman once a week to chat with him and talk about her troubles.
According to Bianca's ex-husband, Shipman is an important spiritual pillar of Bianca.
Perhaps because of this, Bianca made a will, leaving most of her possessions to Shipman (in addition to this, she also left a small sum of money to thank her psychiatrist).
Shipman killed her in December 1997, six months before the crime.
Unbeknownst to Him, just two weeks before he murdered her, the patient, persuaded by her ex-husband, changed his will and gave up leaving all his estate to Shipman and instead left it to her children.
Based on these two pieces of information, I think That Shipman had a motive for murdering Catherine for the sake of his legacy, precisely to upgrade his already "heavily armed" clinic. And if that's true, Catherine is almost a perfect target.
She is old, solitary and, above all, wealthy, and Hyde is not a wealthy town, where most of the local population is working-class.
I mentioned earlier that every medical student takes a collective oath before graduation, promising to dedicate himself to humanity, to exercise his profession with his conscience and dignity, and not to use his knowledge to harm human rights and justice.
Shipman's actions betrayed and trampled on every word of this oath.
(Shipman graduation photo)
On the surface, Shipman is polite, gentle, and talented, but his behavior has long since transcended the limits of what distortion and madness can describe.
If The Shipman case gives us any hints, it means to me that madness doesn't always come with logical confusion or misbehaving.
As a state of mind, it can quietly parasitize all seemingly normal people.
Copyright Notice
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author
The pictures are from the Internet, if there is any infringement, please contact to delete
The text copyright belongs to Myrrh Gardens and the creators
Please contact us for reprints or quotations