Harold Shipman (Part 2)

hey weirdos i'm ash and i'm elena and this is morbid this is morbid 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 because last time it was november but halloween hadn't happened yet exactly i hope you guys all had a good halloween like we really actually did yeah it was actually a nice halloween and i hope today everybody went out and voted yes 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 because it's part two and i want to know what the fuck is up 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 he's 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 uh 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 brook 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 and dr jeremy there was one of the partners at brook 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 jeremy's i literally have that's my job sorry jeremy's sorry good jeremy's sorry sorry good sorry me's sorry me's all that to say sorry me's sorry me's 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 deal like kind of like pet her concerns a little bit trying to rationalize things come 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 the 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 colleagues practices he was not a doctor he was not a doctor he was not a doctor he was not a doctor he was not a doctor he was not a doctor he was not a doctor he was not a doctor he was not a doctor it could have backfired that's tough they were up against a lot here 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 brave they put it all on the line here like in every sense of the phrase yeah years later when the crown launched an inquiry into the systems that allowed shipman the crown the crown just like the crown like i literally picture a crown launching an investigation a crown being like time to investigate 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 great 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 brook 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 a head and dr jeremy said they were almost hinting that she had a similar problem with dr shipman fuck off with that these fuck off with that sex 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 high many of the investigators knew and revered fred shipman uh-huh uh ann 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 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 they didn't investigate the local police might not have taken dr reynolds concerns seriously but as it turned out the doctors at brook surgery weren't the only ones who had started to become suspicious 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 i'm just gonna drive a cab drive a cab just one cab 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 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 yeah uh he said all my customers i classed as friends oh 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 is an empath 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 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 and he's a police officer and he's a police officer and he's 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 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 men 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 a very dark, very nefarious secret. 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. 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 and an 80 year old body. 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 safe. 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. 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. It 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. 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 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, arrest, but she had no history of heart disease. 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. 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. The lawn was perfectly mowed and there was no medications. She was on no medication. No medications. 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 and hide that she didn't know. Okay. The man said that he didn't know her 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. 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 day, 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. Also, like, are you completely dumb at this point? Like, you lost your mind to that level that you thought you were going to get away with that? She has a daughter. She has friends. She has family. And she's going to leave everything to her doctor. And you already know people are suspicious of you, babe. Yeah, that's. I'm like. Are you serious? Yeah. That's not walking a fine line. That's. Yeah. 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. Yes. 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 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. Did she make an appointment? She asked that body be exhumed and subjected to a postmortem examination. Okay. She said, let's go. And you have to point out, too, like, the heartache that would come along with already having buried your parent. How traumatic that would be. To dig them up. And now you're digging them back up. And then have them go through an autopsy when you don't necessarily, that isn't necessarily what you wanted. That is so traumatic. Yeah. 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? 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 accusations. I mean, you know, what are you going to say? When you don't have the knowledge and the background in something, especially medicine, is so complex. Yep. And it's like, 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, if you get a good doctor, which a lot of doctors are great, they're going to be like, you know what, I understand that you want to know more about this or that you're confused. But sometimes they'll just write you off. But sometimes they can be, like, real shitty sometimes. Yeah. So if you get the wrong one, that's like, you idiot. Having a bad day or something. Like, how dare you? Yeah. Yeah. But Angela was a highly respected professional in her own right and a lawyer at that. 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 lady. I'm like, 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 going to do it, too. Yeah. And he cared about, you know, he cared about Kathleen. Yeah. Now, Fred Shipman had already avoided captioning. Yeah. Yeah. Now, 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 that had he not changed his routine, he probably would have kept going on killing for a long time. 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. He altered Kathleen's medical records to indicate that, quote, she was overdosing on codeine, which might have made sense if the 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 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 say so but after hearing what john shaw had to say investigators began to wonder whether uh there might be some more names did investigators begin to investigate they actually were like hmm maybe there could be more to this maybe we should have done something 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 this early in the investigation detective superintendent bernard postles said i can confirm an investigation is being undertaken into the circumstances surrounding miss 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 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 and 49 year old bianca palm freight 49 following the arraignment bernard postles gave a statement to the press indicating that the greater manchester police expected the quote a quote lengthy inquiry with many difficult areas of investigation although the investigation appeared to be moving along it was like relatively easy to get to the bottom of the investigation relatively slow because of the sensitive nature of the accusations 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 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 father dennis marr told reporters that the exhumations were not lost on orders 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 and closing that coffin lid and saying goodbye 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 the 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 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 but there were more discoveries that were going to come 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 nuttle 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 information about the victims or we continue digging into his patient files detective superintendent postles 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 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 is 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 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 open statement yeah for real among other things he walked through the evidence showing how he 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 post-mortem examinations he said of course from dr shipman's perspective it was imperative in each case that he avoid a post-mortem 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 and he said no he said no he said no 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 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 then he just didn't give had the gall to just be like yep is what it is bye whoops when hadfield expressed 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 to her friend 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 able to get out of the 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 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 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 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 case up so they were able to get away with it and they were able to get their theories up 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 that's like the worst defense i've ever heard yeah winter said bianca pomfret and mill 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 literally said don't worry about it change your records don't worry about it like you could you can maybe update them with new information yeah 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 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 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 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 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 argument is that shipman was testifying in court 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 the 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 and with his summation and guidance imparted to the jury they were dismissed for deliberation okay they deliberated for 34 hours before emerging to find shipman guilty on all 15 murders wow and the forgery of kathleen garundy'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 yeah like how do i get out of this how did i get myself into that like you know because 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 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 in sentence the prosecution had prepared files on 23 other victims whose cases weren't seen as strong enough to bring to trial that's always so frustrating 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 which 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 he was a doctor i mean he was a doctor imagine like people are already afraid of dentists and doctors in general just 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 you're supposed to trust that your doctor is going to do the best 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 death to the police her fucking suspicion to the coroner but nothing had been done yikes you know linda's sitting there like told you 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 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 fraught to have been fraudulently altered by dr reynolds 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 what's crazy there was plenty of evidence is they had a butt ton of evidence 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 health care system that though not responsible for the death of dr reynolds 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 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 yeah we should all know what's going to 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 the families didn't quit 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 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 93 93 years old and this motherfucker is what takes you out yeah that is 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 which would prevent like any unauthorized revisions 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 not patients 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 shipment case made people more uncomfortable about the control doctors can have over the end of someone's life the release of the shipment 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 the report said that the shipman's case was a more genuine sense of justice 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 and 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 shipment case bernard postle 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 it was so many of his medical files and patient information having been altered or destroyed any chance of identifying additional shipment victims may have died with him that's awful and that is the shipment case it's it's hard to imagine that he would have given anybody anything i know it was after years of sitting in prison you know but i hate that there isn't a chance he just seems like such a jackass he is but you know prison can be a thing i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know can break up. break a fucker so it's true it's a it's a horrifying case 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 i'm just playing god i think just playing god that's it and using just like a weird like and using such a position of where you have people in such a vulnerable state people just surrender to a doctor you know like when you're sick or something's good you just surrender to you surrender yourself to a doctor when it's just such an 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 do you know what i mean yeah it's almost such a passive way to kill someone yeah do you know what i mean yeah exactly it's it's strange 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 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 fred chipman i do too rest in distress yeah the fact that you fucker yeah it pisses me off that you didn't have to rot in jail no pissed yeah do you have a fun fact people believe that a radio station in russia russia is haunted shut 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 i would like to look further into that so that's my fucked weird fact that we will be looking for an episode on that is so fun that's a fucked up fun but also like where is it a fun fucked fact i don't like it but i love it i love it i want to know more oh i can't wait to go down there yeah we're gonna go down that one all right well you guys we love you we hope you came listening and we hope you keep it 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 you you you you you you you you Thank you. © transcript Emily Beynon