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Harold Shipman : Mind Set on Murder: Why Shipman Killed and Killed Again, the True Story
Harold Shipman - Mind Set On Murder - Why Shipman Killed and Killed Again - The True Story [Hardcover] Carole Peters
- GenresTrue CrimeNonfiction
Hardcover
First published January 1, 2005
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July 2, 2019
I had to read about this one sooner or later because he’s the only serial killer born in Nottingham, my town, and not only that, born in the suburb of Sherwood, Nottingham, where I live. And not only that but he’s the serial killer with the MOST number of proven victims in the whole world, according to Wikipedia. Yay, Nottingham, right? You thought we were all just Robin Hood and the Sheriff and Maid Marian but no, we have Shipman too.
But he wasn’t what you’d call a Merry Man. No.
If ever there was a guy with an obsession, it was Harold, known to his friends and family as Fred. He was a family doctor (called GPs in the UK), and what he would do is he would write prescriptions for diamorphine for his patients who had cancer, then he would give them half and keep the rest for himself, and in this way he would build up a stock of diamorphine. Then he would drop in on a little old lady, one of his patients, and tell Edith or June or Phyllis or Elsie or Dora or Ethel that he needed a blood sample. He would get them sat in their favourite chair, all comfortable (and they were always thrilled when their caring doctor turned up without them even asking him, they all thought he was wonderful), and he would shoot them full of diamorphine and they would die, it would only take a couple of minutes. And later that day either he would pretend to make a further call or a friend or relative would find them and call him (the victims were almost always found fully dressed in a chair looking very peaceful, with the television on) and Dr Shipman would come round again and write out a death certificate – heart attack, old age, whatever. And then he would go back to his surgery and log on to his computer and fake their medical history so that it appeared they had congestive heart disease for years when they hadn’t at all. And that would be that, no questions asked at all, although some professionals in Hyde, Manchester, where all this happened over 20 years, got rather suspicious that so many of Dr Shipman’s patients were dying suddenly. But they just kind of shrugged. I mean, who would think that a family doctor is actually knocking off his elderly patients? No one would think that and no one did.
He started with one or two in the late 70s then he was up to around 10-12 a year by the late 80s. In 1992 he set up his own sole practice and the murders really took off then, By 1995-7 it was 30 per year. Finally he did something stupid, so stupid that if it was part of the plot of a movie you would complain about the poor script – (“so unrealistic, nobody would do that” etc).
What he did was he knew one of his old ladies was loaded and so he faked a will, really badly. Then he diamorphined her. The fake will left her entire fortune to Dr H Shipman and disinherited her daughter who just happened to be…. a lawyer. So she was let us say a little distressed and more than somewhat suspicious. It took not that much digging and the cops were able to discover Shipman’s little plot. Worth pointing out that never had he ever stolen anything or tried to from any other patient. If he hadn’t done that he could have kept on diamorphining his patients till the cows came home. So let that be a lesson for all you murderous health professionals out there. Don’t be greedy!
The public enquiry into his crimes concluded that he murdered 215 patients for sure with another 45 as probables.
Of the 215 (only 41 were men) not surprisingly most were in their 70s and 80s, but he would kill the odd 50 year old on occasion, I suppose when the whim took him.
A FEW QUOTES
The author says :
Five years after his conviction, most people were at pains to tell me that, despite his horrendous crimes, Dr Shipman had also been a caring and dedicated GP. Even those who are relatives of his victims have stories to tell about what a good doctor he was.
A fellow doctor said:
I found him, as his patients did, very approachable, very friendly, very open with his opinions. I found him an extremely affable colleague and he certainly seemed to be a competent doctor. He fitted in very well with the other doctors in this group
A relative of victim said :
In our own little cul-de-sac he killed about six ladies… He killed three times within twenty yards of my front door.
LIMITLESS BANALITIES
This is a very repetitive account of a complicated case. It can hardly not be repetitive, Shipman was performing the identical murder over and over and over again, for 20 years. The author loves her criminal psychologists and “profilers” a little too much for me and quotes their limitless banalities endlessly. Man, these people get money for old rope. Just listen to their pearls of wisdom
What you can see clearly is the particular strength of the relationship Shipman had with his mother. The influence of a strong mother character in their early lives is something a great many serial killers have in common.
It is clear that the shaping of Shipman’s personality had begun in his childhood.
The psychologists told me that we are all capable of killing once, from rage, from fear, to protect ourselves and our loved ones; we can even kill twice, for the same reasons. But then we stop because we don’t enjoy the experience.
SO, WHY DID HE DO IT?
The author says:
I believe euthanasia or assisted suicide is practiced by many GPs. [One expert] calculates that at least 18,000 people a year are helped to die by doctors who are treating them for terminal illness.
I have no idea about how many, but I agree that doctors will do this regularly, it will be a tacit thing done when the person is in their last few days probably. But Shipman was not doing this. The great majority of his victims were old but reasonably healthy. They had years left in them.
These were murders of a completely different type than your usual sexually-related Bundy stuff. In all cases Shipman was sending these old people peacefully – indeed, blissfully – into the great beyond. There was not the tiniest hint of violence or aggression in his conduct. The subtitle of this book is Why Shipman Killed Again and Again but the author doesn’t get anywhere near to an answer. Once he was caught Shipman never admitted any guilt and never gave any explanations. After a couple of years in jail he hanged himself.
But he wasn’t what you’d call a Merry Man. No.
If ever there was a guy with an obsession, it was Harold, known to his friends and family as Fred. He was a family doctor (called GPs in the UK), and what he would do is he would write prescriptions for diamorphine for his patients who had cancer, then he would give them half and keep the rest for himself, and in this way he would build up a stock of diamorphine. Then he would drop in on a little old lady, one of his patients, and tell Edith or June or Phyllis or Elsie or Dora or Ethel that he needed a blood sample. He would get them sat in their favourite chair, all comfortable (and they were always thrilled when their caring doctor turned up without them even asking him, they all thought he was wonderful), and he would shoot them full of diamorphine and they would die, it would only take a couple of minutes. And later that day either he would pretend to make a further call or a friend or relative would find them and call him (the victims were almost always found fully dressed in a chair looking very peaceful, with the television on) and Dr Shipman would come round again and write out a death certificate – heart attack, old age, whatever. And then he would go back to his surgery and log on to his computer and fake their medical history so that it appeared they had congestive heart disease for years when they hadn’t at all. And that would be that, no questions asked at all, although some professionals in Hyde, Manchester, where all this happened over 20 years, got rather suspicious that so many of Dr Shipman’s patients were dying suddenly. But they just kind of shrugged. I mean, who would think that a family doctor is actually knocking off his elderly patients? No one would think that and no one did.
He started with one or two in the late 70s then he was up to around 10-12 a year by the late 80s. In 1992 he set up his own sole practice and the murders really took off then, By 1995-7 it was 30 per year. Finally he did something stupid, so stupid that if it was part of the plot of a movie you would complain about the poor script – (“so unrealistic, nobody would do that” etc).
What he did was he knew one of his old ladies was loaded and so he faked a will, really badly. Then he diamorphined her. The fake will left her entire fortune to Dr H Shipman and disinherited her daughter who just happened to be…. a lawyer. So she was let us say a little distressed and more than somewhat suspicious. It took not that much digging and the cops were able to discover Shipman’s little plot. Worth pointing out that never had he ever stolen anything or tried to from any other patient. If he hadn’t done that he could have kept on diamorphining his patients till the cows came home. So let that be a lesson for all you murderous health professionals out there. Don’t be greedy!
The public enquiry into his crimes concluded that he murdered 215 patients for sure with another 45 as probables.
Of the 215 (only 41 were men) not surprisingly most were in their 70s and 80s, but he would kill the odd 50 year old on occasion, I suppose when the whim took him.
A FEW QUOTES
The author says :
Five years after his conviction, most people were at pains to tell me that, despite his horrendous crimes, Dr Shipman had also been a caring and dedicated GP. Even those who are relatives of his victims have stories to tell about what a good doctor he was.
A fellow doctor said:
I found him, as his patients did, very approachable, very friendly, very open with his opinions. I found him an extremely affable colleague and he certainly seemed to be a competent doctor. He fitted in very well with the other doctors in this group
A relative of victim said :
In our own little cul-de-sac he killed about six ladies… He killed three times within twenty yards of my front door.
LIMITLESS BANALITIES
This is a very repetitive account of a complicated case. It can hardly not be repetitive, Shipman was performing the identical murder over and over and over again, for 20 years. The author loves her criminal psychologists and “profilers” a little too much for me and quotes their limitless banalities endlessly. Man, these people get money for old rope. Just listen to their pearls of wisdom
What you can see clearly is the particular strength of the relationship Shipman had with his mother. The influence of a strong mother character in their early lives is something a great many serial killers have in common.
It is clear that the shaping of Shipman’s personality had begun in his childhood.
The psychologists told me that we are all capable of killing once, from rage, from fear, to protect ourselves and our loved ones; we can even kill twice, for the same reasons. But then we stop because we don’t enjoy the experience.
SO, WHY DID HE DO IT?
The author says:
I believe euthanasia or assisted suicide is practiced by many GPs. [One expert] calculates that at least 18,000 people a year are helped to die by doctors who are treating them for terminal illness.
I have no idea about how many, but I agree that doctors will do this regularly, it will be a tacit thing done when the person is in their last few days probably. But Shipman was not doing this. The great majority of his victims were old but reasonably healthy. They had years left in them.
These were murders of a completely different type than your usual sexually-related Bundy stuff. In all cases Shipman was sending these old people peacefully – indeed, blissfully – into the great beyond. There was not the tiniest hint of violence or aggression in his conduct. The subtitle of this book is Why Shipman Killed Again and Again but the author doesn’t get anywhere near to an answer. Once he was caught Shipman never admitted any guilt and never gave any explanations. After a couple of years in jail he hanged himself.
July 10, 2022
An easy to read and informative book but I’m not sure it’s title is answered other than at a superficial level.
In fact the vast majority of the book charts the killing methodology Shipman employed and the individual circumstances of each murder. When someone has killed over 250 people this understandably takes up a very large part of a book. Whilst I understand the need for each killing to be mentioned, particularly for the surviving relatives, perhaps it would have been better if they were covered in a separate dedicated edition.
To properly answer the title, I felt other aspects needed to be covered in more detail. For example the police case, how this number and frequency of killings could go undiscovered for such a long time and what sort of psychological character Shipman had that drove him to commit his crimes. These aspects were covered but far too briefly which I felt was a missed opportunity.
In fact the vast majority of the book charts the killing methodology Shipman employed and the individual circumstances of each murder. When someone has killed over 250 people this understandably takes up a very large part of a book. Whilst I understand the need for each killing to be mentioned, particularly for the surviving relatives, perhaps it would have been better if they were covered in a separate dedicated edition.
To properly answer the title, I felt other aspects needed to be covered in more detail. For example the police case, how this number and frequency of killings could go undiscovered for such a long time and what sort of psychological character Shipman had that drove him to commit his crimes. These aspects were covered but far too briefly which I felt was a missed opportunity.
December 27, 2011
I like where I live. The broad sunlit uplands of the Pennine chain. The misty twisty moorland. Every landscape however has a blot. My pixie dell has rather a large blemish to it's reputation. I live a stone's throw from Ian and Myra's garden and not too far away from the general practice of Dr. Shipman. The latter holds the dubious distinction of being Britain's foremost serial killer. The inquiry into this case looked into a total of 887 deaths throughout the whole of the doctors career. Spanning more than thirty years, the final estimate of murders he committed is in the region of 260.
'Harold Shipman-Mind Set on Murder' written by Carole Peters, published in 2005, is a fascinating account of the frightening career of this Doctor Death. The author writes for television and has directed T.V. programmes on this subject,e.g. 'To Kill and Kill Again.' The book contains interesting analysis from criminal psychologists, police detectives involved in the case, a senior FBI forensic profiler as well as extracts taken from the excellent Dame Janet Smith who led the Public Inquiry.
Having personal experience of the psychotic persona, I found the psychologist's detailed explanations of the killer's modus operandi quite interesting:-'Psychopathy is the psychological term used to describe someone who has no capacity for guilt, for conscience or for empathy.' Also, 'The thing that I think you have to be so careful about is not to assume that those characteristics in those combinations are only found in people who kill. They're not. If you look at the boardrooms of some of our more successful companies, you see exactly those combinations present.' How very true!
On the downside of this book, the text seems to be taken from some of Carole Peters annotated t.v. scripts. Any publishers (in this case Carlton Books) lack of proof reading always diminishes the enjoyment of reading and this book is littered with errors.
Even so it is a sobering read. The appendix contains eight pages of the list of names of victims and suspected victims. My surname appears more than once and could quite easily be personal.
'Harold Shipman-Mind Set on Murder' written by Carole Peters, published in 2005, is a fascinating account of the frightening career of this Doctor Death. The author writes for television and has directed T.V. programmes on this subject,e.g. 'To Kill and Kill Again.' The book contains interesting analysis from criminal psychologists, police detectives involved in the case, a senior FBI forensic profiler as well as extracts taken from the excellent Dame Janet Smith who led the Public Inquiry.
Having personal experience of the psychotic persona, I found the psychologist's detailed explanations of the killer's modus operandi quite interesting:-'Psychopathy is the psychological term used to describe someone who has no capacity for guilt, for conscience or for empathy.' Also, 'The thing that I think you have to be so careful about is not to assume that those characteristics in those combinations are only found in people who kill. They're not. If you look at the boardrooms of some of our more successful companies, you see exactly those combinations present.' How very true!
On the downside of this book, the text seems to be taken from some of Carole Peters annotated t.v. scripts. Any publishers (in this case Carlton Books) lack of proof reading always diminishes the enjoyment of reading and this book is littered with errors.
Even so it is a sobering read. The appendix contains eight pages of the list of names of victims and suspected victims. My surname appears more than once and could quite easily be personal.
April 16, 2015
Very detailed life and crimes of Dr Harold `Fred` Shipman. Thought it was very good that Carole Peters named each confirmed and suspected victim and the evidence regarding their murders. The book gives praise to the relatives, police, journalists and medical/Funeral Directors who finally brought Fred to justice. It is respectful and sympathetic towards the family and friends of the victims and there are glimpses of how the crimes have also affected the author. Well written with some pictures.
November 20, 2020
Wow!!!! That's all I can say about it. The total number is frightening and it is likely to be higher¡!!!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 20, 2021
Basically a scripted TV documentary narrative written with the benefit of hindsight. There are no answers as to 'Why Shipman Killed and Killed Again.' An unsatisfying and irritating book.
June 7, 2021
Well written but could have finished about 100 pages earlier.
March 23, 2019
An interesting book about the worst serial killer the U.K. has ever had (some 240 deaths). It's especially interesting because the killer was a doctor (G.P) who had a reputation of being dedicated to his patients and making house calls. He usually killed them with morphine and often left them in their homes for someone else to discover.
To me, the fascinating thing was how blatant a path he left (buying extraordinary amounts of morphine). He admitted to be addicted to pethidine early in his career, claimed to have been cured and clean, but then moved on to a different city from where he started and killed patients by the score. It was his profession as a doctor and his reputation of making home calls that led people to giving him a break. He kept his own records; he was in a solo practice. Yet people died like crazy--old, middle-aged, mostly women--and no one did a thing until they finally inspected the number of deaths on his watch.
The credibility that was accorded him was similar to that accorded to Roman Catholic pedophile priests. Surely, Father wouldn't have done THAT.
The best parts of the book are the analyses from various scientists. The worst parts are that the author insisted on writing down several paragraphs about each single death. That became repetitive and tiresome fairly quickly.
Interesting if you want to see how much longer it takes to catch professionals in fields that are supposed to be helping patients/parishioners than it does to catch someone like Ted Bundy, whose only trick was to murder women in different states, where the police departments didn't share any crimes or statistics.
To me, the fascinating thing was how blatant a path he left (buying extraordinary amounts of morphine). He admitted to be addicted to pethidine early in his career, claimed to have been cured and clean, but then moved on to a different city from where he started and killed patients by the score. It was his profession as a doctor and his reputation of making home calls that led people to giving him a break. He kept his own records; he was in a solo practice. Yet people died like crazy--old, middle-aged, mostly women--and no one did a thing until they finally inspected the number of deaths on his watch.
The credibility that was accorded him was similar to that accorded to Roman Catholic pedophile priests. Surely, Father wouldn't have done THAT.
The best parts of the book are the analyses from various scientists. The worst parts are that the author insisted on writing down several paragraphs about each single death. That became repetitive and tiresome fairly quickly.
Interesting if you want to see how much longer it takes to catch professionals in fields that are supposed to be helping patients/parishioners than it does to catch someone like Ted Bundy, whose only trick was to murder women in different states, where the police departments didn't share any crimes or statistics.
August 12, 2012
This book is a riveting read, even though you 'know what happens'. I read it in a couple of days while on holiday. It's jaw-dropping, when you consider the extent of Harold Shipman's murders. The fact that he murdered so many people over a couple of decades, and no one noticed. Well, some people did, but they either didn't have the courage to accuse the doctor (understandable) or they weren't taken seriously.
However, the title is a little misleading because the question of 'why' he killed is never answered. It can't be, because Shipman never admitted to his crimes and committed suicide so we'll never know. The author offers a few suggestions but she doesn't really know and her reliance on psychologists/psychiatrists didn't hold any water with me. It's all just guess work, no matter how much they talk about his childhood. But I'm a sceptic who doesn't believe there's an epidemic of ADDD, there's just a whole lot of lazy/soft parents who would rather give their kids drugs than put some hard work into them.
However, the title is a little misleading because the question of 'why' he killed is never answered. It can't be, because Shipman never admitted to his crimes and committed suicide so we'll never know. The author offers a few suggestions but she doesn't really know and her reliance on psychologists/psychiatrists didn't hold any water with me. It's all just guess work, no matter how much they talk about his childhood. But I'm a sceptic who doesn't believe there's an epidemic of ADDD, there's just a whole lot of lazy/soft parents who would rather give their kids drugs than put some hard work into them.
Read
January 4, 2016good in depth into one of Britain's worst serial killers
October 7, 2022
Short book but goes through each detail
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews