Harold Shipman

Harold Shipman

Dr Harold Fredrick Shipman (14 January 1946 – 13 January 2004) was an English doctor and one of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history by proven murders with 250+ murders being positively ascribed to him.

On 31 January 2000, a jury found Shipman guilty of 15 murders. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and the judge recommended that he never be released.

After his trial, the Shipman Inquiry chaired by Dame Janet Smith, begun on 1 September 2000 and lasting almost two years, investigated all deaths certified by Shipman. About 80% of his victims were women. His youngest victim was a 41-year-old man. Much of Britain's legal structure concerning health care and medicine was reviewed and modified as a direct and indirect result of Shipman's crimes. Shipman is the only British doctor who has been found guilty of murdering his patients.

Shipman died on 13 January 2004, after hanging himself in his cell at Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire.

Read more about Harold Shipman:  Early Life and Career, Detection, Trial and Imprisonment, Death, Aftermath, In Media and Popular Culture

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