The horrific crimes of Britain's worst serial killer Dr Harold Shipman will never be forgotten, according to his former patients. They spoke on the 25th anniversary of 'Dr Death' being convicted for 15 murders. An official inquiry found the once respected GP had killed 284 people in and around Hyde, Greater Manchester, from the 1970s to the late 1990s. Many victims were elderly women who died after he injected them with lethal doses of diamorphine.
Patricia Powell, who still lives in Hyde, Greater Manchester, believes she saved her mother's life by refusing to leave her alone with the GP. The encounter was in 1998, just a few months before he was arrested. Her mum Margaret Beckwith, then aged 64, had an appointment with Shipman at his practice, The Surgery on Market St in Hyde. He asked Ms Powell to leave the room so he could examine her. She refused feeling "something not right with him", she recalled.
"He went to give my mum some medication and I said 'she's not taking it'," she said. "My mum asked me why and I said 'can't you see he's no good? He fobs people off by telling different stories'.". Ms Powell told Shipman: "I'm sorry. I'm not leaving" and he eventually wrote a prescription before the pair left unharmed. "Whatever he wanted to do backfired on him because I was there," she told the BBC. The unassuming GP built trust among his patients over a period of years.
"Nobody wanted to listen at the doctor's surgery. They thought he was so wonderful," Ms Powell added. Her mum only died recently and she was happy to have had all those years with her "because I took her away from him". But she added: "It wasn't fair on all the others that got murdered. I don't trust doctors any more.". Shipman's former patient Louise Aliceto, 61, described him as 'evil'. She recalled: "I went to him once with a rash on my hand and he sent me away. He said 'if everybody comes to me with a rash on their hand this surgery would always be full'.".
She was left thinking he was "a horrible person" and eventually discovered she had known some of his victims. "He was a horrible, evil man to do that to people," she said. Shipman took his own life in his cell in Wakefield jail on January 13, 2004. Over many years of his career, he had forged medical records to support the causes of death he recorded on death certificates. He then lied to the families when he said he had called ambulances for the women he had murdered. He was also found guilty of forging the £386,000 will of his final victim, but she was the only one who was significantly wealthy. Despite a public inquiry, no definitive explanation emerged as to why a GP with 3,100 patients turned into a serial killer.
