Harold Shipman dead

Harold Shipman is dead, he hanged himself in his cell.

[Shipman] was jailed for life in January 2000 for murdering 15 patients while working in Hyde, Greater Manchester.  An official report later concluded he killed between 215 and 260 people over a 23-year period in Hyde and Todmorden, West Yorkshire.  The 57-year-old GP was given 15 life sentences to run concurrently for the murders, and four years for forging a will.  He was the UK's most prolific convicted serial killer, but always denied his crimes.

Within hours of his death, the word "justice" had been scrawled 12 times across his former surgery in Hyde.  The vast majority of Shipman's victims were elderly women who were given lethal heroin injections.  Of Shipman's 215 likely victims, 171 were women and 44 were men.  The oldest was a 93-year-old woman, the youngest a 41-year-old man.

The whole country was pretty shocked at what Shipman had done.  I still feel a slight shudder when I see the name.  I think it was the broken trust that got to me.  In the UK, a GP (general practitioner) is the first doctor you see, unless you go to the casualty ward.  You see them for everything, and this one could not be trusted.