Harold Shipman (Part 2)

In the winter of 1998, a general practitioner in Manchester, England, noticed that one of her colleagues, Dr. Harold Shipman, appeared to have an unusually high death rate among his elderly female patients. An inquiry was opened into the matter, but it went nowhere and was quickly closed with no finding of wrongdoing. Then, in August, another accusation was leveled at Shipman: he was responsible for killing more than twenty of his patients. This time, the inquiry was taken more seriously and the reality was far worse than anyone could have imagined. The arrest and prosecution of Harold Shipman rocked England’s medical community and shocked people around the world. Although he was ultimately charged with and convicted of fifteen murders, investigators suspect Shipman of having killed as many as two hundred and fifty people over the course of his career, making him the most prolific killer in the nation’s history.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Streaming on Paramount Plus, Dexter Morgan is back. And this season, he's facing the scariest threat yet, middle age. A lifetime of blending in gets to you. And now Dexter is up against two rival killers stealing the spotlight. Taking them down means changing his MO and things are gonna get messy. Starring Michael C. Hall, Uma Thurman, Dan Stevens, and Brian Cox. Dexter: Resurrection, new season now streaming on the Paramount Plus Premium Plan. From the original Free Second Opinion studio, here's Hugh Joitz.

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• 1:00Speaker 02

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• 1:23Ash Kelley?

  Hey weirdos, I'm Ash.

• 1:25Speaker 04

  And I'm Elena.

• 1:26Ash Kelley?

  And this is Morbid.

• 1:42Speaker 04

  This is Morbid.

• 1:43Ash Kelley?

  And we're in November, folks.

• 1:45Speaker 04

  We are in November. Halloween happened, it was great.

• 1:48Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 1:49Speaker 04

  And here we are.

• 1:49Ash Kelley?

  It really, it really happened this time. Cause last time it was November, but Halloween hadn't happened yet.

• 1:54Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 1:55Ash Kelley?

  I hope you guys all had a good Halloween like we really actually did.

• 1:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was actually a nice Halloween.

• 1:59Ash Kelley?

  And I hope today, everybody went out and voted.

• 2:02Speaker 04

  Yes. And I know it'll be after that, that this comes in.

• 2:07Ash Kelley?

  We'll find out if you voted or not.

• 2:09Speaker 04

  You know what? Everybody, we did great.

• 2:11Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 2:12Speaker 04

  Good job. We did great.

• 2:14Ash Kelley?

  I'm wearing blue to manifest.

• 2:16Speaker 04

  We're manifesting, we're doing great.

• 2:18Ash Kelley?

  And that's that.

• 2:19Speaker 04

  Use your, your, your right to vote.

• 2:22Ash Kelley?

  Wisely.

• 2:22Speaker 04

  Do it.

• 2:24Ash Kelley?

  Thank you. And thank you for being here today.

• 2:27Speaker 04

  Thank you. And with that, we can probably just get right into it. Cause it's part two.

• 2:30Ash Kelley?

  And I want to know what the fuck is up Kyle.

• 2:32Speaker 04

  Part two, and this is a kooky, kooky case.

• 2:35Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 2:35Speaker 04

  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?

• 2:43Ash Kelley?

  I love a bad bitch stepping in and taking, taking survey.

• 2:47Speaker 04

  Taking survey. So she, and hey, you can clock it, we're starting the story.

• 2:52Ash Kelley?

  Oh, honey, that's a quick clock.

• 2:54Speaker 04

  That's a quick one. So let's talk about Linda Reynolds. She moved to the area in late 1996.

• 3:01Ash Kelley?

  The year of Ash.

• 3:02Speaker 04

  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 the 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 gonna start sharing her thoughts with the other partners.

• 3:46Ash Kelley?

  She, Mariah carried it. She said, it's time.

• 3:49Speaker 04

  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.

• 4:00Ash Kelley?

  Hmm.

• 4:01Speaker 04

  Uh, and Dr. Jeremy there was one of the partners at Brook Surgery at the time.

• 4:04Ash Kelley?

  I don't trust a single man named Jeremy and it's your fault.

• 4:07Speaker 04

  I love that. I've ruined all Jeremys.

• 4:09Ash Kelley?

  You literally have.

• 4:10Speaker 04

  That's my job.

• 4:11Ash Kelley?

  Sorry, Jeremy's. Sorry, good Jeremy's.

• 4:13Speaker 04

  Sorry, sorry, good Sarames.

• 4:15Ash Kelley?

  Sarames. All that to say, Sarames.

• 4:18Speaker 04

  Sarames.

• 4:19Ash Kelley?

  If you're out there.

• 4:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 4:21Speaker 04

  Have we seen him? I don't know.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 4:23Speaker 04

  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.

• 4:32Ash Kelley?

  That makes sense.

• 4:33Speaker 04

  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.

• 4:43Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 4:43Speaker 04

  Which.

• 4:44Ash Kelley?

  Why would you think that a doctor would do that?

• 4:46Speaker 04

  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. Now 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, kind of coming up with reasonable explanations, like, there's gotta be some reason that the deaths are this high. It can't be that he's doing something.

• 5:11Ash Kelley?

  People love to try to, to try to pet a woman.

• 5:13Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's like pull the wool over your eyes.

• 5:16Ash Kelley?

  It's okay, girl, you're wrong.

• 5:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, you're wrong on this.

• 5:18Ash Kelley?

  Stop it.

• 5:19Speaker 04

  But the, despite their resistance, Reynolds fellow partners wanted to be supportive though.

• 5:23Ash Kelley?

  Okay.

• 5:24Speaker 04

  So they all agreed that it would be best to take their concerns to the coroner.

• 5:27Ash Kelley?

  All right.

• 5:28Speaker 04

  Who would be most knowledgeable about this matter and would know what, if anything, should or could be done.

• 5:33Ash Kelley?

  Okay.

• 5:34Speaker 04

  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.

• 5:57Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 5:58Speaker 04

  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.

• 6:06Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 6:07Speaker 04

  Dr. Jeremy said, Dr. Shipman was the most well-respected doctor in Hyde. And calling into question any colleague's practices and behavior is a major step. It could have backfired.

• 6:16Ash Kelley?

  That's tough. They were up against a lot here.

• 6:19Speaker 04

  But still, the matter was serious enough that they felt obligated to go forward with their complaint.

• 6:25Ash Kelley?

  Wow, okay.

• 6:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so the Greater Manchester Police opened up their investigation.

• 6:29Ash Kelley?

  I did not expect this.

• 6:30Speaker 04

  Badass.

• 6:31Ash Kelley?

  Very brave.

• 6:32Speaker 04

  They put it all on the line here.

• 6:34Ash Kelley?

  Like in every sense of the phrase, yeah.

• 6:36Speaker 04

  Years later, when the Crown launched an inquiry into the systems that allowed Shipman.

• 6:41Ash Kelley?

  The Crown.

• 6:42Speaker 04

  The Crown.

• 6:42Ash Kelley?

  Just like the Crown, like, I literally pictured a Crown launching an investigation.

• 6:47Speaker 04

  A Crown being like, time to investigate.

• 6:49Ash Kelley?

  Do it, go forth.

• 6:50Speaker 04

  Well, years later, when the Crown did launch an inquiry into the systems that honestly allowed Shipman to avoid detection for so long, an investigation committee would conclude that the Great, Greater Manchester Police had never taken the initial reports very seriously.

• 7:05Ash Kelley?

  Oh.

• 7:05Speaker 04

  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.

• 7:16Ash Kelley?

  Damn.

• 7:17Speaker 04

  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.

• 7:30Ash Kelley?

  Of course.

• 7:31Speaker 04

  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.

• 7:44Ash Kelley?

  You ever just want to punch, punch ahead?

• 7:46Speaker 04

  And Dr. Jeremy said, they were almost hinting that she had a similar problem with Dr. Shipman.

• 7:51Ash Kelley?

  Fuck off with that.

• 7:53Speaker 04

  Fuck off with that.

• 7:55Ash Kelley?

  Sex.

• 7:55Speaker 04

  The male ego. Exactly. So sexist investigators weren't only the problem here. They were not the only problem.

• 8:01Ash Kelley?

  Okay.

• 8:02Speaker 04

  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 Hyde, many of the investigators knew and revered Fred Shipman.

• 8:13Ash Kelley?

  Uh huh.

• 8:14Speaker 04

  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.

• 8:30Ash Kelley?

  That's not how investigating works.

• 8:32Speaker 04

  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.

• 8:40Ash Kelley?

  Of course it came to nothing because they did nothing.

• 8:42Speaker 04

  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.

• 8:53Ash Kelley?

  It's like, too bad, nobody talked to them.

• 8:55Speaker 04

  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.

• 9:07Ash Kelley?

  I'm obsessed with the fact that he was like, retiring? Not for me.

• 9:09Speaker 04

  No.

• 9:10Ash Kelley?

  Gonna cab.

• 9:10Speaker 04

  Drive a cab, drive a cab, just one cab.

• 9:12Ash Kelley?

  Just my cab.

• 9:13Speaker 04

  Almost immediately Shaw saw a gap in the local market and he seized on it to great success.

• 9:18Ash Kelley?

  Very smart.

• 9:19Speaker 04

  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.

• 9:27Ash Kelley?

  Nice.

• 9:28Speaker 04

  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.

• 9:48Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 9:49Speaker 04

  Uh, he said, all my customers, I classed as friends.

• 9:52Ash Kelley?

  Oh.

• 9:53Speaker 04

  I love him.

• 9:53Ash Kelley?

  That's really sweet.

• 9:54Speaker 04

  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.

• 10:04Ash Kelley?

  He's a straight up caretaker. This motherfucker's an empath.

• 10:07Speaker 04

  As a result, he became very familiar with their lives. And as their driver, he knew their patterns and routines.

• 10:14Ash Kelley?

  Yup.

• 10:14Speaker 04

  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.

• 10:29Ash Kelley?

  Oh.

• 10:30Speaker 04

  Now, after years of losing clients, one after the other, Shaw grew suspicious that something was going on here.

• 10:37Ash Kelley?

  He's also a police officer.

• 10:38Speaker 04

  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, cause 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.

• 11:01Ash Kelley?

  Wow.

• 11:02Speaker 04

  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.

• 11:12Ash Kelley?

  They had the same doctor.

• 11:14Speaker 04

  Dr. Fred Shipman.

• 11:15Ash Kelley?

  And that was likely the. Last place he ever drove them.

• 11:18Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 11:18Ash Kelley?

  Wow.

• 11:19Speaker 04

  John Shaw suspected that the city's most well-respected doctor might be hiding 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.

• 11:46Ash Kelley?

  Yeah, I could see that. Absolutely.

• 11:48Speaker 04

  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 in an 80-year-old body. Despite her age as the former mayor of Hyde.

• 12:09Ash Kelley?

  Wow.

• 12:10Speaker 04

  Grundy kept a fairly full social calendar. And regularly went out on Saturday nights.

• 12:16Ash Kelley?

  Obsessed.

• 12:17Speaker 04

  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 safely.

• 12:27Ash Kelley?

  That is the sweetest.

• 12:28Speaker 04

  Right?

• 12:29Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 12:29Speaker 04

  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 to her mom. But he was vague, saying he hadn't seen her the day before she died and mentioned something about, 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.

• 13:12Ash Kelley?

  Interesting.

• 13:13Speaker 04

  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.

• 13:23Ash Kelley?

  Right.

• 13:24Speaker 04

  He was actually, like, reaching out to get them.

• 13:25Ash Kelley?

  And like choosing who he was going to do this to ahead of time.

• 13:29Speaker 04

  Now, in the days that followed, the story from Shipman became even more opaque. He said she died of cardiac arrest, but she had no history of heart disease.

• 13:38Ash Kelley?

  Okay.

• 13:39Speaker 04

  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. Angela recalled later, it was all very strange. I couldn't understand how she died. It just didn't make any sense to me.

• 13:59Ash Kelley?

  Right.

• 14:00Speaker 04

  Like, which one is it?

• 14:01Ash Kelley?

  Yeah, old age or heart attack. Those are two very different things.

• 14:04Speaker 04

  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.

• 14:18Ash Kelley?

  No.

• 14:18Speaker 04

  The garden was perfectly tended to, something Kathleen always did herself. The lawn was perfectly mowed and there was no medications.

• 14:27Ash Kelley?

  She was on no medication?

• 14:28Speaker 04

  No medications. Angela pushed her suspicions aside, you know, she's going through grief.

• 14:33Ash Kelley?

  Of course.

• 14:34Speaker 04

  But, and 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 in Hyde that she didn't know.

• 14:47Ash Kelley?

  Okay.

• 14:47Speaker 04

  The man said that he didn't know her mother, but he had been tasked with executing her mother's will, which she had filed on June 9th, 1998. Just a few days before she died.

• 14:57Ash Kelley?

  Okay.

• 14:57Speaker 04

  It had arrived at their office with a typewritten letter asking that they be her executors. And it was simply signed Kay Grundy.

• 15:06Ash Kelley?

  Weird.

• 15:07Speaker 04

  When Angela was finally able to review this will in the accompanying letter a few days later, she knew immediately this was not written by her mother.

• 15:14Ash Kelley?

  Really?

• 15:25Ash Kelley?

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• 17:38Ash Kelley?

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• 18:21Ash Kelley?

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• 18:40Speaker 04

  Kathleen Grundy had been known, among other things, for having beautiful handwriting.

• 18:45Ash Kelley?

  She's also the mayor, so there had been.

• 18:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:48Ash Kelley?

  Right?

• 18:48Speaker 04

  Her signature was probably gorge.

• 18:50Ash Kelley?

  And not only that, there's probably so many accounts of her handwriting.

• 18:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:54Ash Kelley?

  Like.

• 18:54Speaker 04

  And this letter was typewritten, and quite badly at that. Something Angela knew her mother never would have done.

• 19:00Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 19:01Speaker 04

  Even more surprising was the fact that in her final days, Angela's mother had changed her will and was now leaving everything to her doctor, Fred Shipman.

• 19:12Ash Kelley?

  In what world?

• 19:15Speaker 04

  That is an incredibly bold thing to do.

• 19:20Ash Kelley?

  I'm also like, are you completely dumb at this stage?

• 19:23Speaker 04

  That's like.

• 19:24Ash Kelley?

  You lost your mind to that level? That you thought you were gonna get away with that? She has a daughter, she has friends, she has family, and she's gonna leave everything to her doctor?

• 19:35Speaker 04

  And you already know people are suspicious of you, babe.

• 19:38Ash Kelley?

  Yeah, that's, I'm like, are you serious?

• 19:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:41Ash Kelley?

  That's not walking a fine line. That's stomping around town in your big boots, brother.

• 19:46Speaker 04

  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 otherwise. This time, however, Grundy's daughter Angela had arranged for a burial.

• 20:03Ash Kelley?

  Good.

• 20:04Speaker 04

  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.

• 20:16Ash Kelley?

  I'm also like, dude, did you not realize she had a daughter?

• 20:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:19Ash Kelley?

  And like, that was gonna look sus?

• 20:21Speaker 04

  I have no idea, but it's hubris. It's just they think they're above everything.

• 20:25Ash Kelley?

  Yeah. Well, and he's been getting away with it for so long.

• 20:27Speaker 04

  Well, so she did something really bold.

• 20:32Ash Kelley?

  She made an appointment?

• 20:33Speaker 04

  That her mother's body be exhumed and subjected to a postmortem examination.

• 20:37Ash Kelley?

  Okay.

• 20:38Speaker 04

  She said, let's go.

• 20:39Ash Kelley?

  And you have to point out too, like, the, the heartache that would come along with already having buried your parent. And now you're digging them back up.

• 20:48Speaker 04

  And then have them go through an autopsy when you don't, that isn't necessarily what you wanted.

• 20:53Ash Kelley?

  That is so traumatic to have to, to have to even do that. I'm like, oh.

• 20:58Speaker 04

  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?

• 21:10Ash Kelley?

  Jackass.

• 21:10Speaker 04

  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.

• 21:21Ash Kelley?

  Yep.

• 21:21Speaker 04

  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 someone with any serious accusations.

• 21:34Ash Kelley?

  I mean, yeah, what are you gonna say?

• 21:35Speaker 04

  When you don't have the knowledge and the background in something, especially medicine is so complex.

• 21:42Ash Kelley?

  Yep.

• 21:42Speaker 04

  And it's like, you do feel stupid sometimes, like questioning a doctor.

• 21:48Ash Kelley?

  We've been in positions where we've questioned doctors before.

• 21:50Speaker 04

  For sure.

• 21:51Ash Kelley?

  And you end up, like, feeling silly sometimes.

• 21:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, cuz sometimes if, like, you know, if you got a good doctor, which a lot of doctors are great.

• 21:58Ash Kelley?

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:59Speaker 04

  They're gonna be like, you know what, I understand that you wanna know more about this, or that you're confused by this.

• 22:04Ash Kelley?

  Sometimes they'll just write you off.

• 22:06Speaker 04

  But sometimes they can be, like, real shitty sometimes.

• 22:09Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 22:09Speaker 04

  When, if you get the wrong one, that's like, you idiot.

• 22:12Ash Kelley?

  Having a bad day or something.

• 22:13Speaker 04

  Like, how dare you?

• 22:13Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 22:14Speaker 04

  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.

• 22:26Ash Kelley?

  He done fucked up this time.

• 22:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, you fucked with the wrong.

• 22:29Ash Kelley?

  I'm like, you didn't do your research, babe, which, thank goodness.

• 22:33Speaker 04

  Also, Angela's confidence made John Shaw feel like he might not be alone after all in thinking this.

• 22:39Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 22:39Speaker 04

  And in August, Shaw went to the police to add his concerns to the growing cloud of suspicion on friendship.

• 22:45Ash Kelley?

  And good for him, too, to put his neck out there.

• 22:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, cuz 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. Like, I'm gonna do it, too.

• 22:56Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 22:57Speaker 04

  And he cared about, you know, he cared about Kathleen.

• 23:00Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 23:01Speaker 04

  Now, Fred Shipman had already avoided capture once, when the investigation prompted by Reynolds and the other Dr. Zepro 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.

• 23:18Ash Kelley?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:19Speaker 04

  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.

• 23:30Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 23:32Speaker 04

  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 patients' 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 coroner had found codeine in her body. Instead, 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.

• 24:15Ash Kelley?

  Not only morphine, but any other. She didn't have any other medicines.

• 24:18Speaker 04

  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.

• 24:24Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 24:25Speaker 04

  In this questionable ass will.

• 24:27Ash Kelley?

  Your motive is right there.

• 24:28Speaker 04

  Yeah. A few weeks later, investigators obtained a search warrant for Shipman's house.

• 24:32Ash Kelley?

  Stop it.

• 24:33Speaker 04

  Where 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.

• 24:43Ash Kelley?

  Dude.

• 24:44Speaker 04

  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.

• 24:54Ash Kelley?

  Shut the fuck up.

• 24:56Speaker 04

  On September 7, 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.

• 25:07Ash Kelley?

  Good, finally.

• 25:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. Now, the evidence against Fred Shipman and the death and attempted defrauding of Kathleen Grundy was, like, pretty immense. It was pretty considerable.

• 25:17Ash Kelley?

  Say so.

• 25:18Speaker 04

  But after hearing what John Shaw had to say, investigators began to wonder whether, uh, there might be some more names.

• 25:24Ash Kelley?

  Did investigators begin to investigate?

• 25:27Speaker 04

  They actually were like, hmm, maybe there could be more to this.

• 25:30Ash Kelley?

  Maybe we should have, uh, done something back then.

• 25:32Speaker 04

  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 Mrs. Grundy's death. I would like to stress that people should not panic about our investigation."

• 25:57Ash Kelley?

  Okay, Bernard.

• 25:57Speaker 04

  Which, like, I guess that makes sense, cuz it's like, this is a prominent doctor, so it's like, 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, court orders for additional examinations were being made for patients who died under Shipman's care.

• 26:21Ash Kelley?

  Okay.

• 26:21Speaker 04

  Each one revealing new evidence of foul play.

• 26:24Ash Kelley?

  Which, again, horrific for the family members.

• 26:27Speaker 04

  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 Mellor, and 49-year-old Bianca Pomfret. Forty-nine. Following the arraignment, Bernard Postles gave a statement to the press indicating that the Greater Manchester Police expected the, quote, "lengthy inquiry with many difficult areas of investigation." Although the investigation appeared to be moving along, it was, like, relatively slow because of the sensitive nature of the accusations and the general difficulty of dealing with such a large number of victims here.

• 27:09Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 27:09Speaker 04

  This was all made exponentially more difficult by the media, who had seized on the story.

• 27:14Ash Kelley?

  That's crazy.

• 27:15Speaker 04

  With the less reputable outlets harassing family members for comment or additional information.

• 27:20Ash Kelley?

  Go away.

• 27:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's so gross.

• 27:23Ash Kelley?

  It's really fucked up.

• 27:24Speaker 04

  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.

• 27:35Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 27:36Speaker 04

  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 undercover of night to avoid curious members of the press and public.

• 27:49Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 27:49Speaker 04

  Although they were a necessary part of the investigation, the seriousness of the examinations was not lost on any of the detectives or the forensic technicians. Father Dennis Marr told reporters, "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."

• 28:08Ash Kelley?

  It is.

• 28:09Speaker 04

  And it is. Like, there really is, like, a finality in closing that coffin lid and saying goodbye.

• 28:15Ash Kelley?

  There's like a ritual that comes along with death, and that's part of it.

• 28:18Speaker 04

  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.

• 28:30Ash Kelley?

  Wow.

• 28:31Speaker 04

  Yet no one on the case dared even to guess a potential number of victims.

• 28:36Ash Kelley?

  Well, how can you even at that point?

• 28:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. Instead, they continued digging through the evidence, which included years' worth of complex medical records and more than 3,000 prescriptions for morphine.

• 28:47Ash Kelley?

  Wow.

• 28:49Speaker 04

  By mid-November, their work was continuing to show results. On November 13, 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 gonna come. In January, 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.

• 29:27Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 29:28Speaker 04

  A judge granted the request, and in late February, an additional eight murder charges were added to the following victims. Marielle Grimshaw, age 76, Nora Nuttall, age 65, Laura Wagstaff, age 81, Maureen Alice Ward, age 57, Pamela Hillier, age 68, Marie West, age 81, and Lizzie Adams, age 77.

• 29:52Ash Kelley?

  My God.

• 29:54Speaker 04

  When asked whether they expected to find additional victims or would 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.

• 30:16Ash Kelley?

  Fifteen.

• 30:17Speaker 04

  That was just what they, like, definitively connected. So his trial began October 5, 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.

• 30:35Ash Kelley?

  Why is your fingerprint on it?

• 30:36Speaker 04

  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.

• 30:47Ash Kelley?

  Wow.

• 30:48Speaker 04

  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."

• 31:19Ash Kelley?

  That's an opening statement.

• 31:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, for real. Among other things, he walked through the evidence showing how Shipman had 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 postmortem examinations. He said, "Of course, from Dr. Shipman's perspective, it was imperative in each case that he avoid a postmortem. 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, but Shipman told them, 'I don't see there's a need to do that.'"

• 31:59Ash Kelley?

  Why?

• 32:00Speaker 04

  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 murder, Shipman wasn't aware that as he was killing Marie, his, her friend Marion Hadfield was waiting for her in the next room.

• 32:22Ash Kelley?

  What?

• 32:23Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 32:25Speaker 04

  According to Hadfield, when Shipman realized she was there, he said, she, she's collapsed on me. She's gone.

• 32:31Ash Kelley?

  What the fuck?

• 32:32Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 32:33Ash Kelley?

  One room away.

• 32:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:34Ash Kelley?

  And he didn't even realize it.

• 32:36Speaker 04

  And then he just didn't give a shit.

• 32:37Ash Kelley?

  Had the gall to just be like, yep, is what it is.

• 32:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, whoops. When Hadfield expressed, expressed her shock and disbelief, Shipman grabbed Wes's head and opened her eyes and he said, see, there's no life in there.

• 32:49Ash Kelley?

  Oh, my God.

• 32:50Speaker 04

  Then he let the woman's head fall back against her shoulder.

• 32:53Ash Kelley?

  Oh, my God.

• 32:54Speaker 04

  Literally opened her eyes. See, there's no life in there.

• 32:57Ash Kelley?

  That is so fucked up.

• 32:59Speaker 04

  Callous as fuck.

• 32:59Ash Kelley?

  Imagine how traumatizing that must have been for her friend.

• 33:02Speaker 04

  In each instance, Enriquez 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 over 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.

• 33:34Ash Kelley?

  Dude, how are you like, how do you think you're going to get away with that? And like, nobody's going to check into it.

• 33:40Speaker 04

  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."

• 33:59Ash Kelley?

  Like, let's be real.

• 34:10Ash Kelley?

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• 34:54Ash Kelley?

  The thing that made us want to get SimpliSafe, by the way, was we got this like weird knock on the door at like 3:00 AM in the middle of a blizzard. It was super creepy. I was like, oh, great, this is a horror movie and this is how it all ends. Knowing that I never have to deal with that and have that sinking feeling again, in that I can just open a camera and see what's going on, or that these SimpliSafe agents are always checking in for me, it just gives me so much peace of mind. SimpliSafe is offering their biggest savings of the year, 70% off your new system with professional monitoring, when you visit simplisafe.com/morbid. That's simplisafe.com/morbid and when you order, write in morbid at checkout. It tells them that we sent you and it really helps the show. SimpliSafe, ahead of crime in real time.

• 35:38Ash Kelley?

  When the weather gets colder, our homes become winter HQ. Everybody's huddled around drinking hot cocoa, you know, we're gift wrapping all together. We're watching the holiday movies. If you're going to be bundled up at home, make sure your home is the place to be with Ashley. Ashley helps you embrace the season with eye-catching designs at affordable prices. From taking it slow in your favorite armchair to hosting the world's largest intimate holiday gathering, Ashley pieces are made to last. Designed for real life with features like stain-resistant performance fabric, Ashley has everything you need for a picture-perfect winter when you need it. Enjoy fast, reliable white glove delivery right to your room of choice. I got some Ashley products earlier this year and I am still so, so obsessed with them.

• 36:22Ash Kelley?

  My Revion Lakes Love Scene and Sofa are the most gorgeous pieces. If you're looking to update any space in your house, like a living room, you know, a sitting room, what have you, just around the coffee table, it's so nice. Put your little cup with a nice coaster on the Core Stone End table and you could just be living life like I am. I love Ashley and the delivery was super seamless. These poor people delivering had to go up two flights of stairs and they were still nice as could be and set the furniture up in the most gorgeous way. Get cozy this winter with stylish home picks from Ashley. Visit your local Ashley store or head to ashley.com to find your style.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  Time for a quick break to talk about McDonald's. It's the tangiest time of the year. For a limited time, head to McDonald's and get a McRib sandwich. Make it a meal by adding a medium fries and a soft drink like an ice cold Diet Dr. Pepper. So grab a McRib sandwich and embrace the tang. Save time by ordering ahead on the app at participating McDonald's for a limited time. Dr. Pepper is a registered trademark of Dr. Pepper, 7-Up Inc.

• 37:28Speaker 04

  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 theories up.

• 37:38Ash Kelley?

  Mm hmm.

• 37:39Speaker 04

  In mid-November, 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.

• 38:03Ash Kelley?

  Dude.

• 38:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:05Ash Kelley?

  Meanwhile, you just have a legit stockpile in your home.

• 38:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:08Ash Kelley?

  Like.

• 38:10Speaker 04

  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.

• 38:19Ash Kelley?

  But they didn't, babe. That's like the worst defense I've ever heard.

• 38:22Speaker 04

  Yeah. Winter said Bianca Pomfret and Winifred Mellor 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.'"

• 38:41Ash Kelley?

  I don't, you can't just change your records.

• 38:44Speaker 04

  Don't worry about it.

• 38:45Ash Kelley?

  Like you could, you can maybe update them with new information.

• 38:49Speaker 04

  No.

• 38:49Ash Kelley?

  But you're acting like that was information that previously existed.

• 38:53Speaker 04

  Well, and he's also using that whole like, don't question me.

• 38:55Ash Kelley?

  I'm a doctor.

• 38:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:56Ash Kelley?

  Okay.

• 38:57Speaker 04

  In early December, when he took the stand in his own defense.

• 39:01Ash Kelley?

  How did I know you were gonna say that?

• 39:03Speaker 04

  Shipman had weak or somewhat, somewhat implausible explanations for pretty much everything that made him look guilty. And Richard Enriquez had no trouble poking holes in his story.

• 39:15Ash Kelley?

  But he just thinks he's so much smarter than everybody else.

• 39:17Speaker 04

  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 Enriquez pointed out repeatedly, when Shipman was testifying in court, his story didn't match his early interviews.

• 39:33Ash Kelley?

  Hmm.

• 39:34Speaker 04

  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."

• 39:42Ash Kelley?

  So did you lie because you were stressed out?

• 39:44Speaker 04

  Well, once again, he always has an answer for why it is the way it is.

• 39:49Ash Kelley?

  Yup.

• 39:50Speaker 04

  The 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 those 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.

• 40:25Ash Kelley?

  Okay.

• 40:26Speaker 04

  They deliberated for 34 hours before emerging to find Shipman guilty on all 15 murders.

• 40:32Ash Kelley?

  Wow.

• 40:32Speaker 04

  And the forgery of Kathleen Grundy's will.

• 40:34Ash Kelley?

  Good.

• 40:35Speaker 04

  As the foreman read through each verdict, Shipman stared straight ahead. He had no emotional response.

• 40:41Ash Kelley?

  I've, inside of his head must have. You've just been

• 40:44Speaker 04

  Fuck.

• 40:44Ash Kelley?

  racing, you know, like, how do I get out of this? How did I get myself into the like, you know, cause he just, he thought he was gonna

• 40:52Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:53Ash Kelley?

  Pull the wool over everybody's eyes forever.

• 40:55Speaker 04

  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 carrying 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.

• 41:25Ash Kelley?

  Bye bye.

• 41:26Speaker 04

  As soon as the case ended, the speculation about just how many victims Shipman had killed began.

• 41:32Ash Kelley?

  Of course.

• 41:33Speaker 04

  In addition to the 15 victims for which he had been clearly found guilty of and sentenced, the prosecution had prepared files on 23 other victims.

• 41:41Ash Kelley?

  Wow.

• 41:42Speaker 04

  Whose cases weren't seen as strong enough to bring to trial.

• 41:45Ash Kelley?

  That's always so frustrating.

• 41:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. On top of that, sources within the Greater Manchester Police Force told reporters detectives had looked into 141 other deaths.

• 41:55Ash Kelley?

  Holy shit.

• 41:56Speaker 04

  By the time the investigation and inquiry concluded, Fred Shipman would be suspected of killing more than 250 people.

• 42:03Ash Kelley?

  That is insane.

• 42:04Speaker 04

  Making him England's most prolific serial killer.

• 42:08Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 42:09Speaker 04

  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.

• 42:19Ash Kelley?

  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.

• 42:29Speaker 04

  And especially as like an elderly person, like,

• 42:32Ash Kelley?

  Yeah, you have to go to the doctor. You're supposed to trust that your doctor is gonna do the best for you.

• 42:37Speaker 04

  It's like you're so like, and people take advantage of them so easily. It's so sad.

• 42:41Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 42:42Speaker 04

  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 fucking suspicion to the coroner, but nothing had been done.

• 42:54Ash Kelley?

  Yikes.

• 42:55Speaker 04

  You know Linda's sitting there like,

• 42:56Ash Kelley?

  Told you.

• 42:57Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 42:58Ash Kelley?

  That's a real I told you so.

• 42:59Speaker 04

  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 fraud, to have been fraudulently altered by Dr. Shipman. 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.

• 43:30Ash Kelley?

  Thank you.

• 43:31Speaker 04

  What's crazy though,

• 43:32Ash Kelley?

  Plenty of evidence.

• 43:33Speaker 04

  Is they had a butt ton of evidence that they found when they actually looked into it.

• 43:37Ash Kelley?

  Right.

• 43:37Speaker 04

  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 healthcare system that though not responsible for the murders themselves, certainly allowed Shipman to go on killing undetected.

• 43:54Ash Kelley?

  Really?

• 43:55Speaker 04

  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.

• 44:17Ash Kelley?

  Public, yeah, we should all know what's gonna happen now.

• 44:20Speaker 04

  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 200, 215 patients.

• 44:39Ash Kelley?

  Wow.

• 44:39Speaker 04

  171 women and 44 men.

• 44:42Ash Kelley?

  That's crazy.

• 44:43Speaker 04

  Between the ages of 47 and 93 years old.

• 44:47Ash Kelley?

  Wow. Imagine, first of all, 47 is so young and then you make it to 93.

• 44:53Speaker 04

  Three years old.

• 44:54Ash Kelley?

  And this motherfucker is what takes you out?

• 44:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:57Ash Kelley?

  That is like so unfair.

• 45:00Speaker 04

  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's systems in both England and Wales was horribly outdated and in need of radical changes that included better training, multiple sign offs on death certificates, 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.

• 45:42Speaker 04

  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 Shipman case made people more uncomfortable about the control doctors can have over the end of someone's life. The release of the Shipman 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, I think.

• 46:21Speaker 04

  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.

• 46:29Ash Kelley?

  Oh, God.

• 46:30Speaker 04

  On January 13th, 2004, just one day before his 58th birthday, Fred Shipman hanged himself with his bed sheets 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.

• 46:51Ash Kelley?

  Yep.

• 46:52Speaker 04

  And no time did Shipman express any remorse for the lives he'd taken.

• 46:56Ash Kelley?

  Lovely.

• 46:56Speaker 04

  And he went to his grave insisting he was innocent.

• 46:59Ash Kelley?

  He was not.

• 47:00Speaker 04

  In speaking with the press, lead investigator in the Shipman 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, with so many of his medical files and patient information having been altered or destroyed, any chance of identifying additional Shipman victims may have died with him.

• 47:30Ash Kelley?

  That's awful.

• 47:32Speaker 04

  And that is the Shipman case.

• 47:34Ash Kelley?

  It's, it's hard to imagine that he would have given anybody anything. Who knows, after years of sitting in prison, you know, but.

• 47:43Speaker 04

  I hate that there isn't a chance now.

• 47:46Ash Kelley?

  He just seems like such a jackass.

• 47:48Speaker 04

  He is, but you know, prison can break a, break a fucker. So.

• 47:53Ash Kelley?

  It's true.

• 47:54Speaker 04

  It's a, it's a horrifying case and it's, I mean, they can, they definitively think like 215.

• 48:01Ash Kelley?

  That's crazy.

• 48:02Speaker 04

  That's unbelievable.

• 48:03Ash Kelley?

  It really is.

• 48:04Speaker 04

  And he just, and why?

• 48:06Ash Kelley?

  Just playing God, I think.

• 48:08Speaker 04

  Just playing God. That's it. And using like,

• 48:11Ash Kelley?

  Just like a weird like,

• 48:12Speaker 04

  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, you just surrender to, you surrender yourself to a doctor.

• 48:24Ash Kelley?

  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.

• 48:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:34Ash Kelley?

  And got something out of that. Do you know what I mean?

• 48:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:38Ash Kelley?

  It's almost such a passive way to kill someone.

• 48:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:41Ash Kelley?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 48:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 48:43Ash Kelley?

  It's, it's strange. There's not a lot of cases that we've heard like this.

• 48:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:47Ash Kelley?

  Because even poisoning feels so much different.

• 48:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:52Ash Kelley?

  You know?

• 48:52Speaker 04

  I know. It's strange.

• 48:53Ash Kelley?

  Yeah.

• 48:55Speaker 04

  It's, it's a very strange thing.

• 48:57Ash Kelley?

  Yeah, there's not, there's not a lot of cases we've talked about where, where it's been injections. I find that.

• 49:02Speaker 04

  I know.

• 49:03Ash Kelley?

  I find that interesting.

• 49:04Speaker 04

  I hate Fred Shipman.

• 49:05Ash Kelley?

  I do too.

• 49:06Speaker 04

  Rest in distress.

• 49:07Ash Kelley?

  Yeah, the fact that,

• 49:08Speaker 04

  You fucker.

• 49:09Ash Kelley?

  Yeah, it pisses me off that he didn't have to rot in jail.

• 49:12Speaker 04

  No, pissed.

• 49:13Ash Kelley?

  Yeah. Do you have a fun fact?

• 49:15Speaker 04

  People believe that a radio station in Rus- Russia is haunted.

• 49:19Ash Kelley?

  Shut up.

• 49:20Speaker 04

  The station, UVB 76, broadcasts white static noises, but no one knows where it comes from. And it's been broadcasting since 1982.

• 49:29Ash Kelley?

  I'm obsessed with this.

• 49:31Speaker 04

  I would like to look further into that. So that's my fucked weird fact that we will be looking further into.

• 49:37Ash Kelley?

  That is so fun.

• 49:39Speaker 04

  That's a fucked up fun fact.

• 49:40Ash Kelley?

  Also like, where is it?

• 49:42Speaker 04

  A fun fucked fact.

• 49:44Ash Kelley?

  I don't like it, but I love it.

• 49:46Speaker 04

  I love it.

• 49:48Ash Kelley?

  Ah, I wanna know more.

• 49:49Speaker 04

  Oh, I can't wait to go down a rabbit hole about this.

• 49:52Ash Kelley?

  That one. All right. Well, you guys, we love you. We hope you keep on listening.

• 49:56Speaker 04

  And we hope you keep it weird.

• 49:59Ash Kelley?

  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.

• 50:04Speaker 04

  Let's go.

• 50:05Ash Kelley?

  Bye.

• 51:38Speaker 02

  Time for a quick break to talk about McDonald's. It's the tangiest time of the year. For a limited time, head to McDonald's and get a McRib sandwich. Make it a meal by adding a medium fries and a soft drink like an ice cold Diet Dr. Pepper. So grab a McRib sandwich and embrace the tang. Save time by ordering ahead on the app. At participating McDonald's for a limited time. Dr. Pepper is a registered trademark of Dr. Pepper, 7-Up, Inc.

• 52:03Ash Kelley?

  At California Closets, we design for the little things. Take this moment of a family getting ready to leave the house. Where's my backpack? Mom, I need my cleats.

• 52:13Speaker 04

  My wallet was right here. If I trip over these shoes one more time.

• 52:19Ash Kelley?

  And now, the California Closets version of that moment.

• 52:26Ash Kelley?

  Entryway and home storage solutions by designers who get you. California Closets, more room for what matters.