Physician as Serial Killer — The Shipman Case

When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge.Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Speckled Band”Harold Fredrick Shipman, a British general practitioner, was convicted on January 31, 2000, of murdering 15 of his patients (and of forging a will of one of them) while he was practicing in a small town in northwest England. He had killed these patients by administering lethal doses of diamorphine (diacetylmorphine). He was sentenced to 15 concurrent terms of life imprisonment but committed suicide while in custody on January 13, 2004. His conviction raised . . .