UK doc gets lifer, probe announced into case

UK doc gets lifer, probe announced into case
REUTERS

LONDON, FEBRUARY 2: Britain has announced an inquiry into the case of the worst serial killer the country has seen, a middle-aged physician dubbed ``Dr Death'' who murdered 15 mostly elderly women patients with heroin injections.

Police investigated 136 deaths during the period covered by their inquiry, and found enough evidence to raise suspicions about Harold Shipman, who was jailed for life on Monday, in some 90 of those. Prosecutors said a decision about whether to proceed on further charges would be taken in consultation with victims' relatives.

Shipman, a married father-of-four, who was by all accounts highly popular, murdered the women, aged 49 to 81, by injecting them with lethal doses of diamorphine, the medical name for heroin. He also forged the will of one victim, 81-year-old Kathleen Grundy--an act which ultimately led to his downfall-- and was given another four years for that.

Health secretary Alan Milburn told parliament the four-year killing spree of Shipman, who was jailed for life on Monday, had left the public seeking reassurance about whether his crimes could have been detected sooner.

``We owe it to the relatives and friends of those murdered by Harold Shipman to identify and to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent a repetition of the terrible events witnessed in Hyde,'' Milburn said.

He said the inquiry, under former chief inspector of social services Lord Laming, would look at the role played by the police, health services and coroner in the case. It is expected to report in September.

Britain's medical establishment has come under heavy fire because of the killings, which took place from 1995 to 1998. There was particular concern that the same doctor who treated a patient could also sign the death certificate and that a drug addict with convictions for illegally procuring pain killers to feed his habit was allowed to continue as a doctor.

The British Medical Association (BMA) said Shipman was an ``evil one-off''. But it accepted that better monitoring of doctors might have headed off some of his killing spree in a rural community in northwest England. ``This was a doctor who abused his position to destroy lives, and it was because he was a doctor he could perpetrate his murders in this way,'' John Chisholm, chairman of the BMA's General Practitioners' Committee, told a news conference.

Chisholm said closer monitoring of data registering deaths and cremations, and of the system for prescribing drugs, ``might have prevented some of these deaths''. Milburn announced a number of immediate steps--to require doctors to disclose criminal convictions and action taken against them by regulatory bodies and to make it compulsory for family doctors to report deaths in their surgeries. A review of death certification will also start at once.

``There is no doubt that systems have to be strengthened and changed,'' Milburn said. ``Harold Shipman not only managed to perpetrate these appalling crimes, he managed to get away with them for years without being discovered.''

Police considered bringing a further 23 murder charges against Shipman and did not rule out the possibility the doctor killed nearly 150 people in his 20-year-long career.