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How the age of Shipman鈥檚 victims was key to understanding how he got away with murdering hundreds of patients in plain sight for nearly 30 years.

This episode opens with the publication of the first report of the public inquiry into the deaths of Shipman鈥檚 patients - a report that officially concluded that, while working as a GP, Harold Shipman had murdered 260 of his patients. But how had he got away with killing on such a scale for so long?

Wilson explores the reaction to the staggering total, discovering how commentators came up with a range of theories to try to understand why a seemingly ordinary doctor had killed so many people.

Wilson meets a detective who led a team that questioned Shipman after his conviction about the murders he committed in Todmorden. He reveals how Shipman refused to utter a single word during several days of interrogation 鈥� a silence he maintained until he committed suicide in his prison cell, four years into multiple life sentences.

After seeing reports of Shipman鈥檚 suicide, a former nurse came forward. She recognised Shipman as a doctor she had worked with as a student nurse at a hospital in Pontefract, West Yorkshire. She had always been troubled by the number of deaths on one of the wards 鈥� a ward where she now realised Shipman had worked as a junior doctor. Could he have begun killing there, even before he became a GP?

Wilson tracks down a family whose elderly relative died whilst under Shipman鈥檚 care in hospital in Pontefract, as well as another doctor who worked alongside Shipman there. Piecing together their stories, Wilson reveals that not only is it clear that Shipman had begun killing before he qualified as a GP, it is also very likely that Shipman killed at least one child.

The revelation that Shipman had begun killing even before he became a GP and that some of his victims were children is shocking. At the time, the coverage of these revelations differed markedly to the reporting of the deaths of hundreds of Shipman鈥檚 elderly victims in Hyde. Wilson asks if these contrasting responses can be explained by the victims鈥� ages and if that could explain why Shipman targeted mainly elderly patients 鈥� not because he was driven by a compulsion to kill old people, but because he knew he would be more likely to get away with it.

Wilson interrogates his own preconceptions about the Shipman case - he had wrongly assumed that Hyde was a town with an above average elderly population and had pictured Shipman鈥檚 victims as frail, decrepit, housebound old ladies, when in truth they were mostly fit, active members of their community. Wilson concludes that these preconceptions run through the entire Shipman case, informing an attitude and prejudice towards the elderly that allowed a seemingly ordinary GP to get away with murdering hundreds of people, in plain sight, for nearly 30 years.

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59 minutes

Last on

Fri 10 Dec 2021 23:05
主播大秀 Two except Wales & Wales HD

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Clips

See all clips from Episode 3 (2)

Music Played

Timings (where shown) are from the start of the programme in hours and minutes

  • 00:16

    Nils Frahm

    Says

  • 00:42

    Jon Hopkins

    Abandon Window

  • 00:46

    David Holmes

    Hey Maggy

  • 00:57

    Asaf Avidan

    Reckoning Song (Acoustic)

  • 00:59

    Hilary Hahn

    Violin Partita No. 2 In D Minor, Bwv 1004: III. Sarabande

Credits

Director Chris Wilson
Executive Producer Nancy Bornat
Production Manager Lynn Philpott
Production Company Wall to Wall Media

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