Shipman killed 15 patients as a junior doctor

Mass murderer Harold Shipman killed up to 15 patients while working as a junior doctor more than 30 years ago, an official report revealed today.

Mass murderer Harold Shipman killed up to 15 patients while working as a junior doctor more than 30 years ago, an official report revealed today.

The deaths occurred between 1971 and 1974 at Pontefract General Infirmary in West Yorkshire, according to the sixth report of the Shipman Inquiry.

The inquiry has already found that Shipman murdered at least 215 patients with lethal morphine injections while working at a one-man GP practice in Hyde, Greater Manchester, after leaving Pontefract.

Inquiry chairman Dame Janet Smith said today that suspicion surrounded a number of other deaths.

In today's report - entitled Shipman: The Final Report - Dame Janet said: "My overall conclusion, therefore, is that Shipman killed about 250 patients between 1971 and 1998."

Today's report follows an investigation into 137 deaths at Pontefract GeneralInfirmary where Shipman worked as a junior doctor in the early 1970s.

Dame Janet concluded that Shipman unlawfully killed three men in this time, but added that there was "quite serious suspicion" about four other deaths, including that of four-year-old Susan Garfitt in 1972.

She said there were a further 17 deaths where there was "some suspicion that Shipman might have been involved in causing the deaths".

In 68 cases Dame Janet found that the deaths were "almost certainly natural" and in a further 45 cases she could reach no decision.

In conclusion Dame Janet said: "I estimate that while at Pontefract General Infirmary Shipman probably caused the deaths of between 10 and 15 patients.

"In my first report I identified 215 deaths for which Shipman was responsible and expressed suspicion about 45 further deaths.

"I accept that some of the deaths I identified as suspicious must in fact have been unlawful killings."

She continued: "If I were to presume that 15 per cent of the deaths that I regarded as suspicious were in fact unlawful killings, my estimate would come to 237 or 238.

"If I then add in my estimate of unlawful killings in Pontefract, I arrive at a total of about 250 deaths."

The report also looked at a claim that Shipman had confessed to his crimes to aninmate at Preston Prison after his arrest in 1998.

Dame Janet dismissed the claim, made by former inmate John Harkin, who said that Shipman told him he had killed 508 patients.

Dame Janet, a High Court Judge, said: "Mr Harkin claimed that Shipman had told him, 'more as a boast than a confession', that the police 'knew nothing' and that he had 'taken 508 lives'."

But Dame Janet went on: "I do not accept Mr Harkin's assertion that Shipman claimed that he had taken 508 lives.

"I do not believe that any number was mentioned, nor do I think that Shipman made anything that amounted to a confession of his crimes to Mr Harkin."