LONDON — A public inquiry announced that family doctor Harold Shipman — Britain's worst serial killer — murdered 215 of his patients in a spree likely "unparalleled in history."
The inquiry's head, High Court judge Dame Janet Smith, said today there was also a "real suspicion" Shipman had killed 45 more people between 1975 and 1998.
Shipman, 56, was convicted in January 2000 of murdering 15 of his patients — all elderly women — by injecting them with heroin. But police said at the time that he may have killed scores more.
Shipman maintained his innocence, and no motive for the crimes has been established.
Smith's yearlong inquiry has investigated the deaths of 494 of Shipman's patients between 1974 and 1998.
In her interim report today, Smith said Shipman began his killing spree in 1975, a year after he entered practice. His victims, ranging in age from 41 to 93, included 171 women and 44 men.
"He betrayed their trust in a way and to an extent that I believe is unparalleled in history," Smith said.
"Although I have identified 215 victims of Shipman, the true number is far greater and cannot be counted. I include the thousands of relatives, friends or neighbors who have lost a loved one or friend before his or her time in circumstances which will leave their mark forever."
In another 38 deaths, Smith said there was too little evidence for her to reach a conclusion.
"The figure of 215 killings may not represent the true total," she said.
Smith said she had "reached no clear conclusion" about Shipman's motive. In all but one case there was no evidence that he killed for money, and there was "no suggestion of any form of sexual depravity."
"It is possible that he was addicted to killing," the judge said.
For more than 20 years Shipman was a respected member of the community in Hyde, a working-class town of 22,000 just outside Manchester in northwest England. In 1992, he set up a busy one-man practice in the town. Between then and 1998 he killed 143 people, Smith concluded in her 2,000-page report.
But his activities did not arouse suspicion until March 1998, when another doctor, who had been asked by Shipman to co-sign some cremation certificates, expressed concern at the number of deaths. Police concluded there wasn't enough evidence to pursue charges.
The investigation was re-opened months later after the daughter of an 81-year-old widow discovered that her mother apparently had changed her will to leave everything to Shipman. That led to exhumations and eventually to Shipman's trial and conviction.
A jury found that he deliberately injected heroin into 15 elderly women — many in good health — during routine checkups in their homes or at his office, falsifying computer records to create fictitious symptoms to explain their deaths.
A government-commissioned report found last year that Shipman had 297 more deaths among his patients than would be expected during a normal 24-year medical career.
Prosecutors have ruled out further trials for Shipman, who is already serving 15 life sentences with no possibility of parole.
The Shipman case has shaken Britain's medical establishment and undermined Britons' faith in their medical system.
The inquiry will now consider how Shipman was able to escape detection for so long. Smith said it would attempt to come up with improved safeguards "so as to ensure such a terrible betrayal of trust by a family doctor can never happen again."
Its final report is due late next year.
On the Net, www.the-shipman-inquiry.org.uk