Harold Shipman: The True Story of Britain's Most Notorious Serial Killer

by Ryan Green

The man on the cover of this book looks like he could be anyone's grandfather. It's easy to imagine him doting on his little grandkids, reading them stories from his lap and letting them play with his big, bushy beard. If you were told he was a doctor, I bet you'd imagine he was a good, kind and gentle one, with an easy, affable manner and deep care for his patients. Harold Frederick Shipman certainly projected all those qualities, but only so that he could hide the evil that lurked deep inside. Shipman abused his trust and used his position to kill – no less than 218 of his patients found their end at his hand, making him the United Kingdom's most prolific serial killer by a long shot.This book tells Shipman's story, from his childhood under a domineering mother to his pathetic death in a prison cell. It will put you in the perspective of those who lived and worked in proximity to him, showing you the considerate but sometimes haughty doctor he presented himself as before taking you through the process of wrenching off that mask and uncovering the full extent of the evil festering within.We will make a study of the man's possible motives and close with a look at the systemic failures that allowed him to kill and steps taken to make sure nothing like his murderous spree ever happens again. Scroll up and click on the Buy Now button at the top of this page and begin to look into the life and mind of the ultimate human the healer who kills ‘Doctor Death’.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Crime, Biography

98 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 14, 2015

About the author

Ryan Green is a true crime author in his late thirties. He lives in Herefordshire, England with his wife, three children, and two dogs. Outside of writing and spending time with his family, Ryan enjoys walking, reading and windsurfing.

Ryan is fascinated with History, Psychology and True Crime. In 2015, he finally started researching and writing his own work and at the end of the year, he released his first book on Britain's most notorious serial killer, Harold Shipman.

He has since written several books on lesser-known subjects, and taken the unique approach of writing from the killer's perspective. He narrates some of the most chilling scenes you'll encounter in the True Crime genre.

"Ryan Green is an incredible storyteller...he doesn’t just tell the story, he allows you to be part of it." ~Blackbird

Reviews

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the British original Angel of Mercy MD

[Osama · Rating 4 out of 5]

قصة اليوم عن هارولد شيبمان اشهر قاتل في تاريخ بريطانيا الحديث.

كان شيبمان طبيب بريطاني محبوب من مرضاه ويؤدي عمله بأقصى درجات الاتقان. لكن الوجه الآخر له كان مظلما ومجرما بما لا يتصوره عقل.

استغل ثقة المرضى واسرهم في تنفيذ المئات من جرائم القتل المتسلسلة تجاه كبار السن - قد تصل إلى ألف ومائتي حالة. حيث كان يراجع المرضى في منازلهم ويحقنهم بدواء الميثادين ويدعي وفاتهم بأسباب طبيعية ويستغل ثغرات النظام الصحي للتغطية على الجريمة.

اسباب القتل قد تتضمن مايلي:
- حبه للسيطرة والتحكم وشعوره بالقوة تجاه المرضى اتخاذ القرار بحياة او موتهم.
- شعوره بأنهم عبء على النظام الصحي والمجتمع ككل.
- رغبته بالموت الرحيم لبعض المرضى الذي يعانون من مشكلات صحية او نفسية مزمنة.
- إدمانه على دواء الباثادين ذو العلاقة بالمورفين بسبب الاكتئاب والتلاعب بالوصفات الطبية.
- التلذذ يالقتل.
- الاستفادة من تزوير الوصايا الخاصة بالمرضى لنيل فوائد مادية أو الاحتفاظ بمقتنياتهم كذكرى.
- الشعور بالذكاء لتمكنه من خداع المجتمع والنظام القانوني والصحي لفترة طويلة.

بعد اكتشاف جرائمه بسبب انتباه ابنة أحدى ضحاياه إلى تزويره وصية والدتها، اودع شيبمان السجن للتحقيق ولكنه سارع بشنق نفسه باللحاف في زنزانته ولم يتم للوصول للحقيقة كاملة ولم يعترف بما فعل.

المصدر كتاب
Harold Shipman by Rayan Green

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this for review, it wasn't bad but I can't say it was very entertaining. It is about a doctor who killed many People by overdosing them. It is short because there isn't much to say really, most of it is just statistics like how many deaths per year, and how many suspicious deaths. There wasn't a detailed planning of his crimes, or an escalating madness that led him to murder, he just killed lots of people in the same way and then got caught from a stupid mistake. I wouldn't call it boring though, it was the perfect length.

[Chantelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I actually really loved this book!

It was a short read but it gave a lot of information! This was interesting it was all about Harold shipman and was the first book I read by this author!

I’m now off to read book 2

Great book tho 5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Emilija · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

This was pretty good. Rather brief and much more biographical than I was expecting, but it seems rather well researched, especially small medical details, which many would have skimmed over or forgotten completely.

Harold Shipman, AKA the most notorious serial killer in British history, used his position as a doctor to kill his patients and rewrote some of their wills in order to take their money. A relatively ingenious idea for the time period, as rules regarding drugs were a lot more lax during his time as a doctor than they are now, even if Shipman bent the rules back then. Tending to focus on geriatric patients and advising loved ones to cremate their parents or partners, he could possibly have continued for years more, had he not made a mistake with one patient called Mrs Grundy.
It seems rather incredulous now, looking back in hindsight, that nobody noticed this happening, considering the number of people he killed in such a small GP area.

[Vicky Peplow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great book

I really do like reading these true crime books by Green. I have a few on my TBR list so look forward to getting into the next one.
The story of Harold Shipman has always interested me and wanted to know more about him and what he'd done.
Keep up the great work!

[Tom Schulte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shipman was an English doctor who is believed to be one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history. In 2000, Shipman was found guilty of the murder patients under his care during the 80s and 90s. Green once again shines a light on a true crime subject that is new to me. While motive may be undiscoverable, there are interesting details here on the techniques getting the lethal grains of opiates applied. The case that undid the deadly career through typewriter forensics raises questions itself as it is unusual in the series. Why was that one sloppy? Guilt?

As a software person myself, I really liked how basic computer forensics applied to 90s software revealed much of the scope of the killing.

The whole idea of health care professionals using their positions to become serial killers and a fascinating and scary topic to me. It seems most such cases I read of are nurses, so this case of a GP of exceptionally prolific murder seems unusual as well as extreme.

The only drawback for me is the lackluster delivery of narrator Ernie Sprance.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

At barely over 2 hours, this true crime story isn't long enough to be considered a book, but it's not really interesting enough to be any longer or more detailed. Green gives us all the pertinent information about this case and Ernie Sprance reads it quite expertly.

NOTE: I received a free copy of this audiobook in exchange for this unbiased review.

[Yu · Rating 3 out of 5]

The form of reading this book is as an audio book. It's short, informative and interesting. It's about a "doctor" who killed (confirmed) 215 patients and with other suspicious killings. The author digs various motivations of Shipman as well, most of them make sense. But for readers who are not so familiar with the serial killer patterns and signatures, it could be more enriched in some ways.

[N S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shipman killed over 200 people, perhaps dozens more. His killing career spanned from the late 70’s until the late 90’s. What I find surprising and disappointing is that there isn’t a deeper work, for instance few if any families of the victims have been spoke to. There are little or no vignettes about the kind of people the victims were or how their passing impacted their loved ones. This is pretty much just a list of statistics. Surely in the entire enquiry plus some good old fashioned leg work a more compelling work covering this evil man and highlighting the tragedy of the lost humanity might have been forthcoming by now, 20 years after Shipman’s death by suicide. It won’t be much longer until no loved ones remain to tell clear stories of victims taken in the 70’s and 80’s for instance, it’s already 40 years ago.

[Beverly Laude · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had never heard of Harold Shipman until I was given the chance to listen to this audiobook by the author. Although short, this book gives a good overview of the case of a notorious serial killer who happened to be a physician. Harold Shipman killed many of his patients and it will probably never be known exactly how many he actually killed.

The author, Ryan Green, does a good job in telling this tale in a factual way. This is definitely not an indepth study of the story, but gives a true crime reader what they are looking for. The book gives you a creepy vibe about how a person can become a Doctor of Death, taking matters into their own hands.

The narrator, Ernie Sprance, does a good job with perfect pacing and enough emotion to keep the listener involved.

[Jodie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was given this free review copy audio-book by the author at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Overall this was a pretty interesting book. I haven't heard of Harold Shipman until now. What a vile human being. I can't believe he got away with all these killings for as long as he did! He used his position as a doctor and earned the trust and love of many patients and then ended up murdering them.
This book was very short and to the point, but definitely worth the read. Ernie Sprance was a good narrator.

[Jen Rudy · Rating 3 out of 5]

"This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review."

Was too fast paced for my taste and unfortunately, there really wasn’t much of a “story” as to what made him who he was. There were a lot of hypothesis and what-if’s but not one of the stories I’m used to reading from this author where there’s more of an understanding as to who the person was and how they became to be what they were.

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting

I did not know anything about Shipman going into this story and was amazed by the lack of oversight that allowed his murderous urges to run unchecked for so long. This text has a fair amount of in depth information about the case but could use a stronger hand in editing.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Shipman or true crime stories.

[Brandon · Rating 2 out of 5]

The concept is interesting, but the book is boring and thankfully short. Even being short, i found myself breezing past pages that essentially stated the same thing over and over again. The book also contains a litany of typos and sentences that do not make sense, as if it was never reviewed by an editor.

[Brittany · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book wasn’t the best. It’s an interesting story about a serial killer doctor who injected his patients with enough drugs to kill them. The way the story was told was with a lot of numbers and dates. That aspect was a little boring to me. I didn’t know about Harold Shipman before reading this though.

[em · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel like this is a quarter of a book. Overall it gives me “I’m at uni and need to hit my word count” vibes. It jumps around quite a lot and I think needed another draft because some sentence structures are awful and there’s some places where it feels like waffling. It’s odd because although I’ve said that, it does pose some interesting looks into how he got away with it.

[Patricia Atkinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

known as doctor death killed 218 in the united kingdom as a child he watched his mom die of lung cancer the doctor administered morphine to her and her pain went away shipman went on to become a doctor and those are the people her murdered some were termenly ill and others were not in the end shipman committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liked how this was formatted. It was clear on facts and felt like it was telling a story of fiction instead of fact which made it more interesting. I absorbed the information better that way. This is one of my favorite true crime cases and it was well done. With this books I think including some photos would be very helpful

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing

A fantastic book that is shocking and interesting from start to finish.
Couldn’t put this book down. A frightening story of something that went on in plain sight for so long.
Well worth a read.

[Lynne Gibson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thought provoking

I had of course heard of this well publicised case before but never in any detail. It certainly makes you take a deeper look at society.
I enjoy Ryan Greens style of writing and each book draws me into the story.

[graham macgregor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not for me

This is a factually information book. Debating this and that. I'm more for a story being told rather than this style of book. It is well written and I do respect the author but this style of book is not for me. It's not what I thought I was buying

[Bri Barkley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I felt like the entire book was just a book report written by a high school student. I feel like it could have been a much better book with the information at hand but it was just bare bones basic information from Wikipedia or something.

[Carolyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I've been enjoying the format and voice that Ryan Green uses for his books, this one was just, boring. It has the facts, the statistics, the basic enough but I assume there just wasn't enough story to make it interesting.

[Dan Crow · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not Greens best work.

I love Ryan Green but this book is not like his others that pull you in to the story. His other books have true storylines while this just feels like a bullet point report.

[Laurie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short narrative of a doctors compulsion to kill his patients, to ignore the "first do no harm" portion of the Hippocratic oath. He never really tells why he did it. Was it to decrease the caseload of the NHS? to end suffering? Nobody knows.

[Alex Kozokin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was afraid this book might to try to give platform to show the bad guy as angel of mercy.
Happy they stick to the facts.
Alot of questions still stayed due to the fact he didn't communicate at all after arrest of why he did it .
Nice read , not more then that.

[Laura Hermosa · Rating 3 out of 5]

To many statistics like if you were reading a police report

[Brenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad true crime book. It was definitely a shortened version of the horrific crimes this man committed but it was the perfect length for me.

[Deborah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Written as if a high school term paper. Full of misspellings, incorrect word usage and run on sentences.