Over a three-year period a family doctor embarked on a complex plan to cover up the murder of 15 women patients in his care, Preston Crown Court heard yesterday.
Dr Harold Shipman (53), of Mottram, near Hyde, Manchester, denies killing the patients between March 1995 and June this year and forging the will of one of his alleged victims, Mrs Kathleen Grundy, a former Mayoress of Hyde, so that he might benefit from her estate valued at nearly £400,000.
On the second day of the prosecution's opening statement, Mr Richard Henriques QC told the court that six of the murder charges related specifically to women patients who were cremated, and in two of the cases Dr Shipman made numerous computer entries on the files at his surgery in Hyde to create a false medical history.
In three of the cases where patients were cremated, Dr Shipman had no reason to visit the victims' house at the time of their death and on one occasion he pretended to call, and then cancel, an ambulance.
The prosecution maintains that Dr Shipman murdered all 15 women by administering large amounts of morphine or diamorphine. None of the women who were buried or cremated was prescribed morphine or diamorphine, the prosecution claims.
"It is our submission that the defendant murdered each one of the six who were cremated. Any other explanation would offend common sense and good reason," Mr Henriques said.
One of Dr Shipman's alleged victims, Mrs Ivy Lomas (63), was a widow and a regular visitor to his surgery, although none of her ailments was considered life-threatening. Yet such was the frequency of her appointments that Dr Shipman viewed her as "a nuisance" and he once joked with police officers that he considered reserving a seat in his waiting room for her with a plaque saying: "Seat permanently reserved for Ivy Lomas."
The court was told that on May 29th, 1997, Mrs Lomas visited Dr Shipman's surgery, and the receptionist, Mrs Carol Chapman, noticed that she was unusually quiet and off-colour. Ten minutes after her appointment began, Dr Shipman shouted to Mrs Chapman: "I'm sorry about the wait. I've just had a problem with the ECG machine."
Dr Shipman then saw three more patients in his surgery, before emerging to inform Mrs Chapman that Mrs Lomas had died despite his attempts to revive her.
He later told police that Mrs Lomas had experienced bronchial problems and he had taken her to the treatment room to rest. When he returned 10 to 15 minutes later, he told police, she had died and he had made no attempt to revive her. Two days later Dr Shipman made back-dated computer entries detailing Mrs Lomas's visit to the surgery. He then wrote on her death certificate that she had died from coronary thrombosis and other complications, including ischaemic heart disease. Mr Henriques said there was no evidence to support this assessment but high levels of morphine were found in her body.
"Dr Shipman never called for help. Resuscitation is hard to perform alone. His behaviour in leaving Mrs Lomas to attend to a number of other patients is unusual, to say the least. The failure to attempt resuscitation and failure to call the emergency services is a feature which occurs time and again in subsequent cases we shall look at," Mr Henriques continued.
The court also heard that on November 24th, 1997, Mrs Marie Quinn (67) was in chirpy form telephoning friends and her son in Japan. Later that day her friend, Mrs Ellen Hanratty, received a telephone call from Dr Shipman to say that Mrs Quinn had died. He said Mrs Quinn had telephoned him but when he arrived at her house she was "breathing her last" in the kitchen.
On Mrs Quinn's death certificate Dr Shipman wrote that her death was caused by a stroke. However, Mr Henriques said analysis of Mrs Quinn's telephone bill showed no such call was made to Dr Shipman's surgery, and when her body was exhumed an autopsy revealed no heart abnormalities, but there was a high level of morphine in a thigh muscle.