1988: Harold Shipman Killed His 55th Patient, a Decade Before Anyone Stopped Him

Alice Prestwich was just another house call for a family doctor trusted by an entire community. Harold Shipman gave the 69-year-old widow a lethal injection of morphine at her home in Hyde, Greater Manchester, on 20 October 1988, the same quiet routine he had already used on dozens of elderly patients before her. She became his 55th confirmed victim, and not one soul suspected a thing.

Shipman kept practising, and killing, for another ten years, forging wills and helping himself to his victims’ assets along the way, before a suspicious bequest finally exposed him in 1998. An official inquiry later concluded he had killed at least 215 patients, making him the most prolific serial killer in British history.

Dr Death - Harold Shipman
Dr Death – Harold Shipman

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1965: The Bread Van Disguise That Unmasked Moors Murderer Ian Brady

One October night in 1965, Ian Brady and his lover Myra Hindley brought a seventeen-year-old back to their home near Manchester, where Brady killed him with an axe in front of Hindley’s brother-in-law, David Smith, whom they had wrongly taken for a kindIan Brady and Myra Hindley brought 17-year-old Edward Evans back to their home near Manchester after Brady had approached him at Manchester Central station. Brady attacked Evans with a hatchet in front of Hindley’s brother-in-law, David Smith, whom Brady apparently believed could be drawn into his criminal world, before strangling Evans with electrical flex.

Smith was horrified and notified police the next morning. Police Superintendent Bob Talbot arrived at the house wearing a bread deliveryman’s overall over his uniform. Inside, Brady was lying on a divan writing to his employer about his injured ankle. Talbot said he was investigating “an act of violence involving guns”, and Hindley denied that any violence had occurred.

When officers asked for the key to a locked spare bedroom, Hindley claimed it was at work. Police offered to take her there to retrieve it, at which point Brady told her to hand it over. Inside the room, they found Evans’s body, and Brady was arrested on suspicion of murder.

Classic Vehicle. Vintage Citroen Bread delivery van | ID 57067159 © Johnbaguley100 | Dreamstime.com
ID 57067159 © Johnbaguley100 | Dreamstime.com

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