1989: The Same Calendar Date, Six Years Apart: Harold Shipman Killed Two Elderly Patients in Hyde

Serial killer Dr Harold Shipman had a chilling habit of striking on the same date across different years. On 26 September 1989, he killed 82 year old Elizabeth Mary Burke in Hyde, the Greater Manchester town where his medical practice was based.

Exactly six years later, on the same date in 1995, he killed 87 year old Dora Elizabeth Ashton, another patient from Hyde. Despite the eerie coincidence, Shipman was never charged with either woman’s death; he was only later convicted for a separate group of murders, though he is suspected of killing far more patients over his career as a trusted family doctor.

Injection to patient’s arm.
Injection to patient’s arm.

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2002: The Monster Butler Archibald Hall Dies in Prison as the Oldest Whole-Life Inmate in Britain

Archibald Hall began as a teenage thief in Glasgow before reinventing himself behind bars, studying antiques and taking elocution lessons to erase his Scottish accent. He adopted the alias Roy Fontaine, borrowed from actress Joan Fontaine, and used the new identity to work as a butler to British aristocracy.

The disguise concealed a killer. In 1977, Hall shot a gamekeeper during a staged rabbit hunt after the man threatened to expose his criminal past, then buried him beside a stream. Later, while working for a former Labour MP and his wife, Hall and an accomplice suffocated the wife after she caught them plotting to rob the couple. They drugged her husband and drove him to Scotland, where they buried her body before strangling him and beating him with a shovel. The couple’s housekeeper was also murdered during the spree.

Convicted of four murders, Hall was sentenced to life in prison without parole. He died behind bars in Portsmouth, England, with the Monster Butler persona outliving the man who had built it.

The Butler Did Do It
The Butler Did Do It

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1944: The Acid Bath Murderer: John Haigh Dissolves His Former Boss in a Barrel of Sulphuric Acid

John Haigh, a convicted fraudster, murdered his former employer William ‘Mac’ McSwan and dissolved his body in a barrel of sulphuric acid. Haigh later claimed the killing was driven by a compulsion he called blood lust, but McSwan had money and property, and the murder looks less like madness than a calculated escalation of Haigh’s earlier fraud schemes.

Tellingly, whatever ‘compulsion’ Haigh described did not resurface until the cash from the McSwan killing had run out, suggesting the acid barrel was less about bloodlust and more about a ruthless, practical solution to funding his lifestyle.

Portrait of john george haigh - acid bath murderer. Public Domain.
Portrait of john george haigh – acid bath murderer. Public Domain.

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1981: Harold Shipman Kills Elderly Patient With a Fatal Injection After She Fell Ill in Her Garden

In August 1981, 81-year-old Elizabeth Ashworth felt unwell while gardening at her home on Peel Street in Hyde, England, and asked her neighbours to call a doctor. Harold Shipman arrived, administered an injection, then told the neighbours she would not live much longer. When he returned later and asked if she was still alive, she had already died.

Investigators later identified her death as an unlawful killing, part of Shipman’s early pattern of murdering elderly patients with fatal opiate injections. Harold Shipman would go on to become one of history’s most prolific serial killers, convicted of 15 murders but suspected in the deaths of over 200 patients.

Injection to patient’s arm.
Injection to patient’s arm.

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On This Day in True Crime History
1794·The First Free Settler Murdered in the Colony: Hanged at Sydney for a Parramatta Stabbing
1826·The Gun That Misfired Twice: Three Bushrangers Hanged Outside Sydney
1873·A Tearful Confession in Custody Cracked the Case: Two Men Hanged at Perth Gaol for Eating their Victim
1889·He Called It an Accident. The Jury Called It Murder: Robert Landells Hanged at Melbourne Gaol
1907·A Doctor Fooled Twice: Martha Rendell and the Second Child to Die of Diphtheria
2002·Shot Dead in His Own Bed: A Melbourne Gangland Killing Blamed on a Friend
More Crime On This Day →

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