1997: Anybody Can See This Book: How Harold Shipman Calmly Deflected the Undertaker Who Suspected Him
Mary Walls was a healthy 78 year old who had been playing with her great-grandchild just the day before. On 14 November 1997 she died during a home visit from her doctor, Harold Shipman, who told her niece she had suffered a heart attack overnight and refused to go to hospital. When the niece arrived she found Mrs Walls fully clothed, sitting upright in her armchair, as though she had simply dozed off mid errand.
That same month, local undertaker Deborah Bambroffe was noticing the identical signature turning up again and again among Shipman's patients, elderly women found dressed and sitting up, and raised her fears with another doctor, though she later admitted they had seemed "so ludicrous" at the time. Her father confronted Shipman directly over the clustering of deaths. Shipman did not flinch; he simply fetched his death register, flicked it open and said, "anybody can see this book", then drifted into small talk about the weather, leaving the family reassured.
Shipman was later convicted of murdering Mary Walls by lethal injection and falsifying her medical history to cover it up. An inquest found she had been unlawfully killed, one of close to two hundred patient deaths eventually linked to him.
