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.
