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| Case file: Dr. Harold Shipman The body of Kathleen Grundy, an 81-year-old ex-mayor from Hyde, England, was found on a sofa in her home, on June 24, 1998. Her friends immediately called Dr. Harold Shipman, who had visited the house a few hours earlier and was the last person to see her alive (he said he had been collecting samples for a survey on aging). Shipman pronounced her dead and the news was conveyed to Grundy's daughter, Angela Woodruff. The doctor told the daughter that an autopsy was unnecessary because he had seen Ms. Grundy shortly before her death. However, following her mother's burial, Ms. Woodruff received a phone call from solicitors who claimed to have a copy of her mother's will that left $550,000 to Dr. Shipman. Ms. Woodruff, believeing it to be a fake, went to her local police. An autopsy was ordered which, in turn, required an exhumation order from the coroner. The body was removed to the laboratory, where normal autopsy procedures were followed; blood, tissue, and hair samples taken from Ms. Grundy's body were sent to different labs for analysis. At the same time, police raided the doctor's home and offices, and found an old Brother portable typewriter that Dr. Shipman told them he had sometime lent it to Ms. Grundy. Later, forensic scientists confirmed it was the machine used to type the counterfeit will and other fraudulent documents. Meanwhile, the forensic toxicologist, filed her report, showing that there was a lethal level of morphine in the dead woman's body and also that Ms. Grundy's death would have occurred within three hours of receiving the overdose. Dr. Shipman's used of the drug was a serious miscalculation, since morphine is one of the poisons that can remain in body tissue for centuries. Dr. Shipman later claimed that Ms. grundy was a morphine addict, but as Dr. Shipman's past patients were exhumed and more autopsies were carried out, toxicologists found high levels of morphine in each of the bodies. The doctor was given consecutive life sentences for the murder of 15 people. It is thought that his victims numbered more than 400. In January 2004 Dr. Shipman died in jail, apparently by suicide. |