What did Harold Shipman say about his wife, Primrose, in these personal letters written by him in prison — just weeks before he was found hanging in his jail cell?
Twenty six years ago today, on January 31, 2000, Dr Harold Shipman, also Britain’s worst serial killer, was convicted of murdering 15 patients under his care and one count of forgery — Shipman was handed a life sentence with a whole life order. Believed to be one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history, Shipman has come to be known as ‘Dr Death’, after it is believed he murdered at least 215 of his patients over a span of 23 years. Violating his patients’ trust in him, Shipman reportedly targeted largely vulnerable elderly individuals and killed them with either a fatal dose of drugs or prescribing them an abnormal dosage. On January 13, 2004, four years into serving his life imprisonment sentence, Shipman hanged himself in his prison cell at the Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire — just a day prior to his 58th birthday.
While imprisoned, the Hyde GP wrote a series of letters to his former patients David and Mavis Stott, before and during his murder trial, as well as merely weeks before he killed himself in January 2004.
It was in this final letter to the Stotts that Shipman made his very last mention of his wife, Primrose Shipman, on record.
As reported by the BBC, in a departure from his usual tone of aggression and condescension, Shipman’s last recorded words about his wife were: “Prim [Primrose] is upset about the downgrading of me to basic. I hope you have an enjoyable Christmas.”
Shipman signed off the letter as ‘Fred’ — since his middle name was Frederick — which was reportedly the name he used with friends.
Shipman and his wife of almost 40 years, Primrose, shared an extremely close bond and she stood by him till the very end, visiting him every week in prison after his conviction.
In fact, prison records obtained by the Sun on Sunday reportedly showed Shipman had planned to end his life before he turned 60 on purpose, so that Primrose would be on the guaranteed receiving end of a £100,000 lump sum pension payout as well as a full survivor’s pension amounting to £10,000 a year.
Had Shipman lived beyond 60, Primrose would have only been entitled to £5,000 a year and no additional lump sum on his eventual death.
In another letter, written by Shipman to the Stotts, likely during his trial in January 2000 as per the BBC, the serial killer said: “[I] was a confirmed liar, a cheat, a forger, a murderer……I was as slippery as an eel,” while expressing his anger over the prosecution’s case against him.
In a separate letter written to his former patients while on remand, Shipman seemed to despair over the sudden lack of media attention surrounding him and his case, writing: “There is no publicity at the moment and it feels like nothing is being done. The episode has caused me to breakdown in a very big way.”
While saying “I didn’t kill anyone and that will be the statement until I die” in a letter from 2000 to the Stotts, at no point did Shipman actually show any signs of remorse or guilt over his killings in any of his letters.
The closest he got to an admission of guilt was in a letter to his cellmate, Tony Fleming, in which he wrote: “I feel responsible for the deaths of 58 of my patients.”
Speaking to The Guardian in 2004, days after Shipman’s suicide, Fleming said: “He didn’t use the word ‘killed’ or ‘murder’, but I am certain it was his way of trying to accept what he had done. It was, I believe, the closest he could come to a confession.”
In fact, Shipman claimed to have saved Fleming’s life in another letter to the Stotts from February 26, 1999.
An excerpt from the letter reads: “Life in here is entertaining, my cell-mate tried to hang himself on Monday night. I heard the noise from his last breaths, lifted him up and then untied the knot and laid him on the floor before crying for help.
“After that I went back to sleep at about 2 o’clock in the morning. My cell-mate seems a lot better now, his medication is working.”
The incident was confirmed by Fleming to The Guardian in the same January 2004 interview. Fleming also alleged there were other times he would wake up to find Shipman looming over him, his hands near Fleming’s throat.
Fleming told the publication: “He would tell me I was snoring and he was turning me over, but his body shape didn’t seem right for that.
“Other prisoners told me that he was dangerous and I should kill him to save myself, but he had already saved me once, so while I was worried I never really thought he was a serious threat to my life.”
Andrew McEwan, another former prisoner of the Manchester prison, shared with The Sun that Shipman had allegedly told him he had “lost count” after killing 200 people and that the victim count may have actually been as high as 400.
