He Was a Trusted Physician Who Frequently Made House Calls, Until He Was Convicted as a Prolific Serial Killer

NEED TO KNOW

• Dr. Harold Shipman was convicted of murdering 15 female patients, most of them elderly widows, between 1995 and 1998

• Investigators suspect Shipman may have killed over 100 patients, making him one of Britain's most prolific serial killers

• His arrest followed the suspicious death of Kathleen Grundy, whose will was fraudulently altered to benefit Shipman

Dr. Harold Shipman was, by all accounts, a respected and caring physician in the quiet English town of Hyde, Cheshire, where he had lived for 20 years. Shipman even made house calls — a real draw for his elderly patients who struggled to find transportation to get to their appointments.

As Father Denis Maher of St. Paul's Catholic Church in Hyde told PEOPLE in 2003: "People trusted him implicitly. One of his pet phrases was, 'Don't you trust me? I'm a doctor.' "

But a four-month trial found Shipman to be something else: a serial killer, as the long-trusted doctor was found guilty of murdering 15 of his female patients.

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It was the death of Kathleen Grundy, an 81-year-old widow on June 24, 1998, that first raised red flags.

Grundy was, per PEOPLE's 2003 reporting, "one of the most prominent and beloved figures in Hyde," and in seemingly good health when she was found dead in her living room that morning. Shipman, her longtime doctor, was asked to come to the scene, attributing her death to old age.

But 13 days after Grundy's burial, her daughter Angela Woodruff discovered that her mother had changed her will and left her $640,000 estate not to Woodruff, but to her doctor: Shipman. When she asked about the people who had signed the will as witnesses, she found that no one knew what she was talking about. The will, it seemed, had been forged.

By August 1998, Grundy's body had been exhumed, with a pathologist concluding she had died not from old age, but from a lethal dose of morphine.

Police then began looking into the deaths of Shipman's other patients, focusing on 14 other women (six of whom were cremated). When those who had been buried were exhumed, investigators discovered that they, too, had been given large doses of morphine. All had seen Shipman shortly before their deaths.

Investigators discovered that Shipman had gotten in trouble for misusing drugs before, but on himself — incurring a fine in 1976 for the unauthorized use of a morphine-type drug.

In September 1998, Shipman was arrested after investigators found that he owned the same typewriter used to make Grundy's forged will, per the BBC .

Shipman's trial began in October 1999 and ended four months later, on Jan. 31, 2000, when he was convicted of murdering 15 of his female patients by injecting them with lethal doses of morphine or heroin between 1995 and 1998.

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Shipman was sentenced to life without parole, with Judge Thayne Forbes saying at the sentencing, "I have little doubt each of your victims smiled and thanked you as she submitted to your deadly ministrations."

Per PEOPLE's reporting at the time, the 15 murders were at the time "believed to exceed that of any other British serial killer in the past century — and there are indications that the actual body count may be more than 100."

Shipman died in prison after hanging himself on Jan. 13, 2004, at age 57.

As one of his victims' relatives told BBC News at the time, "I am a bit shocked, but I suppose really you could say I was angry he has chosen the easy way out instead of admitting his guilt and showing some compassion to his victims."

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