Briton becomes second worst mass murderer in history

Dr. Harold Shipman, Doctor of Medicine, a family doctor, has been officially declared the world’s second worst single mass murdered after a report confirmed that he had killed at least 215 people (171 women and 44 men).

This gentle-mannered, 56-yeart-old family doctor had seen his mother die of cancer when he was 17 and had seen her treated with morphine. It is claimed that she died in front of his eyes.

Psychiatrists claim that this affected Harold Shipman so deeply that he needed in later life to replay the cycle time and again in an attempt to resolve the trauma.

His first victim was killed in March 1975 and the last in 1998, usually with the painkiller pethidine, to which Dr. Shipman was addicted, or diamorphine. Dr. Shipman had been declared addicted to the pain-killer pethidine in the 1970s but somehow managed to carry on practising family medicine, becoming a popular family doctor. It is claimed in the report on this case that he had become addictive in behavioural patterns as well as to pain-killers and that possibly he was addicted to a pattern of killing, a show of power over life and death.

This dedicated father of four denies that he killed anybody. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. The five worst mass murderers were Pedro Lopez, first, guilty of rape and murder of 310 girls in Peru, Ecuador and Columbia. He was convicted in 1980.

Second is Dr. Shipman, with 215 killings. Third, Herman Mudgett, who killed 177 women in Chicago and who was hanged in 1894. Fourth, two Mexican sisters who controlled a brothel, claiming that the deceased had eaten something that did not agree with them. 80 girls and 11 male clients died of poisoning at the hands of Delfina and Maria de Jesus Gonzales, who were sentenced in 1964. Fifth place goes to Daniel Barbosa, who raped and killed 72 girls in Columbia and Ecuador in the 1980s.

John ASHTEAD PRAVDA.Ru LONDON UNITED KINGDOM