Harold Shipman, "Dr. Death"

Harold Shipman was a family doctor in Hyde, England, who murdered a large number of his patients, mostly elderly women, over more than two decades by administering fatal doses of diamorphine during home visits.

Discovery

Suspicion grew in 1998 after a fellow doctor and a local funeral director noticed an unusually high death rate among Shipman's patients. Investigators later found he had also forged a patient's will to make himself a beneficiary, which helped build the initial case against him.

Trial and inquiry

Shipman was convicted in 2000 of murdering 15 patients and sentenced to 15 concurrent life terms. A subsequent public inquiry examined his full career and concluded he was likely responsible for around 250 deaths between the 1970s and 1998, making him the most prolific serial killer confirmed in modern history.

Death

Shipman died by suicide in his prison cell in January 2004.