‘I could have stopped’ serial killer Shipman, nurse admits
A NURSE who worked alongside Harold Shipman, the serial killer, has said she could have stopped him more than 40 years ago, but was too young and naive to raise her concerns about him.
Sandra Whitehead was 18 in 1972, when she worked alongside Shipman at Pontefract General Infirmary.
She said she became suspicious about the doctor following the deaths of three patients, but lacked the confidence to raise her concerns with hospital managers and has spent years haunted by her inaction.
Speaking on an ITV documentary – Harold Shipman: Doctor Death – to mark the 20th anniversary since his arrest, she said: “One night we had three deaths, we just went from room to room and the patient had died.
“It just didn’t seem any reason. They were ill but they didn’t look on death’s door. It just seemed a high proportion of deaths out of a 32-bed ward. I was too young and too naive, I didn’t have the knowledge and experience to ... see senior management and say, ‘I am not happy about this’.”
Following his conviction in 2000 for 15 murders, Ms Whitehead provided information to a public inquiry which helped uncover further victims from his time at Pontefract General Hospital.
It was estimated that Shipman may have secretly poisoned more than 250 of his patients across three decades before his eventual arrest in 1998.
A former detective who investigated Shipman in 1975 for drug offences described his amazement that he was not struck off the General Medical Register at the time. George Mckeating said he had been about to give evidence to a hearing when he was told it had already finished and the panel had decided he was not a danger to the public.
He said: “I was a bit flabbergasted to say the least. In my experience addicts very rarely rehabilitate.”
Harold Shipman: Doctor Death is on ITV at 9pm tonight.