The Manchester GP, Dr Harold Shipman (54), was given 15 life sentences yesterday for the "wicked, wicked crimes" of murdering 15 of his women patients by administering lethal injections of morphine.
His conviction means he is the largest single serial murderer in recent legal history, and the trial judge, Mr Justice Forbes, stipulated that he should spend the rest of his life in prison.
One of the most shocking aspects of the case is that shortly after sentence was passed it emerged that British police had compiled evidence linking Shipman to the deaths of up to 146 other patients.
Files on the deaths of these patients have been sent to the Crown Prosecution Service, but it may never be known how many of his patients Shipman murdered while he was GP at Hyde, Greater Manchester, and during the 30 years that he practised at local surgeries.
The British Health Secretary, Mr Alan Milburn, will make a statement on the case in the House of Commons later today, and it is expected that he will announce a wide-ranging public inquiry into the circumstances of the case.
After deliberating for 33 hours and 55 minutes, the jury of seven men and five women at Preston Crown Court returned unanimous guilty verdicts on 15 charges of murdering his patients to a hushed courtroom. He was also found guilty and sentenced to four years for forging the u £386,000 will of one of his patients, Mrs Kathleen Grundy.
It also emerged that Shipman had been convicted on eight counts of dishonestly obtaining Class A controlled drugs, to treat cancer patients in 1976. He was also convicted of forging prescriptions.
It was also revealed that Shipman was a drug addict, who had asked his medical colleagues to obtain drugs for his surgery that he ultimately used to feed his habit. He admitted to police that he had taken drugs so frequently that some of the veins in his legs had collapsed.
As Shipman stared straight ahead in the dock, Mr Justice Forbes delivered a damning indictment of his record, telling him that each of his victims was a trusted patient. They had put their trust in him and he had murdered them, he said.
"You murdered each and every one of your victims by a calculated and cold-blooded perversion of your medical skills. For your own evil and wicked purpose you took advantage of and grossly abused the trust each of your victims put in you. You were, after all, each victim's doctor. I have little doubt each of your victims smiled and thanked you as she submitted to your fearful administrations," he said.
Once the verdicts had been delivered some of the relatives of the murdered women wept and buried their heads in their hands. Others simply sat and stared ahead. Shipman's wife, Primrose (52), who was sitting with their two sons, Christopher and David, and their daughter, Sarah, in the public gallery, showed no emotion as her husband was led away to Strangeways Prison.
One of the relatives of the victims, Ms Angela Woodruff, whose mother, Mrs Kathleen Grundy, was murdered by Shipman, spoke after the verdict of her wish that procedures on the certification of deaths would be tightened. "It has exposed some disturbing weaknesses in the monitoring and certification of death and the handling of dangerous drugs," she said.
It was the discovery by Ms Woodruff shortly after her mother's death that she and her two sons had not inherited two cottages owned by the former Conservative mayoress of Hyde, Greater Manchester, that first alerted the police and led them to investigate the circumstances of her death.
She was sprightly and in good health before her death. But after Mrs Grundy's body was exhumed from the local cemetery and was found to contain a large dose of morphine, the grim task of exhuming several of Shipman's patients began.
The bodies of up to eight patients were exhumed, including that of Mrs Alice "Christine" Kitchen (70), who was originally from Carrick-on-Suir, Co Tipperary, and the evidence mounted against Shipman. He was not charged with Mrs Kitchen's murder.
During the trial of the popular and trusted Shipman, the prosecution case was built around the discovery that the 15 patients had been murdered during a three-year period and that before their deaths large doses of morphine or diamorphine had been administered.
Medical records were changed to cover up the murders, and death certificates were forged to conceal the true cause of death. One such patient, the court was told, was Mrs Ivy Lomas (63). Shipman had joked with police officers that she was such a frequent visitor to his surgery that he had considered mounting a plaque on the wall saying: "Seat permanently reserved for Ivy Lomas."
In May 1997 Mrs Lomas visited Shipman's practice where he had been the GP for more than 20 years. Ten minutes after her appointment began, Shipman shouted to his receptionist: "I'm sorry about the wait. I've just had a problem with the ECG machine."
The real horror behind the delay emerged during the police investigation. High levels of morphine were found in Mrs Lomas's body. But Shipman insisted she had died from coronary thrombosis and he continued to see more patients in his surgery while Mrs Lomas's body lay behind a screen in his room.