The British tabloids are already describing him as a possible serial killer. Earlier this week police widened their investigation of a Manchester GP, Dr Harold Shipman (52), who is facing four murder charges, to exhume the sixth body of a former patient for forensic tests, but it is thought the total number of suspicious deaths could be as high as 77.
Dr Shipman, from Mottram, in Cheshire, has been charged with the murders of four of his patients: Ms Kathleen Grundy (81), Ms Joan Melia (73), Ms Winifred Mellor (73), and Ms Bianka Pomfret (49), all of whom lived near his surgery in Hyde, Greater Manchester. He is also accused of forging Ms Grundy's £300,000 will, making him sole beneficiary.
It was the discovery by Ms Grundy's daughter, Angela, that she and her two sons had not inherited two cottages owned by the former Conservative Mayoress of Hyde that first alerted police to investigate her mother's death. It emerged that Dr Shipman, who had written on Ms Grundy's death certificate that she had died from old age, was one of the last people to see her before she died.
In the case of Ms Pomfret, who died last December, it is understood that she had been complaining of flu-like symptoms before she died, and on her death certificate Dr Shipman attributed the cause of death to coronary thrombosis.
The grim task of exhuming the bodies of Dr Shipman's former patients continued on Tuesday just hours before he appeared before Tameside Magistrates' Court where he was remanded in custody until next month. The police began their operation shortly before 3.30 a.m. at Hyde Cemetery in Greater Manchester where they exhumed the body of Ms Marie Quinn (67), a former charity worker who died last November.
She was buried close to another of Dr Shipman's former patients, Ms Ivy Lomas (64), whose body was exhumed 24 hours earlier. Post-mortem examinations are continuing on the women's bodies, but police have admitted that their investigation is being hampered somewhat by the fact that several of his patients were cremated.