LONDON, Jan 27 (AFP) - Harold Shipman, the family doctor who became Britain's worst-ever serial killer, is thought to have killed about 250 patients over a 27-year period rather than the 215 murders previously attributed to him, an inquiry said on Thursday.
The findings came in the final report of a judicial inquiry looking into the case of Shipman, who murdered most of his victims while running a one-man medical practice in Manchester, northwest England.
Shipman hanged himself aged 57 in his prison cell in January last year, having been jailed for life in January 2000 on 15 sample counts of murder. He always denied his crimes.
The inquiry team led by High Court judge Dame Janet Smith said Thursday that among Shipman's victims were up to 15 patients murdered while he worked as a young junior doctor at a hospital in Yorkshire, northern England.
The killings took place between 1971 and 1974 at Pontefract General Infirmary, when Shipman was aged between 25 and 28.
While only three murders could be confirmed during that time, Smith said there was "quite serious suspicion" about other deaths, including that of a four-year-old girl in 1972.
The true scale of Shipman's crimes could only ever be an estimate, she said in the sixth publication produced by her team, called "Shipman: The Final Report", published at Manchester Town Hall, just a few miles from Shipman's surgery,
"As the investigation proceeded, it became apparent that there would be many cases in which I would be unable to reach any definite conclusion," she said.
"If I were to presume that 15 percent of the deaths that I regarded as suspicious were in fact unlawful killings, my estimate would come to 237 or 238.
"If I then add in my estimate of unlawful killings in Pontefract, I arrive at a total of about 250 deaths."
She added: "My overall conclusion, therefore, is that Shipman killed about 250 patients between 1971 and 1998."
The inquiry had previously concluded that the doctor murdered at least 215 patients with lethal morphine injections while working at his practice in Hyde, Greater Manchester, after leaving Pontefract.
Shipman's motives have never been discovered, with the inquiry speculating previously that he might have become addicted to murder and the power he felt it brought him.
Shipman was convicted of drug offences in 1976 after becoming addicted to the opiate pethidine as a young doctor, but he was allowed to carry on practising by the General Medical Council (GMC).
Smith's fifth report into the case lambasted the GMC in December, saying its officials were too focused on "looking after their own".
A government investigation launched following Smith's comments said on Thursday that the GMC might even lose its powers to strike doctors off the medical register.
01/27/2005 12:12 GMT - AFP