would 44.wou.992 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

The moment he did so, he became their prime suspect.

Hadden Clark finished his shift at the country club and began driving, the body of the six-year old girl in the back of his pickup truck, covered by a metal cap. He stopped off first at nearby Bethesda Naval Hospital to get the cut on his hand dressed. The free medical privileges were part of his benefits package he received when he was discharged from the Navy. When he left the hospital, it was nearly midnight.

Hadden drove towards Baltimore on Old Columbia Pike. When he saw some woods he pulled over to the shoulder of the road and stopped. He had a ready-made story. If the cops came by he would tell them he had to pee and couldn't wait.

Michele Dorr's killer grabbed the duffel bag, a flashlight, and a shovel from the back of the truck, stepped over a guard rail, and stumbled down a ravine and into the woods. At the base of a tree he dug a grave four feet long, digging until he hit clay. He took the little girl from the duffel bag and began dropping her in. But there was one more piece of business. He had to taste her. The flesh was his prize, her death was his revenge. Afterwards, he covered her body with parts of an old mattress he found nearby, and some leaves. He climbed back up the incline and into his truck, driving back to his newly rented room, five miles from his brother's house.

Finger of Suspicion

Every rookie cop is told that when a child disappears he is to look first in the direction of the parents or caregiver. Statistics bear this out. It's usually a 90% chance that either the parents or the caregiver know what happened to the child.

arrogance 92.arr.002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Hard working, and enthusiastic, Shipman fitted well into the social matrix.

His senior partners saw him as a Godsend. One, Dr. Michael Grieve, appreciated Fred's contribution in providing up-to-date information, as he was so recently out of medical school.

But his career in Todmorden came to a sudden halt when he began having blackouts. His partners were devastated when he gave them the reason. He suffered, he said, with epilepsy. He used this inaccurate diagnosis as a cover-up.

The truth soon surfaced, when practice receptionist Marjorie Walker stumbled upon some disturbing entries in a druggist's controlled narcotics ledger. The records showed how Shipman had been prescribing large and frequent amounts of pethidine in the names of several patients.

Moreover, he'd written numerous prescriptions for the drug on behalf of the practice. Although this was not unusual (drugs are kept on hand for emergencies and immediate treatments), the prescribed amounts were excessive.

Pethidine — a morphine-like analgesic — was initially thought to have no addictive properties. Now, some sixty years after scientists first synthesized it, pethidine's non-addictive reputation is still hotly debated.

Following the discovery of Shipman's over-prescribing, a covert investigation by the practice — including Dr. John Dacre — followed. To his alarm, he discovered many patients on the prescription list had neither required nor received the drug.

Dacre challenged Fred in a staff meeting, as one of his partners, Dr. Michael Grieve recalls:

"We were sat round with Fred sitting on one side and up comes John on the opposite and says, 'Now young Fred, can you explain this?' And he puts before him evidence that he has been gleaning, showing that young Fred had been prescribing pethidine to patients and they'd never received the pethidine, and in fact the pethidine had found its way into Fred's very own veins."

Shipman's way of dealing with the problem was to provide an insight into his true personality. Realizing his career was on the line, he first begged for a second chance.

When this was denied, he became enraged and stormed out, hurled a medical bag to the ground and threatened to resign. The partners were dumbfounded by this violent — and seemingly uncharacteristic — behavior.

Shortly afterwards, his wife Primrose stormed into the room where his peers were discussing the best way to dismiss him. Rudely, she informed the people at the meeting that her husband would never resign, proclaiming, "You'll have to force him out!"

She was right. Ultimately he was forced out of the practice and into a drug re-hab center in 1975.

Two years later, his many convictions for drug offences, prescription fraud and forgery cost him a surprisingly low fine — just over 600 pounds sterling. Shipman's conviction for forgery is worth noting. First, because his skill in this area was nothing less than pathetic; second, he failed to learn that his ineptitude in this area was readily exposed.

Yet in spite of this early warning, some 22 years later he actually believed he could get away with faking signatures on a patently counterfeit will — that of his last victim, Katherine Grundy.

This lack of judgment — some say arrogance — set in motion the mechanism for his downfall.

As for the pethidine charges, the question remains: Did he really self-inject the drugs (as he claimed) or had he already begun using them to kill unsuspecting patients? This is currently under review.

crux 33.cru.0003 Louis J. Sheehan, esquire

Detectives decided that the most significant of all were the address lists. ''The main crux of our search always was geographical," said Lt. Kenneth Landwehr of the Wichita Police Department. "According to the behavioral scientists, the individual lived close to where he was striking."


Once the lists were completed, investigators used their computer to try to come up with a more precise list of suspects. The computer gave them 225 possible suspects, most of whom no longer resided in Wichita. One by one, the detectives set out to eliminate each of the 225 possible suspects.

One of the key pieces of evidence that the killer left behind was his semen. Lab technicians were able to determine that it was a type of semen found in fewer than 6 percent of all males. Police will not comment as to the type, citing their rules of evidence.