The Psychology of a Serial Killer: Harold Shipman

Launching on 21st May 2025: An Appointment with Murder, a forensic examination of those who kill. In Series 1, we turn the scalpel inward on doctors who kill: trusted professionals who betrayed their oath to save lives. From the calculated crimes of Dr Harold Shipman to the dark legacy of Dr John Bodkin-Adams, this series delves deep into the minds, methods, and motivations of medical murderers. Hosted by Dr Harry Brunjes, physician, expert witness, and senior figure in medical ethics, and Dr Andrew Johns, a leading forensic psychiatrist who spent years inside Broadmoor Hospital with some of Britain’s most infamous killers,  An Appointment with Murder is where medicine meets malice. Join The Crime Desk to hear all episodes in the first series as soon as it launches. Plus, you'll get exclusive weekly bonus episodes of our award-winning podcast The Trial, ad-free listening across all of our shows, and early access to brand-new series like our high-stakes investigative series, Heists, Scams & Lies. Become a member today at thecrimedesk.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The spectre of Dr Harold Shipman hangs over the medical community like a black cloud on the horizon: ominous and bleak. His victims run into the hundreds, probably more than we’ll ever know. History tells us that Shipman would eventually die at his own hand, hung in his prison cell. But what of Dr John Bodkin Adams, a medical practitioner who preceded Shipman some decades before and is believed to have killed almost as many of his patients as Shipman did. So, why did Bodkin Adams walk free while Shipman died alone within the walls of Wakefield Prison? Welcome to An Appointment With Murder, hosted by Dr Harry Brunjes and Dr Andrew Johns; two good doctors examining the lives and times of two bad doctors. Johns, a forensic psychologist who met an ageing Peter Sutcliffe in Broadmoor, and worked on the Shipman enquiry and Brunjes, a former police and hospital doctor who worked at St. Mary's Hospital in Eastbourne where Bodkin Adams would spend his last days. As well as examining the strangely intertwined lives of the two murderous doctors, we look at the four kinds of serial killers and ask are those killers mad or simply bad? Presenters: Dr Harry Brunjes & Dr Andrew Johns Producer: Philip Wilding Editor: Chelsey Moore Sound Design: John Scott Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bumptious, bucolic, much admired among the tailored lawns of Eastbourne’s elite, but who was Dr John Bodkin Adams really? Fundamentally, a religious man, devoted to his mother who he called ‘the most religious woman in Ireland’ who manged to transform himself from an out of depth medical student to the higher echelons of the seaside town’s social circle, a stratum of society he quietly envied and despised. Despite this he charmed his way into the lives of the well-heeled locals, charming them into bequeathing him cars and riches, even clothing, persuading them to grant him a place in their wills before, it was said, quietly bumping them off and taking his share of their fortunes. He may have sounded and looked the polar opposite of Dr Harold Shipman, but his intentions were as bloody and bleak as Shipman’s, but only one of them seemed to know how to get away with murder. Presenters: Dr Harry Brunjes & Dr Andrew Johns Producer: Philip Wilding Editor: Chelsey Moore Sound Design: John Scott Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pathogen addict, given to forging prescriptions, a so-called mission-orientated killer and, it’s argued, that he became addicted to killing. Dr Harold Shipman could have been torn from the pages of a particularly bleak crime novel. A loner who would go so far as killing patients in his own clinic, his bloody hands are all over history, even from an early age; even as a junior doctor he certified 133 deaths and was present at a third of all of them. Plainly put, he was at the moment of death twenty more times than any other junior doctor he worked with.He was dismissive of the people he killed too, if they were in his way, or thought they were, then they were almost certainly doomed. Killing one victim at home as their neighbour literally sat next door in the kitchen, telling the relative of another when asked if they might survive, that ‘I wouldn’t buy him an Easter egg’. Dark as pitch, unfeeling and the only doctor in British history found guilty of murdering his patients.

If Jack the Ripper was a surgeon or not is still a matter of debate, some theories argue that he might have been a butcher, worked in a slaughterhouse, or a doctor given the clinical and professional manner of his mutilations. In total, the police would investigate a series of 11 brutal murders between 1888 and 1891. The victims all prostitutes working in the slums of the East End. The investigation was substantial – over a three-year period, 2000 people were interviewed, 300 investigated and 80 detained. But no one was ever charged.Jack wasn’t alone in haunting the streets under a slate Victorian sky. Consider Dr William Palmer who strode through a Dickensian world - Dickens himself called him ‘the greatest villain that ever stood in the Old Bailey’, with a vial of poison to hand. Or Dr Thomas Neill Cream who killed members of his own family as well as a string of sex workers. And why did poison become so prevalent as the weapon of choice for this new breed of killers in the Victorian age? Presenters: Dr Harry Brunjes & Dr Andrew JohnsProducer: Philip WildingEditor: Chelsey MooreSound Design: John ScottProduction Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

While Shipman and Bodkin Adams made their grisly mark on history as doctors who killed their patients, they weren’t the only men of medicine to murder. Dr Buck Ruxton and Dr Robert George Clements created their own wretched legends. Ruxton became infamous for the so-called Jigsaw Murders, pathologists concluded the mutilation of his two victims would have taken approximately eight hours to complete - and that the two bodies had been drained of both blood and internal organs at the time of their dismemberment. He would eventually be found out by pioneering forensic science work.Clements was the doctor who killed all four of his wives for financial gain before taking his own life when he realised the game was up. He was charming, captivating to women, a high functioning psychopath wearing ‘the mask of sanity’. Presenters: Dr Harry Brunjes & Dr Andrew JohnsProducer: Philip WildingEditor: Chelsey MooreSound Design: John ScottExecutive Producer: Jamie East 

Hullett, Morrell, Whitton and Mawhood, just four of the victims of the hundred that Dr John Bodkin Adams helped propel into another world. It’s likely his victims ran into the hundreds with the good doctor the beneficiary of over a hundred different inheritances in the form of cash, valuables and even a car or two. He followed something pf a pattern: the patient is a widow, an elderly widow or spinster, there’s excessive prescription of morphine, the majority are in a coma before death, and Bodkin Adams is looking after their financial affairs until their untimely demise…Presenters: Dr Harry Brunjes & Dr Andrew JohnsProducer: Philip WildingEditor: Chelsey MooreSound Design: John ScottExecutive Producer: Jamie East 

It wasn’t hard for the police to find the home of Dr John Bodkin Adams when they went to arrest him; there were two Rolls Royces parked outside. One bequeathed to him by a former patient. Bodkin Adams was charged with the murder of Edith Morrell. The Prosecution also reserved the right to proceed with a second charge of murder in the case of Bobbie Hullett. This was significant. At the time there was a new Homicide Bill going through Parliament. A conviction for one murder would mean life imprisonment but a conviction for two or more murders and Bodkin Adams would hang. Though under the careful guidance of Geoffrey Lawrence QC, the case took turns no one could have envisaged.Presenters: Dr Harry Brunjes & Dr Andrew JohnsProducer: Philip WildingEditor: Chelsey MooreSound Design: John ScottExecutive Producer: Jamie East