I have just been reading A History of British Serial Killing by David Wilson – a very interesting analysis which focuses on the victims. Wilson (a former prison governor & now a professor of criminology) does not believe that a useful explanation can be found by ‘entering into the mind’ of the murderer.
He notes that ‘Children, young people living away from home, gay men, prostitutes & the elderly are the prime victims of serial killers’ & that ‘most elderly people who have been murdered by a British serial killer were victims of a medical practitioner’ [nurse or doctor]
Harold Shipman of course holds the grisly record as a killer of elderly people, & Wilson notes that we can know nothing about his psychology, even if we thought that a useful line to pursue, since even Dame Janet Smith was ‘unable to attempt any detailed explanation of the psychological factors underlying Shipman’s conduct’ despite the assistance of 4 forensic psychiatrists (none of whom was able to interview him).
I do share Wilson’s distaste & concern with the current obsession, lionisation almost, of the serial killer in popular entertainment. But I was surprised one day when a hypothesis about the psychology of Harold Shipman popped unbidden into my mind, which, in the way common to amateur psychologists, I continue to find persuasive.
A professional was talking on the radio about shopaholics – those who find themselves compelled to spend large sums which they cannot afford on a designer jacket, shoes or handbag which then sit pristine in the carrier bag at the back of the wardrobe or in the attic.
It’s an anxiety thing – the tension builds & builds until a purchase provides the only relief. The sufferer experiences euphoria & an immediate release of tension, followed by remorse & a determination never to do such a silly thing again.
They will. The cycle always starts again. Disaster & discovery are virtually guaranteed once the debt collectors come knocking on the door. Sometimes the sufferer is able to seek help & find relief another way, but shame, or just the universal human wish to have it all – to be able to go out & feel the thrill of purchase while retaining the respect of others, without the disaster of debt.
Such explanations are quite commonly given for addictions & compulsions of various kinds; the mystery lies in the specific choice of action to take or substance to ingest in order to bring relief. As sympathetic or empathetic as we might be, we find it hard to comprehend, even when we have compulsions & anxieties of our own.
The explanation must, in part at least, lie in the personal history of the sufferer – if only in the crude sense that if you have never been exposed to, or do not have access to alcohol, you cannot become an alcoholic.
Harold Shipman was a working class boy who won a scholarship to a good grammar school. When he was in the Sixth Form – aged 17 - his mother died of lung cancer. According to a tv biography broadcast just after his trial, one way he found relief from the tension & anxiety of this (a truly terrible thing to have to witness back then) was to go for long walks on his own around the city at night.
It is not hard to imagine the legacy of almost unbearable feelings of anxiety which this might have left him with.
That does not mean that his future ‘career’ was set – another person would have found some other way of putting these feelings to a more constructive use.
But it is tempting to think that just the knowledge that his patients would, eventually, die, perhaps horribly, produced in him the compulsion to put them out of their misery while there was still time.
Some supporting evidence from Wilsons book:
Shipman liked to pose the bodies of his victims before he left them, because he wanted to give the impression that they had peacefully ‘slipped away’
And speaking of another serial killer of the elderly, Kenneth Erskine, the Stockwell Strangler, Wilson uses a quotation from Dr Edmund Hervey-Smith taken from an article in The Times 28 July 1986 byMarcel Berlins:
"It is possible … that his preoccupation with old people stems from something that has happened to him. Perhaps his mother died after a lot of suffering & as a result he feels sorry for old people. If he is schizophrenic he may genuinely believe that he is putting his victims out of their misery”
None of this is to suggest in any way that Shipman should be a sympathetic character. His arrogance has been noted, fed probably by his repeated ability to get away with it. ‘Silly little people’ starts to be as important as the warped benignity.
And these warring attitudes bring their own tension. To quote Wilson again: We do not need to ‘enter the mind’ of a serial killer to appreciate how bizarre it must be to spend ones life killing people … while all the time appearing ‘normal’ to ones friends & acquaintances, discussing the weather, work, current affairs, or the latest trials & tribulations of family members.
That is just about the end of my hypothesising, except to say that it seems possible to fit in the idea that at least one part of him was wanting to be caught (hence the foolish & obvious forging of a will) while at the same time wanting to see how far he could continue to get away with his breathtakingly outrageous behaviour. It would also fit with his absolute refusal ever to speak to police or any other authority once they had shown him the evidence that established his guilt – the little people had finally caught on & he had nothing to explain.
