Harold Shipman profile

By STEVE CONNOR

LONDON - Was he mad or just plain evil? What was going through the mind of Harold Shipman when he so ruthlessly played God with his patients?

Psychiatrists have expressed many opinions about the mental state of Britain's worst serial killer, but on one thing they are agreed: Shipman was a narcissistic control freak who enjoyed the power his profession gave him over life and death. His arrogance was ultimately his downfall when police used a psychological ploy to break his iron-like conceit during one of the taped interviews conducted after his arrest.

The senior policeman in charge of the case deliberately handed over the interview to two less experienced officers, one of whom was a young policewoman Shipman evidently held in contempt.

The tactic was meant to puncture his feeling of selfimportance, which he used to defend himself by answering questions in a pedantic manner to control the course of the interrogation.

Throughout the interview, Shipman continued to stare at Marie Snitynksi with a condescending countenance. He thought he had an unassailable intellectual superiority over his interrogators until he was suddenly confronted with unequivocal evidence showing that he had forged computer records.

The interview ended abruptly with Shipman's solicitor asking for a private consultation. After the interviewers had left, Shipman broke down, falling to his knees, sobbing.

This, though, was not the remorse of a guilty man but the bitter feelings of frustration from a supremely arrogant person who had been accustomed to being treated with unquestioning authority and respect by his patients.

Richard Badcock, the forensic psychiatrist who saw Shipman on behalf of the police, said that being a control freak in itself cannot be the explanation for his murderous nature.

"There are lots of control freaks out there and they don't all go around killing people. But you have to understand what's important to him, in essence, which is not just self-control but his perception of that control," Dr Badcock said.

"He is very controlling when you're in his presence, rather arrogant. There is a sense that he is very driven about this, not casual. He is behaving like this because it's absolutely important to him to do so," he said.

At 17, Shipman witnessed the slow death of his mother from lung cancer, an experience that is thought to have left a lasting impression. On the day she died, he went for a long run, an unusual act of bereavement.

Some psychologists speculated that his mother's death could have been the source of his morbid fascination in older women. Shipman is thought to be a necrophiliac – not necessarily a sexual interest in the dead, but just in death itself.

But Shipman's main motivation seems to have been his unquestioning belief in his own self-esteem. His narcissism eventually led to his downfall – the forged will he wrote said that the dead woman wanted to reward her doctor for doing so much for the local community.

Gerard Bailes, a consultant psychologist at East Anglia Regional Forensic Science Services, said: "Narcissism would probably be an important factor in his motivation. He considers himself important but everyone else is not. They can't see they have done anything wrong and the more you confront them with what they did, the more they blame you."

Shipman has refused to confess to his crimes and is unlikely now to do so. This is not because he is in self-denial but because he may not see any advantage to it, Mr Bailes said.