In the early morning hours of January 13, 2004, on the eve of his 58th birthday, Harold Shipman, one of the most prolific serial killers of our time, was found hanged in his cell at Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire, England. Shipman, born January 14, 1946 in Nottingham, England, was found guilty of murdering 15 people in 2000 and sentenced to 15 concurrent life sentences. What made these tragic crimes so heinous in the eyes of the onlooking world, was that Harold Shipman was not your everyday, average sociopath! Harold Shipman was a medical doctor, sworn by oath to "do no harm!"

Although unclear as to exactly how many murders Dr. Shipman committed in his violent career, an official inquiry into the deaths has suggested the number to be around 250 patients. 80% of his victims were women. His youngest victim, Peter, Lewis, was only 41 years of age.

What drove this seemingly successful physician who was well respected in the community, had a wife and children and a flourishing medical practice to commit multiple murders? Join me in taking a trip through the annuls of medical history as we explore the dark side of medicine and search for an answer to this question.

If there were a "Hall of Fame" for serial killers, Dr. Henry H. Holmes (1860-1896) would be the star! In the late 1800's, he trapped and reportedly murdered hundreds of guests at his Chicago hotel opened in 1893 for the World's Colombian Exhibition. The hotel was later dubbed appropriately, "Castle of Death."

Unfortunate victims were selected among employees, lovers and hotel guests. Some were placed in a soundproof bedroom that was murderously equipped with special gas lines, allowing him to asphyxiate them at will. Some were locked securely away in a gigantic bank vault close to his office where he could hear their screams and where they would eventually suffocate.

After their deaths, his victims would be sent down a secret chute to the basement, where they would be meticulously dissected, stripped of their flesh and made into "skeleton models". He would then sell them to medical schools, profiting off their untimely demise. Some victims were cremated, some placed in pits of lime, leading to complete destruction of their corpses.

The death toll was said to be estimated as high as 230 victims, however, only 27 of those were verified by the police.

In May, 1896, Dr. Henry H. Holmes was hanged by execution for his brutal crimes. Up to the time of his execution, he remained calm and collected, telling a prison guard on the eve of his death that he "never slept better in his life".

Death did NOT take a holiday in Eastborne in the wake of the good Dr. John Bodkin Adams. A British general practitioner, Adams was suspected in the deaths of more than 160 patients in the 1950's who all seemed to have died of "suspicious" circumstances. In 1957, he was arrested and tried for the murder of Mrs. Edith Morrell, a wealthy widow who had entrusted him with her care. During the lengthy trial, Dr. Adams was accused of giving Mrs. Morrell lethal doses of barbiturates, morphine, heroin and Sedormil. Leaving this world on November 13,1950, Morrell, according to Dr. Adams, died of a "stroke". He was said to have arranged for her cremation on the exact day of her death. The scandalous Dr. Adams proved to have profited from her untimely death, obtaining a small amount of money from her estate, a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost and an antique chest full of silver cutlery. He was also reported to have visited her over 300 times during the course of her treatment and subsequently billing her estate for 1100 visits. In April, 1957, he was acquitted for her murder.

Gertrude Hullet also fell victim of Dr. Adam's unsavory hand when she was found to have two times the lethal dose of barbiturates in her urine after her death on July 23, 1956. Conveniently sympathetic to her cries of being depressed after the death of her husband, Adams prescribed her massive doses of barbiturates to ease her sorrow. Hullet left the acclaimed Dr. Death her Rolls Royce Silver Dawn which he sold several days later. He was never found to be criminally negligent in this case.

During the course of investigation, from 1939 to 1956, 10 suspicious deaths involving similar circumstances occurred in patients, each of whom was under the care of Dr. Adams. He was never convicted of a single murder! He was, however, eventually convicted of other distasteful crimes, including forging prescriptions and making false statements on cremation forms. He died on July 4, 1983, due to complications arising from a hip fracture.

The cradle did not rock when Genene Jones worked the death shift! A nurse from San Antonio, she was hired by various medical clinics in the community to care for the innocent children of Texas. Instead, she brutally murdered them.

She is thought to have killed between 11 and 46 infants and children between 1980 and 1982. She used lethal injections of insulin and succinylcholine to kill these poor, defenseless babies. It may never be known the exact number of her crimes, as Texas hospital officials were said to have destroyed all of her employment records to prevent further embarrassment or trials. I don't know what you think, but was that really legal back then?

Jones was charged with two counts of murder and is currently serving 99 years in prison. Because of a law in Texas preventing overcrowding of jails at the time of her sentencing, she will only have to serve one-third of her sentence! She will automatically be paroled in 2017. Let's hope she doesn't go back into nursing!

When they say that nurses are "Angels of Mercy," in the case of Charles Cullen, they were DEAD WRONG!

Not among New Jersey's finest, Cullen blew authorities away when he confessed in December, 2003, of killing 45 patients during the preceding 16 years at 10 different hospitals that he worked at in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

His murder weapon and drugs of choice were insulin and digoxin. Hospital officials began to get suspicious when Cullen was found accessing patient records that were not assigned to him. He was also requesting medications for patients that were not prescribed for them. Gee, after only 45 deaths, you would think they would have figured this out a bit sooner!

Cullen's motive for murder was taken from his own account. He reportedly wanted to prevent these patients from coding, a term used when patients are facing an imminent demise that becomes a hospital emergency. He also claimed he wanted to end their suffering and prevent the hospital from 'dehumanizing" them. Though he claimed that he often thought about the murders prior to committing them, he said the actual act was on impulse. Currently serving 18 consecutive life sentences, he won't be eligible for parole for 397 years! Hopefully, we'll all be dead by then!

The question often posed when we are confronted with such senseless acts of violence and brutality is what exactly causes these medical professionals to commit these types of shocking monstrosities? Are there contributing factors that are shared among them that predispose them to a life of meaningless crime?

In a study done by Federal Bureau of Investigations psychological criminologist, Robert Ressler in the late 1970's, the answers to these questions seemed to take on a disturbing metamorphosis. The study was based on interview of 36 incarcerated murderers who shared similar traits and backgrounds. Behavioral traits that were found to be commonplace among them included a severely dysfunctional family background involving mental illness, alcohol and drug abuse and actual criminal behavior of the parents, themselves. Each murderer interviewed reported to have suffered severe, emotional abuse as a child. Also discovered was that each had critical, domineering mother figures that deprived them of love and emotional support and sometimes an absent father.

When the implicit trust relationship between doctors and nurses and the patients they care for is exploited for their own, perverse, deviant gain, what can we do? Betrayal by those we believe in chips away at the fundamental core of our society, weakening social mores and values in such a way that may prove beyond repair. It is not enough to sit back and wait for another tragedy to occur. We must strive as a society to stop the violence before it happens. Implementing more stringent background checks and encouraging facilities to provide psychological testing for all employees may be necessary for the future of our children.

In the meantime, these serial killers live on even after they are imprisoned or executed.....sometimes through exploitation of their crimes by the media, but more importantly, in the memory of the victims that are left behind.