Britain’s ‘Dr. Death’ Serial Killer Found Hanged. Harold Shipman, the infamous British family doctor who spent twenty years of quiet family practice coldly and systematically killing at least 215 of his patients (and was only found out because one of his victims had been so grateful for his care that she had left her wealth to him in her will, which was challenged by her daughter) was found hanged in his cell in an English prison. Shipman refused to confess to the murders or reveal his motives, and reaction from the families of some of his victims is to feel profoundly cheated that he “took the easy way out” without talking about his crimes. —New York Times