On 31 January 2000, Shipman was sentenced to 15 life terms for murdering 15 patients under his care, but a later inquiry concluded he had killed at least 215 people between the 1970s and the late 1990s.
Many of his victims were elderly women who were from the town of Hyde, Greater Manchester, and had died after he administered a lethal dose of morphine.
They found evidence for his crimes by exhuming some of the bodies. After examining the bodies, they discovered that all victims had a morphine overdose in common.