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Dr Linda Reynolds

17/ 7/2002

DR Linda Reynolds was the first official to alert the authorities about Harold Shipman.

The Brooke Surgery GP was among those at her group practice asked to countersign increasing numbers of cremation forms produced by Shipman, from his surgery across Market Street.

Dr Reynolds discussed her fears with doctors at Brooke Surgery and worried observer, undertaker Deborah Massey (now Deborah Bambroffe). Then she contacted coroner John Pollard to express her fears.

This was March 1998. Three weeks later Dr Reynolds was told by investigating police officer, Det Insp David Smith, that Shipman was an innocent man.

Dr Reynolds died in March 2000, a matter of weeks after seeing the news of Shipman's conviction at Preston Crown Court.

Husband, Nigel, gave evidence to the Shipman Inquiry on May 8, 2002.

Mr Reynolds told how his wife risked her and Shipman's professional careers by blowing the whistle on her neighbouring GP.

Mr Reynolds told the inquiry: "I think by that stage she believed that he was killing his patients.

"Whether he was killing them deliberately or whether he was killing them accidentally by malpractice she did not know and did not use other words, but killing his patients certainly was what she thought at that stage she feared he was doing."

Mr Reynolds added: "I was saying to her look if you are sure you have to do something and actually at that point you don't have any option, do you?

"When she realised that she was convinced as she was, that out-trumped her fears and the fears really had to be put on the backburner.

"Because at the end of the day, by the time she did it, she didn't have any doubts about it. Because it was the only course of action she could take, she didn't have a choice."

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