Robert Diaz, a Los Angeles nurse, had always wanted to be a doctor and often pretended he was one-he would give unauthorised injections and even as a nursing student liked to be called “Dr” Diaz. Would be doctors with homicidal tendencies include Kenneth Bianchi, one of the serial “Hillside Stranglers” in 1978 (his cousin was the other murderer), who had always wanted to be a psychiatrist and indeed set himself up as a psychological counsellor after assuming a false identity, 9 and William Henry Theodore Durrant, a San Francisco medical student and Sunday school superintendent who murdered two women in a church in 1895, nine days apart, the so called “Demon in the Belfry” murders. Yet there are enough recorded instances of multiple murders by doctors (real or bogus) to make at least a prima facie case that the profession attracts some people with a pathological interest in the power of life and death.

5 – 7 Nor has conclusive evidence been found for Gaylord Sundheim (a psychotic who had studied medicine) being the “mad butcher” of Cleveland, Ohio, in the 1930s. Sir William Gull, “physician in ordinary” to Queen Victoria, and Dr Thomas Barnardo were prime suspects, and there were advocates for Montague John Druitt, a barrister (he was from a respected medical family and may have passed himself off as a doctor) a Dr Stanley (he may have been fictitious) the Polish Dr George Chapman (real name Severin Klosowski) and the Russian Dr Alexander Pedachenko. “Jack the Ripper,” the perpetrator of five unsolved murders in 1888 in London, is thought to have been a member of the medical profession, although there is no conclusive evidence.

1 – 4 Dentistry too has had its notorious characters, yet among veterinarians homicide seems to be almost unknown. The previous BMA chairman, among others, is on record as saying that Harold Shipman is unique, yet medicine has arguably thrown up more serial killers than all the other professions put together, with nursing a close second.

Louisiana serial killer 1930s