SHIPMAN HAD ME FOOLED

The Rev Ian Johnson spent more than four years as a part-time priest serving the community where serial murderer Dr Harold Shipman practised.

His faith in the man who he thought of as a respectful, caring and honourable doctor even left him willing to go to court and testify on his behalf after the allegations were made.

But in a chilling twist, the Rector of Southampton city centre parish later came to realise that he is likely to have buried some of Shipman's victims.

Following the news that Shipman committed suicide by hanging himself in his prison cell at Wakefield yesterday, Mr Johnson has, for the first time, spoken about the GP who he believed shared his compassion and concern for the sick parishioners who they both went out of their way to visit at home...

ONE was a rector and one was a doctor. On the surface they were both similar, with their familiar grey beards and glasses, just a two-year gap in their age and their shared compassion and concern for others.

In fact the Rev Ian Johnson and Dr Harold Shipman would often find themselves bumping into each other as they visited sick residents. Neither man was obliged to make these home visits - it was something they chose to do.

But for one of them there was a very sinister and chilling reason behind the regular home calls to the frail and poorly.

The end result shot Shipman to notoriety as Britain's biggest mass murderer.

Today Mr Johnson, team rector of Southampton city centre parish, has spoken openly for the first time about his links with the man best known as Dr Death after the killer who is thought to have claimed more than 200 lives was found hanged in his prison cell.

Mr Johnson first met Shipman after moving to Denton, near Manchester, to work as part-time parish priest at St Anne's Church in the nearby village of Haughton.

Just across the River Tame, only 150 yards away, was the Pennine village of Hyde, home to Shipman, who would have been 58 today and his one-man doctor's surgery that was to become the centre of the country's worst killing spree.

"My first awareness of him was someone saying to me 'Oh, so and so must be ill because Dr Shipman's car is outside'.

"He had a red people carrier that was very familiar and everybody knew it was his. He was always around and was very good at home visits.

"When the police began investigating I was one of the people who went very public and said 'This is impossible, I know his patients, I know he will come out in the middle of the night to visit them if they are sick because he cares.'

"When he was charged and the whole thing came out it made me question my own judgement.

"I remember sitting in a pub thinking 'this is ridiculous'. Another time I was doing a burial and I remember looking across and seeing a tent over a grave of someone I had previously buried."

But despite the major investigation, sparked by a suspicious undertaker who was concerned about the vast number of people dying at home and the death certificates signed by Shipman, Mr Johnson still refused to believe the worst.

"Who would ever dream that a local GP with whom one worked, who was on the local scene, would not be what they seemed?

"I didn't know a mass murderer, I knew a local GP who was very helpful and I will hang on to that.

"Now I think it is very important that we think of him as unique if we are going to maintain any sort of civilised society. Once we start to think badly and suspect there is evil in people we have had it."

Mr Johnson, 59, does not recall whether or not he buried any of Shipman's victims, but it's more than likely he did.

"All of the clergy in that area would have done funerals of the victims if there were as many as claimed.

"The people who I think I might have known, who he probably killed, were elderly women who perhaps he thought he was helping.

"I believe that he began with the misguided belief that he was easing someone's passing and that he came to enjoy the power that it gave him.

"I think he probably got carried away. It eventually became clear that he had a history of malpractice but that was only discovered later."

Mr Johnson was never one of Shipman's patients but the pair had come to meet as parishioners from Haughton would request that Shipman be their GP as he was so well known for going the extra mile for people - making home visits regularly and always tending to the sick.

During his four years in Denton, the pair talked regularly.

"I had many conversations with him during the course of my ministry in the parish. They normally began the same way, with regard to a patient of his who was also a member of my congregation or parish.

"I believed we would share our compassion and concern.

"It's a silly thing to say now, but I thought he cared and he was compassionate like me."

Mr Johnson continued: "Hindsight really is a ghastly thing because it undermines what you think you know.

"I had absolutely no doubt in my mind, even after the police started their investigations, that he was anything other than a good, caring, compassionate GP.

"I don't remember ever having a conversation with him after it became public that he was being investigated but I had said often enough that I did not believe he was guilty.

"If I had not moved down to Southampton when I did in June 1999 and if he had asked me, I would have been happy to go and stand up for him in court.

"I would rather be taken advantage of in life than see somebody hurt and I refuse to question my ability to make sound judgements about people.

"I think people are wondering how this could be allowed to happen, how he could have taken his own life in a prison and how nobody stopped him. But the real judgement for him is now.

"I am surprised at Shipman's death but it seems to be to me just one of the possible outcomes of this whole sad tragedy. But it does bring closure. Now we have to find ways of moving forward."