Carol Anne Davis - Doctors Who Kill. Profiles of Lethal Medics

With his exceptional IQ and myriad skills, this doctor could have been anything that he wanted to be. Instead, he gave in to his rage with ultimately fatal results.

Richard John Sharpe was born on the 23rd August 1954 to housewife Laura and toolmaker Benjamin in Connecticut, USA. He was their third son and, a mere fifteen months later, they had a fourth child, a girl.

Benjamin Sharpe worked long hours but he also played hard, drinking too much and running up sizeable gambling debts. At home he was a tyrant, beating his children and telling them that they were no good. He endlessly criticised his timid wife, beat his sons and even threatened Richard with a gun. Benjamins own father, a religious zealot with mental health problems who lived next door, committed suicide.

Richard noticed that his sister, Laura, was the only member of the family who wasnt beaten. Keen to become like her, he began to wear her clothes. This soon became a daily occurrence and, when he was twelve, he used money from his paper round to buy a girlish outfit of his own. With his small, slender figure and long hair, he was able to pass as a female and often went into town dressed as one.

By his early teens, hed started to square up to his father and sometimes got the better of the older man. He also fought his corner in the playground and was aggressive in the classroom and on the street. His violence was wide ranging and he hit his mother and sister and killed several of the family pets. However, at seventeen, he showed a different side to his nature when a new girl, Karen, arrived at his high school. He wooed the sixteen-year-old with flattery and long romantic phone calls and, within months, she was expecting his child.

On the last day of May 1973, Richard became a father for the first time. The couple called the baby Shannon. Karen took the child home to her parents, whilst Richard continued living with his. Almost everyone who knew them was against the match as, by now, Richard had shown repeatedly that he could be cold and arrogant. Realising that he was too controlling, Karen began a relationship with another teenager and, when Richard found out, he slapped her, after which they made up. That September they married secretly and moved into a rented flat.

A week into the marriage, Richard overslept, blamed his new wife and threw an alarm clock at her. The abuse continued and he worked hard to alienate her from her family and friends. He was studying for an engineering degree and she supported him by working double shifts as a care assistant whilst also going to college part-time to train as a nurse.

By the mid-Seventies he was taking her birth control pills in order to grow breasts this made him look even more womanly. Richard said that he hoped the pills would relieve stress, but he remained abusive and began to beat and mock their little daughter Shannon on a regular basis so that she became terrified of him. In 1978, he received his engineering degree but immediately changed path and enrolled on a medical course. He also continued to hit Karen and, in August 1979, assaulted her in front of a police officer. He was arrested but the charges were later dropped. By now he felt invincible; he beat Karen harder, leaving her with concussion, two black eyes and a broken nose. When Shannon was ten, he treated her with equal cruelty, blackening both her eyes.

Karens response was to keep her daughter out of school for two days, after which Richard told the ten-year-old to explain to her teacher that she had fallen downstairs. Ironically, children from middle- and upper-class homes such as the Sharpes are less likely to be perceived as domestic violence victims so adults tend to believe them when they say that theyve sustained accidental injuries.

Like most abusers, Richard was determined to terrorise his spouse into staying with him, warning that hed kill her parents and siblings (whom Karen was very close to) if she left.

In 1985, at the age of thirty-one, Richard graduated from medical school and did a research year at a Massachusetts hospital. He then became a resident at Harvard Medical School whilst Karen continued to work in a nursing home. He had several affairs during his residency and would later allege that Karen had one too. When chatting up a new woman, he often introduced the subject of cross-dressing and showed them photos of himself in a female wig, make-up and attire. With his fine features and slender physique, he looked more feminine than most transvestites and was upset when some of his new girlfriends were repulsed and ended the relationship.