He was found hanging from the window of his cell, with a rope made of torn bedsheets around his neck, after a final telephone conversation with his wife Primrose.

Shipman had asked for permission for his wife to see him at Wakefield prison today, his 58th birthday. The request was expected to have been approved today.

Police are expected to interview Mrs Shipman, 56, in their attempt to establish why her husband took his own life. It is unclear, however, whether she will reveal what her husband said before he died: she has never been formally interviewed about her husband’s crimes, and has continued to protest his innocence.

Shipman’s body was discovered at 6.20am yesterday, hanging from the window of the cell where he was held alone. Staff tried to resuscitate him but he was declared dead by a doctor at 8.10am, a Prison Service spokeswoman said. He took with him the secrets of his 20-year murder spree.

During the four years since his conviction, he had been asked repeatedly to reveal how many of his patients he murdered, and why. He had always refused to co-operate with police, who say that he had never shown any remorse.

The former GP had not been on suicide watch at Wakefield prison because, as one officer there said, he was considered to be “too arrogant” to wish to kill himself. Just as the motives for his crimes remain a mystery, so too may the reason why he decided to take his own life.

He had been on suicide watch during his spells at Strangeways prison, in Manchester, and at Frankland prison, Co Durham, but not at Wakefield since his arrival on June 18 last year.

A Prison Service spokeswoman said: “He was showing no signs whatsoever of pre-suicidal behaviour. He was behaving utterly normally. He was working as normal and doing education as normal.”

Shipman was convicted in January 2000 at Preston Crown Court of the murder of 15 patients. An inquiry later decided that he murdered at least 215 people while practising as a GP in Hyde, Greater Manchester, and Todmorden, West Yorkshire, and that he may have killed 40 more. West Yorkshire Police began an investigation into his death.

Detective Superintendent Graham Shaw said: “A report will be submitted either to the Crown Prosecution Service or Her Majesty’s Coroner.” Paul Goggins, the Prisons Minister, said that Stephen Shaw, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, would investigate Shipman’s suicide.

News of Shipman’s suicide was greeted with shock and disgust by relatives of his victims. Jayne Gaskill, from Hyde, whose 68-year-old mother Bertha Moss died at Shipman’s hands, said: “He has won again. He has taken the easy way out. He has controlled us all the way through and he has controlled the last step, and I hate him for it.”

Thea Morgan, 65, who lost her 90-year-old mother Doro-thea Renwick, said: “I want to see the end of him but I think he should have stayed in his cell and rotted.”

The four-year inquiry into how Harold Shipman was able to murder more than 250 of his patients is to continue today as if his suicide had never happened.

The inquiry did not sit yesterday because of a routine adjournment but in a terse statement inquiry officials said that the events in Wakefield would have no effect on its deliberations.

The inquiry is due to report to ministers this summer and because Dr Shipman had refused to co-operate his death makes little difference to its outcome.

The Shipman inquiry has tried to delve into the killer’s psyche, employing a team of psychological and psychiatric experts, but has failed to reach any firm conclusions.

The experts have considered his personal relationships, his aggression, his petty dishonesty and his previous drug addiction. Dame Janet Smith, the inquiry chairman, said: “If one defines motive as a rational or conscious explanation for the decision to commit a crime, I think Shipman’s crimes were without motive. The psychiatrists warn me that it is possible that, in Shipman’s own mind, there was a conscious motivation. All I can say is that there is no evidence of any of the features that I have observed, as a judge, that commonly motivate murderers.

“The psychiatrists say that a person who has one addiction is quite likely to be subject to other forms of addiction. I think it likely that whatever caused Shipman to become addicted to pethidine also led to other forms of addictive behaviour. It is possible that he was addicted to killing.”

Shipman’s body was taken from Wakefield prison at 11.07am under police escort to Sheffield, where a post-mortem examination was expected to be conducted by a Home Office pathologist.

It is expected that Shipman’s body will be cremated and his ashes passed on to his family. The serial killer liked to spend his spare time walking in the Peak District, in Derbyshire, close to his suburban modern semi-detached house in Roe Cross Green, Mottram. It is believed that his ashes could be scattered on lonely moorland above the family home.

The Moors murderer Myra Hindley’s ashes were scattered on moorland in Stalybridge Country Park, in Cheshire, not far from where Shipman lived.

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