NOTORIOUS serial killer Dr Harold Shipman - who could have killed hundreds of people in his home town of Hyde in Greater Manchester - was at one time on the same school PTA as the Rev Ian Davies, now of St Michael's Parish Church, Beetham.

Mr Davies knew the mass murderer before his crimes came to light and here he reveals to the Gazette's Justin Hawkins, the Shipman he knew before the shocking revelations about his crimes.

Long before the Rev Ian Davies became priest-in-charge of the parish church in Beetham last year, he was the headmaster of Mottram Primary School in Hyde - the school where Dr Harold Shipman sent his two children.

"I knew him quite well back then.

He was chairman of the Parent Teacher Association and a great supporter of the school - he was also my GP at the time," said Mr Davies, remembering his time in Hyde in the early 1980s.

Shipman is now behind bars serving life for the murders of 15 of his elderly female patients.

But before his infamy, Shipman was regarded as a pillar of the community in Hyde.

"I would say I was as confident about him as I was about anybody.

He was capable and intelligent and exactly the kind of person you would want on your school PTA," said Mr Davies.

He explained how Shipman's patients adored the GP, who would apparently stop at nothing to help his patients.

"I remember I was quite ill and really struggling, he took the time to go through it with me and to find a cure.

I had nothing but admiration for him - I was shattered when I found out about the charges.

"We have gut feelings about people and we think this person is OK - its a shock to find out how wrong you were.

"It shocked me, I did not think I was going get over it and I think the whole town of Hyde was probably in the same boat."

Since the trial, new evidence has led the authorities to believe that Shipman could have murdered as many as 300 of his patients before he was caught, but the true extent of his crimes may never be known.

Mr Davies said the impact on Hyde, which had already achieved infamy as the home town of the moors murderers Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, had been devastating.

"Imagine if this had happened in Kendal and 300 people had died the way they did it would destroy the town's sense of community," said Mr Davies.

"It has implications for all sorts of things like who do you trust? Who can you trust with your family, your children?

"It is a lesson for everybody," he said, "I have spent my life trying to build a reputation for honesty, I've tried my best to be honourable and a lot of people have put their trust in me - something like this can change all that.

"I have thought to myself that I cannot expect people just to trust me - we will have to build in safeguards when we are asking people to trust us, to make sure that something like this cannot happen again."

In spite of the revelations about Harold Shipman and the implications of his breach of trust, Mr Davies stressed that it should not make people so cynical they cannot trust anyone ever again.

"We can be careful, but spending the whole of our lives examining every thing before we trust it is not an option," he said.