Dr. Richard Shepherd qualified as a doctor in 1978 and as a consultant pathologist in 1987. He worked as a Consultant Forensic Pathologist and a “Home Office” forensic pathologist for over 35 years and he was routinely involved in the investigation of all types of sudden and suspicious deaths in London, the UK and around the world. He is the author of two books, Unnatural Causes and The Seven Ages of Death which give insightful and honest accounts of what it means to be a forensic pathologist. Join us as we discuss how forensic pathology contributes to forensic investigations.
Originally aired on: February 23, 2023
Dr. Richard Shepherd qualified as a doctor in 1978 and as a consultant pathologist in 1987. He worked as a Consultant Forensic Pathologist and a “Home Office” forensic pathologist for over 35 years and he was routinely involved in the investigation of all types of sudden and suspicious deaths in London, the UK and around the world. He is the author of two books, Unnatural Causes and The Seven Ages of Death which give insightful and honest accounts of what it means to be a forensic pathologist. Join us as we discuss how forensic pathology contributes to forensic investigations.
Originally aired on: February 23, 2023
00;00;27;29 - 00;00;55;22
Eugene
Hi everyone. It's Eugene here and welcome. This is episode 79 of forensics talks. And I want to welcome everybody here today. First thing our guest is going to be Dr. Richard Shepherd, who is a long-time forensic pathologist. And over the course of his career, he's done well over 20,000 autopsies and examinations. He was qualified as a doctor in 1978 and as a consultant pathologist in 1987.
00;00;56;01 - 00;01;15;02
Eugene
As he worked, he worked as a forensic pathologist for over 35 years. And I think he's getting on even more in terms of the years right now. But he was routinely involved in the investigation of all types of sudden and suspicious deaths in London, the UK and around the world. Many of the cases you might even know of because they were very large events.
00;01;15;18 - 00;01;36;05
Eugene
He's the author of two books and I have them right here. So, there is Unnatural Causes and The Seven Ages of Death. And so Seven Ages of Death is about a number of different cases that he's worked on. And more recently, Unnatural Causes and so the main part of our discussion is going to focus on what is in the contents of these books.
00;01;36;05 - 00;01;48;09
Eugene
And this is a really good, I guess you'd call it a summary of his CV. And I'm sure that even this is not even doing justice to the number of cases and such that he's worked on. So let me bring him in here. Hey, Richard, how are you?
00;01;48;19 - 00;01;50;12
Richard
Hi. I'm good, Eugene. How are you?
00;01;50;22 - 00;02;18;07
Eugene
I'm excellent, thank you very much. Well, I have to thank Jon Nordby first because we have a mutual friend. And Jon, if you're listening, thank you very much. He introduced us at the Academy Conference in 2010, and I went back and I looked. So I I'm just like, so I have the 2010, the proceedings here. And I noticed that it was February 22-27, 20n
00;02;18;07 - 00;02;22;28
Eugene
So it’s just about, almost 13 years ago to the day. We probably met at some point.
00;02;22;28 - 00;02;28;04
Richard
So, it's very scary. Not that we met that it was 13 years ago is.
00;02;28;20 - 00;02;49;19
Eugene
A long time. It's so. Well, let's begin, shall we? I want to ask you about your extensive career and how it all started. And in your book you talk about one of your first experiences with a young friend of yours were 13 years old. And somehow there's a there's a book that appears. And I was wondering if you could tell me about that experience.
00;02;49;29 - 00;03;25;08
Richard
Sure. Yeah. It was the most formative moment in my life in the sense we were 13, were at school. My friends, his dad was a physician, a general physician, and in his office he had textbooks on all sorts of medicine, one of which was to do with forensic medicine. And my friend at school was obviously looking through his dad's office, saw this book, looked in it, saw some really good photos, and thought he'd bring it to school and do a show and tell out of the classroom with his mates, which is what he did.
00;03;25;08 - 00;03;44;26
Richard
And you can imagine the effect it was. I was a single sex school, so there were 30, 30 boys. You know, we all trooped off because it was the safest place to go to, not to be disturbed by it. We all trooped off to the toilet to look at this book because the teachers didn't well, didn't then. Maybe they don't now go to that.
00;03;44;26 - 00;04;07;15
Richard
We felt safe there. The group of, as you can imagine, this gaggle, sort of like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, following this book through the school. And once again, 2020 of them said, How disgusting and left to play football. Five of them said, Yeah, it definitely is. And they left to play. And in the end I was just so totally fascinated by what I saw in that book.
00;04;07;15 - 00;04;21;03
Richard
I didn't realize that doctors help police. I didn't realize doctor solve crimes. I didn't realize doctors gave evidence in court. All of this was completely new and just completely hooked me. And that was the start of my interest in forensic medicine.
00;04;21;19 - 00;04;31;14
Eugene
Interesting. And so what do you think it is about you or maybe other pathologists that, you know, that makes them unique, that makes them interested in this particular area?
00;04;32;10 - 00;05;18;07
Richard
I think it's very varied, actually. I can think of some pathologists who are really focused on the strict academia, the strict scientific processing and deduction, and some of them just like understanding what's going on in the rest of the world. You know, for me, it was it was understanding the stories and solving the problems of what had happened, you know, may be scientifically, but more just through knowledge and experience and understanding to be able to say, I can tell what happened here or I can't tell what happened here, you know, And that that for me is working from this crime scene, working from the body, working from some of the science that we
00;05;18;07 - 00;05;30;07
Richard
get back, being able to tell that story and then communicate it to a jury, because that's the crucial bit in in the UK is telling it to the 12 people sitting opposite you in court.
00;05;30;19 - 00;05;46;00
Eugene
You know, I think that makes sense. It's almost as if I just thought about it now is it's like your desire for answers has to overcome your fear of, you know, the body and the gruesomeness and the horror, or in some cases a what's happening to these individuals.
00;05;46;20 - 00;06;16;05
Richard
Yeah, I mean, I don't I try not to linger on the individual's last minutes. I tried to I always say that the body will tell you the story, but you actually have to ask the right questions. And knowing which questions to ask comes with knowledge and skill and experience. And sometimes, you know, you can say, Well, I want to find out X because you've seen two or three cases like that before, and that can sometimes solve a problem.
00;06;16;29 - 00;06;33;28
Eugene
So, when you so you became a doctor first and then you were doing like standard autopsy and things like this for, for a while, but not so much on the forensic side. So I in your book, you talk about, for example, having to examine slides of his slide after he had.
00;06;33;28 - 00;06;52;02
Richard
Yeah. I mean, with this is the training process you train to become a doctor. So I spent a doctor, I spent a year or two working on the wards, treating living people, sometimes making them better, often making them better, I hope. And then I had to train to become a pathologist, which involved at that stage all of the branches of pathology.
00;06;52;02 - 00;07;22;12
Richard
So chemical pathology, microbiology and histology, anatomic anatomical pathology. And I think diagnosing diseases, diagnosing cancers. So, all of that work preceded my switched to then beginning to train to be an autopsy pathologist in the history pathologist and putting it all together. So, you know, there's a sort of a massive background medical pathological knowledge that leads me to where I am becoming a forensic pathologist.
00;07;22;12 - 00;07;43;13
Eugene
You mentioned the book, and that was it was Professor Keith Simpson, I believe. And then, you know, I'm wondering about who were the other people for you that were the idols? Were the people that you were being mentored from that were important to you at that time? And this is, again, the year we're talking like we're talking 80 late, late 1980s, 1980s.
00;07;43;17 - 00;08;18;01
Richard
I mean, first and foremost actually was my professor of anatomic pathology who was really supportive of this strange being that came to seem that said, I want to I want to become a forensic pathologist. And we were lucky at the medical school. I was working in that in St George's Hospital was we actually had a forensic pathologist there, a guy called Rufus Crompton, who sadly has just died aged about 90 something, who took me under his wing because it was a very unstructured career in the UK trying to work through this.
00;08;18;06 - 00;08;39;12
Richard
So those two were very important to me, but also other professors around London. Prof. Prof. Mance and Professor Keith Simpson and other people were very, very helpful and kind to me and supported me through my career. And I just as I look back, I sort of realized how good they were.
00;08;40;03 - 00;08;54;12
Eugene
Yeah. And you also mention in your book about the people that support you at home, right? Like your family and the family structure and how important that is because of the stresses and the timing, bad timing, all the time with family and the calls that come late at night and everything else, right?
00;08;54;26 - 00;09;15;20
Richard
Yeah. I mean, it was it was always I think forensic pathology is not unique. I mean, I can think of many physicians and surgeons and obstetricians where, you know, the calls never come at the perfect time. And certainly early on in my career, we didn't have a time when we were on call or off call. We were always working.
00;09;15;20 - 00;09;28;22
Richard
The phone could always ring at any moment and take you away to take you away, maybe for sort of half, half a day or a whole day. You know, that could be that sort of that time when things disappeared.
00;09;29;03 - 00;09;46;25
Eugene
Right, right. Let me ask you about the first time that you really had to cut into a body, because I think that's I think that's an image that sticks with many people who are not pathologist. You know, our doctors are just not using it. And by the way, I know what a PM 40 is now. So that's so.
00;09;47;12 - 00;09;48;19
Eugene
And for anyone who doesn't know if you.
00;09;48;26 - 00;09;54;25
Richard
Or achieved sort of iconic status, yes, I really should be getting sort of royalties for this.
00;09;54;25 - 00;09;57;22
Eugene
And I guess it's the scalpel, folks. It's a model.
00;09;57;22 - 00;10;06;13
Richard
It's a big it's a it's a PM knife that, believe it or not, is for 40 millimeters long. You know, I mean, it's not it's nothing.
00;10;06;13 - 00;10;06;19
Eugene
Yeah.
00;10;06;26 - 00;10;07;04
Richard
Yeah.
00;10;07;20 - 00;10;22;23
Eugene
So what was what did it feel like or you know, and you do describe it in the book, but I'm just wondering if you can give me more insight. You know what you the first time you're actually taking a knife to a body, it just seems so unnatural to do. But you know, something that is necessary.
00;10;23;00 - 00;10;48;22
Richard
Well, through my training, of course, I worked as a surgical doctor, so I had done some operations on living people. And let me hasten to add, under intense control and supervision by my superiors. And that's what happened to me from my first post mortem. I mean, I wasn't just suddenly presented with a body in a knife and the way you go, I had observed, I had helped.
00;10;49;17 - 00;11;18;11
Richard
And then one day it was my turn to actually do this. And it was it was a worrying concerning process because I wanted to do it right and with respect and also get the information that I need. But making those first incisions is a strange thing to do. A strange thing that needs support and help to begin with.
00;11;18;19 - 00;11;49;29
Richard
And you gain the understanding soon, not soon after that. But, you know, this is a process to an end. And the key thing I think that helped me was working in the mortuary space with the anatomical pathology technicians, the mortuary techs that we have, and seeing their skills and their ability to reconstruct so well the bodies that had the post-mortems and some that had been injured and damaged in in traffic accidents and the like.
00;11;49;29 - 00;12;02;15
Richard
So, you know, I had immense faith in them to that they would be able to present to the relatives of their loved one in a way that was viewable and not distressing.
00;12;02;29 - 00;12;26;14
Eugene
Right. And I think one of the interesting things and something that I took away from the book was because your career spans such a long time, that being a forensic pathologist in the seventies and eighties changed significantly over the, you know, 30, 40 years. And so, I'm I'd like to ask you about what was it like being a forensic pathologist at that time?
00;12;27;18 - 00;12;33;10
Eugene
This is the first thing that pops into my head, is getting called out to the scene. It's like your phone call came right to you.
00;12;33;10 - 00;12;59;25
Richard
Yeah. I mean, the phone call was often the senior investigating officer would phone me and I would go to the scene. I think things have changed, but maybe this is me getting old as well as things changing. But there was the pathologists that preceded me, Professor Simpson, Professor Mann, you know, were all really larger than life people, and no one would dare call them anything other than professor or sir.
00;13;00;13 - 00;13;25;21
Richard
And that rubbed off a bit on me, you know. So, I mean, no one would call me Dick. It would be Dr. Shepherd's and there would be some help to move me along. And then as but as we were going to see, we didn't wear any Tyvek suits. We would wear gloves. And the rule at that time was, you know, you put your hands in your pockets and you didn't leave a fingerprint at the scene.
00;13;26;02 - 00;13;56;08
Richard
If you did, you would have to pay a fine to the crime scene. Investigators usually have a bottle of whiskey if they found if they found your fingerprints. And so, you know, and then, of course, we had the discovery of DNA, DNA profiling and the immense development of forensic science and the specializations in forensic science that really in some ways took a lot of the weight and the concerns of us has changed the crime scene into this scientific laboratory, which it is now.
00;13;56;10 - 00;14;02;28
Richard
And thank goodness for it, because, you know, we discover so many more things that we simply didn't see at that time.
00;14;03;13 - 00;14;18;09
Eugene
Yeah. And I mean, you also mentioned something about the fact that, you know, the knowledge the forensic pathologist had the status of the forensic pathologist back then. You know, you mentioned that like a superman could or a person that could never be wrong. You know, their word was taken and it was golden.
00;14;18;09 - 00;14;41;12
Richard
Oh, well, yes. I mean, it certainly I think when I when I came away from it, Professor Simpson was certainly a man who, you know, stood up and just pontificated in court and just told the court what it was, and no one would dare to challenge him. And then that was changing and quite right to know, maybe the pendulum swung too far the other way.
00;14;41;12 - 00;15;16;29
Richard
Now, in the forensic pathologists can sometimes be a bit of a punchbag for the defense advocates, defense counsel, sometimes unfairly. But, you know, we have to be able to manage that in the courtroom as well as the crime scene, as well as doing the post-mortem, as well as doing the scientific evidence. If you can't get your information across to the jury, then no matter how good you are for the other things, that's not helping the state or the defense or whoever the court overall to understand what's going on.
00;15;16;29 - 00;15;27;17
Richard
And that's the crucial thing. It's The Court I don't care about anyone else understanding as long as the jury get it right and can take that information to the jury room.
00;15;27;17 - 00;15;46;01
Eugene
Yeah, you in your book, I mean, you talk about your father and the Alexander Pope, you know, poems and things like that. And you strike me as a person that's very scientific. So you're looking for facts, trying to keep things very logical. But you also talk about something in your book and you mentioned the elasticity of truth.
00;15;46;01 - 00;15;49;08
Eugene
And so, I'd like to ask you about the elasticity of truth and what you mean by that.
00;15;50;01 - 00;16;19;05
Richard
Well, it really. Wow. Whiz into philosophy here, don't we? And, Jon, if you're listening, I apologize because I did, I did listen when you spoke to me about. But the truth is, is such a flexible thing in a court of law. I mean, many people watching this will know that the judge will allow or disallow some evidence. And sometimes they allow evidence that you think is unreasonable.
00;16;19;05 - 00;16;49;20
Richard
Sometimes they disallow evidence that you think is crucial. And then, you know, the jury doesn't know that. The jury doesn't know what it doesn't know. And you have to try and then convey information with the information to them, with the information set that you're allowed. I can't immediately bring up a clear, difficult example to go to. But you're trying to convey only by answering questions to a jury what is going on.
00;16;49;20 - 00;17;07;12
Richard
I sometimes say to people, okay, well, tell me about your holidays, where you tell me about your holidays. You know, you can't tell me. I'm going to ask you questions and I'm going to ask you questions about the color of your suitcase and the weight of your suitcase and the color of the clouds you flew through. And what was the ground like when you landed?
00;17;07;20 - 00;17;16;26
Richard
You know, And they say, well, it's not telling me anything about my hold it. Yeah, but that's what it's like sometimes is giving evidence in court when you can only respond to questions.
00;17;18;01 - 00;17;33;23
Eugene
You talked about the very first case that you had with a with a victim lying on his back. And I believe it was a stab wound down. I'm just wondering how that felt the first time being called out and just, you know, like, you know, this this is it. You're on, you're on the ride. You can't get off now.
00;17;33;23 - 00;17;34;11
Eugene
So. Well.
00;17;34;21 - 00;18;10;28
Richard
I'm so excited. I mean, I really was so excited to be really there, having wanted to do this since I was 13 and trained and gone to medical school and done all of these other things. Excuse me, you know, to be there a knowing that I had the knowledge and probably the skills, but not yet the experience to get it right, to do it properly and to help the police and begin to form those relationships with crime scene officers, with police officers, with scientists that were going to stay with me for the rest of my career.
00;18;10;28 - 00;18;18;01
Richard
It was it was just so exciting. It really was, for me, a great sense of achievement.
00;18;18;19 - 00;18;33;24
Eugene
You also mentioned that it was Dr. Ian West. So he was the boss at a guy's hospital when you were working and you'd mentioned that he would know. Maybe I'm wrong. Was he the specialist in shooting in in Well, it was that he wasn't.
00;18;34;11 - 00;18;59;12
Richard
He had a great interest. He shot himself and he had a great interest in gunshot injuries. And we were I was starting to work at the end of what we euphemistically call the troubles. The Irish, you know, the war in Northern Ireland. There had been a lot of shootings, a lot of assassinations, a lot of bombings in London.
00;18;59;12 - 00;19;14;01
Richard
And around the UK. And Ian had been very deeply involved and gained a huge amount experience from working with them. So, he was sort of self appointed, but he was actually very good at understanding and interpreting gunshot injuries.
00;19;14;11 - 00;19;16;23
Eugene
You said he shot himself. Could you explain that?
00;19;16;23 - 00;19;33;12
Richard
Was he used to go out and shoot weapons himself, not shot. Sorry. Yes, sorry to two separated by a common language. He did it. He didn't shoot himself. He was himself a gun using.
00;19;33;22 - 00;19;36;23
Eugene
I was just curious how dedicated he was to this profession. Okay.
00;19;37;13 - 00;19;40;02
Richard
Well, you know, we're all we're all very keen, you know.
00;19;40;05 - 00;19;58;13
Eugene
Yeah, of course. But you, on the other hand, you took an interest in knives and stab wounds and things like that. And you also mentioned things. Well, of course, in the UK everyone says that, you know, stab stabbings are much more common in the UK. And you also mentioned that they were common with women.
00;19;58;13 - 00;19;58;22
Richard
Yeah.
00;19;59;11 - 00;20;04;19
Eugene
Yeah. So, what was it about the knives that you felt you had, you know, that pique your interest.
00;20;05;07 - 00;20;31;17
Richard
It was because statistically very nearly 60% of all homicides are associated with knives in the UK and certainly in domestic stabbings, domestic homicides, it goes way up into the 75, 80%. So it was a very, very common finding. And it seemed to me when I looked at it, actually, there wasn't a huge amount of thought. Everyone just said, Oh, it's the stab wound.
00;20;31;17 - 00;20;50;11
Richard
And I thought, well, you know, what else can we deduce from these things that we're seeing and describing? You know, surely we can take this a bit further, a bit of research, a bit of understanding about what's going on, rather than just saying, oh, it's a two centimeter stab wound penetrating eight centimeters into the body and involving the heart.
00;20;50;16 - 00;21;12;10
Richard
You know, okay, simple facts that are true, but we must be able to understand more where these are, how they are. They're multiple of a single what do they focus on? All of these things. And it seemed to me that this was aim was doing the gunshot wounds, but this was the common thing that I was seeing not every day, but, you know, two or three times a week and a bit of.
00;21;12;10 - 00;21;16;27
Richard
Right. A bit of work for just some understanding and research.
00;21;16;27 - 00;21;23;05
Eugene
So, when you were working at Guy's, I mean, how far it was all over the I mean, it was mostly centered around London or was it?
00;21;23;15 - 00;21;49;14
Richard
Yeah, I mean, we the jury, I hesitate because the way forensic pathology was and is in the UK is very, very unstructured and very poorly organized. We used to all be associated then I was associated with Guy's hospital, but the universities decided in the end that they didn't like us any more because we didn't do enough research.
00;21;49;14 - 00;22;21;24
Richard
So we were thrown out of the universities and that left us floating free. So how it was organized is far too complex and domestic and depressing for this for this video. But it's still not good. But we covered geographically about half of the population in the United Kingdom. For those both in England, we went from Bedford, which in the Midlands down to the south coast, out towards the East Coast and then out towards the center of England, towards the west.
00;22;21;24 - 00;22;31;13
Richard
So, it was a huge geographical area. It would sometimes take me 2 hours or so, maybe not huge in Canada, but in the UK, 2 hours plus to drive to a scene.
00;22;31;28 - 00;22;56;24
Eugene
Yeah. I want to ask you about some of the cases that you worked on and in the book you list, you know, that night that the dates around 1987 were very important. There's a lot of things that happened. And one of those things that you discussed was August 1987, Michael Ryan. It was the Hungerford killings and that you happened to get on because I believe Ian was on vacation.
00;22;56;29 - 00;22;57;11
Eugene
Sure.
00;22;57;26 - 00;23;07;01
Richard
Yeah. I mean, how often the understudy gets it gets the part because the lead the lead is away. And that was that was very definitely me that day.
00;23;07;16 - 00;23;13;08
Eugene
Yeah. And that one was I mean that was a big scene. There were I believe there were like 16 people that died from that in that one.
00;23;13;23 - 00;23;40;19
Richard
13 died, 13 injured. But the key thing in England, it was it was it was unique. You know, I mean, you know, we have spree killings now so commonly, but this was the first one that occurred in England in this way using semi-automatic rifles and handguns. You know, So, I mean, it was it was a massive change in England in terms of homicides and serial killings.
00;23;41;10 - 00;23;48;20
Eugene
Did you find it difficult to manage the number of bodies or that alone, or were you fairly well prepared for that?
00;23;49;03 - 00;24;20;05
Richard
I think we were fairly well prepared. I mean, it was it was made easier, as so often happens in these cases, because the offender had committed suicide and he was the I was called to the scene not only to see the incident there, but to actually certify him dead and to be certain that he had actually fired a gunshot that was suicidal, because there were suggestions in the press that the British army had come in and the sniper had taken him out.
00;24;20;13 - 00;24;43;19
Richard
But there were also suggestions from him during the hostage negotiations that he had a bomb strapped to him and that they were worried that if this wasn't well documented and then they moved him and he got blown up with his own bomb, there would be difficulty establishing it. So, you know, they very kindly pushed me into a classroom with the school with him and shut the door and said, don't move him.
00;24;43;19 - 00;25;11;17
Richard
And I said, No, I won't. I promise you I won't move them at all. But they managing it was because it was something I think I'd read about in management of other types of mass disasters. We just took it slowly and methodically. There was no rush. We weren't going to let it be a rush. It was just going to be working our way through, documenting everything on the assumption that he wasn't the only person involved, that there might have been someone else.
00;25;11;17 - 00;25;15;11
Richard
And proving all of the weapons that he had were the ones that were used.
00;25;16;05 - 00;25;36;16
Eugene
There was the just it was only, I think three or three or four months later, there was the King's Cross fire at the I guess it was the Piccadilly Line. And 1987 again. And now we have, you know, almost twice as many fatalities there. So are you in that case, do you spread the examination amongst the people that are there or how do you how did that work.
00;25;36;27 - 00;26;25;03
Richard
In that in certainly with the King's Cross fire, yes, there were three or four pathologists. The facilities were nowhere near as good. There was much greater pressure from the public and from families to identify. See, want one of the one of the things about Hungerford that was that made it easier was identification was never an issue. Identification was done very quickly and easily, although there were some injuries that these bodies were not disfigured in any way, whereas the King's Cross, there were a lot of severely burnt people, there were a lot of people who'd been injured, and that trying to establish the list of fatalities was crucial.
00;26;25;03 - 00;26;31;21
Richard
As so often happens in mass disasters. Who is it is the first question. And then how?
00;26;31;21 - 00;26;45;29
Eugene
Well, that was the case with the Marchioness disaster at the boat and the disaster. So, in that case, in your book, you talk about you know, there were bodies that weren't found for days or maybe even weeks, a couple of weeks in some cases.
00;26;45;29 - 00;27;08;21
Richard
I can't quite remember the timing. But it's certainly, in fact, the man whose party it was the last person to be discovered. And he'd been in the River Thames going up and down in the River Thames for many, many days. But even the bodies that were recovered there were I think there were about 52 fatalities in the 23 or 24 were recovered from inside the boat the next day.
00;27;08;21 - 00;27;25;24
Richard
So, we had a tranche that were well-preserved, easily identifiable, easily managed. But we had another chance that came up individually and in small group. But it was August, the Thames is quite a warm river. There was a lot of decomposition occurring very quickly.
00;27;26;17 - 00;27;40;00
Eugene
Yeah. And so again, there were yeah, managing the identification in that case, that's a very critical question is who actually is this? And after decomposition starts, it's not as easy or it's easily it's easy to mistake somebody for somebody else, right?
00;27;40;00 - 00;27;41;17
Richard
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
00;27;41;20 - 00;27;47;16
Eugene
Yeah. And I think in that case, there was difficulty in actually just trying to figure out who was actually on the boat.
00;27;48;05 - 00;28;12;00
Richard
Well, yes, you know, it was a 30 year old party. Lots of people were there. They brought friends. People didn't turn up. People did turn up. There were gate crashes. I mean, it was a 30 year old's birthday party. And they were, you know, tragically, they were having such a good time. And I've been on boats on the Thames and other rivers, you know, where there's been a party in a disco.
00;28;12;00 - 00;28;19;20
Richard
And it's just been great fun. And I can't really imagine that that moment where it turned from fun to this awful, awful situation.
00;28;19;28 - 00;28;47;25
Eugene
Yeah. I want to ask you about your involvement with the death of Lady Diana, Princess Diana, because in that one, you were called to help with the investigation and you actually went over to France and you did well, you were you were speaking with the forensic pathologists there and you found some interesting things. Nothing, nothing that you thought was of malice, just some things that were maybe out of practice.
00;28;48;04 - 00;28;51;15
Eugene
Yeah. So can you talk a little bit about that particular case and how you got involved?
00;28;51;27 - 00;29;18;08
Richard
I mean, I wasn't involved initially is the key thing. A colleague of mine, Dr. Rob Chapman, actually perform the post-mortems on Lady Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed. He was the pathologist on call. And he took he took the call and performed those examinations. But as I'm sure everyone remembers; the conspiracy theories didn't go away. They began to multiply.
00;29;18;08 - 00;29;42;25
Richard
I mean, it was tremendous pressure was caused. And so the man who was then the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, the man who later became Lord Stevens, decided that there should be a full and thorough investigation in the UK of the death, because up to this time, of course, it had all been done by the French police and the traffic reconstructions and everything had been done by then.
00;29;42;25 - 00;30;04;14
Richard
He decided, I think obviously with advice and help from other areas, that there should be a full investigation of all of the aspects. And I was called in to provide the pathology, the forensic pathology review of what had happened in in the accident. So I came in at a late stage two or three years later in this review.
00;30;04;24 - 00;30;37;13
Richard
And just looking, you know, it is interesting. It's a good learning experience to review someone else's case, whatever it is, and say, oh, what I've done that did, oh, that's good. I like the way they did that. Gosh, I can learn from that. But in this case it was done in France and there were I think, some huge you know, I can't imagine what it was like in France trying to manage the death of a member of a divorced, divorced member of the royal family, you know, the mother of the king to be.
00;30;38;12 - 00;31;00;04
Richard
The pressures were huge. And I know having been involved in mass disasters, the way these pressures come in, people always want, you to do things quickly and that there's always the push to get it done yesterday, to do it in 10 minutes, to do it in an hour. And this is why, you know, with Hungerford, I've set a plan that I followed through.
00;31;00;08 - 00;31;20;03
Richard
But you go at your speed because if you try and rush and you make a mistake, the people who've been pushing you suddenly are not going to be standing by your side saying, oh, no, no, he did it for me. They're going to say, Well, you did it wrong. And so, push, push. I know. Is that lovely? Really, really nice.
00;31;20;13 - 00;31;51;29
Richard
Professor of the French military, Professor Larcombe, it was a delight for a lady who they didn't work. They didn't have an on-call system. They just did cases as they came in and she was dragged out of her bed at 2:00 in the morning or 3:00 in the morning to go and examine Princess Diana in the hospital to comment on her injuries and then to come back to the mortuary and perform a post-mortem on a man called Paul, who was the driver of the Mercedes in which three people had died.
00;31;51;29 - 00;32;12;16
Richard
One of them was him. So, looking at all these things, putting it together and of course, the person of interest to the press was Lady Diana. She suffered a very strange and unusual injuries in she had a vascular tear in her left lung, which is why she was apparently, well, for quite a long time before she then collapsed on the way to the hospital.
00;32;12;25 - 00;32;34;18
Richard
But the crucial person was obviously on report. Why was what was he doing? Why was he doing it? Was what was the speed of the car on all of those things. And my view very early on was that you, Mercedes, are generally very good cars. They had all the bells and whistles, the airbags, the seatbelts, but of course, none of them were wearing them.
00;32;36;22 - 00;32;58;00
Richard
So apart from a man called Trevor Reece Jones, who was Diana's bodyguard, who lived, he had very severe injuries but did actually live. He was the one survivor. And he said, you know, he realized something was going wrong and managed to get his seatbelt on just before the car hit the pillar. So, it was understanding all those things together.
00;32;58;11 - 00;33;14;00
Richard
Really, really interesting to work with a fascinating high powered team that had a lot of clout behind it. In my word, you can get things done when you've got a Lords, a Lord of the House, a member of the House of Lords holding an investigation. Things move quiet.
00;33;14;19 - 00;33;39;11
Eugene
Consistently. Yeah, I can imagine something like that. But let me ask you about things which are even larger. So, for example, you know, the tsunami victims in the Boxing Day tsunami there, that one year or for example, 911, you know, things like that which are just enormous, and they span international borders and things like that. I mean, how for example, you assisted with 911.
00;33;40;09 - 00;33;51;00
Eugene
So how what's the mechanism? I mean, does somebody from the US make a call? Is it the people in England that say, look, we need somebody to go over? How does that typically work?
00;33;51;09 - 00;34;15;28
Richard
Yeah, I mean, I didn't help with 911. I was sent over because the British government needed to understand what was happening. We needed I think the phrase might now be no eyes, eyes on it. We needed someone to go and look and say, what is happening in New York, what is happening, How are they managing it? Is it something we're going to accept?
00;34;15;28 - 00;34;40;28
Richard
Because without getting too bogged down, English law says now that if a body is returned from abroad to the UK, the English coroner still has to take what is legally called an interest in that. And often if it's if it's a traumatic death, if it's an accidental or a suicidal or homicidal death, the coroner may decide to hold an inquest.
00;34;40;28 - 00;35;04;03
Richard
So, there was a legal process that had to be satisfied in England. And we were very, very concerned that if we didn't have a solitary view of what was being done, different coroners around the country and you have the same thing in the States and in Canada, I guess, you know, where the coroners and the Emmys can do their own thing.
00;35;04;20 - 00;35;26;01
Richard
We really wanted a unified response. How many what were the names? How was it being managed? So that was what I was sent out to view by the British government, by the Metropolitan Police and by the coroner. And that's that was what I did. I formed that opinion and said they were doing it really well. The guys were working very hard.
00;35;26;09 - 00;35;47;06
Richard
The paperwork was good, the processes were good, and the if the body was returned to England, we didn't need then to start thinking about having a further post-mortem examination on those bodies that came back to England, which is crucial because now these families have been shocked and distressed enough for them to say, Yes, we found your loved one and they're coming back to England.
00;35;47;07 - 00;35;52;01
Richard
And by the way, the English coroner is going to have another post-mortem performed. That just was just awful, right?
00;35;52;01 - 00;36;17;05
Eugene
Yeah. Let me ask you about Well, there's two things on my mind. One is the working with obviously young children, babies. So, for example, SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome was a very interesting time. And of course, there were varied opinions on SIDS and what it meant. But can you give us just a quick sort of background on what the impact of SIDS was in forensic pathology?
00;36;17;28 - 00;36;45;06
Richard
Well, I think, yes, it was coming in as I was really sort of beginning to move into the field and doing regular post-mortems. I mean, there were these deaths nobody really understood. But and they were just, in a sense, just dealt with as tragic events. And then slowly we began to realize is that there were patterns, not me but others, others working in this field.
00;36;45;15 - 00;37;21;24
Richard
And they said that working in the pediatric hospitals and full research, full investigation, saying we do not understand what is happening here. And they created this category of sudden infant death syndrome, which was which was very useful in many ways because it allowed us to focus on these cases that had had the complete plethora of investigations from X-rays down to microscopy, bacteriology, everything that that that was the good thing that enabled us to focus and have protocols to work through them.
00;37;22;10 - 00;37;45;01
Richard
The bad thing was that it also gave other people a dustbin, in which case too, in which to throw a load of cases because they couldn't be bothered to do the work. They just said, Oh, it's sudden infant death syndrome and end of story. And once again I referred to the variability of coroners and EMS. You know, there were some coroners in England who said there is no such thing.
00;37;45;01 - 00;38;17;26
Richard
I don't believe it. I'm not going to allow you to put that on your death certificate. So, there were there were problems. In the end, it has, I think, been beneficial. It's allowed us to focus on this group and mainly for specialist pediatric pathologists to know where they're going. And so much as so much has come out of this this research, you know, the slip, putting your child on its back to sleep, not overheating it, worrying about mattresses and old mattresses and things of that sort, what has been really good.
00;38;18;06 - 00;38;47;20
Richard
And then of course, that has then bumped into the sudden infant death syndrome, has rather bumped into the battered baby, the child's abuse. And there's been the crossover managing that. And then we slide from that into Shaken Baby and the Triads, you know, and all sorts of problems that are that are coming up. And it's it has been a quite a fascinating time to watch this change going on throughout my career.
00;38;47;20 - 00;39;05;14
Eugene
I wanted to ask you about a few different things. And one thing that came to mind is inside of the OR while you're doing the autopsy or the people who are there with you. For example, today, if you were to do an autopsy, are they the same people that were there 40 years ago?
00;39;05;14 - 00;39;34;28
Richard
Yes. Well, yes, they are, because the fundamental it depends on what sort of autopsy I'm doing. If I'm doing what we would call routine. So, this is a non-suspicious trauma, natural causes, death. That's that We have the anatomical pathology technicians. They used to be essentially untrained people. They used to be more tree keepers and the mortuaries used to be little buildings in the middle of cemeteries.
00;39;34;28 - 00;39;58;09
Richard
So they took bodies in and put bodies out and they have the graves in the afternoon. Now, they are a highly trained, highly skilled specialist group. So same bodies, if you said so wrong by choice of the same people. But now they are fantastically trained and so much better doing and understanding their job in terms of suspicious deaths once again.
00;39;58;09 - 00;40;11;23
Richard
Yes, I have. I'll have an investigating officer, I'll have a photographer, I'll have a crime scene investigator, and I'll have scientists or specialist scientists like ballistics if I need them. So, the group of people hasn't really changed a lot.
00;40;13;05 - 00;40;30;21
Eugene
There were a couple of cases that you talked about, and you had some involvement with this. After all, you took an interest. But they have to do with, for example, an individual getting arrested and based on the way that they were restrained, it caused the death or, for example, somebody in custody. And then, you know, based on how they were restrained again.
00;40;30;21 - 00;40;47;20
Eugene
And I mean, we've seen this in North America in the US recently. So what kinds of things came out of the those cases? And did you develop training methods or what kinds of things did you do post those cases?
00;40;48;17 - 00;41;13;05
Richard
Yeah, we had we had two or three. It seems to happen in quick succession. The first one was a lady called Joy Gardner who was said to be an illegal immigrant. She was being arrested, to be taken, deported. She struggled and the not the police officers, but the immigration officers wound a piece of we call it a last class.
00;41;13;05 - 00;41;38;09
Richard
I don't know what you call it, surgical tape. 13 feet of surgical tape were wound round her mouth and nose. And that knocked, not surprisingly, perhaps she suffered asphyxiation, suffered brain damage and eventually died. And that was the first one that really came to my attention. But then we had other cases with people just being restrained, sat on, controlled by police officers.
00;41;38;09 - 00;42;01;21
Richard
This was long before the days of Taser. And often these would just be what I would describe as a rugby scrum. They just, you know, four police officers just pile on top and simply use their weight and gripping to restrain them. And these people would be dying, too. And I realized talking to them that they had no concept of how it was.
00;42;01;21 - 00;42;43;20
Richard
People breathed and that by sitting on people you were going to cause problems, which doesn't happen on the rugby field. Well, no, but these guys on the rugby field probably aren't up to their eyeballs in cocaine and other drugs as well. So all of these things and we used that time, we held two or three seminars at St George's when I was working there, and then we got involved in training police officers and talking to them about, you know, maintaining the airways, someone being responsible for making sure the person could breathe and could see and, you know, telling them the medical, the simple medical, physiological facts and I can't say we have no cases in
00;42;43;20 - 00;43;02;06
Richard
the United Kingdom, but I like to think that by teaching them this, which they took home very quickly, I mean, the police were very fast in their training methods to take this on board because the devastation it caused, I mean, I know to the families of the people who died, it was awful. But to the police officers involved in this, it was awful as well.
00;43;02;07 - 00;43;23;10
Richard
You know, there were very few who would have chosen to kill this person and it would ruin their lives, ruin their careers. And so, they the police were very fast. And I would you know, I think it has had an effect in in the UK and the training and a reduction in the number of deaths and of course, Tasers and things that that help too.
00;43;24;21 - 00;43;53;03
Eugene
I want to ask you about something that you start with at the beginning of a natural causes and you also sort of end with and that has to do with emotional wellness, PTSD and those sorts of things. So obviously, you know, everyone is different, of course. And I know speaking for myself, I've only had a couple of situations where I've been confronted with something which was just very, you know, with death and then that sort of thing.
00;43;53;03 - 00;44;19;05
Eugene
In cases where I was just, yeah, there and somebody like yourself that is getting called out to these mass murders and in all these terrible situations over time, they may cause some problems. And in your book, well, your pilot. So, it's there's one part of the book where you talk where, you know, you're flying and then you're sort of having an uncomfortable episode, let's call it.
00;44;19;05 - 00;44;30;08
Eugene
And so I wanted to ask you about how that came to be, how you first realized that, you know, things were starting to pile on for you.
00;44;31;14 - 00;45;03;18
Richard
Well, it is interesting because I think we all develop a carapace. We all develop a thick skin. You know, we can cope with this. And in fact, the trigger for me, we've talked about Hungerford, we talked about it being one of my the first cases back in 1987, a long, long time later, I was flying my aircraft and I realized I was actually flying over the top of Hungerford quite near Heathrow, said the air traffic controller, quite keen that you know where you are.
00;45;04;05 - 00;45;25;24
Richard
And so I was I was and without realizing it, once I twigged I was over the top of Hungerford or near Hungerford, I had a very bizarre, how can I call it sort of out of not out of body, just an unusual sensation, you know, Was it real? Was it not real? Was it physical? Was it mental?
00;45;25;28 - 00;46;06;25
Richard
What was actually going on here? And that was the first inclination many, many years later. And we're now talking about the late nineties, early 2000s. You know, this was this happened that I realized that something perhaps was involving me a bit deeper. And in the end, bizarrely, it was something that linked back to another mass disaster linking back to Bali, the bombing Bali once again, I was went out there very similar role to the one I played in World Trade Center in 2002.
00;46;06;25 - 00;46;30;00
Richard
About 30 months later on, there were real problems with the infrastructure there, problems with keeping the bodies cool and bags of ice had been got from supermarkets in the initial stages before proper refrigeration was there, and it was just putting a cube of ice into my wife's gin and tonic one night. That actually triggered the memory of Bali.
00;46;30;12 - 00;47;10;18
Richard
And that moment, then those two 200 odd people died. I mean a lot of fragmentation with double bombings and burning it. It was it was an awful situation. But that simple act, doing something so common, just getting a piece of ice out of a plastic bag, open this sort of pan of the trap door and suddenly all of the memories of Hungerford and world trade and individual cases and kids deaths and kids natural deaths, an accident, all of these things just suddenly came out and I'd say completely they rendered me completely unable to do anything.
00;47;10;18 - 00;47;36;04
Richard
I certainly couldn't work. I mean, I couldn't sleep. I couldn't make decisions. And it was a very unpleasant, fortunately brief with treatment episode of acute anxiety and depression. It was it was a very unpleasant Eventually, a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder was made. And I had some psychotherapy as well as some chemical therapy in terms of antidepressant drug.
00;47;36;24 - 00;48;05;00
Richard
And I would say I'm back to what passes for normal now. But it was it did actually make me say to my, you know, you've got to think all the time I thought I was immune. I thought I'd done everything and seen everything. And apart from blips in my smoking habits and my drinking habits during mass disasters, which always resolve quite quickly afterwards, I hadn't noticed any changes, but yet it was there.
00;48;05;00 - 00;48;14;26
Richard
And so I try and encourage my colleagues now to spend some time on wellness and on talking to professionals all colleagues to get through this.
00;48;15;21 - 00;48;34;07
Eugene
It strikes me that in the book there were several occasions where, for example, someone is inside of the autopsy room and you can see that there's just uncomfortable situation and you know that they're going to walk away with this memory, that it's just not going to fade. But in the room, you're probably really good with other people.
00;48;34;07 - 00;48;40;17
Eugene
You're I imagine you're probably an expert now. It's like, hey, are you talking them through and, you know, conversation and. Yeah.
00;48;41;01 - 00;49;09;08
Richard
Yeah. Well, I think that I remembering back to my training days, the worst thing I found was just standing, watching someone else mutilated body. When, when you know the value of what's being done, you understand why it's being done and that there is a benefit and a useful for these processes that can be seen if you're just observing them from nowhere.
00;49;09;19 - 00;49;48;13
Richard
A terribly mutilating event. And I did realize that, you know, often the police were not good about briefing people before they came into the room or, you know, particularly the police. I guess there are some scientists as well that were sort of brought in. And I tried to make sure that I was explaining I would always try talk as though I was talking to the senior officers, but keeping an eye on these other guys because I wanted them to go away and go, yeah, that wasn't pleasant, but it was really useful and I understand why it was done and I can justify what's going on and that that I felt was important.
00;49;48;13 - 00;49;57;15
Richard
But these, these people who were brought in a little against their will often weren't then traumatized are left with a memory that would linger forever.
00;49;58;14 - 00;50;16;06
Eugene
So if you had to go back or for example for people who are watching this, maybe their young pathologists getting started and they want to get into this, what kinds of things do you think could help along the way so that it doesn't come to a head all at once at one point?
00;50;17;04 - 00;50;46;27
Richard
Well, I think what we're trying to instigate in the UK now is that all of the people who are registered Home Office forensic pathologist, so we use the term home office pathologist, these are just they the home office. Our home office just has a list of people on it. That's the only reason we call home office pathologist, is that, you know, they should actually go and see some counselor once a year.
00;50;48;04 - 00;51;08;08
Richard
They don't have to talk about their work. They don't have to talk about anything. They can just go and sit and drink tea and talk about golf or cricket or football. But the point is, it puts them in a room, 1 to 1 with a person who, if they do have psychological mental health needs, is there to offer that support.
00;51;08;08 - 00;51;35;22
Richard
So, nobody knows what they're talking to them about. And I always felt that if we insisted that everyone did it, then it gave those that needed it the option without it standing out. But, you know, it is a question of watching your colleagues. And this is when I'm talking about managing mass disasters. One of the things I'm always saying, watch your colleagues, beware the person that's gone quiet, beware the person that isn't in the evening is sitting on their own.
00;51;36;01 - 00;52;10;25
Richard
Beware the person who is that? They need your help. They're not. They are dissociating. There is there are problems brewing. And, you know, we all we all need that debriefing, that counseling post must disasters. But, you know, that's just single events. We need it throughout our career. I mean, I know that my wife is a forensic pediatrician. Her hospital insists that she goes to see a forensic psychologist once every three months, you know, so within the hospital environment, it's being done.
00;52;11;02 - 00;52;21;11
Richard
It's because of our unusual situation within the criminal justice system with forensic pathologists in this country that we have to do it ourselves. And that's wrong.
00;52;21;26 - 00;52;32;10
Eugene
Yeah, well, see, but I think you make an interesting point about, you know, watching out for your colleagues, because maybe in the past it wasn't people were worrying about themselves, maybe not so much about others. But, you know, you know.
00;52;32;28 - 00;52;49;23
Richard
You never know the guy who's in the room. Is he with a road traffic case? You know, actually, his father was killed. He didn't want to be there. And suddenly he finds himself there and he's got a lot of background you don't know anything about. But it's only by watching that you'll pick that up.
00;52;50;12 - 00;53;01;24
Eugene
Yeah, I think so. And I've noticed, too, that in you alluded to this in the book as well, but humor is often helpful in social situations and yeah, yeah, I can only imagine.
00;53;02;19 - 00;53;23;01
Richard
It's a delicate it's a delicate, delicate line because if you're not careful, you know, black humor is there, and it has to be viewed with great care. So yes, but with delicacy, yes. The important thing. But yeah, humor, humor can break that tension quite well.
00;53;24;01 - 00;53;41;03
Eugene
I want to ask you about what surprises or a longer career. What were some of the things that may have surprised you at the autopsies? Like something showed up that was like, whoa, I've never seen this before. What? What things stand out for you? Oh.
00;53;42;08 - 00;54;07;12
Richard
That's a really that's a really, really difficult question to answer because there's so much normal pathology that we have to know about what we see. And without it being a sort of an I spy book, it's actually quite nice when you see a bit of classical pathology, you know, for instance, for instance, you know, a ruptured aneurysm.
00;54;07;12 - 00;54;24;04
Richard
You know, actually they're quite common. But, you know, when the first sees, wow, you know, I've learned about this and I've looked at my slides and I've learned all about it, and here it is. It's in exactly the right place, doing exactly the right things. And so sometimes when you do that, sometimes it's the rare it is.
00;54;24;10 - 00;54;42;22
Richard
Sometimes it's the oddities. I mean, when people haven't cut their toenails forever, they get these huge they call ram's horns and it's got a wonderful name, a nice croak, Grifo says of the toenails. And they really are these you know, And has it killed them? No, it hasn't. But, you know, it exists. And it's. And what's its value?
00;54;42;28 - 00;55;02;00
Richard
Well, not in terms that cause that other than you can say this person has not been taking care of themselves sufficiently well and their social services haven't been caring for them because they wouldn't have the you know, there were these ancillary markers that we can look to, and we have to notice as well as the stab wounds to the back.
00;55;02;28 - 00;55;22;08
Eugene
I was thinking earlier this morning that you must have an absolutely incredible map of the human body in your in your head because of the way everything is laid out and where you where you're going to find things. So, yeah, I mean, I'm just thinking about that. But your understanding of the human body internally must be absolutely fascinating.
00;55;22;17 - 00;55;49;28
Richard
Yeah, well, I'm very, very fortunate. Of course, the human body doesn't change much and hasn't for thousands of years. So, I'm on a bit of a winner. But, you know, the heart does tend to be, you know, point 1% of the population. The heart's on the right side of the chest. And these anomalies we have to know about and understand and you particularly dealing with children, you know, the errors in the anatomy errors in metabolism, errors in other things that are crucially important.
00;55;50;05 - 00;56;05;20
Richard
We all have to have them. But please, please don't ask me the name of a muscle or nerve because, you know, I'm really not that good an anatomist. I have got a fantastic app on my iPad that tells me the names of things that I need to know them.
00;56;06;02 - 00;56;28;10
Eugene
Yeah, actually, you raise a really good point. And that and something that you raised in your book too is, you know, you say the bodies don't change, but there have been things that have been changing with bodies over the course of your career that you've mentioned. So, for example, body size. Oh yeah, people are getting heavier body markings and you also brought up something and I wonder if you can comment on this, too.
00;56;28;14 - 00;56;34;06
Eugene
It has to do with people with harming themselves, like people self-harm.
00;56;34;06 - 00;57;08;07
Richard
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean these patterns, the tattoos I think are the thing that have changed so much. You know, I was I was recently at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences down in Florida, and just the number of people with tattoos who were attending the conference, it was such a surprise to me. But body piercings and actually the self-harm patterns that are caused and the implements that are used and all of those aspects that are going on are changing.
00;57;08;07 - 00;57;33;15
Richard
But I think the biggest thing is, is body weight. I mean, it's huge really, and I really notice it when I look back at the, the, the photographs that I have, the crime scene photographs, how thin people were in 1987. And, you know, you just they're just not that thin anymore. And it's in a sense, it's not a surprise, particularly in terms of natural death, because, you know, obese, it's overweight.
00;57;33;15 - 00;57;38;06
Richard
And these things are crucially important in contributing to natural death.
00;57;38;22 - 00;57;53;21
Eugene
Yeah, I'm jumping around here. But now you just brought it to my mind that you actually developed your own way of cutting a certain cut. And I'm not sure it's called the shepherd Shepherd's cutter or whatever, but it has to do with the way you fold over certain parts of the skin or whatever.
00;57;53;22 - 00;58;23;28
Richard
Yeah, it was it was really to try and be aware that once I finished, the military takes have got to recreate the body and the family will then want to view it. And it's just trying to make that viewing process better for the family. You know, most families will not ask to see the body naked, but you know, if they do, then, you know, we have to make sure that they are viewable.
00;58;23;28 - 00;58;51;01
Richard
We can't hide the incisions that we make. We make them as at least as little obvious as we possibly can, but they can't be made to disappear. And so, you know, trying to think that little bit further through and to find different ways of making incisions that are more hidden are better, to make the experience of those few members of the families who want to see the body naked.
00;58;51;01 - 00;59;17;22
Richard
There are some religious groups who will want to do it to wash the body of the family. And that's crucially important that, you know, we don't cause them any greater distress by being just without doing things, without thinking, you know, and thinking of the relatives is always something that has to be there. And we have to have the skills and the techniques to do these things as well as we possibly can.
00;59;18;08 - 00;59;20;15
Eugene
Yeah, dealing with the people is the hardest part, isn't it?
00;59;20;15 - 00;59;45;20
Richard
Yeah. Absolutely. And you know, once again it comes back to mass disasters and so often people say, oh, you know, just remember them as they were. No, that's not how we got to do it. In the in the London bombings, we spend a lot of time designing and planning military and but also the relative’s area, the time that was there and spending time with families there, we organized it very well.
00;59;45;20 - 01;00;04;12
Richard
I think that meant that the families could go through it at their own speed. And I would very insistent that sometimes it may take three or four days, three or four visits before the family get to where they want to. And then you must always leave the door open and say, if you need to come back, you always can't.
01;00;04;12 - 01;00;26;29
Richard
Because one thing I learned in general medicine, particularly doing obstetrics, is that if people have a fantasy, it's always worse than the reality. Always, always, always worse than the reality. They think things are terrible. And in fact, if we can say to them no, and here is the reality and you can cope with it.
01;00;28;06 - 01;00;44;17
Eugene
Let ask you about seven ages. So at what point first off, I got to give you credit because anyone who can write as well as you do and four sits for as long and focused for that long has got my respect because I just I just can't focus that long. But seven inches of death. I have it up on the screen for those that are interested.
01;00;44;17 - 01;00;51;03
Eugene
But what would cause you to say, hey, you know, I need to write this book? Were you paused in your career for a time, and this is the.
01;00;51;10 - 01;01;12;22
Richard
Yeah, yeah. I mean, really I was I was sort of coming to, to and into retirement. So I had time, more time than I already knew what to do with in many ways. But I was very keen when I look back at the autobiographies that have been written by my predecessor, so often they were, Hey, let me tell you how clever I am in 20 cases.
01;01;12;22 - 01;01;34;21
Richard
I also wanted to show a little bit about some of the many things we've been talking about here. Eugenia The effect on me affected my family life, the effects on my kids. You know, all of these things are interwoven in a long career. And the seven ages are because it's it was obvious to me that people die of different things in and throughout their life.
01;01;34;21 - 01;01;57;01
Richard
You know, children die of metabolic and congenital abnormalities. Oh, people die of middle-aged people die of coronary artery disease, old people die of dementia. That simply and it was looking at how the body changes and the cases I'd had to deal with in those seven ages. And the seven ages is the Shakespearean quote that we all remember in a mewling puking in the mother's arms.
01;01;57;01 - 01;02;15;25
Richard
And then nobody remembers the bit in the middle. Then you get to songs I songs, songs, everything. And you know, all of these all of these situations are those that forensic pathologists have to manage, you know, and doing a post-mortem on someone in the Middle Ages is not the same as doing a post mortem on someone who was 80 or 90.
01;02;15;25 - 01;02;20;17
Richard
You know, even if they've died from trauma, there are differences and you have to understand and manage them.
01;02;21;08 - 01;02;42;21
Eugene
And then, of course, natural causes were a little different twist, you know, to just talking more about the cases. But here this is and I have to let everybody know both of these books are excellent books. I especially reading on natural causes, it's about as close as I could get to understanding, you know, forensic pathology without actually being there.
01;02;42;21 - 01;02;56;09
Eugene
And so I think I think you did a wonderful job on here, but you made this very personal, that you talk about family life, you talk about wellness, you talk about a lot of different things. And it's so what was the motivation here in a natural cause?
01;02;56;25 - 01;03;19;25
Richard
Well, well, yes. The motivation was someone from a publishing house called Penguin wrote to me and said, why don't you write an autobiography, which was always a good it's always a good start, because normally people write it and then need to find a publishing house. So that was that was the key. Although I have to say, actually, they wrote to me in 1992 and said, write an autobiography.
01;03;19;25 - 01;03;43;00
Richard
And I said, I'm not yet there. You know, let me let me have a career then I'll do one. So that was natural causes was the first of the two books, but it really was writing an autobiography. And I was determined it wasn't just going to be a list of 2020 cases that I thought I'd done well, as I wanted to tell the story of my life in and how it interwove with my career.
01;03;43;00 - 01;03;57;02
Eugene
Yeah, excellent. Well, I think it was a great book. And again, for all of the people that are listening or watching, and especially, like I said, if you are a student and you're looking to get into forensic pathology, it's a great resource. I think it'll give you really some really great insight.
01;03;57;13 - 01;04;18;07
Richard
And a little publicity for me. It's out in the mail. I can't remember now. I think it's 25 different languages. So it really is no excuse for not buying it. I can't tell you what they all are, but that that it's Korean, Chinese, French, German. Probably not American, but they we all know.
01;04;18;12 - 01;04;30;03
Eugene
But it is very well written. It's a great read. So, what's next for you, Richard? Are you are you writing again? Are you are you still involved with other organizations and things like that?
01;04;30;17 - 01;04;57;23
Richard
Yeah, well, a little bit. I mean, I think I've been retired now for so long, I have to be careful to step away from casework because I'm not doing it. And you know, you got to stay sharp. You can't commit yourself down that line. I've done a couple of tours around the UK having an evening with when I tell, I tell the tale a little bit of my life, but also about a particular incident, a domestic incident ends up someone being stabbed.
01;04;57;23 - 01;05;21;27
Richard
And we talk about how we do the examination, and we actually have a body that we will onto the stage, which is a week, which always gets a bit of a gasp from the audience. So, and then we have a court scene. So I've done that twice now and we're looking to go to Australia, New Zealand, probably in spring of our spring, which is spring of 2024.
01;05;21;27 - 01;05;42;02
Richard
And I keep swinging past writing another book. But as you say, volumes, it's, it's, it's knowing. It's knowing what I'm committing myself to that keeps stopping me. But I think we I think we're moving there, but possibly more, you know, more fictional than autobiographical.
01;05;42;21 - 01;05;58;25
Eugene
Excellent. Well, look, I think we're going to stop it here. We've covered a ton of topics. And look, I can't thank you enough. I'm just really fascinated now, just sort of you know, I've known, you know, forensic pathologists, I've done interviews. But I have to tell you, I just it's it was a rejuvenation of interest in the field.
01;05;58;25 - 01;06;03;01
Eugene
Again, based on a lot of the cases and the work that you've done. So, again, thank you so much.
01;06;03;12 - 01;06;23;10
Richard
Well, thank you, Eugene, for asking me. I mean, I have to say, you say I've done over 20,000 premiums. If I could go back to starting at medical school again tomorrow, I would go back without a moment's hesitation. And I love my career, even with its problems here and there but, you know, I would go back and do it again if I possibly could.
01;06;24;11 - 01;06;31;05
Eugene
Well, look, do me a favor. Hang back. I'm just going to just say some closing comments. But, hey, thank you very much. And we'll chat in a bit.
01;06;31;11 - 01;06;32;02
Richard
My pleasure.
01;06;32;09 - 01;06;45;14
Eugene
Well, I'm going to leave it at that. I want to thank everybody. I see that there's people in the comments section. Thank you for all the comments. Thank you for being involved here and everything else. And I want to wish everybody a really wonderful, wonderful Thursday. Take care, everybody. Bye.