Forensic pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd has performed more than 23,000 autopsies. Buzz’s Carl Marsh has performed more than 23,000 interviews. Both will happily discuss mysterious deaths with you, but only one has been booked to do so on stage in Swansea.
In your book Unnatural Causes, you talk about your work relating to the Hungerford massacre of 1987. The police asked you to inspect the killer Michael Ryan’s body, offered you a flak jacket – in case he had a concealed bomb – and you refused, on the grounds that the jacket was only useful to stop bullets. That suggests calmness off the scale in that situation: not just thinking it, but actually saying it…
Dr. Richard Sheperd: It was a uniquely strange and odd experience. Now you talk about it, I have that complete image in front of me: you know, walking, looking down, and looking down the barrel of a handgun that was in his hand, pointing towards me. He’s not moving, but there is [my brain thinking], “is he?” I’m there to certify him dead, but is he pretending now? Of course, he’s not.
But the thing that amused me was, as I went in the police said, “Be careful, doc, he might have a bomb.” They hadn’t mentioned this to me up until then! I just said, “well, OK…” The policeman stated, “Don’t move him too much”; “no, I won’t,” was my reply! But the wheels are turning, and you crack on. You’ve got a job, and you just get on and do it.
What was the next big case that you got involved with after Hungerford?
Dr. Richard Sheperd: Chronologically, I can’t tell you – because there are so many – but I think Rachel Nickell came soon after that. Stephen Lawrence was a tragic case – but it didn’t have the significance at the time I was involved, because of the police investigation. It was just tragic, and it’s still the case that we hear of a South London stabbing in the news so often. At the end of my career, I was puzzled about why people carry knives. They’re so easily killed with a knife. It’s just ridiculous.
How do you go about dealing – personally – with some of the murder cases you’ve been involved in?
Dr. Richard Sheperd: There is that personal accommodation, that personal understanding of what’s gone on. But all doctors are professional, as are army officers, journalists, nurses, and many others. I’m not claiming we’re unique. But you do your job properly. It’s when the human reality of what you’ve seen comes in.
When my kids were younger, I would walk through the door, and they’d be immediately there: “Tell me a story, come and play football, do this or that!” You don’t have a second. If I’d had a bad day, I would sit around the corner for two or three minutes, just so that I could relate to my kids when I walk through the door – to consciously go from being the professional to being a dad – and that worked. You can bury these things for a while, but sometimes they pop up and bite you on the backside.
Of all the cases you’ve worked on, which one did you find the most challenging?
Dr. Richard Sheperd: I don’t honestly think I can say there’s one. Of course, each case is challenging in its own right, but that’s maybe a bit banal. As my kids were growing up, there would be [cases involving] babies and toddlers – how could you do that to a toddler? I know my kids pissed me off badly at times, but you don’t hit them with a cricket bat! Well, not hard anyway [laughs].
A lady had come to England with the kids to go around London, do sightseeing, and forgot the traffic went the wrong way. She was holding her daughter’s hand, she looked the right way for the English traffic, and her daughter looked the wrong way and stepped out in front of a car. How do you deal with that? How is the parent thinking about ever coming to terms with that? The child that you were caring for and then suddenly, just gone. So it’s not the Princess Diana ones, not the major ones – it’s those little personal resonance ones that come back to me at two in the morning when I can’t sleep.
It’s just the innocence of that child; they don’t think anything bad could happen.
Dr. Richard Sheperd: It was an absolute accident, in the sense that no one was to blame, and yet this family has lost a daughter. And the car driver has had an awful event. Everyone suffered, but no one is to blame. These unnatural causes are not always about pointing the finger of blame. Sometimes they are about helping people through the most awful event in their life.
Dr Richard Shepherd, Grand Theatre, Swansea, Sat 22 Oct.
Tickets: £27. Info: here
words CARL MARSH
