Beyond the Tape: The Life and Many Deaths of a State Pathologist

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It’s not that I didn’t have any empathy for patients, I just found it quite difficult. As I made my way through the specialities while training as a junior doctor, I was like, “No, I don’t want to do that” or “No, I’m not good enough to do that”! And then you’d see patients brought into A&E and they’d be writhing about in agony and I’d be looking around going, “Could someone please help this person?” But the person that should have been helping was me! I didn’t know what to do with them. I would have lost sleep if I had patients! I would have been in first thing in the morning going, “Did anyone die during the night?!” Science never lied, even if people misunderstood it from time to time. Terry, though, was an expert in interpreting the subtler messages left for the living to read. She's certainly kept busy. As well as the book, she has just completed her training to become a medical examiner. In over 30 years of practice in total, she has performed thousands of postmortems and dealt with hundreds of murders.

She is also a professor of Forensic Medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland and Trinity College. Cassidy dealt with her share of murder victims – mainly stabbings. Weapons ranged from a seemingly innocuous pencil to ornamental samurai swords (the latter, she says, were "a common feature on living room walls in 1980s Glasgow"). Dr Marie Cassidy, who was Ireland’s state pathologist for 14 years, arrives at Phoenix Park in Dublin in 2013. Picture: Brian Lawless/PA WireThe ‘death investigation circus’ — as that same tabloid had referred to Irish law enforcement’s arrival to a murder scene — had come to town, creating a dark contrast to the unusually warm late summer’s day. Terry, the journalist in question had suggested, was the ‘alluring female ring mistress’. You have to have a certain personality, a very odd personality,” Cassidy laughs. The 67-year-old, originally from Rutherglen in Glasgow, studied medicine there and expected to “end up as a GP”. But she found she was better with deceased patients than live ones, and soon became fascinated with forensic pathology.

Dr. Marie Cassidy, former state pathologist, spoke to Ray D’Arcy about her time in forensic pathology and her time out of it, as chronicled in her book, Beyond the Tape.

I was ambivalent about it. I knew all the bad things that were out there so I did try to warn them, but at the same time they needed to work it out for themselves. I think they were happier when I was away working because I wasn’t there going, “Don’t do this” or “Don’t go there”. When I was home I was much stricter. Throughout the trial Manuela’s mother and father were present. They had sent their daughter to Ireland to improve her English and now they were in court listening to the sordid details of the last few minutes of her life.

Cassidy will continue to appear in Irish courts until all the cases she’s been involved in have been processed. And given her two-book deal with Hachette, she’ll complete at least one more O’Brien novel. She writes long hand at first draft, types with two fingers and doesn’t plot ahead. Dr Cassidy recounts many tragedies from both her time in Glasgow and in Ireland. I was familiar with many of the Irish cases, reminded of the faces we saw, of both victims and perpetrators, on our screens and newspapers at the time. There is one case that she recalls, in 1992, near Glasgow where the body of a young woman, a student, was discovered. One particular paragraph, where Dr Cassidy writes about the postmortem, carries great emotion evoking a huge sense of loss. Looks like a woman. But no one’s got too close.’ The ghost of a smile crossed his lips. Terry knew that some of the burliest police officers were the biggest wimps when it came to death. In the course of 15 years as Ireland's first female state pathologist, she travelled the length and breadth of the country, and along the way witnessed many harrowing scenes.To set the record straight: forensic pathologists are doctors who "carry out post-mortem examinations to establish the cause of death, even if it appears blatantly obvious in some cases, and in doing so identify deaths due to homicide". On the crime scene, you always looked so glamorous: the red lippie, the heels. Was it part of your armour? Did the heels give you power?

I think it was just this old adage that if you don’t see somebody doing something, you don’t think of doing it yourself. And women just hadn’t thought to go into it because it’s not for everybody." You’re looking for patterns, that’s all we work on, patterns of injuries, patterns of whatever, so we’ve never really seen a pattern emerging here.” I did. I had so little time at home, and any time I did have, I spent with the kids. My daughter used to always say, “Mum, you’ve got no friends!” and was like, “I know!” I didn’t have any time to have friends. While she often jokes about watching Coronation Street or having a glass of wine to relax after a long day, it’s just about clearing her head.I was now thinking along the lines that the fire was set to conceal the fact that she had died from injuries,” she continued. “When I examined her lungs I could see there was some soot, some smoke particles in the lungs. Cassidy believes that had they held off for another 10 years, it might have been possible to obtain a conclusive result. The Crown cleared the late McInnes of any involvement in the Bible John murders in July 1996.