‘I’m not great, not the cleverest but I’m awfully handy with a sharp knife’

John Breslin speaks with State Pathologist Professor Marie Cassidy about her passion for her job.

PROFESSOR Marie Cassidy clearly loves her job. The State Pathologist confesses to watching most television programmes on forensic pathology and talks about the subject all the time.

So much so, she joked during an address to a packed hall in Dublin’s Royal College of Surgeons, this was her best night out of the week.

The remark was typical of the Glasgow-born pathologist, who took over the position from Professor John Harbison just over two years ago.

Nearly 200 people who had signed up for the college’s 10-week Mini Med course, opening medicine to a wider audience, were in the York Street lecture theatre.

Prof Cassidy’s informative and entertaining address, referring to Julius Caesar, Sherlock Holmes, toy aliens, mass graves in Bosnia and JFK, was peppered with black humour.

Forensic pathologists are among the weirdest people, she says. They must keep a distance as they do a job few would fancy.

A professor of forensic medicine at the Royal College, as well as the State Pathologist, Prof Cassidy began work in Glasgow before moving to Ireland in late 1990s to become assistant to Dr Harbison.

She has also worked in Bosnia, Croatia and Sierra Leone, each time as part of a war crimes team investigating mass graves.

Prof Cassidy is modest about her role, one of a team of experts involved in the investigation of suspicious deaths.

It includes a range of forensic experts and the technical team that takes over at the scene. There are even experts in ear and lip prints, she explains.

With the increasingly sophisticated use of DNA, the role of the Forensic Science Laboratory has grown in importance.

“A whole lot of people are doing the job that used to be done by one man, or woman, and an assistant. I keep being told at scenes ‘you know, Professor Harbison used to do this all on his own’. I like teamwork, I like having friends around,” she said.

Despite downplaying the role of the forensic pathologist, it remains a key one in positively identifying the individual, the cause of death and helping to piece together how it happened.

She or her assistant will be called to the scene of all suspicious deaths, a fact reported in most news stories. Prof Cassidy claims she is not much help at the scene. She keeps her eyes open, mouth shut and hands in her pockets.

With DNA technology becoming so advanced that the tiniest particles may yield evidence, she is frightened to breathe on a body for fear of disturbing a single cell.

Forensic pathologists come into their own in the morgue, when the body is removed from the scene for the post-mortem.

“I require a sharp blade and I can do wonders with it. I’m not great, not the cleverest but I’m awfully handy with a sharp knife,” said Prof Cassidy. Sometimes it is evident it is a homicide, sometimes not.

Generally the system works well, though there are some unnecessary post-mortems carried out, particularly on elderly people who have not had cause to go to a doctor or hospital prior to their death.

About 2% of cases that turn out to be homicides did not appear so on initial investigation.

For that reason, it’s better to be safe rather than letting them slip through the net, she explains.

It’s said that most homicides are the result of either a drunken brawl or a gangland shooting but Prof Cassidy has noticed changes in recent years. Homicides are becoming more complex and more violent.

“Medicine has just blossomed so you do not see the single stab wound,” she said. Those types of wounds are patched up pretty quickly and the person is out of hospital in a couple of weeks.

“It has to be multiple this or multiple that for them not to be resuscitated. They stab them, shoot them then set them on fire.”

Killers also attempt to conceal the identity of a victim. But she said: “Criminals are usually pretty sloppy. They always do something stupid and that’s why they get caught.”

In one case, before DNA advances, great care was taken so the body would not be identified. It was burned, the fingers were cut off and the face was smashed so it was unrecognisable. There was, however, what looked like a bite mark on the body.

A dentist was called in to investigate further. He reported back that he had no information on the bite mark but, to the surprise of everyone, knew the name of the victim. The dead person had false teeth - and the name was written on the back of them.

In making a positive identification, the use of DNA remains a last resort.

A combination of first sifting through personal effects then bringing in a relative to identify the body from the facial features is still the most common.

However, sometimes people can make the wrong calls.

When a facial identification is not possible other methods of identifying a body including fingerprints, dental records and DNA.

Only criminals, merchant seaman and airline pilots have their fingerprints on file while dental records are not always easy to obtain.

With DNA, there has to be a match for comparison, such as a family member.

It is possible, though rare, a body can remain unidentified forever. In about 1% of homicides the cause of death will never be known.

Prof Cassidy was asked whether she worried programmes like CSI, which she doesn’t watch, could be used to teach killers tricks.

“No, not really. People can get that information anyway,” she said. And, even if they did, she said, to pit her wits against them would just make her job more interesting.