Pathologist bemoans increasingly violent culture

Irish culture has become more violent in recent years, State Pathologist Professor Marie Cassidy has said.

The chief forensic expert admitted homicides across the country had grown far more vicious.

“You don’t get single stab wound deaths as if they can get to a hospital they will survive,” she said, describing it as a “more violent culture“.

The Glasgow-born professor, who took over her role from Professor John Harbison almost tw years ago, said deaths now generally result from multiple injuries as it makes it more difficult for the person to be resuscitated.

“They stab them, shoot them, then set them on fire,” she said.

“Things have become much more complex,” she admitted during an hour-long lecture at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin.

Prof. Cassidy revealed the forensic pathologist’s job in deciphering the death scene was now taken over by advances in science.

She admitted the extent of what science can reveal through DNA has almost become too good.

“We are now frightened to even breathe on a body in case we submit a cell and it can be picked up and used in evidence against us,” she said.

However, it is in the mortuary where her main work stays. She said: “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.”

Prof. Cassidy, who has examined mass graves in war stricken countries like Bosnia for the UN War Crimes Tribunal, said she survives the job through her black humour, adding that relatives are harder to deal with than bodies.

“I’m there to do a job. I do the best I can,” she said.

Prof. Cassidy said many examinations were carried out unnecessarily but she revealed the system works well as it can uncover potential killings which otherwise might slip through the net.

The professor said a post mortem exam can only show an approximate time of death.

However, during television programmes pathologists often give a precise time of death.

“I always say: ‘Hire him, hire him’ because he is obviously much better than we are,” she told the packed auditorium.

Prof. Cassidy said she did not fear that television programmes, like Crime Scene Investigation, were teaching people how to cover their tracks.

“People can get that information anyway,” she said.

“I think it makes it more interesting, kind of pitting your wits against it,” she said.

The professor, who has revealed she is intrigued by legendary investigators such as Sherlock Holmes, said: “They always do something stupid and that is why they get caught.”

The eager crowd at the college’s 10-week Mini Med School heard there were now a vast number of people involved in investigating a suspicious death – with dentists, radiologists, paediatric experts and an anthropologist called in to explore old deaths.

Another intriguing expert that has proved invaluable to piecing together the clues of a crime scene is a forensic entomologist, an insect expert or “bug man“.

“It is amazing how much information you can get,” she said.

Prof. Cassidy said they are frequently being called out by gardaí insisting a body has been found.

However, hoax remains have taken a new turn in recent times.

Prof. Cassidy revealed gardaí around the country are frequently being duped into thinking they have found the foetus of a baby – but it is really a plastic alien toy.

She said officers were bringing the Alien Egg toys, which are in the shape of an egg containing slime and a small alien figure, to the state mortuary at a rate of about one a month.

Prof. Cassidy said the toys, known as Millennium Babies, look nothing like human foetuses and even “bounce“. But in many cases gardaí have shown them to doctors who state they are probably human foetuses of around six to eight weeks.

However, she said her mortuary technician “knows exactly what they are the minute he sees them”.

In a wicked display of his sense of humour he throws them against the wall to show the gardaí that they bounce.