Deputy State Pathologist

The Blob has been running for nearly 12 years; recently cranked down from daily to MoWeFr[Su]. Now that I R retire, it is no longer an everyday story of Institute folks and I must poke elsewhere for copy. Most days, before breakfast, instead of a cold bath [so Protestant, so Yesterday], I glance at the RTE front-page to check that I haven't missed something important. We've come a long way from the BBC dressing a chap in evening clothes for 9 o'clock to solemnly announce "There is no news tonight". RTE will fill their page with stuff regardless of whether there is any news. But it would take a momentous recent upheaval elsewhere to stop RTE giving headlines to an Irish murder or a multi-victim car-crash. 

For 20 years 1998-2018, the reports on Irish mayhem would mention the presence of Dr Marie Cassidy, the [Deputy] State Pathologist. Before she was appointed DSP in 1998, one man carried the can, now there are seven pathologists on pay-roll (currently all women for what that's worth). Jack Harbison, Cassidy's mentor and predecessor, wasn't camera-shy and State Pathologists have become celebs in Ireland. This is not the norm in other jurisdictions.

When Cassidy retired in 2018, as well as the Dancing with the Stars gig and a part on Cold Case Collins [nodding sagely R], she also sat down to write her memoir Beyond the Tape which was published in 2020. It required big font and 1.5pt line-spacing to get it to fill 300 pages and justify the £16 sticker price. Not knocking it for being short; it does the job. The gruesome is presented but not lingered over and the books spares us the smell and the flies, so we can get a sense of how grim-but-necessary tasks are carried out professionally. One thing that helps front-line workers get through is gallows humour and a good bit of that leaks into the pages of the book. 

One aspect of the professional demeanour of Marie Cassidy is that she tries very hard to be non-judgmental and dispassionate. It's not helping grieving relatives if the forensic pathologist goes all weepy on them but neither is pretending to be a robot. Also (by her own account) while Cassidy works hard and meticulously to bring decades of experience to bear on resolving the cause of death, she is not prone to over-egging the pudding. She will stand up in court to say that the evidence is equivocal or insufficient. And I also detect a degree of compassion for the perps. It's not helpful to anyone if state professionals are judge and jury and St-Peter-At-The-Gate for The Accused. Humility and a l o n g list of wrongful convictions require uncertainty about The Facts.

This is the 4th forensic biography I've reviewed after Mark Spenser's Murder Most Florid, Patricia Wiltshire's Trace, and Unnatural Causes by Richard Shepherd. The last has the greatest overlap with the Cassidy book. Shepherd eventually unravelled. It's probably true that gallow's humor isn't enough to secure the mental health of all workers at the forensic coal-face. I only read Beyond the Tape because The Beloved browsed it off the library shelves especially for me. I won't be reading Marie Cassidy's first essay into fiction with The Body of Truth (2024) but I daresay the whodunnit members of my family - who are legion - will give it a go.