Solving the ultimate puzzles of life and death

Dr Shepherd, who last toured in 2023 chats to Clair Woodward about the new theatre tour .

What can we expect from the new show, Time of Death – More Unnatural Causes?

When I retired as a Home Office pathologist, I took up a long held interest in learning how to mend clocks and as someone pointed out I’d spent my whole career taking things apart and not being able to put them back together, and that mending clocks meant I was taking complex things apart in the hope that I could put them back together and get them to work again.

It made me think again about how time is so important in terms of forensic medicine. When did the crime happen? How old is that injury? How long did someone survive? All crucial questions.

So, we are going to be talking about the importance of time in forensic medicine using examples of some interesting and different cases that I have dealt with.

Have you ever had anybody in an audience become quite overcome or emotional during one of your shows?

Only one, and they had to leave – I could not help but notice as they were in the middle of the front row! But they did come to see me afterwards when I was signing books and we were able to have a little chat.

You also appear on Channel 5’s Cause of Death, looking at cases at Preston Coroner’s Court, which shows how compassionate all the staff involved in sudden deaths are…

As a group of professionals we all do what might be considered an awful job, but we must always remember the people who are most important in the entire process are the relatives (and friends) of the person who has died. Obviously, I talk to my colleagues, the Coroner, and police officers about cases, and they are important too, but we have got to make sure the relatives understand, because if they do not, they worry and that can significantly add to their distress.

You have also recently been filming Body in Water which will air on the True Crime - how do you explain the public’s huge interest in true crime on TV, and do you think women are more interested than men?

I think that people have always been both scared and fascinated by violent crimes – the victims, the perpetrators and those who must investigate them. Initially it was the “Penny Dreadful” magazines from 18 th and 19 th centuries with hand drawn dramatic pictures of the events and very descriptive stories. These were often sold at the time of the execution of the convicted perpetrator!! Nowadays we have more sophisticated magazines, books, and TV programmes to satisfy this interest, this continuing need to get into the nitty-gritty of how crime works!

What kind of people go into professions such as yours where death is at the centre?

Most people I have ever come across working in in the ‘death’ industry are caring, conscientious and also very conscious of the complexities of what they are doing.

Sadly, the fantasies held by the public, who are only touched by death a few times in their lives, can be very strong and are almost universally negative and we have to try to make sure that we treat them with empathy and respect at what is such a sensitive and difficult time

What made you interested in a career in pathology?

When I was about 13 a school friend of mine bought a forensic textbook by the celebrated pathologist Keith Simpson into school, and it suddenly opened my eyes to this whole intriguing world of murders, and I decided that that was what I wanted to do. I was not a stranger to death as my mum had died of heart disease when I was nine, so it was my dad who encouraged my interest in medicine. I only ever wanted to be a pathologist, but surprisingly, really enjoyed obstetrics and delivering babies but settled into a life of crime. I do appreciate how lucky I have been to have found a career that I enjoyed so much.

Your wife is in ‘the business’ too – how did you meet?

Linda my wife is a forensic doctor too - although she looks after living victims - and we met at a forensic meeting in London where I was lecturing and we spent time afterwards chatting about bruises. Very romantic! She declined my offer of a drink as she had to buy some shoes which defined my true place in the world. The rest, as they say, is history .. nearly 20 years and counting!

Do you have any other hobbies to relax?

I started flying when I met a CID officer when I was doing a postmortem who turned out to be an instructor for the Metropolitan Police Flying Club and who invited me to fly with them. I now fly a little Cessna, and a Piper Arrow, and it’s brilliant fun. We live in Cheshire, so I fly the Cessna out of Liverpool Airport. On nice weekend days Linda and I can put the dogs in their crates in the back of the plane and fly over the Wirral and Welsh mountains, past Anglesey down to Carnarvon - a trip which takes 2 hours by car but just half an hour by plane. We walk the dogs up and down the fabulous beach, have lunch, and then we fly home again.

Are there any stand-out cases over your years that have never left you?

Obviously, cases that have a high public profile, like that of Princess Diana or David Kelly or Gareth Williams (The Spy in the Bag) or indeed many, many others, remain in the memory however it is often the smaller, more personal cases that leave a bigger permanent mark. In Unnatural Causes I wrote about a teenager who had epilepsy and died suddenly overnight. That case changed the way I interacted with bereaved families.

There was also a case of a family who went to France on holiday; the mother and her 8-year-old daughter were crossing the road to go shopping, and the daughter didn’t look the correct way for French traffic, stepped out and was instantly killed. As a parent I still shiver at that thought. Lives can be changed in that fraction of a second and despite all my years as a forensic pathologist I just cannot imagine how you ever move on from that.

You have worked on mass disaster cases, including the 7/7 bombings in London, the Bali bombings, and the Hungerford Massacre. Do events like this in the news affect you?

The recent Air India crash was something I followed in the news. Managing the results of a mass disasters is a real skill, and it does distress me when I hear people speculating on these events and saying things like: “The families are going to be invited in to look at the bodies.” That’s definitely not what we do. Of course, we do need to establish identity and how the individual died but we do it in a really caring way that cherishes the families as best as we can. And that does not include inviting them to walk up and down rows of bodies in a mortuary until they happen to see their relative. Rather, we identify the individuals and then invite the family to see the body quietly and privately if they wish to do so and with emotional and psychological support – a process that can, if necessary, progress slowly and take many hours and be spread over several days.

Why are we obsessed with true crime, yet reluctant to discuss death?

Some people are very reluctant to believe that their relatives will / could ever die, no matter how old or ill they are, and when the inevitable happens they believe that something must have gone wrong. We no longer openly talk about “death” we talk euphemistically about ‘passing on,’ so people are no longer used to the experience of death and do not know how to behave in the face of sudden strong emotions.

It must be difficult to reveal facts about someone who has died to relatives who did not know them before…

Sadly, quite a lot of the inquests I give evidence in are drug-related or are suicides, and families often say they tried hard to help but eventually failed, which is just awful, or say they never knew that their relative used drugs, or was planning suicide. It is hard either way, and I am not at all convinced that the formal Coronial system works well for the families in these instances. It is important that families know the truth even if it is a difficult truth and I feel that a much less formal environment would often be a better place to discuss and disclose these matters with the families rather than for them find out during the Inquest in the Coroner’s Court.

With your TV appearances and theatre shows you really have become a part of the ‘showbiz world’ – did you have any childhood aspirations on this front?

I wasn’t a show-off as a child; the closest I got to showbiz was the medical school revue when I had to play Dracula and lie in a coffin (which we had borrowed from a local undertaker) and had driven it down Tooting High Street sticking out of the boot of my friend’s Mini! ,

What do you hope audiences will take away from your shows?

I like communicating and I love my subject, and audiences clearly enjoy it too.

•Tickets for the show are available from www.newtheatre-peterborough.com