Dr Richard Shepherd, who has dissected more than 23,000 dead bodies over the course of his career, opens up about some of the cases that stay in his memory – including the one he’s haunted by
Real life Silent Witness Dr Richard Shepherd has dissected 23,000 dead bodies – equal to the population of a small town – as the country’s leading forensic pathologist.
Working on some of the most high-profile cases of recent times, from the horrific murders of Stephen Lawrence and Rachel Nickell, to the devastating Bali bombings and the shocking Hungerford massacre, he has to remain emotionally detached.
“It’s not a normal job. In other fields I would be locked away for life with no chance of parole!” he smiles. “I do a job which is, in many ways, really quite revolting. Cutting up human beings. I accept that. But I don’t get upset; I have to be professional. I have to switch off from this being someone’s mother, father or child when I’m doing it.
“I hope I’m not overtly hard. I have to be robust – I can’t be empathic for 23,000 dead bodies. But I have to remember to switch back on again and have that empathy afterwards. The trick is finding the line.”
In his early days, Richard admits this wasn’t always easy. In 1987, just after putting his two young children to bed, he received a phone call asking him to drive to Hungerford – the scene of a terrible massacre, where 27 year-old Michael Ryan had shot dead 16 people, including an unarmed police officer and his own mother, before shooting himself.
“It was a hugely intense experience to see the town and the enormity of what had happened. Seeing cars and bodies and having to see him and certify him dead,” Richard recalls. “On the journey home I had to stop on the hard shoulder of the M4. I was in tears. It was phenomenally emotional.”
Nine years ago, Richard was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, which saw him experience suicidal thoughts, triggered by a flashback to working in Bali after the 2002 bombings, which killed 202 people. “I saw a bag of ice cubes in the freezer in the kitchen, which sounds silly and trivial, and I had a flashback,” he says.
“They didn’t have the facilities to store the bodies in Bali, so they were stored in tents and they had to use bags of ice from the supermarket (to keep them refrigerated). Suddenly I was straight back there. It was truly shocking. It was like a dam bursting – all the anxiety and distress came rushing out.”
Richard’s wife, Linda, also a doctor, rushed him to a psychiatric emergency department, where he received a mental health assessment and was put on anti-depressants and a course of talking therapy.
“It really was an acute distressing illness and they came to see me twice a day for the next four days,” he recalls. “There was depression, fear and also suicidal ideation. I remember the mental health nurse saying, ‘the thing that worries me about you is that lots of our patients talk about suicide. You know what you are talking about.’”
Richard, who lives in Cheshire, has appeared on TV shows including Autopsy: The Last Hours Of… and The Death Detective, and will be back on our screens again later this month in Body in the Water on the True Crime channel. He has also published two books – Unnatural Causes and The Seven Ages of Death – and been on a nationwide tour.
Now he is touring Britain again with his captivating new show Time of Death – More Unnatural Causes, which will see him telling audiences about the cases and stories that have haunted him the most during his career, spanning more than 40 years.
“There is a fascination about death,” he explains. “If we go out for dinner my wife will say: ‘do not talk about cases’ but people always ask.” Richard’s fascination with forensics began as a 14 year-old, when a friend brought a book on the subject into school.
After training as a doctor at St George’s Hospital medical school in south west London, he joined the elite forensic department at London’s Guy’s Hospital and found himself working on numerous high-profile cases.
He was called in as a consultant for the Princess Diana inquiry and flown out to New York following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Other notable cases he has worked on include the 1989 Marchioness disaster, where 51 people died on a pleasure boat on the River Thames.
He was also one of the first people to link the 1992 murder of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common to Robert Napper. At first, the police were convinced her killer was Colin Stagg, who was tried in September 1994, but acquitted.
In 1995, Napper was convicted of the 1993 double murder of Samantha Bisset and her daughter. Richard says: “I ended up doing a post-mortem on her and I remember saying to the Met Police ‘gosh, if you hadn’t got Colin Stagg, (he was yet to be tried) I would say that this is on the progression that this murderer is going to follow – of increasingly violent and sexually orientated crimes.’
“The police said ‘oh no, we’ve got Stagg.’ But they screwed up. They hadn’t and this was the next one along the line for Robert Napper.”
Richard was recently coaxed out of retirement and, at 72, is currently carrying out up to ten post mortems a week.
Yet, despite his day job, he admits: “I don’t like the sight of my own blood. I’m a bit wobbly about that!”
The Spy in the Bag
When the body of MI6 spy Gareth Williams was found naked inside a sports bag in his flat, the conclusion was that he had been murdered. Rumours circulated that his work concerned Russia and he had been helping trace international money-laundering routes used by organised crime gangs.
The coroner ruled his 2010 death “unnatural and liked to have been criminally mediated”, but Richard is convinced that no foul play was involved. He says: “Another pathologist did the first post mortem and said he didn’t know why he died. When I did my examination, I agreed. There weren’t significant drugs or alcohol and he was a fit young man.
“It came to the practicalities of getting into the bag. I can tell you, having handled 23,000 dead bodies, there’s no way I could put a body into a bag without causing injuries to the body and there weren’t any. Another expert said you couldn’t climb into a bag, but some people like being confined in tight spaces for sexual reasons, so that is a possibility.
“The coroner concluded he was unlawfully killed – others thought so and the coroner believed them. But I am entirely satisfied that despite the unusual nature of the case, he had done it himself and the Met Police re-investigated and said they weren’t taking it any further.”
The death of Dr David Kelly
When government scientist Dr David Kelly was found dead near his Oxfordshire home there were suggestions he had been murdered. A BBC report claimed the Labour government had “sexed up” the intelligence it presented to the public over weapons of mass destruction to justify the 2003 Iraq war.
After Dr Kelly was outed as the BBC’s source, he walked from his house to a nearby hill – where he appeared to have taken his own life. Richard says: “They wanted a review of his death because the first post mortem said suicide, but a lot of people said it wasn’t.
“There were huge political ramifications. Here was a man who was caught in an utter maelstrom and people said he’d been murdered in the woods.” But Richard concluded that suicide was the correct verdict.
He says: “He was uninjured, he hadn’t been attacked, it wasn’t a homicidal injury.” As well as believing that Dr Kelly had self-inflicted injuries, Richard says: “When I went to the scene, it was on a hill overlooking the Oxfordshire countryside. If you had to have a view in your eyes as life slipped away, it was a delightful one.”
*Dr Richard Shepherd tours the UK from 29 September with Time of Death – More Unnatural Causes. Tickets on sale via theatre box offices and drrichardshepherd.com . Body In The Water airs from September 16 on True Crime and via True Crime UK on ITVX
