Speaker 1: It's Monday, March eighth in twenty twenty one, and police
Speaker 1: are gathered in a remote section of the Flinders Rangers
Speaker 1: in South Australia. They've been told they'll find the body
Speaker 1: of a twenty one year old woman here. Jasmine Corp
Speaker 1: was last seen leaving her job at Southern Cross Aged
Speaker 1: Care in Adelaide on Friday night. By Sunday, detectives were
Speaker 1: being told a story by her ex boyfriend. He said
Speaker 1: Jasmine had taken her own life and that he had
Speaker 1: buried her body more than four hundred kilometers from home.
Speaker 1: So here they are, and they're about to uncover her
Speaker 1: shallow grave. Among those gathered is Professor Roger Bayard. He's
Speaker 1: the one that's going to determine exactly how Jasmine died.
Speaker 1: What he discovers will give him nightmares he hasn't experienced
Speaker 1: in forty years on the job. I'm Jemma Bath and
Speaker 1: you're listening to True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the
Speaker 1: world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who
Speaker 1: know the most about them. Professor Roger Bayard is one
Speaker 1: of Australia's most respected forensic pathologists and has spent more
Speaker 1: than four decades investigating sudden, suspicious and unexplained deaths. He
Speaker 1: is internationally recognized for his research into forensic pathology, sudden
Speaker 1: infant death, and unusual causes of death, and has worked
Speaker 1: on some of our country's most confronting homicide cases, like
Speaker 1: the Snowtown murders and the horrifying case of Jasmine kr.
Speaker 1: He also helped identify victims of the Barley bombings in
Speaker 1: two thousand and two and the Boxing Day tsunami in
Speaker 1: Thailand in two thousand and four. This is a man
Speaker 1: who has performed more than six thousand autopsies. In twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, he was named a World Leader in forensic science.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty four, he was named Tasmanian Australian of
Speaker 1: the Year. In twenty twenty five he became a Companion
Speaker 1: of the Order of Australia and in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: Just recently he retired from an impressive and wide ranging career.
Speaker 1: As someone that works in and around death, Professor Bayard
Speaker 1: has seen some horrific things. The way he gets through
Speaker 1: it is focusing on the science, not the horror. Here's
Speaker 1: Roger Roger, thank you for joining me on True crime
Speaker 1: conversations and congratulations on your recent retirement. Was forensic pathology
Speaker 1: always what you plan to do if you go back
Speaker 1: to young Roger.
Speaker 2: I was going to be an archaeologist, but thought, when
Speaker 2: on my teenage years, you don't get much money doing that,
Speaker 2: so maybe I'll do medicine, and no, I do do
Speaker 2: basically emergency medicine, and the qualified in general practice was
Speaker 2: going back to Canada to emergency medicine. And I was
Speaker 2: in Belice and I was snorkeling and it was so
Speaker 2: good I stayed a few extra weeks. And when I
Speaker 2: go back to Canada, no jobs in emergency. So basically
Speaker 2: by default I got into pathology, and then into pediator
Speaker 2: pathology and then forensic pathology. So it's been a sort
Speaker 2: of a downpill course really for years.
Speaker 1: You mentioned four decades. You have seen so many iterations
Speaker 1: of your profession. Has it changed in the way you
Speaker 1: do your job? Given the advances in technologies.
Speaker 2: It has. What we're using more often now is imaging
Speaker 2: CT examinations, So most forensic facilities have cts, so bodies
Speaker 2: get CT before an autopsy, which means that you can
Speaker 2: actually find a course to death, sometimes without even opening
Speaker 2: the body. So we're doing a lot more CT examinations
Speaker 2: with external examinations still not looking for any injuries or
Speaker 2: something untoward, and the CT can tell us if there's
Speaker 2: been a rupture at the heart or whether there's been
Speaker 2: a stroke. So that has changed things dramatic. It also
Speaker 2: adds to our standard autopsies as.
Speaker 1: Well, because you have to include it as well.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. So, yes, we've been dragged out of
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century, sometimes reluctantly.
Speaker 1: But I can imagine being able to use CT and
Speaker 1: not having to open a body for a family member,
Speaker 1: like if I had to imagine my loved one being
Speaker 1: chopped open to be able to be spared that like,
Speaker 1: that's a good thing.
Speaker 2: It is a good thing. It's a good thing for families,
Speaker 2: for the pathologists or resources. But I often meet with
Speaker 2: families and you know, the particularly with babies, they want
Speaker 2: to meet the person who they want to ask the
Speaker 2: pathologists questions, but it's not really what it's about. They
Speaker 2: want to see the person that looked after their baby
Speaker 2: in the time that they last saw the baby to
Speaker 2: the time they saw him again or her, And you know,
Speaker 2: I explain that it's not chopping open it's it's it's
Speaker 2: a surgical procedure. Nowadays, we open the body cavity is
Speaker 2: really carefully treated with respect, and everybody knows that this
Speaker 2: is a tragedy, and I think that's important for people
Speaker 2: to hear.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to hear say that, because, yeah, me using
Speaker 1: that word chopped, it's such a it's quite a violent word,
Speaker 1: but it's quite well. It is. It's medical. What you're doing.
Speaker 1: Is it almost like you have a process that you
Speaker 1: go through. You're you're doing the exact same thing kind
Speaker 1: of in every autopsy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, there's a standard procedure of opening the three
Speaker 2: body cavities, examining the organs, taking them out, weighing them
Speaker 2: and slicing them and looking for disease and injuries, and
Speaker 2: then taking pieces for looking at under the microscope. But
Speaker 2: the there are modifications. For example, if somebody has maybe
Speaker 2: a back injury, you would you would dissect the act,
Speaker 2: which you would normally do. You may in a strangulation
Speaker 2: case where you would do a nectar section. So by
Speaker 2: that what you're doing you're taking every layer of the
Speaker 2: skin and the muscles, and you're looking for bruising and
Speaker 2: injuries and documenting it with photography, so you do modify
Speaker 2: them according to the case, but there is a standard
Speaker 2: process that should be followed and it is not always followed.
Speaker 1: When you said that respect for the body and the
Speaker 1: family is a big part of what you do, can
Speaker 1: you expand on that, How do you make sure that
Speaker 1: a body is respected?
Speaker 2: Essentially, pathologists are the last doctors that this person is
Speaker 2: going to see. So there are patients. So when the
Speaker 2: bodies come in, they come with the funeral director, they're
Speaker 2: in body bags, they're covered with sheets. They're brought into
Speaker 2: the mortuary on the trolley and the dissections perform on
Speaker 2: the trolley. There's not unnecessary moving of the body. The
Speaker 2: body is to this people, and that's that's the important part.
Speaker 2: And if you if you don't understand it, then you
Speaker 2: should not be doing forensics.
Speaker 1: How many autopsies do you think you've done over a
Speaker 1: forty year career.
Speaker 2: I lost count Actually was up to six thousand, I think,
Speaker 2: and then a few years ago I just stopped counting.
Speaker 2: But they're the autopsies I've done. But then I've seen
Speaker 2: tens of thousands of other autopsies as well. Because my
Speaker 2: colleagues are autopsy around me. So a large number of
Speaker 2: dead people.
Speaker 1: I can see why you're done, Roger. That's a lot.
Speaker 2: Yes, I agree. I feel it's funny. The last couple
Speaker 2: of months, I've been thinking back to cases and thinking,
Speaker 2: aback what I've done. I mean, I published over one
Speaker 2: thousand papers and twelve textbooks, and it makes me I
Speaker 2: feel exhausted.
Speaker 1: I'm not surprised. You're a very accomplished man, well driven,
Speaker 1: I think. Can you remember your first autopsy?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Really, I remember my first autopsy. I remember my
Speaker 2: first pediatric autopsy. And my first autopsy was in Hobart
Speaker 2: in nineteen eight and I was a medical resident in
Speaker 2: the hospital and I was getting interested in pathology, and
Speaker 2: so the pathologist said, well, you know, I'll show you
Speaker 2: how to do an autopsy. And it was a patient
Speaker 2: I was looking after who had a disseminated cancer and
Speaker 2: he was going to die. And my boss said, you
Speaker 2: better go and tell him he's not going to make it,
Speaker 2: and also that I want an autopsy. So I sat
Speaker 2: down with this old fellow he was an old digger
Speaker 2: because it was a repatriation hospital, and gave him the
Speaker 2: bad news and mentioned the autopsy. And then he said, well,
Speaker 2: who's going to do the autopsy, and I said, well,
Speaker 2: it's actually going to be me. So he just sat
Speaker 2: back and thought for a bit. Then he just looked
Speaker 2: over and said, you know, son, you're going to be
Speaker 2: all right. So basically I looked after him in life,
Speaker 2: I looked after him in death, and he gave me
Speaker 2: a benediction for my career, which decades later still means
Speaker 2: a lot to me. In the first Pediatric Case was
Speaker 2: my first publication, actually as a little girl in Canada,
Speaker 2: Genevieve who died of leukemia and said a very strange
Speaker 2: finding which we published. But I still use her in
Speaker 2: my textbooks and I still use her to teach, and
Speaker 2: in fact, I've just finished the fourth edition of My
Speaker 2: Sudden Death in the Young Book, and I've dedicated to
Speaker 2: gel and all the other young people who have contributed
Speaker 2: to it, so her memory continues.
Speaker 1: Did you find the pediatric autopsies harder given it's a
Speaker 1: child or I guess like mechanically as well.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm very good at the sections because obviously much smaller.
Speaker 2: And I was always interested in pediatrics. I did flying
Speaker 2: doctor work and did a lot of pediatrics there, and
Speaker 2: I've found pediatric case as harder as I get older,
Speaker 2: because when I first started, I thought, I am going
Speaker 2: to find the cause of death here, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: going to work it out, and it was very challenging.
Speaker 2: And then as I got older, I realized more and
Speaker 2: more that sometimes you're just not going to find out
Speaker 2: what's happened, and you know the impact of this death
Speaker 2: on families.
Speaker 1: I know you don't just do crime, but you have
Speaker 1: seen a lot of crime and the worst things that
Speaker 1: humans can do to other people. Is that something you've
Speaker 1: had to learn to compartmentalize or how do you kind
Speaker 1: of process the things you've seen?
Speaker 2: Well, just correct you. I don't do crime. I observe
Speaker 2: crime just of course the record, you do compartmentalize and
Speaker 2: when you're doing a case. I mean, I've had some
Speaker 2: horrific childhood cases, the assaults. One was a little boy
Speaker 2: who was I think kicked in the stomach and the
Speaker 2: de facto boyfriend who did it actually videoed him on
Speaker 2: his phone while he was dying. And you can't think
Speaker 2: about that while you're doing the case. The case is
Speaker 2: the order. If you start to get distracted, then you
Speaker 2: don't do a proper job later. Of course, one case
Speaker 2: I remember there was another little boy who been kicked
Speaker 2: in the stomach and he had a paratonitis. So when
Speaker 2: I opened the anominal cavity, there's this whiff of almost
Speaker 2: like sewage came in and I just just stopped me
Speaker 2: in my tracks because I realized what that meant, and
Speaker 2: so I had my back turned to the police. And
Speaker 2: everybody knows that sort of pretending to the second one.
Speaker 2: I just got myself together. Yeah, occasionally at night you're
Speaker 2: you're sitting there in its cases that you don't expect
Speaker 2: to get through to you that.
Speaker 1: Might Does it get easier dealing with death or do
Speaker 1: you have an interesting relationship with death?
Speaker 2: Well, I see death as a part of life, and
Speaker 2: I'm actually an animist, and I believe that life is
Speaker 2: like a river and we're just an eddy in the river,
Speaker 2: and then when we go, we're still part of the
Speaker 2: life force, but the eddy's gone. It's not as we were.
Speaker 2: I think one of the mistakes in the West is
Speaker 2: we trivialize everything, but we're so terrified of death we
Speaker 2: hide from it. You know, you don't put grandma out
Speaker 2: on the kitchen table and have awake and everybody's standing
Speaker 2: around telling great stories. What you do is Grandma's putting
Speaker 2: a body bag whipped away. You may never see her again,
Speaker 2: and you know she's in a coffin and cremated. That's
Speaker 2: not a good way to say farewell. And I think
Speaker 2: we lose by not will not be able to say
Speaker 2: so well.
Speaker 1: I think you're right there, because there are so many
Speaker 1: other cultures that that celebrate life after death much more
Speaker 1: than the Western world.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I'm a very close friend who is from Samoa
Speaker 2: and she just went back the end of last year
Speaker 2: for the second burial for her mother. And what that
Speaker 2: means is mum was buried years ago, and the three
Speaker 2: daughters get together and they get the bones out, and
Speaker 2: they wash the bones and anoint them with oil, wrap
Speaker 2: them up in tapper, have them in the house and
Speaker 2: they have a second ceremony, and so it's very visceral thing,
Speaker 2: but it's it's a way of saying goodbye, you know, properly.
Speaker 2: So other cultures I think do it better.
Speaker 1: Hundred can't. I cannot imagine that happening at a Western
Speaker 1: funeral or a Western kind of well.
Speaker 2: We're spiritually bankrupt. Actually, that's that's how I see it.
Speaker 1: I tend to agree in terms of how much looking
Speaker 1: into crime was a part of your job. Can you
Speaker 1: kind of give us a bit of an overview because
Speaker 1: you worked in so many different areas, did investigating crime
Speaker 1: kind of take up a majority or how is that
Speaker 1: kind of it.
Speaker 2: Varies tremendously depending on countries and jurisdictions. In some countries
Speaker 2: the pathologists will just do criminal cases, but here we
Speaker 2: do all sorts of cases. The current as Act of
Speaker 2: South Australia is basically any death is reportable, it's sudden,
Speaker 2: unexpected or doctor can't issue a certificates. So probably sixty
Speaker 2: percent of our case so just natural death right, And
Speaker 2: then we have a large number of suicides twenty five percent.
Speaker 2: Then we have vehicle accidents, and you get down to
Speaker 2: actual homicides, it's probably only about two to three percent.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So although it occupies a lot of our time, because
Speaker 2: you know, with a standard case of somebody who's just
Speaker 2: dropped down there with a heart attack, you know very
Speaker 2: easy to quickly find the current artyage. Over with a homicide,
Speaker 2: you may be going for eight or ten hours. Is
Speaker 2: there a lot of injuries? Trying to work out which
Speaker 2: injuries are important? Is it an injury or is it
Speaker 2: not which injuries were lethal, the sequence of injuries, the
Speaker 2: type of injuries, sharp force, blunt force. Then you have
Speaker 2: to put it all together into a report and then
Speaker 2: go to court and be challenged, made to look like
Speaker 2: an idiot. There's a great quote of Jackson Lambs in
Speaker 2: Slow Horses, and I've put it in my book saying
Speaker 2: that sometimes talking to lawyers in court is like trying
Speaker 2: to explain Norway to a dog. It's just they asked
Speaker 2: questions I know you can't answer.
Speaker 1: Well, it's one of those It's one of those careers
Speaker 1: that you There aren't many jobs where you get kind
Speaker 1: of criticized to the level that you do when you
Speaker 1: are standing up in a court room, like having your
Speaker 1: work dissected that kind of closely and horribly in like
Speaker 1: a cross examination. Like there's not many of us that
Speaker 1: have to go through that.
Speaker 2: No, And it's interesting the games that were played. I
Speaker 2: was inter state and the defense said, you know, did
Speaker 2: you bring all the material that you base your opinion
Speaker 2: on with you to court? And I thought, well, the
Speaker 2: prosecutors smart enough to catch this, And I said no,
Speaker 2: I didn't. So you just raised an eyebrow and looked
Speaker 2: at the jury as if you know this is in competence.
Speaker 2: When the prosecutor came, he said, you didn't bring all
Speaker 2: of the material? Did you? Said no? He said why not?
Speaker 2: I said, because, as you are aware, it fills ten
Speaker 2: boxes and it wouldn't fit on the plane. And so
Speaker 2: in that instance the jury thought, ah, so the other
Speaker 2: lawyer was actually trying to put one across.
Speaker 1: Did you enjoy working in homicide, especially if it ended
Speaker 1: up with you having to go to court?
Speaker 2: Oh? I wouldn't say I enjoyed. I find an interesting process. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's quite stressful, be very to measure the blood pressure
Speaker 2: of pathologist in the witness box when they're being hammered.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's interesting. This adversarial system, I think, you know,
Speaker 2: is a bit of a problem. Going back to SMOA,
Speaker 2: I was over there doing autopsis for the government and
Speaker 2: there was a homicide. A young fellow had dropped a
Speaker 2: rock on another kid's head. They were both reasonable young blokes,
Speaker 2: but they were both drunk. There they don't have juries.
Speaker 2: They have a council of elders. And the judge said
Speaker 2: to me, why don't you come down and stand beside
Speaker 2: me and explain to the council, And they had a translator,
Speaker 2: and it's interesting the elders speaking saying you what I
Speaker 2: was saying, but it was also translated. But the two
Speaker 2: lawyers were not really at each other's throats. So I
Speaker 2: got the feeling that I've already thought, this is just
Speaker 2: a tragedy, and let's, you know, let's find out what
Speaker 2: happened to see what we can do. But that that
Speaker 2: was a very meaningful court appearance. Other times, you know,
Speaker 2: you'll get asked the same question five hundred times, or
Speaker 2: you'll get asked a question that's about five minutes long
Speaker 2: with a whole lot of double negatives in it, so
Speaker 2: that you know you don't you're really not quite sure
Speaker 2: what's going on. In that case, you can go to
Speaker 2: the the judge and say, I'm sorry, you're on it,
Speaker 2: but you know, I can't ask the question the way
Speaker 2: it's put to me. It will confuse the jury. And
Speaker 2: I've had judges saying just answer the question, doctor, okay.
Speaker 1: You also get put in scenarios where you your evidence
Speaker 1: or findings might be put up against another experts. Would
Speaker 1: that happen very often?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, quite often. And the problem is the more
Speaker 2: technical case, the more difficult it is. For juries to
Speaker 2: sort of sort it out. So if you have some
Speaker 2: sort of you know, bespeckled, bald, be it, an old
Speaker 2: guy saying one thing, and you've got similar guys saying
Speaker 2: another thing, often the juries will just negate both of them.
Speaker 2: So that's too complicated. So what what the court or
Speaker 2: what the other side has done is they've created a
Speaker 2: reasonable doubt. So one of the things that's developed in
Speaker 2: curture reason is it's called hot tubbing, and it means
Speaker 2: that two witnesses will be in the same box at
Speaker 2: the same time. And that's fascinating because I find that
Speaker 2: people who have pathologies, who've got quite outlandish theories really
Speaker 2: tone them down when I'm sitting beside them looking at them,
Speaker 2: because my facial expression will be you know what, I'm
Speaker 2: allowed to do that? And then the lawyer will say,
Speaker 2: you know, do you have an opinion on that? To
Speaker 2: press a byad, the side that calls me calls me professor.
Speaker 2: The side often the other side caused me mister to
Speaker 2: reduce my status. I don't care. My father was called
Speaker 2: mister for eighty years. But what they'll say is, what
Speaker 2: do you think of that statement? I said, Well, I'm
Speaker 2: a bit confused because I'm not aware of any literature
Speaker 2: that supports that, and this, this and this, and so
Speaker 2: it has to be then answered at the time, So
Speaker 2: it speeds things along, and I think it it makes
Speaker 2: it easy. It's also like pre trial conferences. Let's just
Speaker 2: have a conference with everybody and see what we can
Speaker 2: agree on and what we can't agree on.
Speaker 1: I think you've already kind of answered this, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to ask you bluntly, what do you think about
Speaker 1: our current court and justice systems given your involvement in them.
Speaker 2: I think it does a spectacular job. Given how fragmented
Speaker 2: society is, mistakes are made, but I think that generally
Speaker 2: the system is a safe system. I'm not so supportive
Speaker 2: of juries. I prefer judge alone because then you can
Speaker 2: get the reasons why they made the decision. I've got
Speaker 2: judges who are friends who much prefer jury trials. I
Speaker 2: think it's just it brings out more information. I do
Speaker 2: like the European inquisitorial system rather than our adversarial where
Speaker 2: you get to talk about things you have the conferences.
Speaker 2: It's less aggressive. So I think, yes that given what
Speaker 2: we've got, it does a pretty good job.
Speaker 1: Maybe just toned down the aggression. Yes, yes, indeed, let's
Speaker 1: go back to the autopsy room. When you are investigating
Speaker 1: a crime, would you have the detectives in there with you?
Speaker 1: How does it work in terms of I know you
Speaker 1: do report after the fact, but how involved are the
Speaker 1: detectives and the police very involved.
Speaker 2: Some of our cult and safety people want the police
Speaker 2: to stand behind the room with a glass between them
Speaker 2: and me, and I won't have that. I'll go to
Speaker 2: a death scene and talk to the police. You know,
Speaker 2: what's happened, who might it be, how could this have happened?
Speaker 2: What are questions that we need to do? What are
Speaker 2: samples should be taken? There are crime scene officers there
Speaker 2: as well who look after that. They're very skilled, but
Speaker 2: we're all talking about what is the possibility? And then
Speaker 2: at the autopsy, I'll have the crime scene officer and
Speaker 2: I will have one or two detectives sitting in the
Speaker 2: room and we're talking about things. What could this not be?
Speaker 2: What could it be? We try and do it as
Speaker 2: quickly as possible so that they can get information. If
Speaker 2: they have somebody that they suspect, they can then ask
Speaker 2: them questions and I'll have information from me to say, well,
Speaker 2: it was a stab wound with a double sided blade,
Speaker 2: not a bullet wound.
Speaker 1: After the break, Roger talks about his time working on
Speaker 1: the case of Jasmine cor who was buried alive. I
Speaker 1: want to talk about some cases so can people can
Speaker 1: really understand how your work works. I want to start
Speaker 1: with Jazmine, which was one of the harder kind of
Speaker 1: cases in your career. She was murdered in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one by her ex boyfriend. He at first denied ever
Speaker 1: being involved in her death, and he just admitted to
Speaker 1: burying her body, told police where he had buried her.
Speaker 1: Can you talk us through your involvement, because that was
Speaker 1: one of the cases where you went to the scene
Speaker 1: as they exhumed her body, just meine correctly.
Speaker 2: Wasn't one of the harder cases. It was the hardest case,
Speaker 2: and after that I really started to think about retirement.
Speaker 2: I think that it was so horrific that something actually
Speaker 2: broke in me and I lost I don't know the
Speaker 2: enthusiasm perhaps, but yeah, I wanted out after that.
Speaker 1: So you went to the crime scene when they exsumed
Speaker 1: her body. You couldn't tell in that moment what had happened.
Speaker 2: Could you well, I'll take you back a step. I
Speaker 2: was phoned on a Sunday night about her death and
Speaker 2: Taverick Singh, the perpetrator, had suggested they had a suicide
Speaker 2: pact and then she went through with it, but he didn't.
Speaker 2: Then he was very it was so complicated but stupid.
Speaker 2: He on the day before he was seen on CC
Speaker 2: footage of a hardware store getting a shovel in cable ties.
Speaker 2: He then lent his car to a friend, and all
Speaker 2: of this is a matter of public records, so I
Speaker 2: can talk about it. He put his phone in the
Speaker 2: back of the French's car, and when he was abducting Jasmine,
Speaker 2: his friend went south. He then had her in the
Speaker 2: boot with a blindfold and her legs tied for five hours.
Speaker 2: She didn't have any head injuries. She didn't have any
Speaker 2: drugs on board, so she was completely aware of what
Speaker 2: was going on. Then he took her up north and
Speaker 2: as she's lying in the boot, she can hear him
Speaker 2: digging the hole and he dragged her into the hole
Speaker 2: and then just filled the soil around her. When the
Speaker 2: body was taken out, the question was was she dead
Speaker 2: before she went into the ground, And he was just
Speaker 2: hiding the body, and when we got her back to
Speaker 2: the mortuary we did a CT scan. We could see
Speaker 2: material in her airways and at autopsy there was soil
Speaker 2: in her mouth, in her trakar bronchi down into the
Speaker 2: lungs in her esophagus, so she had inhaled soil and
Speaker 2: she died from being buried alive, which is one of
Speaker 2: the I mean, people have nightmares about that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is that why it horrified you so much? Just
Speaker 1: imagining the cruelty of her death.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was a very sweet little Ponderabi woman who
Speaker 2: had come over from India to learn nursing and was
Speaker 2: working in a nursing home. And apparently from everything we hear,
Speaker 2: she was just a lovely person. And he apparently was
Speaker 2: considered a reasonable fellow and until he wasn't. It's interesting
Speaker 2: he finally pleaded guilty. And it's the only trial I've
Speaker 2: ever gone to, this sentencing because I wanted to. I
Speaker 2: wanted to put my eyes on this fellow, and I
Speaker 2: expected something like Charles Manson, but just this average looking nerd.
Speaker 2: It brings to the point of, you know, is it
Speaker 2: in all of us to do this? Who knows?
Speaker 1: Did you find attending the sentence helpful for you while
Speaker 1: trying to process this case, or no.
Speaker 2: They're not really nothing really helped. Talking to my colleagues helped,
Speaker 2: and that's what we do.
Speaker 1: You also did the Barley bombings in two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: if I'm correct.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, what.
Speaker 1: Is it like working over overseas in these countries that
Speaker 1: perhaps don't have the facilities that you're used to.
Speaker 2: It's challenging. They're very hot, they don't have good refrigeration units,
Speaker 2: so the bodies are all decomposed, and it's confronting. I mean,
Speaker 2: the smell's extraordinary. And with the tsunami there were just
Speaker 2: so many children and families. It was so distressing.
Speaker 1: Because it is a completely different experience having one body
Speaker 1: in a like a kind of like an operating room
Speaker 1: sit situation and then having open air thousands of bodies
Speaker 1: like that. Is that is world's apart in terms of experiences.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's it's terrific. And the mortuary were working in
Speaker 2: was actually there was a temple room and we had
Speaker 2: didn't have running water, and there was material on the
Speaker 2: ground out of the body bags and there are probably
Speaker 2: five teams working in this confined space. So yes, it's
Speaker 2: it's completely different, and there's something you know, you're not trained.
Speaker 2: We read about it until you're actually there, you don't
Speaker 2: realize how how complex is. The Tirees did a spectacular job.
Speaker 2: They really were well organized, but resources were strained in
Speaker 2: those instances.
Speaker 1: Are you looking for causes of death or is it
Speaker 1: mainly just identification?
Speaker 2: Combination of both. We're looking for anything untoward. And I've
Speaker 2: written a paper called the Hiding in Plane Sight. What
Speaker 2: better place to hide a homicide victim than amongst hundreds
Speaker 2: of other bodies? And I talked about the crime rate
Speaker 2: in London during the Blitz and that went up. How
Speaker 2: easy would it be to just walk along behind somebody
Speaker 2: you want to murder, hit them with a brick, throw
Speaker 2: them into a bomb site and it would be assumed
Speaker 2: that it was part of the bombing. When I was
Speaker 2: in Thailand, one of the mortuary tenders said, come in,
Speaker 2: have a look at this, and there was a coffin
Speaker 2: and he took the lid off and there was a
Speaker 2: perfectly preserved body of a young woman, and so I
Speaker 2: got the entire authorities there. I don't know what happened,
Speaker 2: but she had been that coffin had been under a
Speaker 2: whole lot of other coffins which would actually taken off. Now,
Speaker 2: if we hadn't moved those coffins, she would have then decomposed,
Speaker 2: and you know, you would think, yes, she's one of
Speaker 2: the victims of the drowning.
Speaker 1: That It's just mind boggling, isn't it that that like
Speaker 1: that that could happen. I guess it's probably happening in
Speaker 1: every major disaster that we hear about.
Speaker 2: I suspect. So, I mean, if you're trying to hide
Speaker 2: a what better place Snowtown?
Speaker 1: We have to talk about Snowtown because that is one
Speaker 1: of the most notorious kind of murders, serial killings in
Speaker 1: Australian history. Take me back, because it was nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: nine that those bodies were found, eight bodies in a barrel,
Speaker 1: a few other bodies buried elsewhere. And you were fairly
Speaker 1: early on in your career, weren't you.
Speaker 2: I had just started full time at forensics three weeks before,
Speaker 2: and this was my first week on call and I
Speaker 2: got called by the head of Major Crime about the
Speaker 2: Snowtown bank vault and barrels and really had no idea
Speaker 2: what was going to happen. But we got the barrels
Speaker 2: down to Adelaide and examine them there. And that was
Speaker 2: not easy because what if I go and drums are
Speaker 2: very heavy. These were full of fluid. We didn't know
Speaker 2: whether it was acid or what it was, so we
Speaker 2: had to test it for toxic chemicals. And then we
Speaker 2: had to work out how to actually empty the barrels
Speaker 2: without losing any evidence because as a fluid come out,
Speaker 2: if there are bullets in there, you miss them. So
Speaker 2: we had to sive all the remains and then pull
Speaker 2: the bodies out, the eight bodies, and we gave them
Speaker 2: a to f and then did testing. We examined them
Speaker 2: for identifying features like tattoos and the dentists in the DNA.
Speaker 2: Surprising it didn't work and people are stout of it
Speaker 2: that they say, well, you can get DNA out of dinosaurs,
Speaker 2: but the problem with this is a bad environment. It's
Speaker 2: wet and no oxygen, the DNA breaks down. So the
Speaker 2: identifications were with traditional fingerprints and features like that.
Speaker 1: How long did that take you? I can imagine that's
Speaker 1: not you know, a one day thing. That's it sounds
Speaker 1: like weeks of work.
Speaker 2: It took a couple of weeks, and then of course
Speaker 2: the legal side of it, and I think the trial
Speaker 2: went for a year. It was very, very time consuming.
Speaker 1: How did you determine how those people had died when
Speaker 1: there were so many things happening in those barrels.
Speaker 2: Well, I had two colleagues who were working on They
Speaker 2: were working on most of the cases, and there were
Speaker 2: gags in some of the mouths. Sometimes you just couldn't determine.
Speaker 2: Body that I examined was skeletonized, so I couldn't tell
Speaker 2: how they died. It was difficult to identify injuries because
Speaker 2: of the puture faction. There were stories about being tortured
Speaker 2: with electricity and sparklers to the genitals. There was one
Speaker 2: case of cannibalism and we did find a piece of
Speaker 2: flesh that was missing off off a leg. I think,
Speaker 2: so there were some very bizarre things that went on there.
Speaker 2: But in a way, the cause of death wasn't all
Speaker 2: that important, given that you know you've got dismembered bodies
Speaker 2: and barrels that these fellows are you know, obviously handled
Speaker 2: and been actually driving on the countryside. They had them
Speaker 2: in the back of a trailer for a while.
Speaker 1: In terms of cases you've worked on in your career,
Speaker 1: do you look back on that one as like, it's
Speaker 1: hard to say enjoyed. But was that, like I can imagine,
Speaker 1: it was a puzzle trying to work all of that out.
Speaker 1: Is that or was it just so hard to do
Speaker 1: something so intricate like that?
Speaker 2: It was just you take it a step at a time,
Speaker 2: and you know, each case an individual case, and then
Speaker 2: you go from that to the next one. I must
Speaker 2: admit that that's one of the few times I've had
Speaker 2: nightmares after there. I woke up one on the Saturday,
Speaker 2: just bolt up writing better think three in the morning
Speaker 2: and said to my dog, what have I done? You know,
Speaker 2: I've moved from pediatrics into this. It's it was interesting
Speaker 2: and challenging, and I'm glad I don't have to do
Speaker 2: it ever again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in terms of attending court for Snowtown, that would
Speaker 1: have been one of those cases where the media attention
Speaker 1: because they wouldn't be media attention for every case you
Speaker 1: appeared on, but that one, I can imagine would have
Speaker 1: been huge. Which was that overwhelming for you having the
Speaker 1: media as an added element, not really.
Speaker 2: Because you used to delivering evidence, but I remember the
Speaker 2: I think it was with the committal all I talked
Speaker 2: about was putre faction or autolysis, which is two methods
Speaker 2: of breaking down their bodies, puture factions bacterial and autos
Speaker 2: just breaking down. So that's what I spent most of
Speaker 2: my time on. And when I walked out a little
Speaker 2: about twenty camera crews in front of me, and I'd
Speaker 2: forgotten about them. I burst out laughing, and somebody said,
Speaker 2: you know, you were the only person in the whole
Speaker 2: history of that trial that came out of the court laughing.
Speaker 2: I thought, yeah, not a good look.
Speaker 1: Why were you laughing because you'd just forgotten.
Speaker 2: I was just well, I'd been talking about trivia and
Speaker 2: here's twenty camera crews wanted to get my picture up.
Speaker 1: Next, Roger tells me about how he was involved in
Speaker 1: Sally Clark's conviction being dismissed. I want to move on
Speaker 1: now to Sally Clark, the UK mother who was convicted
Speaker 1: of the murder of her two sons nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1: That conviction was dismissed in two thousand and you were
Speaker 1: asked to review that case for the defense.
Speaker 2: If I'm right, yeah, two thousand and three. I think
Speaker 2: it was the second quarter of appeal. Convicted in ninety nine,
Speaker 2: one Quart of Criminal Appeal upheld the sentence, and then
Speaker 2: I was asked by the defense to look at them
Speaker 2: for the second court.
Speaker 1: You cited significant and ongoing problems in the investigation of
Speaker 1: the deaths of those two boys. I'm curious, is this
Speaker 1: a case of the pathologists involved not understanding pediatric pathology
Speaker 1: or what do you think went wrong?
Speaker 2: Partly, I mean, I find it really difficult to understand.
Speaker 2: I mean, if I could go through the cases, I mean,
Speaker 2: Christopher died at eleven weeks and at autopsy they said
Speaker 2: there was an injury of the inside of his lip,
Speaker 2: which is significant in their baby, and there were bruises
Speaker 2: on his legs. But they put the cause of death
Speaker 2: as lower respiratory infection, so he had enough respiue infection
Speaker 2: to kill it. And then I think the beginning of
Speaker 2: ninety eight Harry died. And with Harry, they were both
Speaker 2: with Sally alone at the time. With Harry, they found
Speaker 2: all sorts of things that said this is shaken baby syndrome.
Speaker 2: They found bleeding at the back of the eye, they
Speaker 2: found the laceration of the brain. They found all sorts
Speaker 2: of things. Now when this was reviewed, Oh, also he
Speaker 2: had two fractured ribs on the right hand side. When
Speaker 2: this was reviewed when Sally had been charged with murder
Speaker 2: with shaken Baby, the retinal hemorrhages, the bleeding in the
Speaker 2: eyes weren't there. That was just congested vessels, and the
Speaker 2: doctors in the hospital when they've been trying to resuscitate him,
Speaker 2: it hadn't seen retinal hemorrhages. So the retinal hemorrhages was wrong.
Speaker 2: The laceration of the brain was a cut cause when
Speaker 2: the mortuaru tenants were removing his brain, and that's not
Speaker 2: a feature of shaking baby anyway. And a lot of
Speaker 2: the other things didn't drive. And so what they did,
Speaker 2: rather than actually say, let's take a deep breath and
Speaker 2: review all, they sell it's obviously inflicted suffocation, and the
Speaker 2: pathology reasons for that were pretty dubious. They went back
Speaker 2: and reviewed Christopher because of that, and you remember he
Speaker 2: had died from a severe recipe infection. Well that's gone
Speaker 2: now they say it's also inflicted suffocation. There. The problems
Speaker 2: with Chrystal were that the bruises on the legs weren't
Speaker 2: noticed by the doctors in the hospital or the police,
Speaker 2: and then people trained to look for this. When you
Speaker 2: have what you think is a bruise, you cut it
Speaker 2: so that you actually see the hemorrhage and the tissues underneath.
Speaker 2: Otherwise it might be libidity. The post mortem staining this
Speaker 2: wasn't done. The grounds for saying that was inflicted suffocation
Speaker 2: were pretty shunky. You know Harry as well, Again, photographs
Speaker 2: not taken, tissues not sampled, The fractured rib on the
Speaker 2: right hand side, it couldn't be seen on my croscopy.
Speaker 2: There was supposed to be a fractured dislocation of rib
Speaker 2: on the right hand side as well, that hadn't been
Speaker 2: photographed properly, so you couldn't review it. The retinal hemorrhages,
Speaker 2: as I said, weren't seen by the doctors in the hospital.
Speaker 2: It was a mess, actually, But she still was convicted.
Speaker 2: And then it transpired that the examining doctor had pathologists
Speaker 2: had withheld information from the court. I don't know why,
Speaker 2: but Harry had microbiology cultures that showed staphlococcasaureus, a very
Speaker 2: nasty bacteria, a pure growth in five different sites. So
Speaker 2: he clearly died of Scepsis what about Christopher? Well, you
Speaker 2: can't tell, because you know there wasn't enough documentation, so
Speaker 2: I called Christopher's death unascertained and Harry's death due to sepsis,
Speaker 2: and Sally was. The conviction was quashed in two thousand
Speaker 2: and three, and then she died of a mixed drug
Speaker 2: and alcohol toxicity several years later. Whether it was deliberate
Speaker 2: or accidental, don't know, but if you look when she
Speaker 2: came out of court, she said, there are no winners.
Speaker 2: And you think of her husband, Stephen, who's lost his
Speaker 2: wife and two boys. What a sad story that is.
Speaker 2: There was the whole issue too with Soroy Meadow, a
Speaker 2: very distinguished pediatrician in the UK, who said there's a
Speaker 2: one in seventy three million chance of this being due
Speaker 2: to SIDS, and that was then looked at and people said.
Speaker 2: There was an editorial I think in the British Medical
Speaker 2: Journal saying convicted by mathematical error because just because one
Speaker 2: case has happened, it doesn't have any bearing on whether
Speaker 2: another case will happen. So he was castigated for that.
Speaker 2: But I also blame the defense. Why didn't they query it,
Speaker 2: Why did they let that through? I mean, nobody thought
Speaker 2: those kids were sins anyway, So it's just a red herring,
Speaker 2: So it was a mess of a case.
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but think of Kathleen Folbeck while reading
Speaker 1: about Sally. You know, another young mother convicted over the
Speaker 1: murder of four children. Eventually all of that was quashed
Speaker 1: quite recently. Do you see similarities there? Or I know
Speaker 1: that Kathleen Folby her children It was all to do
Speaker 1: with genetics and stuff, but originally she was it was
Speaker 1: a sid's death, and then she got convicted with murder.
Speaker 1: And it just makes me think, like, how often is
Speaker 1: this happening that mothers have been convicted of murder when
Speaker 1: there's all these other reasons at play.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think it occurs very often. The fact
Speaker 2: that it occurs at all is clearly a problem. I
Speaker 2: appeared for the defense with Kathy actually got forty years,
Speaker 2: so it shows you how good my evidence is. But
Speaker 2: I think, stepping aside from the genetic stuff, there were
Speaker 2: reasons that these children could have died anyway. Laura, for example,
Speaker 2: had this full blown marcarditis inflammation of her heart that
Speaker 2: was ignored in favor of inflicted asphyxia. Sarah had a
Speaker 2: very strange shaped back of her palette, and one of
Speaker 2: the boys was was epileptic, So I don't think think
Speaker 2: you need to evoke genes. I worry a bit about genetics,
Speaker 2: and I did give a talk to the Medical Legal
Speaker 2: Society in New South Wales and on Kathy, and I
Speaker 2: just said, what I'm here for is for you to
Speaker 2: tell me how you know the kids died from this
Speaker 2: mutation rather than with this mutation. Three have the cardiate mutation, Sarah, Laura,
Speaker 2: and Kathy. Well, Kathy is still alive, so it's not
Speaker 2: immediately lethal. The two boys have this mutation that causes
Speaker 2: lethal epilepsy in mice, not in children. So I don't
Speaker 2: understand the genetics, and nobody could really explain it to
Speaker 2: me at this meeting. But as I said, I don't
Speaker 2: think the case ever should have got up because I
Speaker 2: think they were You know, although you have a lot
Speaker 2: of death in the family and people talk about Meadow's law,
Speaker 2: one death is SIDS, two is undetermined, three is homicide.
Speaker 2: That's a denial of natural justice. It's also not Meadows
Speaker 2: law as de Mayo's law. So you text some medical
Speaker 2: examine who came up with that for sir Roy. So
Speaker 2: again a number of issues and a very tragic case
Speaker 2: I mean for babies dead.
Speaker 1: You're saying that genetics aside, she should never have gone
Speaker 1: to prison because there was enough reasonable doubt in the evidence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my belief.
Speaker 1: Sudden infant death, We've mentioned it a few times. That
Speaker 1: is an area that you specialized in, isn't it. Why
Speaker 1: did you decide to specialize in that area.
Speaker 2: Well, as I said, I'd done a lot of pediatrics.
Speaker 2: I've done flying doctor work, I've done pediatrics in hospital,
Speaker 2: and then when I started pathology, I just realized that
Speaker 2: parents shouldn't shouldn't have to see their children die. There's
Speaker 2: a great quote of Euripides, What greater pain immortals bear
Speaker 2: than this to see their children die before their eyes?
Speaker 2: And so I just thought, well, if I can work
Speaker 2: on these cases and find preventative strategies will work out
Speaker 2: what's going on, then that's a good thing to do.
Speaker 2: And that's how I deal with these cases. Otherwise they're
Speaker 2: just so. But looking at accidental deaths, we worked very
Speaker 2: hard in the nineteen nineties and got legislation changed about
Speaker 2: unsafe cots, and so we're not getting the number of
Speaker 2: deaths in cots that we used to. You know, kids
Speaker 2: being wedged or hanging from things. So that was that
Speaker 2: was a victory. I've done a lot of work in
Speaker 2: SIDS and I did some work with Harvard University and
Speaker 2: we found that there's a chemical called substance P in
Speaker 2: the back of the brain that controls breathing, controls heart rate,
Speaker 2: it also controls head and neck movement. And so we
Speaker 2: found substance P was decreased in some SIDS babies significantly.
Speaker 2: And we've asked for years why don't they just lift
Speaker 2: their heads up when there's face down aras that is,
Speaker 2: they don't because they can't. So I think we're putting
Speaker 2: together pieces of the jigsaw, and that's that's important.
Speaker 1: Before your guidelines, how many children do you think we
Speaker 1: were losing to SIDS?
Speaker 2: Well, it's we used to. There were I think fifty
Speaker 2: in the eighties a year in South Australia. Now they're
Speaker 2: about five. But one of the terrible things is the
Speaker 2: sleeping position. You know, we found out that sleeping face
Speaker 2: down is a bad thing. They should sleep on their backs.
Speaker 2: But if you go back historically, particularly in the States
Speaker 2: in the fifties, pediatricians doctor Benjamin Spock were advising parents
Speaker 2: to put their babies to sleep face down, and there
Speaker 2: was a pediatrician, Abramson, who said, look, we can't do this.
Speaker 2: I'll suffocate and it's been calculated with something like I
Speaker 2: think in the UK and Europe sixty thousand babies died
Speaker 2: because of that medical initiative. Now you don't hear that
Speaker 2: very often. Wow, this medicine doesn't like to admit errors.
Speaker 2: But that was a mistake. Wasn't evidence based. The thought
Speaker 2: was if they're on their backs, they'll they'll aspirate, vomit,
Speaker 2: inhale it and that doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: But it also makes you think like that's more than
Speaker 1: an error, is it? Could criminal charges have been involved
Speaker 1: there with that kind of advice.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it was incredibly well intentioned and it
Speaker 2: made sense, and a lot of medical initiatives are like that,
Speaker 2: but when you examine you think, nah, maybe that's not
Speaker 2: the best thing to do.
Speaker 1: We recently covered the suspicious death of Australian Jason Rigby
Speaker 1: in Fiji. I don't know if you remember this. You
Speaker 1: gave some comment for sixty minutes just last year on
Speaker 1: that it was ruled a suicide in a very short investigation.
Speaker 1: They are now treating it as homicide. What were your
Speaker 1: thoughts when you heard about that case and that ruling.
Speaker 2: Well, I haven't actually reviewed the evidence since the TV program,
Speaker 2: but I think the stab wounds and the scenario didn't
Speaker 2: make all that much sense, and so my opinion was
Speaker 2: it should have been treated as a suspicious case from
Speaker 2: the word go. And that's what happens. If you have
Speaker 2: a stabbing. The first thing you got to ask yourself
Speaker 2: is has this person been stabbed? Have they done it themselves?
Speaker 2: And there are various ways of differentiating, you know, self
Speaker 2: inflicted stab wounds from inflicted stab wounds.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask in a suicide case, is
Speaker 1: it hard to determine if it was done to them
Speaker 1: or if they've done it to themselves in any kind
Speaker 1: of form of suicidal death.
Speaker 2: Sometimes, I mean one of the Snowtown cases was thought
Speaker 2: to be a suicidal hanging, but he was actually strung
Speaker 2: up by the perpetrators. So that's an example of mist homicide.
Speaker 2: With stabbings, if you stab yourself, often there are multiple
Speaker 2: stab wounds. There's not just one wound, and you have
Speaker 2: what to call hesitation cuts, So you've got one cut,
Speaker 2: a very superficial cut, because it's very difficult to hurt yourself.
Speaker 2: So there may be multiple little inside wounds that aren't significant,
Speaker 2: whether it's say a homicidal cut throat or probably just
Speaker 2: one cut from one side to the other. With suicidal
Speaker 2: little wounds, when people stab themselves in the chest, say
Speaker 2: they're often lying on a bed or a couch, they
Speaker 2: take off their clothes that you don't stab through clothing,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't go through bone, It just goes through
Speaker 2: soft tissue. And there's just probably one stab wind into
Speaker 2: the heart and the knife will be in sight you.
Speaker 2: So those are the things that help you sort of differentiate.
Speaker 2: Also with a stab wound. If somebody's being stabbed, they
Speaker 2: tend to try and get away. They may fall over,
Speaker 2: there may be blood, force, trawl or an other things.
Speaker 1: And stabbing yourself to death is not overly common, is it.
Speaker 2: No, not really, It's most of our suicides are carbon monoxide,
Speaker 2: are hanging, or or drugs.
Speaker 1: This is a bit of a big question, but what
Speaker 1: is the most unusual death you've seen. I know that
Speaker 1: that is another area that you've specialized in.
Speaker 2: I suppose a lot of them, actually, But there was
Speaker 2: an oldly woman who was pecked by her rooster, which
Speaker 2: was out collecting eggs and she had Barica's veins and
Speaker 2: she bled to death from that. I published that because
Speaker 2: it was strange, but as to give advice. So if
Speaker 2: you have varicas veins and you get a small cut,
Speaker 2: don't walk around, lie down, elevate the leg, put your
Speaker 2: finger over it, and you know, pressure a medical alert
Speaker 2: button or phone somebody. And I got phone costsm all
Speaker 2: over the world, people saying thank you so much of
Speaker 2: that advice. My grandmother's got varicas veins. I worry about it.
Speaker 2: So I've developed an approach to pathology called preventive pathology.
Speaker 2: All my clinical colleagues think that, you know, the pathologist
Speaker 2: knows everything, but he's always too late, which is a
Speaker 2: bit rude. But what this is is taking lessons to
Speaker 2: the mortuary like that one and putting it out there
Speaker 2: so that simple, simple things can be considered and people
Speaker 2: can actually prevent them from dying.
Speaker 1: What do you think would be the proudest achievement from
Speaker 1: your career?
Speaker 2: My book Sudden Death in the Young it's now and
Speaker 2: it's fourth edition as I just submitted it on the weekend.
Speaker 2: But it's a it's a summary of all of the
Speaker 2: possible causes of sudden unexpected up the age of thirty five,
Speaker 2: and I it's yes, it's it's I really am proud
Speaker 2: of it. It's also proud of getting the AC last year.
Speaker 2: That was a nice sort of recognition of of of
Speaker 2: my career. So those two probably, Yeah, getting the A C.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a good time to go. Yep, I'm done,
Speaker 1: I'm out.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: I'm curious do you consume true crime in your in
Speaker 1: your regular day? Do you watch documentaries listen to podcasts
Speaker 1: or is it too much for you? Having worked.
Speaker 2: Crime fiction? Actually, I really like reabs and inspector banks,
Speaker 2: so I to read a lot of that. It's interesting
Speaker 2: to see the angles that authors come up with. And
Speaker 2: you know, I mean Patricia Cornwall Cake Scarpetta was based
Speaker 2: on a friend of mine in New York, so sort
Speaker 2: of connections there, and I call it witless silence. I
Speaker 2: think it's silent witness. But the doctor there was based
Speaker 2: on another friend, Helen Whitwell in England. So things weave
Speaker 2: through these stories that they're fascinating.
Speaker 1: What about watching these forensic pathologists on screen? I can
Speaker 1: imagine you would sit there going that wouldn't do that,
Speaker 1: wouldn't do that, that's not right.
Speaker 2: I think the only television program I enjoy forensically is
Speaker 2: Inspector Rex. He's a even a C grade forensic program
Speaker 2: from Vienna where Inspected Rex the German Shepherd sold all
Speaker 2: the crimes. The thing about Inspected Rex is that he's
Speaker 2: not trying to guestimate the time of death like they
Speaker 2: do on Silent Witness. You know, they'll all the time
Speaker 2: of death was two minutes past midnight. Yeah, plus and
Speaker 2: minus about six hours. There's a lot of well, I
Speaker 2: have to compress a whole investigation into an hour, so
Speaker 2: it's understandable that there are inaccuracies. But yes, I don't
Speaker 2: tend to enjoy the portrayal of forensic pathologists on TV.
Speaker 2: A lot of them are these sort of dottery old
Speaker 2: guys with glasses and beards and bald heads that make,
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of black humor. So it doesn't
Speaker 2: seem real to me.
Speaker 1: Are you telling me that you can't, as a pathologist
Speaker 1: tell the exact time of death. It's more of a window.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, there are so many different I've called timing the
Speaker 2: Achilles Heel of pathology because you know, although there's a
Speaker 2: process that you go through, like you know, the body
Speaker 2: temperature decreases and the body gets stiff. It's different for
Speaker 2: different people in different environments. So there's a lot of
Speaker 2: inaccuracies there. Interestingly enough, there's a very complicated German chart
Speaker 2: for measuring temperatures and working out time of death, and
Speaker 2: it was reproduced in Bernard Knight's textbook, and a colleague
Speaker 2: of mine from South Africa a few years ago pointed
Speaker 2: out that the reproduction actually has thrown out the parameters,
Speaker 2: and so anybody who's using the chart from the textbook
Speaker 2: would get the wrong time of death. You've just got
Speaker 2: to be very cautious. I mean, gastric emptying time used
Speaker 2: to be. You know, people say, oh, yes, they died
Speaker 2: two hours after this or whatever. All I say is,
Speaker 2: you know, if there's food in the stomach, they died
Speaker 2: or were murdered sometime after they ate. Because if you're terrified,
Speaker 2: sometimes the gas entering time is really quick. Other times,
Speaker 2: if you're injured, it may be very slow. We get
Speaker 2: people who have been in ICU for say four days,
Speaker 2: and they've still got food in their stomach from before
Speaker 2: the accident. So again there's a lot of variability, and
Speaker 2: I think that's one of the things in modern forensic
Speaker 2: pathology that we've getting much better out of saying I
Speaker 2: don't know. And I like doing that in court with
Speaker 2: juries because if I say to a question I really
Speaker 2: don't know, I can tell the jury thinks, oh, well, okay,
Speaker 2: he doesn't think he knows everything. So when he does
Speaker 2: say he knows something, then we can probably put more
Speaker 2: faith in it.
Speaker 1: Professor, you've retired. Now you're passing the baton to the
Speaker 1: younger forensic pathologists.
Speaker 2: Of the world.
Speaker 1: I just throw it into the mortary and left of Australia.
Speaker 1: What is your advice to the profession. What are you
Speaker 1: hoping to see from the profession and what do you
Speaker 1: think makes a good forensic pathologist? What values do you
Speaker 1: want to see upheld.
Speaker 2: I think compassion and curiosity are the two most important points,
Speaker 2: and a work ethic. I've seen a lot of younger
Speaker 2: pathologists who don't see to be really interested in the job. Clearly,
Speaker 2: working as much as I have is something that most
Speaker 2: people would not want to do. But my boss said
Speaker 2: to me once when I started forensics. He said, if
Speaker 2: they're paying you to do something you enjoyed, then it's
Speaker 2: not work, And as I said, I've treated it like
Speaker 2: a puzzle to work out causes of death and prevention strategies.
Speaker 2: And I really like writing literature and history of my
Speaker 2: best subjects at high school, so I've continued that and
Speaker 2: that to me, every paper I write has to have
Speaker 2: a particular point that I'm making a change in practice
Speaker 2: or a new observation, and that that I think is
Speaker 2: what young pathologists must do. I don't think of it
Speaker 2: as a job. I think of it as a vocation,
Speaker 2: and I'd like people to treat it like that.
Speaker 1: Well, Professor Bayad, thank you for everything you've done all
Speaker 1: of the I was going to say millions. It feels
Speaker 1: like millions of texts and kind of findings you've had
Speaker 1: over your forty year career. And thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2: Thanks Demm, it was a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thank you to Roger for joining us on this episode.
Speaker 1: You can find links to Roger's books in our show notes.
Speaker 1: Make sure you're following our show on Apple Podcasts and
Speaker 1: Spotify for updates on this story and all the stories
Speaker 1: we cover. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back
Speaker 1: next week with another true crime converce Station