I've dissected 23,000 dead bodies. It's not a normal job

IN his line of work it was inevitable that Dr Richard Shepherd would develop a gallows sense of humour.

- BY SUE CRAWFORD

As the country’s leading forensic pathologist, Richard is an embodiment of the medical experts in BBC's long-running crime drama Silent Witness and a consummate professional.

But he fully accepts dissecting 23,000 bodies, the equivalent of a small town's population, is an odd way to make a living. He says: “It's not a normal job. In other fields I would be locked away for life with no chance of parole.”

He has had to remain emotionally detached as he worked 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 says: “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' 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 was not 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 massacre, where Michael Ryan, 27, had shot dead 16 people, including his mother and an unarmed police officer, before shooting himself.

Shocking