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A few years later guns entered the fray. "Up until then, Glasgow had a reputation as 'Stab City' and it was mainly knife crime we were dealing with," she says. "There was a change in the gangland killings. All of a sudden, we had this spate of shootings." She has a mellifluous Scottish accent, full of warmth. And she laughs a lot; nothing seems to bother her. When I ask about sexism and whether there was a glass ceiling in such a male-dominated profession, she laughs it off. Death is not a headline or an obituary notice, it is something that will happen to us all. I have witnessed death in all its guises. This book is an attempt to enable you to see with my eyes, to walk carefully in my footprints beyond the police tape.”
A Dublin man gave a false confession to the murders and spent nine months in custody before it was found that he had lied, while Nash, who was already serving two life sentences for a double murder of a Roscommon couple, confessed to the murder before retracting his statement. Mark Nash, who was sentenced to two life sentences for a double murder he committed 18 years prior, was sentenced to two more life sentences in 2015. Pic: Rolling News happened. At the centre of this investigation was Manuela, and our hope was to do her justice. We stood around her — as if we could shield her from more harm, forming a closed circle. Each of us was directly linked to her, each forensic expert and investigator abutting the next but never stepping into the space of their neighbour. The circle around her grew with each step of the investigation, from scene to court, as the family, friends, witnesses, the DPP, the judge and the jury joined it, all looking inwards towards Manuela. Manuela’s mother and father set up the Manuela Riedo Foundation in Ireland to raise awareness of and prevent sexual crime in the country. It helps to fund charities and agencies who provide support to victims of rape and sexual violence. Shame on us: they lost a Swiss angel and we gained vital services for victims of sexual assault.
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Ray told Marie that the first time he saw her, he thought of Kay Scarpetta, the medical examiner protagonist of Patricia Cornwall’s series of crime novels. She’s described as "diminutive, glamorous and blonde" – "a bit like yourself", Ray adds to Marie, who takes a second or two to reply, laughing, "But I was the real thing". She was, Ray says, a woman in a man’s world. But, Marie says, she never felt like any of her colleagues had a problem working with her. About your husband – you say he can get irritated about your cavalier attitude to your safety (in particular when you went to war torn Sierra Leone to work) – is there something in you that likes life on the edge?
It probably says a lot about a nation when the person tasked with investigating the cause of violent deaths becomes something of a household name. Or maybe it's just another indication of our fascination with true crime. Since her retirement in 2018, she has authored documentaries on RTÉ including Dr Cassidy’s Casebook and Cold Case Collins. She has also written a book about her career, Beyond The Tape. Vinnie!’ Terry was relieved to see the photographer’s familiar aquiline face, his heavily lidded eyes giving the man a permanently thoughtful, hangdog look. She recounts visiting a department store in Glasgow on her lunch break after a morning examining a badly decomposed body found in a wooded area. The deceased, she concluded, had likely died from alcohol or natural causes. It makes for grim though, alas, not surprising viewing. Cassidy revisits several other cases, including the 2013 murder of the mother of three Olivia Dunlea in her home in Passage West, in Co Cork.Either way, there’s one name that’s been inextricably linked to a lot of high-profile murders in Ireland over the last 15 years or so, but it’s not a gang member or a serial killer (thankfully), it’s the woman who was called upon at all hours of the day or night to attend a crime scene and investigate what happened to the victim. When asked if she misses the role she said: "No...I’d come to the end. It's one of those jobs that you know when you have to go and I knew that I had to go.” It used to be, people would use these experts [in Irish court] if it suited them and we all knew a load of baloney was coming out of their mouth,” she says. “I think now in the UK and Ireland most of the experts are pretty straight. I’ve come across some dubious ones in the past, but I think that’s been weeded out.”
I haven’t stopped smiling since I was asked to be part of Dancing with the Stars," Dr Cassidy said.At the first roundabout the garda driver took a right turn, away from the main park area. Terry relaxed a little. Her work, either in the mortuary or in the field, was a safe space for her, somewhere she knew the rules and had a tangible, achievable problem to solve. Pathology wasn’t like the other areas of policing, where they had to worry about motive and crimes of passion — Terry’s job involved getting to grips with the science of what had happened to the deceased. You can’t be seen to be taking things lightly even though behind closed doors I’m not a very serious person. This is an opportunity and you don’t get opportunities like this very often, not at my age anyway. Dr Marie Cassidy, who was Ireland’s state pathologist for 14 years, arrives at Phoenix Park in Dublin in 2013. Picture: Brian Lawless/PA Wire
It is a smell you don't forget," she says. "Working in that environment for a few hours, you become accustomed to it and don't notice it clinging to you, but it clings to everything." According to Cassidy, the scent lingers on your clothes and hair – giving off an odour similar to rotting fish. Among the group was Detective Chief Inspector John Fraser, a well-dressed senior detective whom Terry had met at a forensic medicine conference on deaths in custody some months before. The main thing was identification and to make sure the bodies were returned to their families. It wasn't like a murder elsewhere where you are conscious of not losing forensic evidence. The main concern was to get these bodies out as intact as we possibly could so we could identify them."That was really bizarre because I had been doing the same job over in Glasgow for many, many years and nobody knew who we were," she explained. Still, those were different times. She tells a story of going for a senior registrar post in Scotland, in her early days, and being criticised for being "too honest" and told she'd never do well in her chosen career. When the job went to a less-qualified male colleague, she shrugged it off. "They told me I'd get it next round, but I didn't want it."
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