Gloucestershire &amp; Worcestershire

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A regular on TV, body doctor&nbsp;Dr Richard Shepherd&nbsp;has a brand new show out The Truth About My Murder from 21 September (CBS Reality). But if you want to see him in the flesh (see what we did there) he is bringing his new show Unnatural Causes to the Roses Theatre in Tewkesbury on Sunday October 23. 



Unnatural Causes is also the title of his best-selling book&nbsp;which earned critical acclaim and spent more than ten weeks on the Sunday Times bestseller chart,&nbsp;so it promises to be a gruesomely good night out.



During his career&nbsp;Shepherd&nbsp;has performed more than 23,000, working on some of the most high-profile cases of recent times including the&nbsp;Princess Diana Inquiry,&nbsp;9/11&nbsp;and the&nbsp;Hungerford Massacre.&nbsp;He has faced serial killers, natural disasters, perfect murders, and freak accidents.&nbsp;His evidence has put killers behind bars, freed the innocent and turned open-and-shut cases on their heads.&nbsp;Yet all this has come at huge personal cost. Time to find out more.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="666" src="https://glosworcs.muddystilettos.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2022/09/2-11.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-42397" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/glosworcs/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2022/09/2-11.jpg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/glosworcs/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2022/09/2-11-800x533.jpg 800w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/glosworcs/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2022/09/2-11-400x266.jpg 400w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/glosworcs/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2022/09/2-11-788x525.jpg 788w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /><figcaption>Dr Richard Shepherd &#8211; kind of the Daniel Craig of the corpse world, non?!</figcaption></figure>



Hello Dr Shepherd, tell us about the new Unnatural Causes tour?



I am really looking forward to touring again. Last year when I made my ‘stage’ debut I was nervous &#8211; there were those two o&#8217;clock in the morning moments when I would wake up and think, “what am I doing? Why on earth have I agreed to do this?” It’s funny, I&#8217;m not scared stepping into a witness box at a trial and I&#8217;m not scared about standing up in front of an audience of hundreds of doctors or medical students. But put me on my own on a theatre stage and it’s an entirely different matter. 



As a forensic pathologist, I have a lot of life skills, but standing on the stage on my own was not one of them. The other thing is I&#8217;m used to standing up and taking an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And now I&#8217;m going to pop up on the stage and tell some of the truth some of the time, but still to the best of my ability! All the same, I&#8217;m looking forward to it because it&#8217;s a new experience in my life, and life should be full of new experiences.



So what&#8217;s the show all about?



The thread that runs through the first half is an investigation of a possible murder. I tell that story, and it gives me the chance to explain how amazing the human body is. Yes, the body can go wrong all by itself, but it can also be made to go wrong by other people poisoning it or hitting it or stabbing it. In my job as a forensic pathologist, I have to understand diseases and also what happens when people are injured, why they die, so I can interpret those injuries and recount the story of what happened. 



We weave the first half of the show around the twists and turns of that investigation. Along the way, there will be clues to make people do a bit of thinking. After the interval, we go into a Q&amp;A with the audience. We hope that during break, people will be arguing amongst themselves. Is it murder? Is it suicide? Or just maybe an accident! And then, at the end, they have to make up their mind.



Why do you think your first book, Unnatural Causes, which charted the immense personal cost of your work as a forensic pathologist, proved so popular?



It&#8217;s always difficult to know exactly what it is that readers like about a book &#8211; all I know is what people have said to me about it. They told me it was just interesting. I was always determined that it wouldn’t just be “My 20 Best Cases”. I was certain that it had to be much more than that. So, I constructed a format that wove these cases into the story of my life, and many people really seem to have connected with that personal and professional interface.



Do you think the job was worth it because it really did take its toll on you?



Of course. I know lots of doctors in lots of branches of medicine who have had very similar stress related problems. But I also know accountants and lawyers and teachers who have been through it, too. So, it&#8217;s not unique to me or to my job, but I think the unique thing was that I was prepared to write about it in Unnatural Causes. Yes, it was awful. But the important thing is that I got help and I got through it.



Was it in fact therapeutic to write about it?



Yes, writing Unnatural Causes was quite cathartic. Perhaps because it was written sometime after the event, it was quite interesting to go back and look at those dark times again. But not all those times were dark – for instance when I drove up to the house of my psychologist for my first therapy session, I noticed that it was called Wit’s End! I thought, &#8216;I trust this lady already&#8217;. And in fact she was tremendous. Other than my wife, she was the person who I felt was there just to help me. So, I was very lucky to find her. I was also very lucky to have the help of my colleagues and for the short time I needed it a marvellous drug called Sertraline!



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You are one of the country’s foremost forensic pathologists and have been involved in some extraordinarily high-profile investigations. Can you tell us, for instance, about the enquiry into the death of Princess Diana?



That was a fascinating case to work on. What interested me was that they were in a Mercedes which are phenomenally good and safe cars which are engineered to crumple in a crash and to withstand high-speed impacts. It became clear that if Diana and Dodi Fayed had been wearing seatbelts, they both should have survived.



That’s very sobering, isn’t it?



Absolutely. Of course, every death of a young mother is an awful thing. But I think it&#8217;s particularly sad when it was their own decision not to wear the seat belts that went badly wrong.



Was that one of the most headline-grabbing investigations that you have ever been part of?



Yes, I think it probably must have been one of the most high-profile cases I&#8217;ve ever been involved with. What was particularly interesting was to watch the internal mechanics of a well-funded and well supported investigation working.



You also investigated the serial killer Dr Harold Shipman. Did the fact that he was a fellow doctor get to you?



Yes, because as a medical professional, you should be caring. Even as a Forensic Pathologist I think we must be caring. What upsets me is the fact there were so many opportunities to have stopped Shipman earlier. There had been a previous police investigation, but the allegations were dismissed. It’s quite scary that he was allowed to keep going and amazingly he was known to the local undertakers as “Dr Death” because so many of his patients died!



How did he get away with it?



So many people loved and trusted him as their GP. He was said to have had a fantastic bedside manner. And if he said, “listen, I think we&#8217;ll just take some blood for tests. Roll up your sleeve,” you’d immediately agree. Then instead of taking a blood sample he would inject morphine. It upsets me that he wasn&#8217;t stopped as quickly when he should have been. But it also upsets me that Dame Janet Smith&#8217;s long, public inquiry made all sorts of important recommendations about how deaths should be properly and correctly certified, and very few have ever been followed up. I pretty much think that Shipman was not then, and maybe even now, the not the only serial killer doctor in the world.



Why are people so fascinated by true-crime stories?



I think because it&#8217;s a part of life that people know happens, but they don&#8217;t understand. Also, you can always form your own opinion about a crime. People always like to try to second-guess the experts and the courts. And then there&#8217;s also the frisson of, “oh my goodness, that could be me there. How would I cope in that situation?” Very few people come across a dead body these days, let alone a murdered dead body. So, because it’s unusual and also hidden away it just sets up a fascination in people. There are always lots of fantasies about what has happened, which are usually a long way away from the truth, but people relish that challenge of trying to understand what has taken place.



Tell us about your most recent book, The Seven Ages of Death.



In my career of about 23,000 cases, I’ve examined everyone from babies and teenagers through to the middle aged and the old. My cases have covered all of Shakespeare’s seven ages of man, So, I thought that following that arc from birth to dementia would be a great way to structure the book and so I talk about diseases and traumatic deaths – accidents and murders &#8211; in all of these seven ages.



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You will be on our TV screens again this autumn in a new series on CBS Reality – The Truth About My Murder – can you tell us about this?



The public really does have a fascination with ‘true crime’ and I will be looking at a number of the most intriguing homicides in recent years from the UK and USA and uncovering the truth about &#8216;what really happened&#8217;.



Your wife Linda is a forensic physician. How did you meet her?



It was through work. I went to London to give a lecture at the Royal Society of Medicine. It was a conference about the legal aspects of medicine. There were loads of lawyers there pontificating about how crucial some small aspects of the law were. Then I got up to speak and I said, &#8216;It&#8217;s quite clear that doctors are from Venus and lawyers are from Mars.&#8217; Linda says she fell in love with me at that moment. After the conference finished, I asked her if she fancied going out for a drink? She said, &#8216;No, I&#8217;ve got to go and buy some shoes.&#8217; So that really set the tone for our marriage!



Now you have retired as a forensic pathologist, what hobbies do you have?



A: I keep bees. I don’t think I’m a very good beekeeper, but now I have three hives buzzing away. They’re difficult little creatures, but beekeeping is one of those things I always thought I would like to do. I&#8217;ve been doing it for about eight or nine years now. It&#8217;s very interesting and hard work learning about them and about how the hives work. Also, at the end of the year, there&#8217;s honey and that’s when the family suddenly seem to appear!



I&#8217;ve also taken up clock repairing. I was looking for a practical hobby where I could just sit somewhere warm and mend things and Horology is really both complex and interesting as well as being practical and when the clock ticks away and chimes it’s very satisfying too. I was talking to a psychologist about this the other day, and they said, &#8216;that&#8217;s really interesting, at the end of 40 years of pulling things apart and not being able to put them back together to work, you&#8217;ve chosen a hobby that involves putting things back together and getting them to work again.&#8217; I’d never thought of that.



You are also a qualified pilot – tell us about that?



In my opinion flying is the world&#8217;s most fantastic pastime. Flying is absolutely the best, most liberating thing in the whole world. I just love it. It&#8217;s just that sense of freedom. I’m also nosey, so I like looking into people’s gardens! Last summer, I left Liverpool at nine o&#8217;clock in the morning and in the evening was eating dinner at a restaurant in a French town called Troyes drinking wine and eating Moules. It’s just fantastic to travel about in these places under my own steam.



Finally, what do you hope that audiences will take away from Dr Richard Shepherd&#8216;s Unnatural Causes?



At the age of 13 or 14 a friend borrowed his father’s Forensic Pathology textbook, and I literally had a Damascene moment where I suddenly realised that being a forensic pathologist would be absolutely the best thing ever. And so, I just hope that I can show people a little bit of the fascination I have for my world. I also hope they see that pathology, and forensic pathology, isn’t awful but that it is a brilliant and useful job. I&#8217;m so fortunate to have found this career when I was so young. And then to have achieved it and to have done it for 40 years – I really do consider myself an incredibly lucky person. 



Unnatural Causes is on at the Roses Theatre in Tewkesbury on Sunday 23 October. To find out more or book ticket head to <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://rosetheatre.org/" target="_blank">www.roses theatre.org</a> or www.drrichardshepherd.com.

In the flesh! TV’s body doctor Richard Shepherd

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