Derek Tremain - How to Solve a Murder: True Stories from a Life in Forensic Medicine

HarperElement

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

HarperCollinsPublishers

1st Floor, Watermarque Building, Ringsend Road

Dublin 4, Ireland

First published by HarperElement 2021

FIRST EDITION

Derek and Pauline Tremain 2021

Cover design Steve Leard HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021

Images courtesy of the author, with the exception of the Forensic exhibits in Guys Hospitals Gordon Museum photograph in the picture section, which is courtesy of The Curator, The Gordon Museum

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Derek and Pauline Tremain asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at

www.harpercollins.co.uk/green

Source ISBN: 9780008404888

Ebook Edition January 2021 ISBN: 9780008404895

Version: 2021-12-15

This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

• Change of font size and line height
• Change of background and font colours
• Change of font
• Change justification
• Text to speech
• Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008404888

For our children Ross, Gemma, Rowan and Amber and our families.

BY DR RICHARD SHEPHERD

You may think, watching any of the many crime series on television, that all murders are solved by one crucial person. Who that person is will of course depend on whether you are watching a police, a pathology or a CSI television series. The thing they all have in common is that one critical person does all the jobs and makes all the discoveries. In the end there is usually a blinding flash of inspiration, a quick arrest, a confession and its all over and time for a cup of tea. I know you know thats not how it works, but still you go with the story, even if, like me, you are always somehow left dissatisfied and think, I wonder what its really like

Derek and Paulines brilliant book tells you what its really like. You certainly get the nuts and bolts of forensic medicine, but you also get the brains, bullets and bones. This superb book leads you painstakingly through the tests and the truths and the spellbinding background minutiae of the investigation of many of the murders that were dealt with in the Department of Forensic Medicine at the world famous Guys Hospital in central London.

Youll very quickly appreciate that, despite the many famous names so closely associated with that department Professors Keith Simpson and Keith Mant and more recently Dr Iain West and the many murders that were dealt with over the years in that department, it wasnt the headline names that were important, but the whole forensic team, working together in rather cramped and crowded rooms at the back edge of the least favoured wing of the hospital to uncover scientific and medical evidence, prove the cause of death, establish the identities of corpses and assailants and then produce the facts that were crucial in obtaining a conviction.

The team at Guys dealt with so many thousands of deaths over the years some domestic murders, some serial murders, some accidental deaths and, in later years, some terrorist related. Deaths of babies, children, adults and the aged. Each death was dealt with using specialist skills that had been built up over years. The department was also innovative finding, establishing and proving new techniques in many areas, including microscopy, weapon recognition, serology and toxicology.

Derek and Pauline were crucial figures in the department and in the investigation of many headline cases over the years, including the Clapham rail disaster and the sinking of the Marchioness. These mass disasters all had to be investigated at the same time as deaths from gang violence, natural causes and tragic accidents time just had to be found, somehow. High-profile or celebrity deaths always added complications to the work, often with the media, as did deaths in high society, while deaths of the homeless in filthy squats in derelict buildings or on street corners were seldom reported by the press. However, these deaths were noticed, and were investigated with exactly the same determination by the team at Guys. And so they were, for many years, the daily life and work of Derek and Pauline.

I remember so clearly Derek sitting in the departments laboratory a room always humming with the noise of machinery and smelling of vaguely disconcerting chemicals, often with notes of decomposing something or other. Pauline would often be found in her office, which always smelled of coffee, i.e. much better, efficiently managing the department and controlling (or attempting to) the many pathologists who were based at this national hub of forensic excellence. Pauline was also brilliant at keeping police, coroners and sometimes even judges firmly, but politely, in their places. But she wasnt deskbound for many years she actually worked in the mortuaries every day alongside the pathologists as the autopsies were being performed, and both she and Derek attended many murder scenes to take photographs, take samples and to make precise notes. Derek and Pauline, each in their own domain and each an expert in their own right, brought to the team at Guys diverse assets, skills and experiences that always proved useful in tracking down a murderer.

In this book, Derek and Pauline have captured the essence of how a murder investigation progresses in a forensic department the joys of success and the frustrations of dealing with transient evidence; the stresses of managing human bodies, or parts of bodies, knowing that personal feelings have to be kept at bay until the scientific facts are established; putting in long, hard hours, often in difficult conditions, until the job is finished, and never, ever, expecting a 5 oclock departure, because that is simply not how forensic medicine works.

This book not only provides an insight into how forensic medicine works, it places you centre-stage as the work goes on around and about you. It leads you into strange places and will, at times, test your belief in humanity. One downside is that youll never be able to watch a fictional crime series again without a knowing smile and an extra-large slice of disbelief!

You will be gripped, fascinated, enthralled and (as we all are when doing this crucial job) occasionally appalled but that is the reality of the work involved when you have to solve a murder.

On your way to work, have you ever glanced at the person opposite and wondered what they do for a living? Its a common enough pastime. Its distinctly unlikely, though, that you would ever have guessed what our working lives entailed. You would have found nothing remarkable or odd in our appearance. You might well have wondered, however, about the unmistakable odour of decay occasionally trailing in our wake