Unnatural Causes

by Dr Richard Shepherd

  I went straight to the desk where Jen was bending over her books and put my arms around her and apologized for being so wrapped up in my work and for being cold and detached at home. Knowing nothing could be worse than the cold detachment of the family whose bodies I had just examined, I whispered in her ear a promise that I would try harder to be a more loving, open, emotional husband.

  It later emerged that the father who had shot his own family had not shot himself in the head. His injuries were not life-threatening. As soon as he was discharged from hospital, he was sent straight to a psychiatric unit. A police officer I met later, on another case, told me that it had been easy for the father’s defence team to convince everyone that he was deranged enough to be charged with manslaughter with diminished responsibility.

  Manslaughter usually results in a lighter sentence than murder, so of course it is preferred by defence teams. And diminished responsibility was often in those days achievable. Later, the 2010 law reforms tightened the definition of diminished responsibility, so that it now can be applied only to those with a recognized medical condition. But for many years before these reforms, the plea of diminished responsibility was fair game for defence counsel and I fear was often abused. In this particular case, however, it did not occur to me, or apparently anyone, that the father could be anything but mad. You’d have to be completely crazy to shoot your family. Wouldn’t you?

  I assumed the case would end there, but in forensic medicine, despite the fact that patients are certainly dead, cases have a habit of coming back to life. Some months later, I was called to give evidence at the father’s trial. I was amazed to find that he had been charged, not with manslaughter after all, but with the murder of his family. The police officer told me quietly that the father had begun a relationship with a female resident in the psychiatric hospital. He had confided to his new lover that he was just pretending to be mad and that in fact family life had been getting on his nerves. He had simply shot his family because he was tired of them.

  You might think this is clear evidence of psychiatric disorder but, when the lover passed her information on to the authorities, they immediately initiated in-depth interviews and the result was that he was judged to be of sound mind. The charges were changed to murder. The father was found guilty and given a life sentence. The terrible scene of family destruction in the heart of that house of apparent harmony had been not the result of madness but cold-blooded, intentional and planned homicide.

  His trial reminded me of my resolution to be a more caring husband. I don’t think anyone, least of all my children, ever accused me of being an uncaring father. I got them ready in the mornings and as soon as I was home from work I was busy with reading, cooking, homework, games, bedtime. But I was definitely slipping in the husband department.

  Jen wanted a demonstrative, loving husband. I thought I was demonstrating my love by taking on the lion’s share of responsibility for home and childcare during her long training. However, when I thought about the father who had just been jailed, I realized that he might have appeared to take care of his family adequately – while actually silently planning their murders. I realized that it was, in fact, perfectly possible to participate fully in family life while one’s mind was somewhere else completely. Did I do the same thing? Was I thinking about work too much while playing the good father? Could this be the reason Jen was complaining? Was she in fact asking for more loving, focused engagement?

  I pondered. But I did nothing. We were back to a busyness which seemed to preclude any loving engagement. One of us was always just about to leave for work. And if we were both home there were a thousand topics which required our attention: the children and their schoolwork, difficulties at work, the house repairs …

  I wondered how I was supposed to fit love into all this? Should I write it in my diary: ‘Staff meeting 5 p.m. Love 7 p.m.’? And what was I supposed to do? Bring home flowers? Light candles at meal times? I would have liked to ask other men how they managed to make warmth, humour and this love business a part of their everyday married lives, but such a conversation would not have been acceptable in work circles. In fact, it would have been impossible. We talked about homicide, not love. And so I blundered on.

  17

  The Crown Prosecution Service eventually contacted me about the Anthony Pearson case. His girlfriend, Theresa Lazenby, had been charged with murder and her trial was shortly to take place.

  There was a pretrial meeting (a luxury Simpson enjoyed throughout his career but which I have seen disappear in the course of mine) and before it I refreshed my memory with the notes and photographs of the case. Prosecuting counsel had also sent me some more material, including transcripts of Theresa’s police interviews.

  As I read, I remembered how the detectives who interviewed her had found it hard to connect the strangled body of an adult male with that young woman. How protectively they had spoken about her. I soon began to understand why.

  In the interview, Theresa explained that she had known Anthony for five years. She had a four-year-old daughter by him who lived with her parents. She divided her time between the flat she shared with him, where she usually spent her nights, and her parents’ house nearby, where she spent her days.

  At the time of Anthony’s death, Theresa’s parents and daughter were away on holiday. She described the day in detail and I can only say that it was a very ordinary day that ended in a very extraordinary way. The juxtaposition of the two was almost surreal. She bought a birthday card for a friend and video-recorded a TV show for her absent family, went to her grandmother’s to ask after her grandfather, who was poorly. She tried unsuccessfully to borrow a little to help pay for a holiday she planned with friends in Tenerife. So far, so normal.

  Later, she met Anthony at the pub. He was drinking heavily and strangely annoyed with her for arriving early. He did not approve of the holiday (‘You slag!’) and then demanded money to buy more drinks and then for cannabis.

  Theresa borrowed money for Anthony from her occasional boss behind the bar. A complicated evening of drinking, cannabis and anger followed. Theresa herself consumed only one half of lager and no cannabis and her description of events showed her as the appeasing girlfriend of a very erratic and difficult lad. By the time they arrived home with a takeaway pizza, her statement suggested he was out of control:

  I gave him his pizza in the front room and he said he’d lost the cannabis and I said: don’t be silly. So I started searching through his pockets and he pushed me away against the wall … he threw two glass ashtrays at the wall … And I said: you always have to break things. He said: yeah, that’s right.

  He just freaked out and he started pulling the videos off the mantelpiece and throwing things around, he was shouting and he started pulling the record player apart and I went to hold him to stop him doing it any more (crying) and he punched me in the head and I fell over and I cut my hand (shows palm of right hand cut) and there was glass all over the place and I was lying by the sitting room door and he couldn’t open it because my head was there so he kept banging my head with the door.

  He went into the toilet and he was calling me and so I went in and he cut his arm with a razor blade on purpose … I got a towel and I said: don’t be silly. I got a towel and put it around his arm, I think it was his right arm, I think he flicked the towel off first. Then he pulled the string out of the light socket …

  I went in our bedroom and he was throwing more things, my little ornaments. He went into the kitchen. I’ve got a glass dining table and I said please don’t smash it but he picked up some salt and pepper pots and went into the bedroom and threw them out of the window. And he picked up the mirror so I closed the window and I grabbed him and we both fell back on the bed (sobbing) and I was holding him.

  He cut my arm. I don’t know what it was but I moved my arm (shows right forearm cuts). I moved my arm and he elbowed me in the stomach. I put my arm over again, he cut and bit my arm (shows cuts and bruising right upper ar
m). I picked up a piece of tie at the side of the bed (sobbing), it was on the bedside cabinet on the left side and I just strangled him with it. I didn’t want to hurt him, I just wanted to stop him hurting me, I just didn’t know, I just didn’t want him hurting me any more. I was shouting at him to leave me alone, to get off me. Get off me! Get off me! Then when he stopped hitting me I ran out of the house and came here.

  Q: When you were strangling Tony, were you on top of him on the bed, or him on top of you or side by side, which was it?

  A: We was near enough side by side. I was on the left side of the bed. I was on my back. He was on my leg below me. I wasn’t trapped. He hit me in the stomach a few times, I got the tie around his neck … (sobbing)

  Q: Carry on …

  A: I crossed the tie over, I pulled it tight to stop him hitting me. I don’t know how long for but when he stopped punching me I ran out of the house and ran here.

  Q: Did you mean to kill him?

  A: (sobbing) No, I didn’t want to kill him.

  Q: Did you think you’d killed him?

  A: I knew I’d hurt him because he kept trying to catch his breath. He went purple. His mouth, his tongue, his tongue was sticking out … I looked at him. I knew I hurt him. I just had to get out of the house. I had to get here to get help for Tony. I told the man straight away, the policeman.

  Theresa went on to say that Tony had assaulted her in the past but, amid much sobbing, that she loved him and felt he needed her. It seemed she was a very young mother – she and Tony must have had the baby when they were still in their teens – trapped in an abusive domestic relationship by her belief that he needed her.

  I was moved by her protests, her insistence that this was the first time she had retaliated and then only under immense physical threat from Tony. Sometimes perpetrators seem more like victims, and Theresa was both suffering and remorseful. But the prosecution was planning to rely on my evidence. Which had to be unbiased. So I was determined to adhere to the truth, with its beautiful simplicity, and not allow emotion, with all its treachery, to muddy that simplicity.

  The case conference was held in one of the Crown Prosecution Service rooms above the Old Bailey. The courtrooms are majestic and wood-panelled: there is no court in the UK that gives participants more of a sense of justice, its history and importance, than Court 1 of the Old Bailey.

  There is nothing majestic, however, about the offices above.

  I waited in a room with battered furniture and ill-fitting windows and suddenly counsel, a senior and a junior, burst in. They had come straight from their case in the court below, still wearing their gowns, throwing their wigs on the table, greeting me by name before the more formal proceedings began. The two detectives arrived shortly afterwards. Spending time at a post-mortem together can be a bonding experience and we shook hands warmly like friends.

  We sat around a large, scratched table drinking tea from china mugs – barristers didn’t do polystyrene – with the various files and photographs spread out before us. All of the Metropolitan Police photographs were put into small folders with stiff brown covers bound by black plastic rings.

  I was silent as everyone else discussed Theresa Lazenby’s plea. The charge was murder, but they thought it was highly likely that her counsel would offer a plea of guilty to manslaughter with diminished responsibility – which, of course, carried a much shorter sentence. The detectives were keen that this would be accepted. It was obvious that they liked Theresa and that they believed she had acted in self-defence. Indeed, unusually when the defendant has been charged with murder, they had not even objected when she was released on bail.

  ‘Have you read her police interview, Dr Shepherd?’ senior counsel asked me.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ve seen the pictures of what he did to her before she grabbed the tie?’ asked a detective.

  ‘No, I didn’t receive those pictures.’

  There was a lot of shuffling and then the barrister produced a folder. The police photo folders I usually saw contained pictures of murder scenes and of post-mortems. This folder was different. From the pages stared a pretty young woman, who was very much alive.

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘This is Theresa.’

  Her youth and health lit up the pictures. She was fresh-faced and her long, red hair was sensibly tied back. Just as the detectives had told me all those months ago, she was rather sweet-looking. A world apart from the usual murder suspect.

  I carefully examined each photo while everyone else sipped their tea and chatted. Finally, I looked up.

  I said, ‘I think …’

  Then I paused. Was I sure? I did not want to be blinded by any preconceptions of the case into forgetting the horrific consequences of a mistake.

  The police officers watched me intently, waiting. The lawyers frowned.

  The pause went on too long.

  ‘Yes?’ prompted senior counsel in a tone that indicated my hesitation could be jeopardizing the credibility of what I was about to say.

  Then I remembered that nagging doubt I had felt on the day of the post-mortem. It was caused, even then, by a dissonance between fact and story. And now I had found another major divergence between the truth and Theresa’s version of it.

  Yes. I was sure.

  I said, ‘I think all Theresa’s injuries are self-inflicted.’

  Counsel for the prosecution gaped at me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She did all these things to herself.’

  His junior colleague reached for the photos.

  ‘Those cuts on her arm. You’re saying she made them?’

  ‘I believe so. I do not believe that she killed Anthony Pearson in self-defence because he was attacking her with glass, razors, what have you.’

  They exchanged glances.

  ‘You’ll say that in court?’

  ‘Yes. I’d like more time to study this case, of course.’

  ‘How …?’ The detective inspector was unshockable. But he looked miserable. ‘How can you be so sure that Tony Pearson didn’t cut her?’

  In fact, the injuries in the pictures bore all the classic hallmarks of self-infliction. If you’re being attacked, you get out of the way, twist, move, do something: you can’t help it. Unless you’re being pinned down – which Theresa says she wasn’t – or you’re immobilized by drugs or alcohol – which she clearly wasn’t – then you simply don’t let someone slice your skin over and over again in the same direction and in the same place.

  And there was further evidence. The wounds were only in the most common sites for self-inflicted injuries (the sites are common because they’re easily accessible) and the force used was only moderate. It’s not hard to be forceful when you’re in a fury and cutting someone else. It’s very difficult if you’re injuring yourself.

  I explained all this.

  ‘These certainly weren’t defence injuries,’ I said.

  The two barristers looked at each other again and then at the police officers. I noticed once more that, although the detectives had charged her with murder, it was clear they liked Theresa. One of them picked up the folder containing her pictures.

  ‘Look at her face. Tony Pearson must have scratched her there,’ he said.

  I shook my head.

  ‘No. These are fingernail injuries.’

  I held a hand up to my own face and mimed scratching it in exactly the same way, in exactly the same place.

  ‘If I remember rightly, the victim’s fingernails were bitten down. They were far too short to make these scratches.’

  I reached for the post-mortem folder. The notes I had made at the post-mortem were attached and as I moved them the air became lightly scented with that smell, its pungency like snapped elder branches, of the mortuary.

  I flicked through the folder rapidly until I found a picture in which Anthony’s fingers were clearly visible.

  ‘Yes, he obviously bit his nails. They wouldn’t have been sharp enough to inflict the scratches to
her face.’

  I handed it over. The detectives studied it and passed it to senior counsel, who put on his glasses to peer closely before dropping it in front of junior counsel, who glanced at it with difficulty and then shut the book rapidly.

  I picked up the pictures of Theresa.

  ‘On the other hand …’ I held one up in which her fingers were visible. ‘Her nails are cut to a sensible length but she could certainly scratch her own face with them.’

  They passed it around. Then there was a silence.

  ‘And the bite mark on her arm?’ demanded the first lawyer.

  ‘She could reach her upper arm with her own mouth.’

  I demonstrated, not very ably, by biting at my own arm. Then I opened the photo folder again.

  ‘And look carefully, the size of the bite marks indicate a small mouth, too small for a man. We can confirm that by measuring her mouth, of course, but we’d need to get a forensic odontologist to examine her. Bite marks are highly individual.’

  There was another silence.

  ‘I did notice in your statement,’ I said, turning to the inspector, ‘that when Theresa appeared outside the police station you initially called an ambulance. And then –’

  ‘When we examined the injuries, we cancelled it,’ he agreed.

  ‘Because you didn’t think they were too serious,’ I reminded him.

  Counsel asked, ‘Did you come here today expecting to tell us this?’

  ‘I hadn’t seen the pictures. But I certainly intended to tell you that Theresa’s version of events could not be true. I knew that when I read the transcript of her interview.’

  The prosecution lawyers were looking excited while the police officers were assuming the weary expression of those who suspect they have been duped.

  I was confident, at least partly because I had discussed this evidence with my colleagues back at Guy’s and we were all in agreement. I knew from the ligature marks that she could not have put the tie right around his neck, crossed it and pulled it tight as she described. The tie did not go right around his neck. It did not cross. It went only across the front of his neck.