Dr Richard Shepherd: Lessons from 23,000 Postmortems- including Hungerford, Hillsborough and Princess Diana

Full Disclosure with James O'Brien

Global

Society & Culture

4.6 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2025

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Britain’s leading forensic pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd has performed over 23,000 postmortems and given evidence in some of the most high-profile cases of our time, from Hungerford to Hillsborough, from Princess Diana to David Kelly. But his fascination with death began much earlier, when his mother died suddenly from heart disease and he was left with questions no one could answer.

In this episode of Full Disclosure, Dr Shepherd tells James O’Brien how that childhood loss set him on the path to forensic medicine, how his father’s emotional openness shaped him, and how a book brought into school by a friend gave him his first glimpse of a profession that would define his life. He reflects on the leap from observing to performing autopsies, the responsibility of telling the truth in court, and the lasting emotional toll of cases that never leave you.

Candid, unflinching and deeply human, Dr Shepherd shares how a lifetime spent uncovering the truth about death has shaped the way he lives.

Find out more about Dr Richard Shepherd Time of Death tour here

Transcript

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1:02.1	This is a global player original podcast.
1:18.9	Hello and welcome to Full Disclosure, a podcast project designed to let me spend more time than I would ever go on the radio with interesting people.
1:21.1	Dr Richard Shepard, welcome.
1:23.6	It's a tough introduction to this, but you'll be used to it.
1:24.7	I've not interviewed you before.
1:28.9	You are Britain's leading, have been Britain's leading forensic pathologist. I read here 23,000 post-mortems. Yeah. Over a career, 40 years. Yes,
1:37.2	I appreciate it. Not sort of rushing them off. But latterly on a mission also to remove some of the mystique that surrounds your profession.
1:47.2	Yeah, I think there is this great interest in crime, in violent crime, and there's a lot of false
1:55.6	ideas have been built up. What happens? What we do when we're investigating it and how it is involved
	...

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