This is Australian True Crime with Michelle Laurie.

Have you ever wondered what kind of person could defend a murderer?

Have you ever wondered what kind of person does autopsies for a living?

Well, you're about to meet one of each.

Our guests today are Joanna Glenn Gary, head of forensic pathology services at the Victorian

Institute of Forensic Medicine, and at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine

and Timothy Marsh, a senior criminal lawyer who has spent his career working on some of

Victoria's most serious cases. Their work sits at different points within the justice system,

but regularly intersects in courtrooms and investigations where medical evidence and legal

argument have to be interpreted

together under intense scrutiny. Together they explore what it means to work in that space and how

two very different professions are brought together by the same question at the centre of so many

cases. What actually happened? This is Australian true crime.

We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created,

the Wurundri, Woi Wurang people of the Koolan Nation.

And a warning, this episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.

I suppose the thing that would be more surprising to listeners is there's more that brings us

together than drives us apart in this sense.

And I think one of the things that both Joe and I are very sort of animated about is

trying to dispel the myths around the nature of what we do.

CSI has obviously done a lot to create an entire mythology

around forensic pathology, and you needn't look very far to find umpteen examples of the law

...