Posted by For two decades Professor Marie Cassidy occupied one of the loneliest and most important offices in the country, State Pathologist. Born in 1955 in Rutherglen, Scotland, she graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1978 and initially trained as a histopathologist, basically tissues caused by disease. Luckily for us, in 1985 Cassidy crossed into forensic pathology. She became the first woman to work as a full-time forensic pathologist in the UK. For 13 years in Glasgow, she investigated everything from gangland executions to suicides, industrial accidents, and domestic tragedies. In 1997, Cassidy travelled to Dublin to meet legendary Professor John Harbison, then State Pathologist, to discuss the possibility of working within the Irish system. The meeting was barely over when she was rushed out under police escort to a murder scene in Grangegorman. By 1998 she was formally appointed Deputy State Pathologist, and in 2004 she succeeded Harbison to become Ireland’s first female State Pathologist. Over the next 14 years, Cassidy performed thousands of post-mortems and became central to some of the most disturbing and high-profile cases in modern Irish history. Most memorable for me at the time, she oversaw the Stardust exhumations, reopening wounds from one of the state’s most traumatic disasters to seek justice for those poor young people. Her expertise was not confined to Ireland. Cassidy worked internationally with the United Nations, helping to identify victims of war crimes and genocide in Bosnia. She also worked in Sierra Leone. Alongside this work, she maintained an academic career, holding professorships at both the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and Trinity College Dublin. She trained generations of doctors. She retired as State Pathologist in 2018. Her memoir, Beyond the Tape (2020), became a bestseller. She later turned to crime fiction, publishing Body of Truth in 2023 and Deadly Evidence in 2025. She also became a familiar face on Irish television, presenting Dr. Cassidy’s Casebook and bizzarely as a contestant on Dancing with the Stars Ireland. Today, Cassidy serves as a patron of Victim Support at Court (V-SAC), advocating for witnesses and families navigating the trauma of the legal system.
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