After eighteen years spent in autopsy between “500 and 600” bodies, the ex-forensic scientist of Corsica, Paul Marcaggi, is certain: “If life is absurd, death has nothing to envy”. A privileged witness to the evolution of forensic medicine over the past thirty years, the expert put away his scalpel in 2008. Lack of means, lack of recognition, lack of sleep, the reality of a forensic expert, he confides in 20 minutes, is not that of ” Experts in Miami ”.
To lift the veil on this often fantasized profession, Paul Marcaggi – also known on the island under the name of “Doctor death” – records, in an eponymous book * published this Thursday, the files which have populated his daily life. A father and a son who kill each other with knives, a Corsican nationalist riddled with bullets at a wedding, the assassination of Prefect Erignac one evening in February 1998… The memories of the ex-lawyer also paint the portrait of a Corsican company
faced with death and violence.
What, in your career, brought you along this path of forensic medicine?
I got into forensic medicine completely by chance. I was a medical student in Marseille and I was preparing a first degree in emergency medicine. And one day, one of my Corsican friends called out to me at the bar, saying: “I don’t want to register myself in forensic medicine. Sign up with me! “. I don’t know why, but I did. He never performed an autopsy, and I became a forensic scientist!
Then you worked in Corsica for more than ten years. How did forensics evolve during this time?
Everything changed. At the beginning, we went to crime scenes with a battery-powered lamp, without clothes, without anything, there was no DNA, it was really “artisanal”. When I started, the “bluestar” – this liquid which allows to highlight the traces of blood or semen – did not exist, for example. Now you have experts in white overalls with gloves, masks, the approach is more scientific. Procedures have also changed, as have the profiles of the gendarmes and police officers who work alongside us.
Why and how did you select the fifteen autopsies that appear in your book?
I wanted to proceed in sequence – the dead burned, drowned, hanged. The aim was to show the reality of forensic medicine, which is not necessarily that of Experts in Miami. And then, surprisingly, when you are a forensic or emergency doctor, you often proceed in sequence without being able to explain it. One day you will only autopsy drowned people. The following month, most of the victims will be burned. We don’t know why, it’s kind of a random draw. We therefore chose representative themes and cases to illustrate them.
As a preamble to your book, you explain that the exercise of this profession “requires putting as much distance as possible”. Why ?
I have always found it essential to put some distance from the body that had to be autopsied. And I stuck to it scrupulously throughout my career. If you do not put this distance, the risk is to lose your impartiality. If you put affect into what you are doing, at one point or another, it can distort your vision. It may start from a good feeling, but the day you find yourself at the helm of an assize court to detail your autopsy report, you can’t go wrong. What we ask of a legal expert is to be as objective as possible and to provide technical information.
Your book ends with the assassination of Prefect Claude Erignac on February 6, 1998. You were in charge of the autopsy. How did you live that night?
I arrived among the first on the scene, within twenty minutes of the incident. At first, we didn’t even know it was the préfet. Then when we found out, the pressure went up a notch. When some officials responsible for the investigation receive a phone call from the Minister of the Interior in person, it helps to build up that pressure. Afterwards, I tell you frankly, at the time, I did not think that I would be asked to do the autopsy. But I made sure to treat this file like any other. Looking back, I rejoice because if I had strayed from this impartial management, I would have been turned around by all parties involved.
Why did you decide to resign in 2008?
I am still an expert with the Court of Appeal. For example, I intervene during police custody, I always make reports. But I decided to stop the autopsies because I felt that I had covered the issue, and the conditions in which I exercised this profession no longer suited me. Forensic medicine is one of the hospital’s many poor relatives and today there is a vocation crisis. Because when you are woken up every night for ten years, you kind of forget your family life. So it was about time I bowed out.
*Doctor death, by Paul Marcaggi and Denis Demonpion (Ed. Robert Laffont)