Patholigist

When someone has been murdered at a crime scene, a pathologist, who is a medically trained member of the team, will examine the body to attempt to establish the cause of death and to attempt to gather more in information on how they died. They would to this by performing an Autopsies, this is to gain information about how they died and information about the body leading to their death. A pathologist would also in some cases supervise the collection of evidence from the body at the crime scene, this ensures that evidence is not contaminated and also that the body is not damaged during the investigation as this could potentially affect the results. Pathologist collect further evidence from the body, this evidence can include includes hairs or fibres found on the body, these could potentially come from the person who killed them. The pathologist is to then write a report on their findings from the autopsy, this will report will contain information about how an individual died and the how their death occurred. This report will be used and presented in any court.

In the Christine Jessop case a pathologist should have been consulted however there is no death report due to the body being found in a different county who didn't file a report. It would have been helpful to have a pathologist in the Christine Jessop case as we would have been able to identify the cause of death as well as any other evidence.

Pathologists will only be contacted when a person’s death are unknown or suspicious. They are likely to be contacted with a murder investigations to determine how a person was killed. A pathologist examines the bodies, or performing an autopsies to identify how a person died. A pathologist can provide the investigators with additional information about potential suspects, information such as their predominant hand as you would be able to tell by the bruising left behind. A pathologist is required in every case involving a body and their roles don't change as they're examining the dead body.