What Nobody Tells You About the Morgue (with Patricia Cornwell) | Forensic Files

If you told me when I was a kid that this would be how I spent my time, I would have not only told you you were
crazy, but I would have probably run from the room screaming. Cuz that was not how I envisioned my
life. >> [music] [music] >> I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. And I'm here today with writer Patricia
Cornwell. She's the author of many, many books, including 29 novels about forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta.
Patricia Cornwell's new memoir is called True Crime. Can you tell me about this picture on the cover of your book? This
is This is not exactly what I would expect. >> This picture was in 1997. Annie Leibovitz did um she was doing
photo shoot of me for Vanity Fair. And so we were we we were trying to get just the right picture. So first we
started in the Richmond Medical Examiner's office, and that picture um you may have seen it before. I'm at an
[clears throat] autopsy table and I have a cigarette hanging out of my mouth. And
and that was sort of the picture she was looking for, but the one you're talking
about was taken in the in [clears throat] the cooler of that of the Richmond Medical
Examiner's office, and yes indeed that is a dead body. And that was Annie Leibovitz took that photo. And the funny
thing is the picture that's on the cover when she was trying to take pictures of
me, Dr. Fierro, Marcella Fierro, who was the deputy chief at that time um and my
mentor she was across the room with her little Canon Sure Shot camera, and every
time Annie Leibovitz, the great Annie Leibovitz, is trying to take one of her pictures, Marcella's going snap, and the
little flash cube is going off, and Annie finally lowers her massive camera, she looks across the room and says,
"Could you please just not do that while I'm doing this?" >> You worked there in the in the '80s.
What What got you into the morgue? >> Well, that was not anything that I ever planned on and I'm glad you asked
because a lot of people they they've assumed that that is what that I was working there and while I was working
there, I got ideas for writing books. It was the total opposite. I started out a
journalist after college and within 6 or 8 months of being at at the Charlotte Observer in Charlotte Well, you know,
North Carolina in Charlotte, North Carolina, um they assigned me the police beat. And
that is what began my quote life of crime was running around, you know, the late hours of the night reporting on all
the crimes in the Charlotte area and ending up on homicide scenes and talking to rape victims and um shooting victims
and stabbing victims and all this sort of thing. And so, but the one thing that I never knew when I was doing the
police reporting is when I would go to a crime scene and the body was whisked away,
I didn't know where they're taking it and what are they doing with it. There wasn't really This was 1980 and 1981.
There wasn't much known about this sort of thing publicly except for the show Quincy, whenever that was long ago and
far away. When I finally wrote the Ruth Graham biography, I left journalism. I wrote a biography of my my dear friend
Ruth Graham and then I thought, "What am I going to do? I I'm going to try writing books about crime.
Maybe that's something I can do." But I'd never been to a medical examiner's office or a morgue. So, somebody got me
an interview at the Richmond Medical Examiner's Office and I met Dr. Fierro for the first time in 1984.
And she gave me a tour of the morgue and I began doing research there. I was already trying to write a murder mystery
and I would go talk to her. I would use their library. And after about the better part of a a year of that, I
wanted to see autopsies and that was not going to happen unless I would had some
sort of validity for being in the autopsy suite. And I said, "Well, what would it take to give me that validity?"
She said, "Well, if you could become a volunteer police officer, that might do it." So, I did.
>> Well, tell me about Tell me about that about seeing your first autopsy. I mean,
I'm I've always I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but there's so many people who go through
their whole lives never seeing a dead body. You know, maybe maybe you're with a loved one at the end of their life,
but even even then, you know, um what happens to you when you are surrounded by so many bodies?
>> It's not the same as seeing it on the news or on TV or in photographs when you're actually in the presence of
They're they're there's a weird energy. I I used to feel You know, the morgue is all the I yeah,
I call it the morgue. That's what I'm calling Hollywood, you know, Hollywood when it's just a
a word that means a lot of things. The autopsy suite, the medical examiner's facility. But when you're in that
autopsy suite with all those bodies, I used to I used to get so tired. I would get just so exhausted. It's in a
It's almost as if you felt like the dead were trying to suck the life out of you
because they're they're there and then here's this these living people are coming in and tending to them and most
of these people a lot of them have been traumatized. They've been in car wrecks or they've been murdered or or or
they've died all by themselves cuz they didn't have a doctor. Most people that end up there it's it's not a good thing.
It means something's happened that causes it to be a medical examiner's case. So,
I would find I was I was stunned by how tired I would get. Uh when I would leave at the end of the
day, it's I felt like someone had literally sucked the life out of me. When I would And part of it, I'm sure,
is my emotional shields of using a tremendous amount of energy and not to let these things get to me while I'm
standing there cuz you're no good for anyone if you let that get to you while you're
there. You cannot You don't cry in front of this. You don't You don't get hysterical. You don't flee the room. I
mean, these are patients who need to be taken care of. Someone needs to to to care about these people and the people
they've left behind and figure out what exactly happened to put you here because
it's not just about justice cuz sometimes there's not a villain. But it's also about life insurance policies
and and people trying to move on with their lives and they're needing the medical examiner to help them do that
because of the legal um complications and all that go with it. But it's um it is very Pictures are hard to look at,
but being there in person is a different experience altogether. >> Are there any I mean, this was a long
time ago, I know, but are there any cases that stick out to you from your time there?
>> Oh, I have many cases that stand out to me from from from being there. And also,
you know, I didn't we When I stopped working there, I didn't quit going to medical examiner's office.
I mean, I kept doing research there really throughout my whole career of at various not not just the not just in
Virginia, but met at other medical examiner's offices in other areas where I would go do research and
and spend several days watching cases with them and going to scenes all to keep myself
you know, uh um I don't It's It's keeping myself sort of trained. Sort of like an athlete where
you need to keep doing stuff so or you'll lose you'll lose it. So it I If you told me when I was a kid
that this would be how I spent my time, I would have not only told you you were crazy, but I would have probably run
from the room screaming. Cuz that was not how I envisioned my life. But it it is
but it's so important if you're going to write about it, let people feel it for what it is.
You know, when your eyes play tricks on you, you're down there sometimes and you
think somebody just moved on the table, but they didn't. Or um it's it's uh there's a strange strange energy in
there. I mean, you know, we don't know there there are theories about how long consciousness
kind of almost circles the body. And so particularly if somebody hadn't been dead long, if they hadn't weren't even
put in the cooler, they came straight from the crime scene and were were put right into the the autopsy room.
And you're looking at this person who is still not even that cold yet. And you look at their photograph and you
think they look just like themselves except that the energy that's in them is gone. It's
like a light bulb that's burned out. It still remains the same shape it was, but
the whatever was in it is gone. Where did it go? >> I was interviewing Sebastian Junger who
wrote this book In My Time of Dying. And I was fascinated >> a great author. >> He's such a great author
>> to get him you tell him I'm a fan. >> I will tell him. My mother had just died and I just read
his book and I was with my mother when she died and so I was very interested in this idea of what happens exactly after
death cuz I was alone with her for a number of minutes. And I read his book and he
he talks a lot about how for so long we've been concerned that when the heart stops life is over. But actually, as you
were talk you're the activity in your brain goes on for much longer. And so this idea that we're just
counting death at when you have cardiac arrest when we know scientifically that the brain continues to fire for
sometimes hours after cardiac arrest is a real I mean this is the stuff that we're just starting to get to the
scientific breaking point of what actually does death mean? >> Well, it you know, people think they
would assume that I am a very fatalistic morbid kind of person who is convinced that death is waiting around the corner
every other second. And and by the way, I I do know that danger might be around the corner every other second, but I
don't have the attitude about death that people would expect that I do. I actually have a very hopeful attitude
that I would not have had had I not been around it so much. And I've been around
it so much that I don't believe it. Not the way other people believe it. I believe it is the end of your biological
existence right here and now, but I do not it is believed it's the end of you. And even if I weren't a a religious
person, a spiritual person, I would still believe that after what I've seen. >> When you were
back there with all these surrounded by dead bodies in in the morgue, you you decided that you should maybe write
about a medical examiner. Tell me about the decision to create a character around a medical
examiner. >> It was all because I couldn't get published. Postmortem was my my fourth attempt. And if that hadn't
been accepted, I I would have think I might have quit. It's hard to say cuz I I sometimes don't
know when to give up, but that would have been four attempts at crime novels that nobody wanted.
But um an editor who had rejected three of my books suggested I make Scarpetta the
main character cuz she was a minor character in my earlier ones. And the person told me
that is your best character. That's who I want to hear about. And by the way, that these fanciful stories you're
writing about buried treasure and and cheated wills and you know, and archaeology digs where
something bad happens. Is that what you see at the medical examiner's office? I said, "Never."
Never. Death there is ugly. She said, "But I want to see what you see." So that's how Postmortem started.
>> When I was reading through all of what what made me so jealous about the way you've lived your life, you know,
besides the helicopters, I keep saying I have to get my pilot's license and I haven't done it yet, but I was
I'm on my way. I'm 42. By the time I'm 43, the lessons will have started. >> That's about the age I was when I got my
I didn't get my pilot's license till I was like 43. I think I was 43 when I got it.
>> Okay, well, it's not it's not too late. >> No, it's not. Honey, you're just getting
started. You're >> [laughter] >> As my mother used to say, you're a spring chicken.
>> Well, I just But here's the wonderful thing that I think that you've been able
to do. And it's I I hope what I like so much about what I get to do is, you know, this morning I was
talking to people who disentangle whales from fishing equipment. And, you know, yesterday I was talking about a wholly
different I was talking about cybercrimes. And the wonderful thing is that it's always different. And you get
to have these new experiences, but you what you've done is you have jumped in the deep end. If
you're going to write a book, it seems to me you need to know what you're writing about. You know, for example, um
the scuba diving. You wanted to you decided one day, I want to I want I How about underwater crime?
>> That's exactly how that happened. >> Why not? But I I better go scuba diving.
And you did it. >> Yeah, now I want to set something on us on the moon, but I think that I'm not
sure rockets are going to be in my future, but I mean, if I could but I'm just going to tell you and you I bet you
would too. Someone said, "If you could take a rocket to the moon and write a story about it, would you do it?"
>> In one second. >> There you go. Me, too. Just go out and experience whatever anybody lets you and
as you as a writer, use your your research interest as an excuse to do something that you wouldn't do
otherwise. I would never have gone scuba diving had I not wanted to do it for research. Um I I wouldn't have occurred
to me. Um it's a lot of work. It's a lot of training. And it's scary. I I find it
scary trying to breathe underwater. When you even now after all the times I've done it and I haven't been I haven't
been in a number of years now. Who knows if I will again. But when I first jump in the water
and I'm floating and waiting to go down the line down to do you do you scuba dive?
>> Yeah, I yeah, I just I did just at a 110 ft through a cave and I thought Phoebe,
the goal here is not to panic. >> [laughter] >> But don't you agree that if you didn't
do it, you would never write it the way you could write it because you experienced it?
>> Well, that was so interesting your when you went to the to the body farm. I we
also did a story about a body farm in Texas. Not the original in Tennessee, but you said some Yes, we you said
something about when you first got there and it was the same experience that I had.
I thought there was going to be product big protocols with suits that I was going to have to wear and and I
walked in there and they gave me a little pair of boots to wear on top of my shoes and
they said this is for the decomp fluid and nothing else and here we go and you they just gave you a little pair of
gloves. >> Yeah, well back exactly and what they don't give you is a surgical mask. And
if And clue for the future. If they suggest that you put Vicks up your nose, oh, no,
no, no. Do not ever do that. The real pros know you don't ever put Vicks up your nose when you get into a stinky
situation whether it's a decomp in the morgue or at the body farm or at a crime scene because let's the science of odor
is is molecular. And so what you're smelling is particulate that's that's that's causing the stink. It may be
invisible and microscopic, but that the the putrefaction element of this is something those
molecules then get stuck in the ointment you've just put up your nose. So now what you've done is you put a fly
catcher right in your face instead of across the room. So don't use Vicks or anything up your nose. No no petroleum
jelly, nothing up your nose. The other thing is as awful as it and the smells are my the the thing that I have the
hardest time with. I really do. I cannot stand it. And the body farms are terrible cuz decomp is awful. But but if
you don't experience something, if you have a reason to want to experience something, then you should do it. As
long as it's appropriate. I mean, don't break the law or kill somebody do something awful. But there's not there's
no there's no substitute for showing up. And and don't forget that's what autopsy
means. Autopsia is the Greek word to mean to to look for yourself, to see for yourself. And I encourage anybody
that's doing anything that requires research. If you can do something that helps you understand it better
by participating. Whether it's flying a plane or scuba diving or walking through
a certain area or to explore. I mean, as kids we explored. And then we get to be adults and we're
not supposed to do that anymore. Yes, we are. You haven't been to the moon. So you haven't set a a crime on the moon
yet. Is there any other Is there any other store experience you want to have? I'm
jealous of Agatha Christie because there was so many cool things she got to do that you can't I mean, I don't know that
you can do now like like going on archaeology digs, you know, going to archaeology things
like in Egypt like she did. And you know, these wonderful pictures of her on a balcony overlooking the pyramids. And
I would love to to to see things like that. But I you know, there I don't know what may be
ahead. But I do know that the world is not that open like it once was. You've got to be careful where you go. I would
love to be on a safari in Africa, not I mean not not the bad kind, but to see these majestic animals in person in a
safe way cuz I love elephants, tigers, bears. I love them all. >> We talked about this, but you started
out, you know, your journalism career started out you were you were doing crime reporting.
>> Um I still to this day sometimes, I don't know what this says about me, but I'll
turn the police scanner on um cuz they have these apps now on your phone. You don't have to just have one in your car
and I listen to the police scanner from Chicago where I'm from and I don't know why it gives me comfort in this odd way,
but I also just think it's such a weird interesting look into humanity to into who just the stuff that
you hear. What was it like when you turn that scanner on for the first time when
you were doing the the crime beat at to just hear all the things that go on that we don't
hear about every day. >> It completely shattered my view of reality when I began to see the kind of
crimes that were going on that you don't know about if you're just your average person, but if you're listening to the
scanner and I had one on my desk in the newsroom and I had one in the staff car I drove. So everywhere I was
um when I was on on duty on my beat that, you know, I was listening to a scanner.
And um and and that absolutely shattered my world view. I mean, I would drive home
from work and now I'm scared and I didn't used to be. You know, a shadow could fall across my
windshield and I'd jump in the car because something's just I'm startled easily. Had I not been a police
reporter, I really don't think I would be sitting here today. I don't know I mean, it never occurred to me to write
about crime. I never read a murder mystery in my life. Um I never had. I never did till I started trying to write
them. I still don't read much in the way of that. I never have and it's not a disparagement of the genre. It's more a
statement of how poorly read I am. >> [laughter] >> But, um it But, yes, you you you can't see what you cannot look
death in the face and violence in the face and walk away unchanged unless there's something not quite right with
you, in my opinion. It's it it you you can't be a naive person and think that bad things don't really happen if you're
nice. It's not true. Bad things happen to all kinds of people who are minding their own business and some lightning
bolt of a whack job comes out of nowhere and decides to shoot or stab them for no
reason, even. Or abduct somebody. I mean, it's awful. But, but but you can't you also can't
forget there's a lot of good people in the world, and I know plenty of them, too. If you
had to to think about, and I get I get not reading a lot of crime. People say that
to me, too. Phoebe, aren't you you're surrounded by crime all the time. And I think to the Well, I it's like if you if
you sold shoes every day, you wouldn't come home and read about shoes. You wouldn't want to. I feel, you know what
I mean? I I'm so interested in million other things besides crime, but if you had to
recommend a a crime novelist, you know, that that you admire, would it would it be Agatha Christie? Who would it be?
>> listen. There's nobody like Agatha Christie. And and you know, and it's funny, um
I I One of the things the stories I tell in my books in my memoir, I mean, is that it was probably about 1984, and I
was trying my hand at writing my first murder mystery, and I did not know what I was doing. I couldn't I had no earthly
idea. And it's a terrible feeling when you sit down and the it doesn't talk to you.
It's like you're playing a dead keyboard, and and and I I just I thought, I don't know where to go with
all this. I'm not good at this. I'm never going to be good in this. I'd already started doing, I think, some of
the research at the ME's office, but I still couldn't figure out how to tell the story. I mean, how do you write
about autopsies but but tell a whodunit at the same time? I I I there was no formula for what I
was trying to do. I was I didn't realize I was kind of creating a new one. And so
but so I had this dream one night where Agatha I was waiting in a line and Agatha Christie was doing a book
signing. It was so real. It's like I was watching it. I was I was awake and asleep at the same time. My eyes were
shut, but I couldn't move. And there's this movie playing in my head like this. And I'm in that line and I get up to the
table and it's Agatha Christie and looks just like her with the big hat and she had on all black. And she's just signing
books and not looking at anybody. So when I get to her, I just said, "Thank you. It's an honor
to meet you." And she's signing and she says something. She says, "You will take my place."
And I said, "Excuse me?" And she looked up at me briefly and she said, "You will take my place." And she
pushed the book back to me. And that was it. The dream was over. And I wo- I woke up and I thought, "What
the hell was that?" And I looked her up in our World Book Encyclopedia and that she looked just like the picture in
there that I'm not sure I'd ever seen before. But the point was of course I've never taken her place and
could never take her place and nobody will take her place. But it's almost like something from beyond
through that entity that was in my head. You know, we talk about where do people go
when they die? I don't know. But it was like something said, "Don't give up. Don't give up. You're going to do better
than you think. Just hang in there." >> Figured You figured it out. >> Well, I don't know that I figured it out, but
I always would recommend Agatha Christie to people because she's not just a a mystery writer. She's very sci-
scientific. She's exact and she is a Rubik's Cube. You know, she's a walking Rubik's Cube. I mean, seriously, how she
comes up with her puzzles, I don't know. What a mind that woman had. Um I love Thomas Harris.
If anybody's not read Silence of the Lambs, to me that's probably one of the very best crime novels ever written.
Truman Capote In Cold Blood is worth reading. But I don't read a lot of crime. See,
it's like you said about the person who sells shoes maybe. [laughter] I tend to I love non-fiction. I love to
read good biographies. I Let's see, what else do I like to read? I like to read poetry, believe it or
not. I have a I have a a copy of T.S. [clears throat] Eliot's The Waste Land on my shelf over
here. Now and then I'll pull it out cuz it's most beautiful writing I've ever read in my life. Is that is my favorite
favorite poem. And how on the earth somebody wrote something like that cuz you know,
in my heart of hearts, as much as I I I love my research and being able to explore things that most people don't
know about and finding a way to incorporate them into a story, at the end of the day what I always dreamed of
when I was young and writing was I wanted to be a good writer. And so to read people like Hemingway or
T.S. Eliot and to look at what they do and to study the way they put a sentence together,
it's like watching Roger Federer play tennis. It's like watching the Cirque du Soleil
or Olympic gymnasts do things that I go, "How on earth did you just do that?" >> Patricia, thank you very much for
talking. >> Well, it's been my pleasure.

Phoebe Judge interviews crime novelist Patricia Cornwell about how working in an autopsy suite inspired her to create her most famous character: forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta. Plus, Phoebe and Patricia talk about visiting “body farms,” listening to police scanners, and why Patricia says she would have “run from the room screaming” had she known what her future would look like.

This is the first episode in our new series, What Happened Next? Follow us for more videos coming soon.

Chapters: 0:00 Intro 1:54 What got you into the morgue? 4:25 Surrounded by dead bodies 8:37 What happens when we die? (Sebastian Junger) 10:21 Creating Kay Scarpetta 14:10 Visiting the "body farm" 17:28 Police scanners 22:40 Favorite crime writers

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Brief Summary

Patricia Cornwell discusses her memoir, morgue experiences, and writing journey, including her character Kay Scarpetta and the importance of firsthand research.

Key points

Patricia Cornwell's Journey. From journalist to crime novelist, Cornwell reflects on her unexpected career path.
The Energy of the Dead. Cornwell describes the emotional and physical impact of being in the morgue.
Understanding Death. Exploring the complexities of death and consciousness through personal experiences.
Writing Challenges. The speaker shares their struggles with writing a murder mystery.
The Influence of Agatha Christie. The speaker reflects on Agatha Christie's impact on their writing journey.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I would have probably run from the room screaming.

Reflecting on her unexpected career path.

0:03WatchJun 30, 2026

Tension

45/ 100Some tension

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