Medical Detectives

by Robin Odell

  Enquiries into the background of Roberto Calvi’s death revealed the complex inner workings of the international banking system. Many murky secrets came to the fore and several unsolved mysteries were highlighted. It seemed that God’s Banker had close financial ties with the Vatican and, on the day before he died, he was stripped of his authority as head of Banco Ambrosiano. The bank crashed in 1982 with debts of £700m amid claims of false practices. These allegations had put Calvi under the spotlight in Italy where he faced charges of false accounting and exchange control violations. The inquest verdict in London did nothing to quell the rumours and Calvi’s name was linked to that of Michele Sindona who had been convicted of fraud in the USA. Calvi’s family believed he had been murdered to prevent him naming participants in the banking underworld.

  On 29 March 1983, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Lane, quashed the earlier suicide verdict and ordered a new enquiry because of irregularities in the way the first inquest was handled. Dr Paul was criticised because of statements he had made at the time. At the second inquest, under the direction of Dr Gordon Davies, the interests of the Calvi family were represented by George Carman QC. He pursued the angle that Roberto Calvi might have been rendered incapable of resistance due to the administration of an immobilising drug. This scenario would have enabled those who might wish to kill him to take his body by boat to the scaffolding platform under Blackfriars’ Bridge in order to suspend it and, thereby, hang him.

  An opposing theory was that Calvi, his pockets weighted with bricks, negotiated a twelve foot descent by ladder before stepping out onto the planking. Keith Simpson, cross-questioned by George Carman, said that when he examined the body, he ascertained that it had been immersed half-way up the legs. To counsel’s suggestion that the body must have been wet, the pathologist replied that he assumed the body was in the position in which it was found. He mentioned that he had known situations where hanging was achieved from a sitting position. He would not change his original findings as to the cause of death but admitted the possibility that Calvi might have met his end at the hands of others. While the inquest jury was clear about the cause of death it was left with two possibilities as to the circumstances. The coroner said he saw no obvious evidence that the dead man had been unlawfully killed. On 27 June, the jury returned an open verdict.

  During the following years, Calvi’s name was rarely out of the news for one reason or another. The Prime Minister of Italy, Bettino Craxi, suggested in 1984 that the banker’s death might have been linked to criminals operating within the banned P2 Masonic Lodge. And, in 1989, a court in Milan ruled that Calvi’s death was murder. By this time, Keith Simpson had passed on, but the legacy of his work continued to produce new forensic challenges. In the same year, private investigators carried out a reconstruction of the tragedy at the request of the dead banker’s son, Carlo Calvi. The original scaffolding from which the banker had been suspended had been kept in storage and the idea was to ask a stand-in to act the part of Calvi by climbing up on it. Examination of his shoes, similar to those worn by Calvi, carried traces of yellow paint and rust transferred to them from the metal scaffolding. No such traces had been found on the dead man’s footwear in 1982, an observation which was used to reinforce the argument that he had not acted on his own account. This development was reported by Professor David Bowen in connection with an insurance claim relating to the case.

  In June 1998, an Italian judge ordered that Calvi’s body should be exhumed to establish whether his death was suicide or murder. There were hopes that fingernail scrapings might still yield useful forensic material to help determine whether Calvi had handled the bricks used to weight his clothes. In July 2003, it was reported that Italian prosecutors had concluded Calvi was murdered and they suspected the involvement of four people. Their belief was that the banker had been killed by the Mafia for mishandling its money. The four men were put on trial in Rome in March 2004 when new evidence was introduced purporting to show that Calvi had been laundering treasury bonds stolen in 1982. In June 2007, a court in Rome decided there was insufficient evidence to convict the accused men and they secured an acquittal. The prosecution’s case was that Calvi had been lured from his London apartment and was strangled before being taken by boat along the River Thames to Blackfriars’ Bridge where his body was suspended from the scaffolding. This reconstruction of events was rejected by the judges.

  More than twenty years after the discovery of a body under Blackfriars’ Bridge, the mystery of Roberto Calvi’s death remains. Commenting on the affair, Lico Gelli, the former Master of the P2 Masonic Lodge, was quoted as saying, ‘It is not up to us to deliver judgements. Only God will be able to tell the truth.’ Quite possibly, Keith Simpson would have agreed.

  After his retirement in 1972 having served for twenty-six years at the Department of Forensic Medicine at London University, first as Reader and then as Professor, Keith Simpson was appointed Emeritus Professor and continued to lecture and examine at various universities, including Oxford, Cardiff and St Andrews. Despite all his accomplishments, perhaps the thing he regretted most was not being honoured with a knighthood. That would have given him parity with Spilsbury and Smith. He was awarded a CBE in 1978 and after being subsequently overlooked in the honours lists, he expressed his disappointment to Joe Gaute, his publisher, whose encouraging response was, ‘Don’t worry Keith, it will come.’ Unfortunately, although thoroughly merited, it never did.

  Apart from Francis Camps with whom he had a fractured relationship, Simpson achieved many plaudits from his contemporaries during his lifetime. Dr Ray Williams, Director of the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory, said of him, ‘He has a gift for the most lucid exposition of the subject I have ever heard,’ adding, ‘He is a real giant in his profession’. His gifts as a teacher and explainer were widely recognised and he noted a moment of quiet satisfaction in his memoirs, Forty Years of Murder. In 1970, after giving evidence at the Old Bailey, he was handed a note written to him by Leslie Boyd, the Senior Clerk to the court. It read, ‘If I may respectfully say so, I still think you give evidence better than anyone else I know or can remember – and that includes Spilsbury.’ The enjoyment of the comment was no doubt the greater for besting Spilsbury, at least in the Clerk’s opinion.

  Keith Simpson was, naturally, a member or fellow of many learned and distinguished clubs and societies but, perhaps, one of the least well known was Our Society, formerly The Crimes Club, a dining venue for medico-legal practitioners. Formed in 1903, the club had a formidable membership which included Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Bernard Spilsbury. Simpson’s contemporaries, Francis Camps and Donald Teare, were also members. In 1979, he gave a memorable presentation of the Lydney Case which he entitled, ‘A Riddle of Maggots’. It was not recorded whether any of the diners had to leave the table but the subject matter certainly called for strong stomachs.

  Keith Simpson did not suffer fools gladly but he was generous to his friends. In 1982, he found time to write a foreword to Murder Whatdunit by Joe Gaute and Robin Odell. Joe was an old friend but in a book which set out to demystify forensic investigation for non-specialist readers, he might have viewed it as an over-simplification of a field in which he was, indisputably, a master. Instead, he wrote a very generous appraisal, describing the book as, ‘an essential reference work for the crime writer and an accurate encyclopaedia of world history in the subject’. He was a perfectionist and as resolute in his opinions as was Spilsbury, for whom he had scant regard; ‘… he was a cold, aloof man. I never saw him laugh,’ he said. Like many professionals in different fields, the pleasure in his work came from confronting a challenge and then finding answers. Of his discovery of the tell-tale gallstone when he searched through the acid-reduced remains of George Haigh’s victim, he said, ‘It was the most exciting moment I think I’ve ever had.’

  Keith Simpson was the last of ‘The Three Musketeers’; Francis Camps died in 1972 and Donald Teare in 1979. Simpson outlived them and died, age
d seventy-eight, in 1985 from a brain tumour. With their passing, perhaps the golden age of the forensic pathologist also closed. The advances and reforms for which they had fought through teaching and by bringing together the elements of a new approach to forensic work, were largely won. A new era dawned in which the near celebrity status of the pathologist gave way to teamwork and the advances they had made were taken to new levels of crime scene investigation, requiring specially equipped laboratories and sophisticated technical resources. Addressing police officers in the preface to his book, The Investigation of Violence, he underlined the importance of leaving no stone unturned and concluded, ‘We deserve only the reputation we earn’. Keith Simpson certainly earned his reputation and an American colleague, Dr Milton Helpern, Chief Medical Examiner for New York City, said that the informed mind is able to look, observe and react when the bell rings. He added, ‘The bell always rings with Keith Simpson’.

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  NEWSPAPERS

  Blackwood’s Magazine

  Bombay Medical News Guide

  British Medical Journal<
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  Daily Express

  Daily Mail

  Daily Sketch

  Dublin Medical Journal

  Glasgow Herald

  News of the World

  Sunday Telegraph

  The Lancet

  The Law Journal

  The Sunday Times

  GLOSSARY

  THE TERMS DEFINED HERE reflect contemporary knowledge and use during the greater part of the twentieth century. Huge advances have been made in forensic pathology in recent years with the emergence of new techniques and procedures. This process of natural development has been aided by the advent of more sophisticated serology and toxicology and, of course, DNA profiling and information management. A new forensic landscape has been created and, with it, a new vocabulary. By accessing expertise in a wide range of new disciplines, such as forensic odontology, entomology and anthropometry, today’s forensic practitioners can call on an unprecedented bank of knowledge with its own terminology. In part, this is the legacy of the pioneering forensic pathologists who initiated new realms of discovery and understanding.

  ADIPOCERE: Condition of a human corpse when natural body fat solidifies into a yellowish-white, waxy substance. This occurs when a body has been exposed to a damp, airless environment. It is a slow process, also known as saponification, when the neutral body fats are hydrolysed into a mixture of fatty acids and soap. Adipocere adheres to the bones and tends to maintain the shape of the body.