Who in their right mind would choose to be a forensic psychiatrist?

When police were called to a block of flats in north London at the beginning of 2002, they expected to find a routine dispute between neighbours. What they actually discovered was the body of a woman, Rose White, in the locked bedroom of one of the apartments. The officers suspected foul play and the tenant, Anthony Hardy, was charged with murder. Incredibly, an incompetent pathologist concluded that the 38-year-old victim had died of a heart attack. (The pathologist was later struck off.) The murder charge was dropped; Hardy pleaded guilty to criminal damage and was sectioned under the Mental Health Act. Released before the end of the year, he went on to murder two more women.

This gruesome case made a powerful impression on Dr Richard Taylor, the forensic psychiatrist who carried out a pre-trial risk assessment after the discovery of the first body. Taylor did not know Hardy had been released and he was stunned to get a phone call on New Year’s Eve in 2002, telling him that the dismembered remains of two women had been found in a wheelie bin and Hardy’s flat. What Taylor did know, when he interviewed Hardy four months before the double homicide, was that the suspect had a history of domestic violence towards his wife, whom he had struck on the head with a bottle and tried to drown. When the couple separated, Hardy continued to target his now ex-wife, spending short periods in prison after damaging her house. He was arrested again in 1998 after a prostitute accused him of rape, but this charge was also dropped.

Incredibly, the incompetent pathologist concluded that Hardy’s victim had died of a heart attack

Hardy was physically imposing and Taylor felt ‘uneasy’ when he assessed him with a junior colleague. He writes:

Our conclusion was that he could pose a serious risk to women, independent of [his] disturbed mental state and alcohol abuse, but we also had to work on the basis he’d had no hand in the death of White, given the post-mortem findings.