Literary Influences and Future Writing

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For your next home project, try Thumbtack. They know homes. Hire the right pro today Hi, it's Phoebe As you probably know, here on Criminal, we normally put out our episodes on Fridays Starting today, we have something new to share with you Recently, I've been interviewing writers, reporters, and journalists about stories I'm curious about We're going to be sharing these more casual conversations here in the podcast feed on Tuesdays. You can also watch these new episodes on the Criminal YouTube channel We've got the link right in the show notes. Today, I'm talking with crime novelist Patricia Cornwell. She's written many books, including twenty nine novels about a fictional forensic pathologist named Kase Garpetta who, as it turns out, is based on someone she knows well. Tatricia Cornwell recently published a memoir called True Crime And I started out by asking her about the cover It's a picture of her wearing a lab coat and gloves and standing next to what appears to be a dead body on a gurney Can you tell me about this picture on the cover of your book? This is not exactly what I would expect. This picture was in nineteen ninety seven Anyie Liboitz did U She was doing photoshoot of me for Vanity Fair And so We were We were trying to get just the right picture. So first we started in the Richmond Medical examxaminer's office and that picture, you may have seen it before. I'm at an autopsy table and I have a cigarette hanging out of my mouth. And that was sort of the picture she was looking for. But the one you're talking about was taken in the cooler of that of the Richmond Medical examxaminer's office. and yes, indeed, that is a dead body. And that was Annie Leibabitz took that photo. And the funny thing is the picture that's on the cover When she was trying to take pictures of me, dor. Fierro, Marcella Fierro, who was the deputy chief at that time, and my mentor She was across the room with her little cannon sure shot camera And every time Annie Leibvitz, the great Annie Leivoz is trying to take one of her pictures, Marcela is going snap And the little flash cube is going off. and Annie finally lowers her massive camera and she looks across room says Canould you please just not do that while I'm doing this? You worked. there in the eighties, what first got you into the Mor Well, that was not anything that I ever planned on. And I'm glad you asked because a lot of people 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 a total opposite. I started out a journalist college And within six or eight months of being at the Charlotte Observer in Charlotte, well you know North Carolina, in Charlotte, North Carolina They assigned me the police fee. 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 shooting victims and stabbing victims and all this sort of thing And so, but the one thing 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 are they taking it and what are they doing with it? There wasn't really this was nineteen eighty and nineteen eighty one. There wasn't much known about this sort of thing publicly except for The show Quincy whenever That was long ago far away When I finally wrote the Ruth Graham biography, I left journalism, I wrote a biography of my dear friend, Ruth Graham, and then I thought, what am I going to do? I'm going 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 examxaminer's offffice, and I met doctor Fierro for the first time in nineteen eighty four 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 year of that, I wanted to see autopsies and that was not going happen. unless I had some sort of validity for being in the autopsy suite. And I said, Well, what would it take to give me that validity? And She said, Well, if you could become a volunteer police officer, that might do it. So I did. Well tell me about that about seeing your first autopsy. I've always I guess I shouldn't be surprised but there' 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, I'm 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 a room full of dead bodies there there are There's a weird energy I used to feel, you know, the morgue is I call it the morgue. That's like calling Hollywood, Hollywood when it's just 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. in 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 just 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 they've died all by themselves because they didn't have a doctor most people that end up there 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 stunned by how tired I would get When I would leave at the end of the day, its I felt like someone has 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 not to let these things get to me while I'm standing there because you're no good for anyone If you let that get to you while you're there. cannot You don't cry in front of this. 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 care about these people and the people they've left behind and figure out what exactly happened. put you here because It's not just about justice because sometimes there's not a villain But it's also about life insurance policies 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 complications and all that go with it. It is It is very pictures are hard to look at but being there person is a different experience altogether. Are there any I mean, this was a long time ago, I know, but are are there any cases that stick out to 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 when I stopped working there, I didn't quit going to medical examiner's office. I mean, I kept doing research there reallyally throughout my whole career at various not just the not just in Virginia, but other medical examiners, offices and other areas where I would go do research and spend several days watching cases with them and going to scenes, all to keep myself you know, u yeah, um It's keeping myself sort of trained sort of like an athlete where you need to keep doing stuff or you'll lose You'll lose it So 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 Be that was not how I envisioned my life, but it is But it's so important if you're going to write about it 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 U It's it's there's a strange strange energy in there. I mean, you know, we don't know 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 had weren't even put in the cooler, they came straight from the crime scene and were put right into the autopsy room And you're looking at this person So It's 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 Younger, who wrote this book in My Time of Dying, and I was fascinated. such a great author He's such a great part and you tell 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 because 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 talking 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 by the way, 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 is believe. It's the end of you. And even if I weren't a religious person, a spiritual person, I would still believe that after what I've seen. When you were There, with all these surrounded by dead bodies and the morgue, you decided You should maybe write about a medical examiner 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 would have think I might have quit, it's hard to say because I sometimes don't know when to give up. That would have been four attempts at crime novels that nobody wanted. U An editor who had rejected three of my books suggested I make Scarpetta the main character because 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, these fanciful stories you're writing about buried treasure and cheated wills and you know, an 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 We'll be right back. criminal comes from ritual When it comes toultiv vitamins, it's good to know exactly what you're putting in your body Ritual is very clear about that The Ritual's Eesssential for Women eighteen plus multivitamin contains nine key nutrients important for your brain, bones, and red blood cells You take two capsules daily and the capsules are made with a delayed release design. 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You know, besides the helicopters, I keep saying I have to get my pilot's license and I haven't done it yet. but was I'm on my way. I'm forty two. By the time I'm forty three, the lessons will have started. That's about the age I was when I got I I didn't get my pilot's license til I was like forty three. I think I was forty three I got it. Okay, well,'s not it's not too late. No No it's not honey, you're just getting started. You're my mother used to say, you're a spring chicken Well, I but here's the wonderful thing that I think that you've been able to do and it's I hope What I like so much about what I get to do is 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 cyber crimes. And the wonderful thing is that it's always different and you get to have these new experiences, but 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 the scuba diving. you wanted to you've decided one day, I want to How about underwater crying? Exact. Why that happen? Why not? But 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 but I'm just going to tell you and you I bet you would too. if someone said, if you can take a rocket to the mooon 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 as writer use your Your research interests 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 It wouldn't occurred to me. It's a lot of work, It's a lot of training And it's scary 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 Wh 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 scuba dive? Yeah, yeah, I just I just did one hundred and ten feet through a cave and I thought, Phoebe, the goal here is not to panic. You're talking about me. I'm not going to no cave Don't you agree that if you didn't do it, you would never write it the way you could write it because you youed it Well, that was so interesting. when you went to the body farm, we also did a story about a body farm in Texas, not the original agcy, but there's enough you said something. Yes, 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 big protocols with suits that I was going to have to wear and I walked in there and they gave me a little pair of to wear on top of my shoes and they said, this is for the decomp fluid and nothing else. And here we go. And they just gave you a little pair of gloves. Yeah, well exactly. And what they don't give you is a surgical mask And it's An for the future If they suuggest that you put Vs up your nose? Oh, no, no, no, do not ever do that. The real pros no, you don't ever put Vs 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 Well the science of odor is molecular And so what you're smelling is particulate That's that's causing the stink. It may be invisible and microscopic. but the the putre faction 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've put a fly catcher right in your face instead of across the room Don't use vs or anything thing up your nose, no petroleum jelly, nothing up your nose. The other thing is As awful as it and the smells are the thing that I have the hardest time with. I really do. I cannot stand it. And the body farms are terrible because decomp is awful 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's no there's no substitute for showing up. And don't forget that's what autopsy means. Autopsia is the Greek word to mean 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 participating whether it's flying a plane or scuba diving or walking through a certain area or Eplore. 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 crime on the moon yet. Is there any other is there any other it's 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 likeike going on archaeology digs, you know, going to archaeology things like in Egypt like she did and these wonderful pictures of her on a balcony overlooking the pyramids. And I would love 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 saafari in Africa not I mean, not the bad kind, but to see majestic animals in person in a safe way because 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 doing crime reporting I still to this day, sometimes, I don't know what this says about me, but I'll turn the police scanner on because 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 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 into 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 crime beat 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 When I was on duty on my beat You know, I was listening to a scanner And um And that abbsolutely shattered My worldview. 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 Id jump in the car because something 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 U I never had. I never did until 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 But u 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 quite right with you in my opinion It's you can't be a naive person and think that bad things don't really happen if you're nice. It's not true. But But you can' you also can't forget there's a lot of good people in the world. and I know plenty of them too If you think about and I get not reading a lot of crime. People say that to me too, Poebe. aren't you you're surrounded by crime alim. and I think well it's like if you sold shoes every day, you wouldn't come home and read about shoes. you wouldn't want to. I feel, you know I mean, I'm so interested in a million other things besides crime. but if you had recommend a crime novelist, you know that you admire Would it wouldould it be Agatha Christie? Who would it all be? Well, listen There's nobody like Agatha Christie And, you know, and it's funny. Um One of the things the stories I tell in my books in my memoir, I mean is that it was probably about nineteen eighty four, 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 it doesn't talk to you It's like you're playing a dead keyboard and 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 Emmy's office but I still couldn't figure out how to tell the story I mean, how do you write about autopsies, but tell a who done it at the same time? There was no formula for what I was trying to do. I didn't realize I was kind of creating a new one And so So I had this dream one night where Agath I was waiting in a line and Agatha Christie was doing a book sign. and it was so real. It was like I was watching it. 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 in 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 woke up and I thought, what the hell was that And I looked her up in our world book Encyclopedia and 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. noobody 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, donon't give up. giveive up, you're going to do better than you think. Just hang in there Well, you 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 scientific. She's exact, and she is a Rubik's cube You know, she's a walking Rubiics's cube. I mean, seriously, how she comes up with her puzzles, I don't know. What a mind that woman had. 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 U Truman Capoti in cold bllood is worth reading But I don't read a lot of crime. See, it's like you said about the person who sells shoes babbe. I tend to I love nonfiction. I love to read good biographies let's see, what else do I like to read? I like to read poetry, believe it or not. I have a copy of TSL. It's The Wasteland on my shelf over here. now and then I'll pull it out because it's the most beautiful writing I've ever read in my life. is my favorite favorite poem and How on earth somebody wrote something like that? Becauseuse you know In my heart of hearts, as much as 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 want to be a good writer And so to read people like Hemingway or T.S. Elliott Um, And to look at what they do and to study the way they put a senate together watching Roger Fetter, played tennis