“I have to admit when I was growing up I was afraid of dead bodies. I wouldn't even walk past the cemetery.”

Surprising words for Government Forensic Pathologist Dr. John Obafunwa who dissects around 200 corpses a year.

But he learned to overcome his phobia at medical school in order to learn how to give clues to how people died for murder trials and inquests.

“By the time I was in the third year I could stay in the morgue until well past midnight,” says Dr. Obafunwa, whose job includes the very necessary but somewhat morbid task of removing and weighing vital organs for coroner's hearings.

And while his evidence plays a vital part in murder trials even non-criminal deaths can throw up their fair share of mysteries.

In one case in the UK he had to examine an old man burnt beyond recognition in a house fire.

What was puzzling was why the man was still sitting? Was it a natural death, or arson or had the man been attacked?

Bone fractures could be interpreted two ways - they could have been broken in a struggle or they could have shattered in the heat.

“During the course of the autopsy I was able to establish he died of a heart attack. I found evidence of a clot. He had the heart attack, dropped a cigarette and was dead by the time the fire reached him.

“There wasn't any carbon monoxide in his blood because you can only get that if you are alive in the fire.”

When there is no medical history the search must be even more meticulous. “You go layer by layer, collecting every body sample, checking for poisons,” Dr. Obafunwa said.

Bone marrow might even be examined when other samples are not readily obtainable.

He says there are three crucial elements to solving a mysterious death - medical history, clues taken from the scene and evidence on the body.

Medical notes are obviously vital but he cautions: “You don't want to create a bias within yourself.”

If the corpse has a known illness then that is looked at, along with the possibility the deceased may have died of an overdose of drugs prescribed for their complaint or even forgotten to take their medicine altogether.

A site visit is also crucial before the body is dissected. “For example if you find a teenager and there's a bag with a cloth nearby with a tissue and I smell petrol that tells me he might have been sniffing solvents.”

Tests will then be tailored to look for solvents in the system. “You know what to anticipate.

“There are so many different ways to die. Even natural death comes in different ways depending on which system of the body is affected.”

Then it is time to look for clues on the corpse.

“The actual process of retrieving organs and looking at them in detail might not take you more than 30 minutes.”

When he is clear about a likely cause of death the entire autopsy can take an hour, but when there are multiple injuries, the session can last three or four times longer as each wound is logged.

“There are times when there is a lot of pressure, people expect you to make a pronouncement, you feel pressure to get it right. I am not going to say it's easy. Each case has its own peculiarities.”

Despite his 20 years in pathology Dr. Obafunwa, like colleagues the world over, sometimes draws a blank, requiring a redoubling of his efforts. If this fails a negative autopsy is declared.

Deaths in water can also throw up interesting twists as he differentiates between “wet” drowning and “dry” drowning.

The former is when the lungs are full of water while with the other very little water is found in the lungs and windpipes - but the victim has died very quickly in the water.

One cause of dry drowning is where cold water strikes the back of the throat, triggering the over stimulation of nerve endings in the mouth.

This sends an impulse to the brain and then to the heart which becomes blocked, slowing down the heart rate to the point of it stopping.

The other form of dry drowning is where cold water causes the larynx to go into spasm and blocks the windpipe causing asphyxiation. But this is tricky to spot.

“Once the person dies the part which went into spasm will relax so water goes down the throat. You might find water in the windpipe but the lungs are essentially dry.

“I have seen a few cases of dry drowning.”

Typical victims of these phenomena are drunken sailors who fall overboard but are dead by the time they are dragged aboard just minutes later. Older people with poor circulation are also more prone to this death.

Dr. Obafunwa is a busy man away from his autopsy work, examining more than 8,000 surgical samples, passed on by his skilled team at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, to spot diseases and help brief doctors.

But despite the workload it's clear Dr. Obafunwa likes his work, especially working out how people died.

He says: “I enjoy the challenge, I don't take anything for granted.”