Instead she was called over the PA system to where two Gardaí waited to bring her to a crime scene. A double murder: two women, Sylvia Sheils and Mary Callinan - the Grangegorman murders. For Cassidy, it was a baptism of fire. The women's injuries were so horrific Harbison later described them as "outside my experience in 26 years of pathology practice". Over the next two decades, many of the murders Cassidy investigated were femicide: violent deaths of women by men. Since 1996, 261 women have died violently in the Republic - according to Women's Aid, almost nine in 10 knew their killer. In Dr Cassidy's Casebook, which returned to RTÉ tonight, Cassidy remembers some of these women, not just as victims and statistics, but as people: Noeleen Brennan, murdered in 2008, described by her sister Tina as "the baby of 11 children, the youngest of us all, a character, she loved dancing". Olivia Dunlea, murdered in 2013, a play-school teacher, "She lived for kids, she was involved in youth club... she loved life". In this first of three episodes, Cassidy asks why. Why were women being killed by men they knew, by men they loved? Why were women more likely to die "at the hands of someone in their bed, rather than someone under their bed?". Women's Aid research finds only 13% of female murder victims are killed by strangers. Cassidy asks the question 'why' with such passion that we want to know too. The documentary offers plenty to ponder. Archivist Caitriona Crowe says the 1990s were a landmark decade for the rights of women in abusive relationships. In 1996, for example, the Domestic Violence Act gave women living in such relationships the right to barring orders, to protection orders. But 1996 also saw the highest number of women murdered in a single year. We can draw our own conclusions. In addressing Cassidy's question, the show probes themes of machismo and control, shifts in the gender balance of power/vulnerability, and historical perspectives on women, defined until the 1970s as chattels in the Irish Constitution. And the documentary asks a further, vital question: whether somewhere in that relationship between a woman and her eventual killer - there might have been "an intervention that could have stopped this death happening"? Anne Dunlea, sister of murdered Olivia, provides a possible answer with her heartfelt message: "If you have any doubt... about your own partner, a loved one's partner... speak out... look for help, don't take any chances - because we were that family that thought it would never come to us."
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