Final Exam Forensic pathologist Judith Tobin makes the cut. Delaware Today, October 2001 "So, do you want to see the morgue?" Dr. Judith Tobin asks. The question is a formality, as a barker might ask a carnival-goer, "Do you dare enter the House of Horrors?" After all, the morgue is the main attraction, the creepiest spot in Seaford's Nanticoke Memorial Hospital — and the place where Tobin, Delaware's assistant state medical examiner, has performed more than 4,600 autopsies. The morgue is in the basement, deep in the center of the hospital. As in a carnival funhouse, one must wind through a labyrinth of corridors to reach the tiny room. The metal examination table — the centerpiece — has just been washed and the floor mopped. In one corner, Tobin keeps a small cardboard box containing about a dozen bones that have washed up along the Delaware shore. They're probably just animal bones, she says, but she's holding onto them until she's had a chance to examine them fully. In another corner stands a refrigerator where she keeps vials of fluids — blood, bile, urine and others — collected during autopsies. She opens the door, peers inside, and notices a small garden salad in a plastic container on the second shelf. "That's not allowed," she says, making a note to find the culprit. "Who'd want to eat that after it's been in there?" Tobin, 75, admits that she's not your usual medical examiner. The field is predominantly male, and most people her age have retired years ago. But she enjoys her work and plans to stick with it as long as she is able. Her demeanor resembles that of a street-wise cop, and she rattles off medical terms as if they were routine police codes. Tobin's career is long and distinguished. In the middle of World War II, a woman from the nursing corps visited Tobin's classroom, and her talk piqued Tobin's interest in medicine. She entered medical school as one of 12 women in a class of 120. "That was pretty good at the time," she says. During her second year, she took courses in pathology, the study of disease, and found that she was very good at it. "When my classmates would give me a hard time," she says, "the resident would tell everybody, 'Well, she's better than you are.'" During her internship she married Dick Tobin. The two had grown up together in New Jersey and had dated throughout college. Dick, a surgeon, had graduated from medical school the year before her and had hoped she would choose a career where their paths would cross. "He wanted me to go into anesthesia," she says. "But with anesthesia, your patients are asleep. I didn't like that much." One might think her choice to work with patients who have passed away would have the same effect on her, but as a medical examiner, she does spend time working and conversing with people. "I talk to the families fairly frequently," she says. She also appears in court regularly to testify about her findings. She became assistant state medical examiner in 1964 and has overseen forensics in Kent and Sussex ever since. Through the years, Tobin has learned the art of countering the nature of her job with a sense of humor. She laughs about some of the strange things she's noticed during examinations. "I've seen some wingding tattoos." And even after logging thousands of hours in the morgue, dead bodies still give her a start. "Sometimes it's funny. I'll forget there's a body and come into the morgue and jump." Tobin is foremost a doctor, but she is also a detective, and it was her love of solving mysteries that led her into forensics. Each person she examines spent his or her final hours in a different way. It is Tobin's job to piece together that story to determine the cause of death. Sometimes the tiniest clue can completely change the case. She cites the case of a Farmington man found charred in a fire. Locals said he was an old drunk who must have accidentally passed out and gotten caught in the flames. Tobin's examination of the man revealed that he died before the fire began — then she found the bullet lodged in the man's chest. What had been the story of an accident turned into a tale of murder. Another man, a Dover resident, was killed by his wife and an accomplice, neither of whom were very skilled. The wife first tried to poison the victim's dinner. "She fed him his favorite meal — laced with Valium," Tobin says, but the dose was not enough to kill him. The woman and accomplice then tried to lure him into the bathroom to drown him in the bathtub. That didn't work either. Finally, in desperation, the woman stabbed her husband to death. Tobin's autopsy helped re-create the story and determine the exact manner of death. Tobin's accomplishments as a doctor — including a Distinguished Service Award from the Medical Society of Delaware — are matched by her accomplishments outside work. After her husband died in 1970, she raised their six children, then aged 9 to 15, while continuing to work as a forensic pathologist for Kent and Sussex counties. In 1984 she was named Delaware's Mother of the Year. She is also a member of the Soroptimists, a service organization in Seaford made up of about 50 local businesswomen. After so many years as a medical examiner, she's seen nearly everything that could make a person squirm. She is nonchalant about most of her work. "A lot of people aren't used to signing death certificates," she says. "I sign them all the time." But the most difficult part of the job — the part Tobin wishes she never has to do — is examining children, whose deaths have always affected her deeply. She mentions a child who drowned in a bucket of water. "Little kids shouldn't be allowed to drown. It's senseless." Now with 19 grandchildren, Tobin is ever conscious about child safety. She has also noticed trends in deaths that are easily preventable. Drivers running red lights have accounted for a number of deaths in Delaware, she says, and there has been an increase in overdoses on prescription drugs as well as hard drugs like heroin and cocaine. Having spent so much time examining patients in ways one cannot do when the patient is alive, Tobin has a keen insight into anatomy and the inner workings of the body. In fact, she says, she has cultivated a sort of X-ray vision. "When I get sick — which I rarely do," she says, "I can picture what's going on inside of me. They talk about atrial fibrillation. Well, I can see my heart beating right there in my hand."