Spotlight on Alumni

Bodies laid out on a cold metallic table waiting to be examined. Police and court officials pressing for information that might help break a case. Seeing a family receive closure after losing a loved one. This may sound like an episode of CSI, but this is the life of a medical examiner.

Dr. Marcella F. Fierro saw many people and victims come through her office as a medical examiner. Among them were the four victims of serial rapist and murderer Timothy Wilson Spencer, the first murderer in the state of Virginia to be convicted based on DNA evidence.

Fierro graduated UB Medical School in 1966, a time when many women were not becoming doctors. Times have since changed for the medical school. The school now admits classes of 140 students, and has averaged 67 female students over the past five years.

"We look for the best," said Charles Severin, Ph.D., MD, the current Associate Dean of Medical Education and Admissions. "And we want to make sure there are woman physicians because some women do feel more comfortable seeing a female physician than a male [physician]."

In the 1960s, however, the field of medicine was predominately reserved for men.

"Medical school was a man's world then. Our graduating class of 88 medical students had 4 women," Fierro said. "It was pretty isolating."

After Fierro graduated from the UB Medical School and her husband, Bob, graduated from medical school at the University of Ottawa, the couple moved to Fort Riley, Kan. where they both planned to enter the military as physicians.

"We graduated during the Vietnam era when everybody went [into the service], except the women…they didn't want women physicians," Fierro said. "We even went to Washington and saw the officer in charge of assignments and volunteered. No luck, and I quote from a letter from the Office of the Surgeon General, ‘we are not recruiting physician wives.'"

Deciding that there were other avenues to pursue, the couple started their family while at Fort Riley and, after Bob had finished his tour of duty, moved to Virginia where they settled to raise their family. Bob had started his own practice as a gynecologist and Fierro entered the Virginia Medical Examiner System and rose to the rank of Deputy Chief Medical Examiner, served and as faculty at the Medical College of Virginia in the departments of Legal Medicine and Pathology, and served as a clinical professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.

"I never went home at the end of the day feeling like I hadn't done something meaningful," Fierro said. "It's worthwhile work…recognizing diseases that may have epidemic potential [and] recognizing causes of accidental death that are preventable."

Fierro left Virginia and went to Greenville, N.C. to serve as a professor of forensic pathology at East Carolina University for two years before returning to Virginia as Chief Medical Examiner of the state.

As Chief Medical Examiner, Fierro oversaw high profile cases such as the tragic campus shooting at Virginia Tech, an experience she described as both personally and professionally difficult for herself and the entire medical examiner team. Fierro, however, said that her job as a medical examiner lead to a rewarding career.

"You are speaking for a dead person who cannot tell their own story," Fierro said. "A dead murder victim is unable to testify in court what happened to them and you get to tell that tale…somebody has to tell that story."

Marcella Fierro has taken pride in her role as a storyteller of people's lives and gained much attention with her work. Novelist Patricia Cornwell based her series of crime novels off Fierro while she was Chief Medical Examiner in Virginia, and built the main character, Kay Scarpetta off of Fierro herself.

Now retired, Fierro, 70, and her husband reside in Virginia and enjoys spending time with her family. However, she is always willing to excitedly retell her stories and experiences as a medical examiner.

"All women should be empowered to go for their dreams," said Melissa Eckstein, a senior psychology major.

Fierro was not afraid to go for her ambitions despite adversity, and encourages students of both genders to love learning and to take advantages of opportunities to help others.

Email: news@ubspectrum.com