You're listening to the Paranormal UK Radio Network, the best in paranormal talk radio
in the UK and around the world. Hello world, You're listening to Eleanor
Wagner's strange and scary world here on the Paranormal UK Radio Network, where we're
always creeping it real. I'm your host, Eleanor Wagner. Welcome all to
my paranormal Closet, where the stories in magic take place. Today's guest is
a former New York City death investigator with the Medical Examiner's Office, who will
open up about her more than twenty years of death steine investigations. She consulted
on international mass fatalities, been a featured speaker at numerous national conferences, is
a published author, and taught at multiple medical institution. Her prior rowls at
OCMEE included Medical Legal Investigator, Deputy Director of Investigations, and Director of Forensic
Investigations, where her responsibilities included death investigations, disaster planning, victim identification,
evidence and missing persons. Join me and welcoming Barbara Butcher to today's program.
Welcome, Oh, thank you, Eleanor. It's a pleasure to meet you.
As I understand it, you were the second ever woman hired and the
role of death investigator in Manhattan, and the first to last more than three
months, last twenty three years in fact, is that correct? That's right.
I immediately knew when I walked in for the interview that these guys were
going to have a hard time with a woman. Not the boss, not
doctor Hirsh, but the investigators were like, what the hell is she doing
here? Well, yeah, because the only other woman hired, she ran
out of there screaming always, oh my goodness. I don't know if it
was the work or just the guys and them giving her a hard time.
I'm but yeah, it was very unusual for a woman to do a job
like that. Death investigation is a tough, tough game. Yeah, and
met, Well, why don't you go ahead and tell the listeners a little
about yourself, your beginning and the back history up to that point. Sure,
I was a physician assistant working in surgery and preventive medicine and then hospital
administration. And I was bored board board board. So I was also a
drinker, A little bit of an alcoholic there, well, a lot of
an alcoholic. Okay, So this begins the story of how I came to
be a death investigator as an alcoholic. I finally got sober, and when
you get sober, you get services from the state, including the employment program
for recovering alcoholics. And I went to this program and then they were going
to teach me how to be a worker among workers, how she had to
work and have pride and humility and all these things. And so they gave
me a whole bunch of tests Minnesota multiphasic, multi personality, preferential, etcetera,
etcetera, Briggs Myers, things like that. And at the end of
the test, my counselor said to me, Barbara, you should either be
a poultry veterinarian or a coroner a death investigator. I said, poultry.
Why poultry? He said, you know you're you're good at diagnostics, but
you always got upset when your patients died and or they didn't get better,
and so if you were with puppies and kittens, it would break your heart.
But chickens, said, they have beaty little eyes, nobody gets attached
to them. So I think you should work with chickens. I said,
no, I think I should work with people. That's funny. Yeah,
In one of the assignments he gave me was to find the person in New
York, York City what had the best job in the world, and asked
them for an informational interview. And I did. I called Charles Hirsch,
the chief Medical Examiner of New York, and I went in to talk to
him, and I spent all the afternoon there and they offered me a job
as a death investigator. Wow, now this was like right up my alley.
This was perfect. Do you remember that first case, that first one?
Oh yeah, I remember my first homicide very well because I asked the
detectives that they'd take a picture with me all lined up, you know.
It was a little so I could make a little card my first homicide,
and they did so. Somebody stole the damn picture, though, which is
too all. What a shame. Yeah, yeah, we had a lot
of fun. I'd like to say that alcoholism and the misfortune of alcoholism actually
wound up getting me my dream job. It was absolutely fantastic. As a
little kid, I got a dissecting kit. I liked science a lot,
and kids in the neighborhood used to bring me roadkill. Oh my goodness.
I would dissect it and then I would say things like, oh, you
see the little black lines, the little zigzag lines along his back, how
they all run into track. That's a tire mark. He was run over,
and this possum had his little ribcage crushed, and this is cause of
death. So from childhood I was ready for this job. Wow, that's
incredible. Yeah, that was the best job I ever had, so exciting.
How many death scenes would you say you covered in your career. I've
been to five five hundred death scenes and six hundred and eighty homicides investigated.
Yeah. Wow, that's a lot. Yeah. Yeah, and New York
City has some of the greatest variety in deaths and homicides, I mean,
really exciting stuff. So I had a pretty good time, except it was
soul crushing it. Yeah, in time, you know, the tragedy,
the constant exposure to horror kind of it kind of messed me up. Yeah,
I'll bet Oh my goodness. Yeah, as you could see from my
book What the Dead. No. I wrote that book to get it all
out there, the stories of the strange cases I saw and the effect that
that kind of work has on human beings. Cop. Yeah, I was
just going to say I imagine it's the same for police officers and eating firefighters.
Absolutely. Yeah. What is the difference between a death investigator and a
crime scene investigator? A crime scene investigator is responsible for the forensic evidence found
at the scene, things like fingerprints, blood spatter of a carpet, fibers,
things like that, whereas the death investigator from the Medical Examiner's office is
required to do a separate investigation into the cause and manner of death. So
the body belongs to us and the scene belongs to the police. But of
course it would be silly to work completely separately. We work together. I
explore the scene, look for drugs, suicide notes, medications, anything that
would help me get evidence on the death. And then the body I would
examine it and do photographs, measurements in order to do an autopsy. When
you do an autopsy, you get a cause of death. So like a
gunshot wound, for instance, that's pretty plain and simple. Gunshot wound to
the head cause of death. But what is the manner of death? Is
it a homicide, suicide, or ancient So that's what I was responsible for,
is finding out that manner of death, the context in which the death
occurred. Interesting Now, you mentioned at one point that you avoided a booby
trapped suicide. What was with that? Oh? Yeah, yeah. In
the first chapter of the book, I described one of my favorite cases.
I was called one night and for a standard suicide, a dead man found
hanging in his apartment. But when I got there, the place was pitch
black, and the young cop standing at the door told me, oh,
his electricity has been shut off. He said, it's kind of spooky in
there is a guy just hanging in the dark. And I went into the
apartment. It was very very dingy, very old, and it was it
was late at night, and it was pitch black in there. But I
used his flashlight and I my little flashlight, and I was able to see
the guy, and sure enough he was hanging. I didn't find any suicide
notes anything like that in the room. But that night I was bitching and
moting because I had my left hand in a cast. I had been fooling
around with some saws and some wood trying to build something and accidentally cut a
tendon in my hand. Ooh nice. So I had just had surgery and
my arm was in a cast. So I was bitching because I had to
work I was at a thick time, So as I examined the guy,
I used my right hand hold a flashlight, check under his eyelids, you
know, look for hemorrhages. Mainly, what I wanted to make sure is
that he actually hanged himself and that this wasn't a murder set up to look
like a suicide. And it was all pretty clear. So back in those
days, you know, we used polaroid cameras. This was a long time
ago, in nineteen ninety two, and so with the flash I was,
you know, taking pictures and documenting everything so that I could give a report
to the medical examiner the next day. The guy doing the autopsy, and
before I left, normally I just I took out my buck knife and I
was going to cut him down. So I would hold the ligature with my
left hand and cut above it with the right. But I couldn't do it
because my arm was in a cast. My gosh, thank goodness, thank
goodness. Because I left, I said, all right, look like a
suicide. When I got back to the office, I was preparing my report
and I was looking at the photos, and I saw that the ligature he
used was not the usual rope. It was an extension cord, one of
those orange on the EAPs outdoors. I thought, oh, that's interesting.
The next photo I saw that the extension cord was actually plugged into the wall.
Wow, I said, wait a minute, this doesn't make sense.
Why is this plugged in, especially since he didn't have any electricity was turned
off. Then it came to me and I called the cop back at the
scene. I said, go screw in the light bulbs in the lamps.
He said, what I said, just do it, Just check this.
He came back and he said, this light this electric. What this guy
had done was unscrewed the light bulbs to make it look like his electricity was
shut off. Then when he hanged himself, he plugged the extension cord into
the wall so that whoever cut him down would be electrocuted. Wow. But
because, oh my goodness, because my arm was in a cast, I
didn't cut him down as usual, and I avoided either being killed or badly
injured. But you know, I told the kind of state to somebody else.
I yeah, you say, somebody else's life too, that would have
an after you. Oh my goodness. Yeah, So horrible person could you
be to do? To be so cowardly to do that to yourself, but
then to want to take somebody else. There's a thing I call the angry
suicide. How many times have we seen like a kid go with a with
an automatic rifle into a school and shoot children and then shoot themselves, And
to say, the hell did they do that for? Why didn't they just
kill themselves get it over with. Well, because some people in their depression,
they're so damned angry at the world, but the world for not helping
them. I don't know why. And this was one of those people,
just an angry, angry man who wanted to take somebody out with them.
Maybe he wanted to be famous, you know. Could you imagine about a
great newspaper story that would make Yeah and all medical examiners office employee killed by
booby traps suicide. Well, look, he is famous. He's in my
book now, right, So I guess I guess that. Oh my goodness,
And now we will just we just came away from our memorial of nine
to eleven and I noticed that you involved, if even identifications, that must
have been so difficult. Yeah, nine to eleven ruined everything, it really
did. It ruined our sense of safety. Our sense of just security as
Americans. We always felt like we were strong and secure and nobody could get
us. And now right in our own city we get attacked, and it
was so devastating. There's an old saying that one death is a tragedy and
a thousand deaths is a statistic. But when you're crawling through the burning rubble
and the smoke to pick up little pieces people's bodies, and you see a
calendar that says lunch with Steve one o'clock Tuesday, or the graduation picture of
a kid from from sixth grade, the things that are on a person's desk,
the papers, the little god there was a desk set that had a
golf ball in it, like from a hole in one, you know,
the hen and the little little black hole in one. That kind of stuff
that tells you this is not a statistics are individual lives, and each one
of them is a little universe. It's a person with a family and friends
and gone. And that is so horrifying and so scary, and they're well,
I remember where I was in that moment, and it touched so many
people's lives that I'm in the school district, that's where I work as my
regular job, and they didn't mention anything about it, And I just don't
understand. This should be something that is brought to the attention of every person
in the United States every single year at this time. Yeah, it should
not be forgotten and a tragedy that they don't mention it in the school districts
or talk about it anymore, and it should be something that is spoken about
every single year at this time. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's one of
the blackest days of our nation's history, one of the darkest days we've ever
had. And there are lessons in there that we need to learn about our
police in the world. Absolutely, it's something that is part of the history
that should be talked about. Yep. Yeah, but hey that it's not
well we are we're talking about it. Oh, that's right. Yeah.
Then there was the two thousand and four tsunami. How does that work?
You know, I know there's so much devastation. How does that even happen?
Well, that earthquake, it was just after Christmas two thousand and four.
It was a huge earthquake out in the Indian Ocean and it sent to
a tsunami, a tidal wave spreading in all directions through Indonesia, Thailand and
all the East Asian islands and killed two hundred and thirty eight thousand people.
Isn't that something? Imagine two hundred thirty eight thousand. So what most nations
did, out of necessity was just bury the people in trenches mass graves,
because you couldn't leave them out in the heat. Of course, unhealthy and
disgusting, but so that's what most people were doing. But then in Thailand
there was a little problem, and that is that there were I think eight
hundred and forty European tourists who were in Thailand on vacation when the tsunami hit,
and their countries wanted their bodies back. So the Thai government, they
know that tourism is very very important to their economy, and they had no
choice but to try to identify of the more than five thousand bodies recovered in
Thailand, which were all rotted, horribly rotted in the heat. How could
you pick out eight hundred and forty European tourists. Well, they asked for
help, So the United Nations Health Division Health Branch asked me and my boss
to go over there and see if we could help out and we did.
We went to Thailand and we brought DNA technologists and doctors and identification specialists to
help them, and they managed to do it. It took a land,
yeah, So the Europeans sent help and came over to help, and using
DNA and dental records and things like that, we were able to identify all
of the tourists and return them to their homes. And a great number of
the Thai people too, who were who were you know in these mass graves.
We were able to identify some of them. But what I learned over
there is that the attitude is everything right, and the Thai people have such
an amazing attitude of acceptance of reality and just keep on moving no matter how
bad things get. I guess it's a Buddhist thing. But they were so
kind, so gentle, and so willing to just keep working, even though
their homes had been destroyed, they lost family members. They knew that they
had to help their country, they had to keep working, and they did,
and they were very fund prosecuted to do that. I think the first
time I went, I was there two three weeks, and then I went
back a little later to work on some more things for another week or two
weeks. Yeah, so we know how long did it take for them to
identify everybody? Well over a year, yeah, yeah, well over a
year between between DNA and dental records, you know, getting all that information
from different countries in Europe. So it know, it all worked out.
But I have enormous respect for the people of Thailand who put aside their personal
tragedies to do something for their country, to help just wonderful, wonderful people.
And we had a good time. I mean, even in the middle
of all that destruction and death, we still had lovely dinners or we'd allay
I'm smart friend. Yeah. Effort of bringing those people home, Yeah,
it was was a wonderful, wonderful experience to learn some much from them.
We were supposed to be helping them, but I think they taught us a
lot too. Oh that's interesting. Wow. Well, and then there's the
crash of flight five eighty seven. I imagine that was very similar to you
going through the nine to eleven because the circumstances are very similar in that there's
an explosion, right, it would have been very similar to how you were
scraping people's pieces of body parts together, right, Yeah, I mean that
was you know, that happened right after nine to eleven. It happened in
November, so it was less than two months after the nine to eleven attack,
and we were so frightened that it was another terrorist attack. But no,
it was an accident. And well, yeah, what did it turn
out to be the cause of the ground some kind of error in the tail
mechanism or like a pilot over correcting for a tail mechanism error. I don't
remember the whole details. I just remember all those burned bodies, two hundred
and fifty something people. One of them was a mother and a baby.
She had been holding her baby, and god, that still sticks in my
head. Oh well that yeah, so damn hard. But we had a
flight manifest so we knew people's names. We just had to make sure we
identified which body was which person because they were also badly burned. And we
did manage to do that using DNA and dental records and things from their families.
But that's another It's a funny thing. As my job went on for
a period of about nine ten years, I was getting more and more horrified,
more and more depressed and frightened about all the murders and things I was
seeing. So come nine to eleven, the universe smacked me in the head.
We both reclouts and deaths. Then two hundred and fifty deaths. Then
there was a train wreck. Then I went to London for the the underground
bombing. There it just became masdf jeeesh one right after the other. Yeah,
and then you know, my colleagues. I just had lunch with some
of my friends from the Medical Examiner's Office and we were talking about COVID.
In New York City, the epicenter of the epidemic. We had fifteen thousand
dead people that had to be picked up, identified, wrapped, sealed,
and stored because, if you recall, there were no funerals. Nobody could
dig grapes, nobody could get to work. It was too dangerous. So
my friends at the New York City Medical Examiner's Office stored fifteen thousand bodies in
huge refrigerated tents and they had to go in and pick up those bodies from
people's homes, and it just it was the most god awful thing. It's
the kind of job that's why I call it soul crushing. My job was
so exciting, so fun, so interesting but also soul crushing. Yeah.
I was just asking, is there any case in particular that stands out that
most of you but each one that we've already discussed seems to be yeah,
out bad. I think there was one case of a serial killer, guy
named Aaron Key, and he on a ten year period was raping and killing
little girls, little adolescents, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen year olds, a
thirteen year old, and for ten years he was getting away with it,
and they knew that it was one person because all the DNA matched from each
victim, but they didn't know who that DNA belonged to because he wasn't in
the national data banks. See yeah, yeah, yeah, how so he
because he had never been arrested. And that bothered the hell out of me,
the fact that for so many years this guy could get away with it,
but finally he got caught. Police played a little trick on him.
He was a suspect, and they brought him in for questioning and gave him
a cup of water and then they were able to get DNA off the cup
after he throw it away, And I did my part to convict him.
Testifying in court one of the cases that I had done was a little a
little girl, just a sweet, nice young girl, and it bothered me
a lot, a real lot. So I was so pleased to help put
him away. Now, so that stands out in my mind. I know
that you're also interested in paranormal things, right, oh, I answered that
we had the similarity in that you were led to that and I was led
to the paranormal. So we Yeah, how were you led to the paranormal?
Well, as a child, I lived in a home that was haunted,
and I of course was afraid of what I saw, and I really
didn't have parents that understood it, so, you know, Mom would always
say it was just a dream, it was just a dream. And as
I got older, I also had premonitions when I was a kid too,
which was something very different that came to me in dreams, and Mom would
always say it was just a dream. And then one day a terrifying nightmare
that I had ended up coming true and it kind of like shut things down
for me. I just I felt like responsible bird, even though I was
twelve, and that's not a realistic thing for me to blame myself for that,
but I felt responsible. I knew it was going to happen, and
my mom said it was a nightmare, and it did, and I did
nothing to stop it. Mom. You know, I didn't do anything to
stop it. All was just a dream. It was just dreaming. No,
it wasn't again true. So I kind of shut down for a long
time. But I still kept paranormal in my life in other ways. And
I've been a writer since the seventh grade. In fact, my most recent
book I dedicated to my seventh grade teacher, because you reconnected, and I
was just thrilled to be able to dedicate it to her, and she was
tickling to receive the dedication. But I always was into writing stories that were
psychological thrillers, and that somewhere along the line, I was in a writer's
group and it came to me to write true life ghost stories from my experience,
and I said, well, let me put it out on social media
and see if anybody out there wants to share their experience and it might end
up in my book. And before I knew it, that part of my
writing took off. Even though I went to school to write for children,
and even though I wanted to write psychological thrillers, I wrote two of those
and now I was dedicating myself to writing true account ghost stories for other people,
and people just love to read true account ghost stories. Though at fifty
I wrote my first book, and here it was a new career because I
was writing true account ghost stories. I had a power normal team, and
now I have paranormal podcasts. So I was led to do this, and
yeah, I've stuck with it ever since. It's wonderful. You know.
People always asked me, they said, isn't the Morgue full of ghosts?
And I tell them known because that people didn't die there. They died somewhere
else. We just pick them up and bring them here. So their spirits,
if they're haunting, they're staying in the place of death. But I
when I was a kid, my great grandmother's house, we used to go
there to visit with my mom, and we'd go up the backstairs and on
the landing of the stairs, it was a cold spot. It was very,
very cold, and it made your stomach get queasy like that. Yeah,
and when we were little kids, we knew there was something creepy.
We'd run through that area real quickly. And my mom, when she was
a little girl, she used to sleep up there and she asked my grandmother.
She said, you know, I always hear this couple fighting like it
sounds like it's a long way away. I hear a woman crying and a
man hollering and they're fighting. What is that? And she said nothing,
Dolly. They said nothing, nothing there, no problem, don't worry.
Well. Then when my mom got older, she asked my great grandmother again
and she told her the true story, which was that my great uncle al
was very jealous of his wife. He was afraid that she was seeing another
man. And they were up on that stair landing arguing and fighting, and
he shot himself died, and they couldn't find her. They found his and
they couldn't find her anywhere, and they figured, oh, it was true,
she ran off with another man. Now they had three little children,
and one of them died immediately. They said the baby died of a broken
heart. The other two were put in orphanages. Oh, come sad.
But then on the day of my great uncle funeral, which was held in
the parlor on the ground floor, somebody went upstairs to get something and they
found his wife's there. She too was dead, but he had shot her
first, stuffed her body behind a stove, behind a heating stove, and
then shot himself on that land. Asked that there were two deaths there.
She So what you guys were experiencing is what you call residual haunting. It
was, yes, then it was happening continuously, over and over again.
Yeah, that's so interesting. Yeah. So I absolutely believe in haunt and
in Poulter Guide and whatever they whatever you call them, I don't know the
terminology. But you don't have anything going on where you live now. No.
I live in a modern high rise building, brand new, on the
fifty eighth floor, way up in the sky. So the only thing we
have up here are birds because what you do, oh you do. No
apartments can be haunted to individual apartments. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure that
New York is very very active from what I understand. I haven't done anything
personally there, but from in the field and speaking to people, New York
is extremely active. I can well imagine. I mean, some of the
the deaths I've seen in apartments all over New York, I would not be
surprised at all to know that there's some kind of paranormal activity there. Some
many of the deaths were tragic, so there, as I understand it,
paranormal activity takes place more when there's a tragic death, when it's conflict and
things. I mean, I don't know if that's true. No, it
does happen that way too, but it's just there. Want things take place
regardless whether it's tragic or not. You have spirits that stay around just because
they've got unfinished business or they were really happy and they don't want to leave.
And what I've made it my goal is when I have been called into
places to do paranormal investigations, when I speak to spirit, I let them
know that I'm there out of respect and that I don't want to intrude.
But if they want to tell us their stories, I'd be willing to listen
and write about it. And so I'm sensitive, but not nearly as sensitive
as some of the people that I work with. I mean, I have
people that I work with that actually can see and hear. But when we
go together as a group and we use tools and that energy that we have,
we oftentimes get a really good reception. I mean, we do go
to places and nothing happens, but that's up to spirit if they want us
there and they want to share, we're willing to listen, and it's really
been a very fun experience for me. I never expected that in my older
years than I would be going through all of this. But I'm really enjoying
myself. I really am, and I feel like I have a person now.
I'm doing something for spirit and then also group members helping each other out
to learn and better ound gifts so that they'd become more streamlined. I guess
would be a good word to use in what we do. Yeah, yeah,
well that's fascinating. Yeah, I'm sure if you're probably just walking down
the block in New York, you could probably pick up energy from all the
buildings and all the teap Remember when I worked in the city, when I
worked in the street, and I'd be walking in the street, I mean,
you know, there were just mobs of people, and especially at lunchtime,
I'd be walking, and so many times I would be walking them,
I would say, oh, my goodness, that person looks so familiar to
me. I feel like I know that person, And in my experiences now
I've learned that possibly that person was somebody that I did have in my life
in a previous life. I just recognize them because I recognize their soul.
So I do believe that there's there's a possibility in that. But I did
have a lot of recognition when I was walking the streets and I wanted to
go out to and go when do we know you're from? But they would
they would probably look at me like I was crazy. You know, So
you mean that when I die, if I want to, I can stick
around. I don't want. I can haunt this apartment if you wanted to.
Yeah, I don't recommend it, because I try it. I try
and explain to people that you when you pass on, you can come back
and visit any time you want, if you go into the light, because
we do receive messages and visits from aunt deceased loved ones, and I got
them personally from my dad the day he died and my mother in law when
she died. But they also knew that they could come to me. We
always said it, especially my motherwise. She said, if I can,
let you know, I'm going to come back, and she did. So.
I like to tell people that if those little nuances that you get if
you pick something in particular. A lot of people pick like butterflies or dragonflies
or a cloud or coins, whatever it is that you pick as your signature's
going. If you get a message and you hear it's mom or it's great
grandmam, receive it and accept it because that's the beauty of it. They
are letting you know that they are with you always. And that little symbolism.
Don't let anyone tell you, oh, that's nothing, because it is
something. You receive it for what it is, and it's really special to
get those messages from them, even in those little nuances. Yeah, just
leaving a coin on that butterfly, that's well, that bird. My father
was with big birds and my mother in law. It's birds. And when
they come and they sit on the ledge of my house and they are just
looking at me, I know they're not there, just looking at me.
It's one of them saying hang on here. That's wonderful, comforting absolutely to
know that they are always with us. And so when people tell me these
stories that they've had, or they're just cease loved ones coming to visit them,
they're just they're wonderful, inspiring, faith based stories, whatever anyone's religion
or belief is, to know that there's something beyond. And so I like
to tell people that when you go through that light, you can come back
and visit any time you want. But if you don't go through the light,
you're kind of stuck here. So go to the light and then come
back and visit. I like that. I like that. Okay, good
will haunt this apartment pigging out. But I'm sure that so many of the
death scenes that I did would be haunted, because you know what, when
I think about a case, like there was a Dominican family uptown and a
father, mother, and three sons. And when I got there, the
father and the mother had both been shot, and so had the twelve year
old boy. And there was a three year old boy walking around that apartment
in his parents' blood, his little tiny footprints in their blood. Now,
they turned out the murderers were looking for the other son, the seventeen year
old. They were drunk people, and I guess the seventeen year old was
working for them. Maybe he took off some money or something, so they
went and killed his entire family. Old boy, old boy, I mean,
I mean, I imagine that three year old, even though he was
three, that has to stay with him. Something I have to be like
in the subconscious back there and come to the forefront somewhere in life. I
would imagine, I mean, oh yeah, yeah, I would think so,
I would absolutely think so. I know, I can't get it out
of my head. I see those work, his tiny toe prints. I
see them in my mind so clearly that kind of tragedy to have your whole
family killed. I know that his little spirit. I pray for him,
that his little spirit is free, is happy, is cared for, because
that was God. He must be in his twenties. Now. I hope
he's okay. But we say that that is the most gruesome or horrific case
you've ever been in. Bombdon Or No, no, no, unfortunately,
not no, no, no, no, there were people are strange,
and we tend to think that, oh, everybody's just like us, that
we all live in homes or apartments and we have families, we have friends,
we go to work, you know, we do everyday things. It's
not really like that at all. That's just the majority of us. Sure
we live like that, we live decent lives, but there are so many
who don't. There are people who live on the fringe of society and have
rules and beliefs that are so different than the rest of us, and I
get to see that, and it's not a fun thing to see. One
guy I can think of he was at a club and he met a woman
there and he said to her, listen, let's go to your place.
Well party. Here's fifty dollars. Why don't you go get us some cocaine
and then we'll go party. Well she took off and with his money,
and he was serious. So he went to her apartment and she wasn't there,
but her eight year old daughter was. So he took the eight year
old daughter and he raped her and then he smothered her and threw her in
a garbage sheep. So that was so devastating to me. That was very
early in my career. But what really killed me was that the guy when
he explained to the cops what happened, that he thought it was justified.
He said, no, no, guys, you don't understand. She took
my fifty dollars so I had to take something. Oh my goodness. But
he actually believed that he was justified. So that case probably, I mean,
I'm surprised I stayed at the job. That was one of my first
autopsies seeing that case, and I asked the I was a woman pathologist,
doctor Jackie Lee. She was doing the autopsy, and I said, my
god, how do you stand this day after day? How can you see
this and still live your life? She said, Barbara, when you leave
here each day, I want you to surround yourself with things of beauty or
music, love, food, dancing, everything, have creativity. In order
to act as a counterbalance against the destruction and despair and death that you're going
to see every day, you must surround yourself with beauty. She was absolutely
right. Life and beauty are the only counterbalances we have to the evil that's
in the world. And I got myself a little house in the country,
and there I had grass and trees and cats and dogs and things that were
alive. Brought your joy, That brought me joy, and that kept me
going through what was a pretty crazy job. Wow. So I think that's
the opposition to evil is to create and to have joy and love. There's
an awful lot of evil out there, Yeah, there really is. You
say that being in this position you learn some surprising lessons about life, and
that some of these lessons saved you from becoming a statistic yourself how showered with
gleeen. Well, you know, there were times when I was so depressed,
times in my life that everything was lost and I was suicidal. I
remember sitting in my apartment once I had lost my job, I was losing
my apartment, my relationship broke up, my brother had just died of a
drug overdose. I felt like there was nothing left out there with a revolver
and practice. Oh no, no, well really yeah, yeah, sure,
yes, just click click. And that's probably one of the few times
in my life that drinking saved me because I passed out from drinking. Yeah,
I had. I had a lot of times that depression was deep.
But then when I started to see people lose their lives who didn't want to
lose their lives. They didn't want to die, They just wanted to live
and be happy. Right then I saw the value, the absolute value of
life. You know, we cling to it because it's all we have.
I saw that. But I saw things too, like grace and humility and
kindness. I Land is a good example. Yeah yeah, yeah, the
people who they live through terrible things and yet they just keep going. People
who gave themselves up to save others. You know that kind of sacrifice is
so awe inspiring. When life is all we have and you give it up
for someone else to save a child, that's pretty crazy. And you know,
there are so many people in my life who I will never forget.
Cops and firemen and EMTs who rushed into burning buildings who you know, to
try and save people, or who dove into the freezing river to rescue someone
who was trying to commit suicide. People like that who inspire me every day
to say life is precious, hold on to it, and I do so.
Now if I get depressed, I just remember there's something here for me.
It's just around the corner. And there's so many people in the world
who are depressed, especially now, you know, after COVID, so many
of us are lowly and isolated and in despair. And that's a lot of
children too, And it concerns me a lot, you know, for people
to be depressed, that really concerns me, and I keep encouraging them.
Please get help, Please consider medications, talk to a doctor, talk to
a priest, spiritual advisor, your family, talk to someone, don't die,
don't give up. There's just too much to live for really, there
is, Yeah, you can't see it now when you're depressed. It's like
wearing gray glasses. Everything you see is gray. But if you can just
get some help and pop those glasses off, you'll see that life is good.
And you know something you doing that is such a good thing because you
never know that one seed that you plant is going to make the difference in
somebody's lives. And seen it happen when people said I was going to kill
myself until that person said what they said, Yeah, so you be amazed
what a difference what you say can make for a person. It's sure,
ken. All of us can be heroes, all of us can be life
savers by doing the simple act of picking up the phone, say how you
doing, how's things going? Yep? Hey at work? And I was
just talking to some man and I was the greeter at the register and I
always try to have a smile on my face and I always try and say
just something to make somebody smile. And he said that, he said,
thank you so much for your smile today, and it just was like,
well, that's so nice to hear that because I do try to do that.
Yeah, those simple things can make the difference to somebody. And you
never know when you're going to get that response back. That's right, it's
a gift. You're a smile to somebody was lonely or or tired or said.
That's a gift. It's huge. I remember I was so depressed one
day. I was so damn lonely. My job was getting to me badly.
And I was walking down the street with my head down, and then
I sort of felt something tugging at me, and I picked my head up
and I started looking around at everything around me. And this young woman was
walking to me, like striding happily as she said, damn, you look
good today, and I was like, ohh and and her that made it
burst out of her like a like a beacon, the light, the joy,
the happiness that she felt, and it washed over me and I felt
so great, like Wow, somebody cared enough to say, damn, you
look good today, even though I knew I look like shit. It's what
you needed though, in that moment, that's what I needed. Yeah,
And each of us can give that to anybody, and especially people who are
mean or angry. You know, the customer in the store who was angry
and berating you over nothing, and you know, just a few kind words
can turn them around. Yeah, Barbara, thank you for what you do.
Thank you, and thank you for writing this book, because I think
that's going to make a difference toune for people who read it. Yeah,
I think I've been very surprised at the number of people who've written to me.
I get wonderful fan mail on my website, Barbara Butcher author, and
people just write to me and tell me thank you for talking about depression,
thank you for talking about alcoholism. It really helped. And so yeah,
I'm glad I got to do one little thing, you know in the world.
Why didn't you tell the listeners about your What the Dead Know book and
how to get it as well as your wraps fighting contact information? Okay,
yes, the book is called What the Dead No Learning about Life as a
New York City death Investigator by Barbara Butcher, And yes, Butcher is my
real name. It k it goes well with the job, right, it
does now, And it's available and it's it's by published by Simon and Schuster.
It's available in bookstores or on Amazon or on websites everywhere, and you
know it is. It's a funny book. I mean there's a lot of
whack you or in there dark humor, but it's about my adventures as a
death investigator and also about what it, what it did to me, what
you know, what it did to my soul and how I got out of
it. So it's a memoir and a true crime story and everything mixed up
in one. And it's also got lessons and they're on forensics and stuff.
So yeah, it's a fun book. It's a fun book, and I'm
really pleased it's doing well. And who knows this a TV series they're discussing
and we'll see what happens with that. How exciting. Yeah, yeah,
it is, it is. I've been very very lucky, very fortunate.
Well, thank you so much for joining me today. You've certainly lived in
an extraordinarily interesting life, and I appreciate the fact that you've opened up and
shared it with me today. Thank you so much. Bless you, and
to my listeners. If you like listening to this week's episode and you're into
all things paranormal, check out my other show, Eleanor Wagner's Creeping Real podcast
out of the Post to Post Entertainment Network, which is available wherever you get
your podcasts, and if any of you are interested in reading any of my
books, you can find the links to them on Amazon unavailable. There,
I write about the history of the town and the location. I add the
paranormal story to the mix, and I finish it all off with photoons and
evidence. Everybody loves a good go story, but there's nothing better than a
true ghost story, So check it out and I hope you'll stay a while
and listen to a silent crafter a stranger. Part two takes this out of
the show. Thank you again, Barbara. Thanks ghostly listeners. You can
sign up or level up on my author Eleanor Wagner Patreon program that's p A
t R e O N, where you will find special bonus opportunities only available
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enthusiasts for tuning in today. I hope you'll come back again. Remember to
tap into your own gifts. Everyone has them, and in the meantime,
make sure you're creeping it real