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This is Later with Lee Matthews The
Lee Matthews Podcast More What You Here weekday

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Afternoons on the Drive. Barbara Butcher
was a chief of staff and director of

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forensic sciences training program at a New
York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner.

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She's taken many of her experiences and
wrote them into a book called What the

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Dead No Learning about life as a
New York City death investigator. Barbara Butcher,

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welcome. Not everyone would flock to
this job. What attracted you?

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Curiosity? Telling me there's nothing quite
as interesting as seeing how people live.

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Now, of course I was there
to see how they died and investigate that,

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but you'd be shocked at the way
people lived, especially in New York

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City. Everything from a home in
a cave beneath the tunnels of the abandoned

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train tunnels and furnished by the way, or up in this avenue penthouses filled

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with art and growing pianos and all
kinds of crazy things. I did it

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take a lot of getting used to
to get into this line of work?

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Or had pathology already kind of been
in your background? Well, pathology was

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not in my background. I was
working surgery, but as a child I

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loved dissecting dead animals to see what
happened. And all the kids in the

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neighborhood used to bring me a road
kill and my parents for my Christmas present

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got me a frog in fromaldehyde.
So I liked it right from the beginning,

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and then it led to this career. Now. I know many on

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the narc squad end up doing drugs? Are they trying to stop? I

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mean, what effects do working murders
day in and day out have on the

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people who work them? Horrible?
In order to properly do your job,

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have to detach emotionally and just think
about the science in front of you,

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observe, listen, record, and
it's very hard to stay detached because you're

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a human being. You want to
have emotions. And I did reach a

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point where my emotions were are shut
off. Couldn't keep a relationship going because

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I just couldn't feel anymore. It
was numbing. And to see people's families

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that the families of the dead,
but they goes through when someone's murdered or

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commits suicide, it's hideous. Yeah, how they do it well. I

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remember early in this job, I
was sent to cover a gunshot murder and

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I was a young, impressionable kid
talking to the officer about what happened,

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and at one point he says,
oh, and the body's right over there.

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And I looked over and it was
a body that had taken a direct

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shot to the face with a shotgun. But as shocking as that was,

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my first emotion was, oh,
okay, the person that that body belonged

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to no longer is there. I
mean, there was just something right away.

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And I don't know if that was
just me psychologically objectifying the situation so

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I wouldn't have to deal with it. But there is something about the dead

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that I find is Okay, this
is no longer the person that it was.

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This is the person's husk, if
you will. Yeah, that's a

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great reaction and a very emotionally healthy
one, I think. Okay. My

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boss once said that the body is
just a rental car that we drive around

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in for a while. Some of
them will crash when they're shining and new,

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and some of them get worn out
and take years to wind up in

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the jumpyard. So Leah, looking
upon it as an object, that's a

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good thing. The problem is when
you think about what happened in just the

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moments before their deaths if you have
an imagination, and it's not a great

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asset in this line of work.
What the Dead Know is the name of

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the book. Barbara Butcher is the
author, learning about life as a New

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York City death investigator. What are
some of the top things you've learned about

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the dead? I think the primary
thing is that every single life is valuable

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and matters. Every single life is
a story and a universe unto itself,

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with relationships for family and friends and
and an intricate part of the world.

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And we tend to look upon when
we hear all, there is twenty murders

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this week in Chicago or someplace like
that. Wow, twenty, But we

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forget that each one of those lives
had an extensive network that was part of

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our world. Their family, their
friends, their work. Everybody has a

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story. And that's what I learned
first and foremost, and some of those

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stories are included in What the Dead
No. Barbara Butcher is with us.

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Is there a particular one that stands
out that when you wrapped up the case

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you learned the most from. Yeah, and it was an unfortunate lesson.

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I would say there was an elderly
woman who jumped from the roof of her

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building, and I went early on
a Saturday morning to investigate it. And

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when I turned her body over and
pulled her on, I saw the tattoo,

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the blue numbers of Auschwitz. She
had been a concentration Yeah, she

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had been a concentration camp survivor.
And that shocked my eyes and shocked my

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brain like lightning, because we've heard
of these things, certainly, but to

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actually see it that a person was
tattooed and labeled as an object, a

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prisoner of a worker, it was
absolutely horrifying to me. And I went

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home after that, and I get
changed to go meet some friends for breakfast

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and went down to as As I
was walking to the diner, I went

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down to a synagogue and I started
knocking on the door, saying hello or

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anybody there, and a rabbi came
up, and it looked a little shocked,

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and I forgot that I had a
black motorcycle, leather jacket and boots

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and sunglasses. I looked kind of
tough, and he said, oh,

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how can I help you? I
said, a Jewish woman, a Holocaust

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survivor, just died, and I'd
like you to say the kadish the prayers

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for the dead for her, he
said, Okay, what's her maiden name?

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I don't know. Well, do
you know her mother's name? No,

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her father's Nay, No, I
knew nothing. Then I started to

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cry. He so it's okay,
don't worry, We'll see the press for

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your friend. I was so overcome
by the fact that I had seen evil

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who stark waving evil in the form
of one little tattoo, and has scared

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the hell out of me, knowing
how much evil there is in the world.

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Yeah. Yeah, this is Barbara
Butcher we're talking too. She's written

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about her experiences as a death investigator
in New York City, What the Dead

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No, learning about life as a
New York City death investigator, and then

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in that particular case too. It's
to me remarkable that if I mean,

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presumably the lady had committed suicide,
It is remarkable to me that but she

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I mean, it seems to me
that so many bad things had happened to

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her up until that point, she
had a lot more reasons to commit suicide

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before then. Exactly, I wondered, after on earth could have happened that

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made her commit suicide? Now?
How did she last so long, but

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we will never ever know. Barbara
Butcher, chief of Staff and Director of

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Forensic Science's Training Program at New York
City Office of Chief Medical Examiner, sharing

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her experiences in the book that's available
everywhere, learning about life as a New

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York City death investigator. What the
Dead No, Barbara Butcher, Thanks for

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sharing the stories. Thank you.
Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews,

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the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember
to listen to The Drive Live weekday

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afternoons from five to seven and Ihearts
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