This is Later with Lee Matthews The Lee Matthews Podcast More What You Here weekday
Afternoons on the Drive. Barbara Butcher was a chief of staff and director of
forensic sciences training program at a New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner.
She's taken many of her experiences and wrote them into a book called What the
Dead No Learning about life as a New York City death investigator. Barbara Butcher,
welcome. Not everyone would flock to this job. What attracted you?
Curiosity? Telling me there's nothing quite as interesting as seeing how people live.
Now, of course I was there to see how they died and investigate that,
but you'd be shocked at the way people lived, especially in New York
City. Everything from a home in a cave beneath the tunnels of the abandoned
train tunnels and furnished by the way, or up in this avenue penthouses filled
with art and growing pianos and all kinds of crazy things. I did it
take a lot of getting used to to get into this line of work?
Or had pathology already kind of been in your background? Well, pathology was
not in my background. I was working surgery, but as a child I
loved dissecting dead animals to see what happened. And all the kids in the
neighborhood used to bring me a road kill and my parents for my Christmas present
got me a frog in fromaldehyde. So I liked it right from the beginning,
and then it led to this career. Now. I know many on
the narc squad end up doing drugs? Are they trying to stop? I
mean, what effects do working murders day in and day out have on the
people who work them? Horrible? In order to properly do your job,
have to detach emotionally and just think about the science in front of you,
observe, listen, record, and it's very hard to stay detached because you're
a human being. You want to have emotions. And I did reach a
point where my emotions were are shut off. Couldn't keep a relationship going because
I just couldn't feel anymore. It was numbing. And to see people's families
that the families of the dead, but they goes through when someone's murdered or
commits suicide, it's hideous. Yeah, how they do it well. I
remember early in this job, I was sent to cover a gunshot murder and
I was a young, impressionable kid talking to the officer about what happened,
and at one point he says, oh, and the body's right over there.
And I looked over and it was a body that had taken a direct
shot to the face with a shotgun. But as shocking as that was,
my first emotion was, oh, okay, the person that that body belonged
to no longer is there. I mean, there was just something right away.
And I don't know if that was just me psychologically objectifying the situation so
I wouldn't have to deal with it. But there is something about the dead
that I find is Okay, this is no longer the person that it was.
This is the person's husk, if you will. Yeah, that's a
great reaction and a very emotionally healthy one, I think. Okay. My
boss once said that the body is just a rental car that we drive around
in for a while. Some of them will crash when they're shining and new,
and some of them get worn out and take years to wind up in
the jumpyard. So Leah, looking upon it as an object, that's a
good thing. The problem is when you think about what happened in just the
moments before their deaths if you have an imagination, and it's not a great
asset in this line of work. What the Dead Know is the name of
the book. Barbara Butcher is the author, learning about life as a New
York City death investigator. What are some of the top things you've learned about
the dead? I think the primary thing is that every single life is valuable
and matters. Every single life is a story and a universe unto itself,
with relationships for family and friends and and an intricate part of the world.
And we tend to look upon when we hear all, there is twenty murders
this week in Chicago or someplace like that. Wow, twenty, But we
forget that each one of those lives had an extensive network that was part of
our world. Their family, their friends, their work. Everybody has a
story. And that's what I learned first and foremost, and some of those
stories are included in What the Dead No. Barbara Butcher is with us.
Is there a particular one that stands out that when you wrapped up the case
you learned the most from. Yeah, and it was an unfortunate lesson.
I would say there was an elderly woman who jumped from the roof of her
building, and I went early on a Saturday morning to investigate it. And
when I turned her body over and pulled her on, I saw the tattoo,
the blue numbers of Auschwitz. She had been a concentration Yeah, she
had been a concentration camp survivor. And that shocked my eyes and shocked my
brain like lightning, because we've heard of these things, certainly, but to
actually see it that a person was tattooed and labeled as an object, a
prisoner of a worker, it was absolutely horrifying to me. And I went
home after that, and I get changed to go meet some friends for breakfast
and went down to as As I was walking to the diner, I went
down to a synagogue and I started knocking on the door, saying hello or
anybody there, and a rabbi came up, and it looked a little shocked,
and I forgot that I had a black motorcycle, leather jacket and boots
and sunglasses. I looked kind of tough, and he said, oh,
how can I help you? I said, a Jewish woman, a Holocaust
survivor, just died, and I'd like you to say the kadish the prayers
for the dead for her, he said, Okay, what's her maiden name?
I don't know. Well, do you know her mother's name? No,
her father's Nay, No, I knew nothing. Then I started to
cry. He so it's okay, don't worry, We'll see the press for
your friend. I was so overcome by the fact that I had seen evil
who stark waving evil in the form of one little tattoo, and has scared
the hell out of me, knowing how much evil there is in the world.
Yeah. Yeah, this is Barbara Butcher we're talking too. She's written
about her experiences as a death investigator in New York City, What the Dead
No, learning about life as a New York City death investigator, and then
in that particular case too. It's to me remarkable that if I mean,
presumably the lady had committed suicide, It is remarkable to me that but she
I mean, it seems to me that so many bad things had happened to
her up until that point, she had a lot more reasons to commit suicide
before then. Exactly, I wondered, after on earth could have happened that
made her commit suicide? Now? How did she last so long, but
we will never ever know. Barbara Butcher, chief of Staff and Director of
Forensic Science's Training Program at New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner, sharing
her experiences in the book that's available everywhere, learning about life as a New
York City death investigator. What the Dead No, Barbara Butcher, Thanks for
sharing the stories. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews,
the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday
afternoons from five to seven and Ihearts Media Presentation