Barbara Butcher: Inside the Mind of a Death Investigator

Summary

Podcast Summary: Miss Understood with Rachel Uchitel

Episode: Barbara Butcher: Inside the Mind of a Death Investigator

Date: November 14, 2025
Guest: Barbara Butcher, veteran death investigator, author, and TV host

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the life and career of Barbara Butcher, one of the most experienced death investigators in the United States. With over 5,500 death scenes and nearly 700 homicides under her belt, Barbara provides unique insights into the realities of death investigation—how fact and instinct merge at crime scenes, the emotional toll of repeated exposure to death, and the human stories often lost behind headlines. The conversation delves into the difference between television dramatizations and the real work of forensic professionals, including famous cases, mass casualty events like 9/11, and personal stories from Rachel and Barbara.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Does a Death Investigator Do?

• Role Clarification
  • Barbara distinguishes her fieldwork from the autopsy-focused work of forensic pathologists.
  • "What we're really concerned with is the manner of death. Was it a homicide, suicide, or accident or natural?" (Barbara, 04:44)
  • Her work involves examining scenes, bodies, and collaborating with police, but maintaining an independent viewpoint.

2. Barbara’s Unusual Path into Death Investigation

• Career Journey
  • Began as a physician assistant in surgery but found herself seeking a new challenge.
  • A career counselor suggested either poultry veterinarian or coroner, leading her to contact the NYC Chief Medical Examiner, who hired her.
  • “I said, I'll take the dead people.” (Barbara, 06:41)
  • Trained with NYPD Homicide and FBI Scene Investigation Schools before learning hands-on through casework.

3. Crime Scenes: Approach, Initial Observations, and Key Evidence

• First 90 Seconds at a Scene

  • Stresses keeping an open mind and not accepting initial police judgments.
  • "It's not a homicide until I say it's a homicide." (Barbara, 15:01)
  • Describes assessing the environment and the feel of the scene before focusing on the body—keying into smells, room setup, and subtle evidence.

• Time of Death Determination

  • Describes rigor mortis, lividity, and temperature checks.
  • Explains what specific details (like the location of blood pooling or blood spatter) reveal about sequence and cause of death.

4. Famous & Intriguing Cases:

• Ellen Greenberg Case Discussion (10:51, 11:17)

  • Rachel brings up the high-profile Philadelphia case where a woman was found stabbed in a locked apartment.
  • Barbara explains why, although rare, it is physically possible for people to inflict multiple injuries upon themselves in some suicides, but reiterates the importance of rigorously recreating scenarios before concluding.

• "The Staircase" Case (Death on the Staircase Netflix Doc, 24:36)

  • Barbara analyzes why certain accident or murder claims don’t hold up to forensic scrutiny, e.g., blood spatter patterns inconsistent with falls.

5. Death Investigation Versus Police Work

• Overlap and Independence (23:04)
  • Investigators present impartial, scientific evidence used by police to pursue perpetrators.
  • "My job is to give them evidence...that will lead them to a person, to the suspect." (Barbara)

6. Sensory Realities of the Job

• The "Smell of Death" (28:50)
  • “It's the smell of feces, sulfur, deep decay, insects...It’s unbreathable. And there’s really nothing you can do about it...Forget about putting Vicks under your nose.” (Barbara)
  • Importance of unaltered scene conditions: open windows can disrupt crucial evidence like body temperature or smells revealing substance use or poison.

7. Mass Casualty Events: 9/11 and Thailand Tsunami

• Personal and Professional Impact
  • Barbara recounts the overwhelming trauma and emotional toll of mass disasters.
  • "We had more than 20,000 remains...40% of the people remain unidentified." (Barbara, 02:08, 39:06)
  • Rachel shares her personal experience of losing her fiancé on 9/11, and how closure from identification efforts mattered deeply.
  • “We know how they died, we know when they died...except who they were. That became our mission.” (Barbara, 37:15)

8. Memorable and Haunting Cases

• Unsolved and Morally Complex Deaths
  • Barbara reflects on haunting cases—youths killed in drug deals, deaths with undetermined causes, and cases she believes were murders but couldn’t be proven.
  • Recounts the challenges of dealing with deceptive or complicated cases, such as suspected insulin overdose homicide described in detail (43:40).

9. Personal Transformation and Coping

• Relationship with Death and PTSD
  • “I'm not scared of dying. I'm scared of the way of dying...My hope is that I should be walking through a neighborhood and someone sees me and says, ha, you had an affair with my partner. I'll be 90 years old and they'll shoot me in the back of the head and I won't know what happened.” (Barbara, 46:19)
  • Describes hypervigilance, therapy, and retreats into creative outlets (writing, TV) as means for managing trauma.

10. Barbara’s Media Work: Book and TV Show

• Teaching Through True Crime
  • The show "The Death Investigator with Barbara Butcher" on Oxygen TV features her real cases, aiming to educate viewers on forensics and the realities of death investigation.
  • “I like teaching the viewer, the crime fan, the true crime fan, how we do it.” (Barbara, 48:11)
  • Her memoir, "What the Dead Know," is crafted to “see what you see and feel it and smell it and hear it. I want to be there with you.” (49:57)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Scene Authority:
  “It’s not a homicide until I say it’s a homicide.” - Barbara Butcher (15:01)

• On Possible Self-Inflicted Deaths:
  “Is it possible for a person to stab themselves in the back of their neck 20 times? Yes, it is. I’ve seen it done.” - Barbara (11:17)

• On Closure for 9/11 Families:
  “Our biggest concern was recovering the remains and identifying every single one. That’s the number one objective...after 24 years, 40% of the people remain unidentified.” - Barbara (37:15, 39:06)

• On Emotional Toll:
  “It changes lives, and the fact...PTSD is a killer. It absolutely is.” - Barbara (49:57)

• On the Smell of Death:
  “I’ve called it a strawberry milkshake made with garlic, but that doesn’t quite catch it...It’s unbreathable.” - Barbara (28:50)

• On Personal Relationship to Death:
  “No, I’m not scared of dying. I’m scared of the way of dying.” - Barbara (46:19)

• On Her Name:
  “Butcher is my name and it’s one of the best gifts my daddy ever gave me. It’s so perfect for this job.” - Barbara (54:19)

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Important Timestamps

• 01:20 – The unique smell of death described
• 04:44 – Definition and duties of a death investigator
• 06:13–08:22 – Barbara’s unconventional career path
• 15:01 – First steps and mindset at a crime scene
• 17:11 – Establishing time of death; importance of body and environmental clues
• 23:04 – Distinctions and intersections between police and death investigator roles
• 24:36 – Analysis of notorious “Staircase” case
• 28:50 – Reality of the “death smell” and why the scene mustn’t be disturbed
• 31:52 – Mass casualty, emotional fallout from 9/11 and the Thailand tsunami
• 39:06 – 40% of 9/11 victims remain unidentified 24 years later
• 43:40 – Description of an unresolved (believed) murder case
• 46:19 – How the job has changed Barbara; dealing with trauma and fear
• 48:11–49:57 – Details of shaping and purpose of her TV show and book
• 54:19 – "Butcher" is Barbara’s real name and how it defines her role

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Final Note

Barbara Butcher’s decades of work have left her with hard-earned expertise, skepticism, and a deep well of empathy for both victims and survivors. Her stories illuminate the realities and unseen burdens shouldered by death investigators—and serve as a powerful reminder of the importance of scientific rigor, humility, and psychological care in forensic work.

For more:

• Book: "What the Dead Know"
• TV Show: "The Death Investigator with Barbara Butcher" (Oxygen, Saturdays at 9pm)
• Upcoming podcast: Barbara will explore forensics topics with relevant experts.

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Listen if you’re drawn to true crime, forensics, or want to better understand the people doing work we rarely see—and the toll it takes.

Transcript

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[Rachel Yucatel]

Today on misunderstood with Rachel Yucatel. What is so distinct about this death smell?

[Barbara Butcher]

It's unbreathable.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Okay, let's go into the first like 90 seconds of a scene.

[Barbara Butcher]

I step in and I take. Take my hands off my ears and put them on my mouth. I take in the totality of the room, the feeling so I don't close in right away on the body.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Did you ever follow the Ellen Greenberg case where the girl was found stabbed in a locked apartment and her fiance said that she stabbed herself?

[Barbara Butcher]

Is it possible for a person to stab themselves in the back of their neck 20 times? Yes, it is.

[Rachel Yucatel]

You were involved in the Thailand tsunami also 9 11. Can you share how you deal with that mass casualty and what. What it is that you do?

[Barbara Butcher]

911 was so we had more than 20,000 remains. 40% of the people remain unidentified.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Most of us watch crime scenes unfold from the safety of a screen. Blue lights flashing, tape stretching across the street, detectives whispering over evidence. But my guest today is a person who actually walks under that tape. Barbara Butcher has spent decades stepping into the toughest, most chaotic scenes imaginable. From everyday homicides in New York City apartments to the unimaginable devastation of of 9, 11 and the Thailand tsunami. As one of the most experienced death investigators in the country, she's examined more than 5,500 death scenes and nearly 700 homicides, determining the cause and manner of death. The answers that shape everything that follows. She's the author of the memoir what the Dead Learning about Life as a New York City death investigator and now the host of Oxygen's new series the Death Investigator with Barbara Butcher, airing Saturdays at 9pm Barbara. Barbara's job isn't about speculation or emotion. It's about precision. She notices the details most of us would miss. The open window that shouldn't be. The angle of a bruise, the way the room smells, the temperature, the silence. Her work isn't just about how someone died. It's about finding the truth inside the chaos they left behind. Today, Barbara joins me to explain what a death investigator actually does. The biggest mistakes police make before she even arrives. How science and instinct come together at a crime scene. And what really happens when life ends suddenly and mysterious. This isn't TV drama. This is the real thing. And Barbara Butcher has lived it, smelled it, and seen it foreign. Barbara, thank you for joining us on Misunderstood. I've been watching your show and I am truly obsessed. So thank you for joining me.

[Barbara Butcher]

Oh, it's my pleasure. It's such a pleasure to meet you. I love your show.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Oh, thank you. Okay, so let's just start with this. What is a death investigator?

[Barbara Butcher]

You know, when, when people think about death investigation, when they think about murder investigation, if they think in terms of the autopsy, a forensic pathologist opening up the body and figuring out what they died from. And that is true. However, what we're really concerned with is the manner of death. Was it a homicide, a suicide or an accident or a natural? So in the case of a gunshot wound, sure. You open up the head. Forensic pathologist says, yep, death cause death, gunshot wound. I find the manner of death. I go to the scene where the. The death occurred. And working collaboratively with the police, I do my own investigation into the body. I examine the scene. I examine everything around that body. You know, using forensics, some common sense and physics, I can tell you one of those things has happened. It's certainly not a natural death, but could be an accident like cleaning your gun. That's a convenient excuse sometimes. But a suicide or a homicide, I'll guarantee you one thing. If it's a suicide, the gun is left behind. If there's no gun, to me, it's a homicide. So that's A right stint.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Right, right. Okay. But how did you get into this? Because it's not a straightforward path. I mean, I think a lot of people train in the medical field to get involved in stuff like this. You had a different path. So tell me how you got into this.

[Barbara Butcher]

Well, you know, I was a physician assistant working in surgery and trauma and things like that. So I had that background, but actually it was a career counseling service. Um, they. I was bored at my job at the time. I was a. What was I? Oh, a director of a hospital. And, you know, I was bored. I wanted something, so.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Wait, wait, that's so fascinating. Don't skip over that.

[Barbara Butcher]

What.

[Rachel Yucatel]

So what did you do for that job?

[Barbara Butcher]

Well, you know, when I was a physician assistant, I got into surgery in this little hospital in the South Bronx. So it was like a knife and gun club. Very exciting. It was a great, great job, and I got to do a lot of good, but when a patient doesn't make it, it is devastating to me. I have too much empathy. So then they promoted me to Director of Public Affairs, Politics, blah, blah, blah. But that's not my thing. So I go to this career counseling service. They give me all those tests, Minnesota, multiphasic, rigged, Myers, blah, blah, blah. And they said, my counselor said, you should either be a poultry veterinarian or a coroner. I said, poultry? Why? That said, well, you're good with diagnostics. You'd make a good veterinarian. But if it was puppies and kittens you were working with, well, it would break your heart if they didn't do well. Chickens, on the other hand, have beady little eyes. Nobody cares about them. They'd be perfect for you. I said, I'll take the dead people. Oh, my gosh. So, you know, coroner. That was. That was a great idea. And I thought, well, I won't get involved because they're already dead. I forgot they have families. And you get very involved. So the counselor said, call the one person in New York who you think has the best job in the world. I called the Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Charles Hirsch. He said, sure, come on in. And we talked, and they offered me a job.

[Rachel Yucatel]

No way. That's amazing.

[Barbara Butcher]

Yeah. Isn't that something?

[Rachel Yucatel]

That is something. So what was your first role like? What did you have to do?

[Barbara Butcher]

Well, the first thing I did was about three months of training. I went to the NYPD Homicide School, Criminal Investigation School. I went to the FBI's Scene Investigation School. And all the while, I went out on every single case in New York City with experienced Investigators with seniors. And there I learned how to examine the body, how to document it, photograph sketches, how to interpret the findings there on the scene, and how to work closely with the police, yet independently.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Right.

[Barbara Butcher]

We disagree sometimes. And I love working with cops. I come from a cop family, so I would go in there and have an absolute ball. It was the most interesting job on earth for a while.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Oh gosh. Well, okay, but hold on a second. So. So I understand this is an independent job of the police department. So you work for the medical examiner's office.

[Barbara Butcher]

That's correct, yeah.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Okay, but you're not one of the medical examiners who's doing the autopsy. It's in the field work where you're dealing with the actual body before it makes it to the morgue.

[Barbara Butcher]

Right. I'm seeing the body in its original context at the scene.

[Allie Jackson]

Right.

[Barbara Butcher]

When I give my photographs and my written report to the medical examiner, they now have a context for the death. So a gunshot wound becomes a suicide or a homicide or an accident.

[Rachel Yucatel]

So is it always that a death investigator shows up or sometimes does the police just handle this part?

[Barbara Butcher]

The police have to call us if someone dies alone. So if they call and say, I've got an 85 year old woman in a locked apartment, windows are locked. But her son got concerned and called us, everything's perfectly normal, there's no trauma, she's in bed. And we got her physician's name off her heart medication. Called him and he says it's fine, he'll sign the death certificate. I don't have to actually go to the scene.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Got it.

[Barbara Butcher]

I do have to check it out in that way.

[Rachel Yucatel]

But like, did you ever follow the Ellen Greenberg case? I think it was where the girl was found stabbed in a locked apartment and her fiance said that she stabbed herself 20 times in the back of her neck or something. Do you know which one I'm talking about?

[Barbara Butcher]

Yes, I do. Just recently that came up.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Yeah. So my question with that is, do you think they called a death investigator because the whole issue became with the medical examiner and they're trying to get him to change his testimony or whatever his signings findings. And if there was a death investigator present, I would think that there would be a lot more to talk about, but it seems like people didn't like what he had to say. What were your thoughts on that case?

[Barbara Butcher]

Yeah, as I recall, it was classified as a suicide based on the locked door. And the family is more concerned that it would be a homicide. And do you remember the jurisdiction where this took Place, what town it was.

[Rachel Yucatel]

I think it was in Philadelphia. George, you can correct me me if I'm wrong. I. I believe it was in Philadelphia.

[Barbara Butcher]

Okay, then there would have been a death investigator at the scene. Philadelphia is a, you know, well, has good protocols. Very good. ME's office. So they would have sent an investigator. So here's the thought. Is it possible for a person to stab themselves in the back of their neck 20 times? Yes, it is. So when I got to that scene and I noted that the doors were locked and the windows, very important, and I asked the police, how did you get in? You know, if it's just the bottom lock, then it could be a slam lock. So I want to know that the bolt was secured so it's easy to get in with a slam lock. So if the position was such that she could have taken a knife and stabbed herself like this, I'll believe it because I've seen it.

[Rachel Yucatel]

But why would anyone do that?

[Barbara Butcher]

The reasons for suicide are varied, but in my mind I classify them as two different types. One or actually three. One is the sad suicide, a brokenhearted person takes an overdose of sleeping pills and peacefully goes to sleep in bed and never wakes up. Or the angry suicide, jumping off a building into a crowded sidewalk. Oh, the kids that go and do school shootings, they go out there, they shoot all these children and then they shoot themselves. Now why didn't you just kill yourself? Because they're angry and they want to make a big statement that people will never forget them. And it shows. Hey, you didn't take care of me. So there's a third kind, though, that recently has come to my attention and that's the sort of psychotic break suicide. It's entirely possible to be a normal, well adjusted person out in the world, but then go into a psychotic break, for instance, with bipolar disorder. And to harm yourself like that, is it difficult, painful and a little crazy? Yeah, it is. But I've seen it done. Still one man who shot himself in the heart twice. The first time he didn't die instantly. Say, what the hell, I got another few minutes here. He shot himself again.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Oh my gosh.

[Barbara Butcher]

That time he made it. I mean, he didn't make it. He died.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Right, right.

[Barbara Butcher]

Accomplished what he was trying to do. I have seen people stab themselves repeatedly across their torso, even in the. It's almost like a self punishment. Think of it. Yeah, yeah, there's something about that. That's self hatred. Yeah, it's possible. If I were at that scene, I would be reenacting with everybody Get a woman her size, her approximate age, her health condition and see, can we do that? Could we?

[Rachel Yucatel]

So, okay, let's go into the first, like, 90 seconds of a scene. Like, talk about what you're looking for. Are you going in? Always skeptical of everything. Like, does somebody start with you? Walking in like we see in the movies, you go under the rope or whatever, and they're like, yeah, it's a classic suicide. Are you like, let me tell you what it is.

[Barbara Butcher]

Exactly. That's me. When the dispatch person calls me and says, barbara, you've got a homicide in the 23 precinct. I said, who says, well, the police said, no, no, it's not a homicide until I say it's a homicide.

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[Rachel Yucatel]

I love it.

[Barbara Butcher]

And I'm not saying anything because a preconceived notion. And what would I look for? Homicide. So I look for everything. So in that first 90 seconds, I get to the door and I ask the. Well, may I be a little lazy?

[Rachel Yucatel]

Of course. Whatever language you want. Yeah.

[Barbara Butcher]

Okay. So I asked the hmfic, that's the head in charge, what. What have you got here? And he'll say, well, you know, obvious gunshot wound, bled out on the floor. No weapon is seen. All right, thank you. That's it, though. I don't want to hear anymore.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Right.

[Barbara Butcher]

So now I. I step in and I take my hands off my ears and put them on my mouth like that. Listen, don't speak. I take in the totality of the room, the feeling. If I walk in there and there's scales and glassing envelopes and white powder and spoons everywhere and stacks of cash. I know I'm in a drug scene. If I come into a home and there's Birkenstocks and library shelves, PBS tote bags. That's a whole nother kind of life. So how good often determines how you die?

[Rachel Yucatel]

Do you ask for a few minutes alone, or are there like, cops and people walking all over the place while you're doing all this?

[Barbara Butcher]

Once they got used to me, all I'd have to do is, hey, guys, give me a second. And I just. Just take. Then take it in. I'd walk through carefully, and then. So I don't close in right away on the body.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Okay?

[Barbara Butcher]

I want the totality of it.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Okay?

[Barbara Butcher]

So, you know, I'll photograph and sketch everything, and gradually I'll close it on the body.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Right? And then what are you looking for in a body to determine time of death? All the things that you're looking for. What do you get from the Body.

[Barbara Butcher]

Time of death is very important because that narrows down your suspect fields. So what I'll do is at first I'll look at the rigor mortis. And, you know, you go into rigor over time, over about 12 hours. You stay rigidly stiff for another 12 hours, then you come out of it. And it's all related to muscle activity. Some people have lots of rigor, some people don't. If you do cocaine and you're a bodybuilder and you have a fever, you're going to go into rigor mortis almost instantly. A little old lady wasting away from cancer. It's going to take time. So I check that. Then the algo mortis, that's the settling of blood. If you're lying on your back, the back should be purplish red as the blood settles. But if it's half on your back and then I see that you're on your stomach, that means somebody moved the body after death.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Oh. Could it not be a bruise from a fight they had before their death?

[Barbara Butcher]

There's a difference. I can tell the difference between a bruise and.

[Rachel Yucatel]

They look different.

[Barbara Butcher]

Okay, absolutely. So I'm looking for. Oh, and then the algo mortise. That's the temperature of the body. And I take a rectal temperature. But I do that last because I don't want to start messing with the body or moving it around. Yet as I close in on the body, I get a sense of who this person is. Do I smell alcohol? Do I see multiple track marks from drugs for heroin injection or other injection? And do I have a sense of. Of what happened in this room? There's sort of a choreography of murder. You know, if I see someone with their throat slashed and against the wall, there's like a spray of blood and then a second spray lower down. Now, I know they were standing there when someone cut the throat. And when the carotid artery was transected, the blood sprayed out under high pressure. Then the second spray was less pressure. So now I know where was the victim standing? Where was the perpetrator standing? So that's what I'll start to interpret, a sense of where everybody was. I remember a case where I came in. It was a bar owned by two guys. And the guy, the living guy, said, you know, we were having a fight. We're partners in this business. We were standing facing each other. We each had a gun. And suddenly he was going to shoot me. And I shot first. No, you didn't. Because when I look at the body, which is face down, on the ground. I see that. On the column of the wall, there's blood spray and blood spatter, so I know he was shot when he was down on the ground.

[Rachel Yucatel]

I see. I see.

[Barbara Butcher]

Yes, I know where that blood pattern was.

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[Barbara Butcher]

Also, there's a lot of crossover there. If I am, I have a strong feeling that it was a homicide. Let's say that the person's head was bashed in or on the floor. That could be an accident. It's possible slope and fall. Or it could be that they were hit with a blunt object. So we're looking around for that blunt object. Of course, looking at the wound to get a better characterization, I can tell if it was a tire iron or a two by four. So the police, their. Their job is to take the evidence that I give them and the manner of death that I give them and then go catch a perpetrator.

[Allie Jackson]

Right.

[Barbara Butcher]

I don't chase suspects. You know, hopefully I am in touch with the detectives and they tell me what's going on, but my job is to give them evidence. Right. Will lead them to a person, to the suspect.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Yeah. What do you think of cases that have become, you know, Netflix docu series? Because they've never been solved. Did you ever follow the one about, I think it was called the Death on the Staircase about the wife who fell down the staircase and then they thought it was the husband. They found out the husband was having a gay affair and then he said it was an owl that came in and hit her in the face or. I mean, it was intriguing to watch. And to this day you don't really know if he did. Like, do you ever follow stuff like that? And you're like, wait a minute, I know whether or not he did it?

[Barbara Butcher]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. In fact, it's strange. You've read my mind. I was just. When I thought about blunt forced trauma, I thought, oh, of course, that case. So he's in prison right now, I assume.

[Rachel Yucatel]

I don't know. I can't remember because I was so into the actual movie. And I remember he came up with this, this defense that it was an owl. And I was like, wait a minute, did he Ever go to jail? As it was coming out of my mouth, I think he's in jail now.

[Barbara Butcher]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure he is. So anything is possible except the fact that a person could walk down the stairs and fall and then hit their head on multiple planes, like this side.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Ricochet their head.

[Barbara Butcher]

Yeah, yeah, that. That doesn't really happen. There was so much evidence there. There was blood spatter everywhere. And it wasn't the kind of blood spatter that, let's say you fall down forward onto the stairs. You're going to hit your face and your head. Your face may bleed and hit, shoot outwards, but not high up on the wall.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Right.

[Barbara Butcher]

So where are you falling? Even if you're tumbling down the stairs? Maybe you break your neck, maybe you slam your face. There's blood, but it's not spraying all over the place. Yeah, at different heights. No, that doesn't happen. And I do recall it was this guy, a detective called Jimmy Cold Case, because that's mostly what he worked on. But he was at a scene I came to, where a guy fell down the stairs. It was obvious he was. He was drunk, but he had a perfectly neat little bullet hole in his head. And, you know, I could prove that was an accident because he hit a stone corner at the bottom of the wall. It wasn't a gunshot. But then Jimmy Cold Case, and I won another case where a guy had blood everywhere. He was at the bottom of the stairs. And Jimmy, I said, clearly homicide. Jimmy said, no. What about if he fell forward, but then he caught himself on the rail and flipped to the side, striking his head on the right. Then it bounced, ricocheted to the left. Then he fell backwards again over the railing and hit his head on the mailbox. What do you think about that? I said, jimmy, anything is possible. Except that.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Oh, my gosh. So you are called to trial once in a while to testify as an expert in cases. Can they be cases that you were not the death investigator on?

[Barbara Butcher]

Yes, that is possible. It's rare. But if it's an old case and the investigator is no longer with the office, as the supervisor, I was, you know, the director of investigations, etc. I can go in and read from their notes and from their photographs and help the jury interpret what. What those notes and what those photographs mean. So, yeah, it's done.

[Rachel Yucatel]

I see. But the one. The trials that you're called to are mostly ones you were involved with from the beginning.

[Barbara Butcher]

Yeah. And, you know, just three, four weeks ago, I was called in for a case I did 31 years ago. 31 years, a mother and daughter were killed in their apartment. And right away I had an idea who it was, but we couldn't prove anything. We had DNA, but when you put it in the CODIS and the data banks, it didn't hit to anybody. So obviously he had never been arrested before. Well, you know, we never give up. Cold Case Unit ran it again after 30 years, and it hit just somebody. And it's exactly the guy that I thought it was.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Oh, wow. So is he. He was on trial.

[Barbara Butcher]

Oh, yeah. So I got to testify at his trial, and he was found guilty, and he's being sentenced now.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Wow. I can't. But bringing something to closure like that has got to feel so good in what you do.

[Barbara Butcher]

It sure does. It sure. Wow.

[Rachel Yucatel]

So in a lot of the episodes I've seen that you've done of the death investigator on oxygen, you guys talk a lot about the smell. And we always see that in the movies. They. They make it very clear that there is a smell that goes death. What is so distinct about this death smell?

[Barbara Butcher]

That it is composed of multiple compounds, and there is nothing like them that you can relate to in any way. I mean, I've called it a strawberry milkshake made with garlic, but that doesn't quite catch it. It's the smell of feces, sulfur, deep decay, insects. It's. It's a horrible, horrible smell. And no one's. You know, there are chemicals that are responsible for these smells, but there's something about the combination. And it's oily, so the air will settle in your hair and on your clothing, and it's just. It's unbreathable. And there's really nothing you can do about it. Forget about putting Vicks under your nose. It does. Right.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Does a mask prevent you from breathing it or. It still goes down.

[Barbara Butcher]

It's so insistent, it's so deep that even a mask. I mean, if you wore a complete gas mask.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Right, right.

[Barbara Butcher]

But then when you took it off, it's all over your body.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Yeah. So. And I saw in a recent episode that I saw of yours that you had been upset with some detectives for opening a window, opening the door, because you actually needed to smell that smell to get some answers. Can you explain that?

[Barbara Butcher]

Sure. The first reason I don't want windows open is because it changes the temperature of the room, and I need that temperature to calculate time of death. So you're sort of cooling the body down much faster than it should be.

[Vrbo Advertiser]

Right.

[Barbara Butcher]

1.5 degrees per hour in a 70 degree room. So that's the main thing. But also the smells of alcohol, that's a very distinct smell. And if you've got breezes blowing through, I'm not going to catch it. It.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Yeah.

[Barbara Butcher]

Also things like poisoning. There is a, a poison that for some reason has escaped my mind. It smells like choked cherries or bitter almond. Oh, cyanide, that's it. Oh. So I can, you know, I remember.

[Rachel Yucatel]

The one always used on the ID network to kill your husband or your wife. Cyanide or antifreeze. I've always noticed that's a popular, That's a good one.

[Barbara Butcher]

Yeah. But of course we're going to pick it up on toxicology. And don't leave the damn antifreeze bottle around half full because we know that's a possibility. Right, right. I recall bending over a guy who just looked like, you know, ordinary death, passed away, heart attack. But as soon as I got near him, I smelled choked chickens. I said, aha, let's look for some cyanide guys. And we found it.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Right. So there is a difference obviously between going and seeing one person or just a few dead as opposed to a mass casualty. Like I know you, you were involved in the Thailand tsunami also. 9 11. Can you share a little bit about how you deal with that kind of mass mass casualty and what, what it is that you do?

[Barbara Butcher]

You know, the truth is for a long time I just didn't deal with it. 911 was so traumatic to work on because we were seeing things that were not imaginable, like two jawbones inside somebody's chest. Like that makes sense. The forces, the, the destruction, the disintegration of people. That was a rough one. And so for a long time I didn't deal with it and I just got more and more angry. I never wanted to go home. My relationship ended and you know, that was happening for a lot of us. Yeah, drinking and, you know, cheating, all kinds of things. It was a way to cope. But we didn't cope. Then the Thailand tsunami. Oh, I do want to say one thing though. At first, when in recovering body remains from the World Trade Center, I didn't have much identification with the people that victims because nothing personal of that person was there. But then when I met the families of the dead, oh my God, that wrenched my heart out of my chest. Twisted it, dried it out, put it back like an old dried prune. It was so heartbreaking to see their pain. Unbearable. And when I went to the tsunami, it was a horrific scene. Thousands of bodies laying out on the ground, decomposed and, you know, couldn't even recognize hardly a human being, recognizable as a human being.

[Rachel Yucatel]

But were these bodies ones that kind of. They had been collected and put in one spot or.

[Barbara Butcher]

Yeah.

[Rachel Yucatel]

And that's when you came into that case.

[Barbara Butcher]

Yeah. They decided to take the bodies, their body collection points or morgues, with the temples, so that all around each temple they were areas filled with bodies and trenches where we bury them, because they figured, well, at least the monks can now bless them on their way to the next world or whatever the belief may be. But there was something very interesting about the Thai people and their philosophy and their religion, and that is that even though they were devastated, they had lost their homes, family members died, so many terrible things happened. And yet when the government said, we need to rebuild, we're paying 50 Baht an hour. And trucks would go through the cities, through Bangkok. LOUDSPEAKER Come and work, come and work. People came and they worked. They rebuilt the resorts because they depend on tourism. They rebuilt manufacturing, they rebuilt everything. And so much self sacrifice. But meanwhile they were living in cardboard sheds or whatever they could get their hands on dormitories. There was something about the call to duty and responsibility to the victims that was. It changed my attitude, changed my heart to see how these people handled death. And it's. A lot of it has to do with their faith. So.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Yeah, yeah, I want to go back to 911 for a minute. I don't know how much you know about me, but I lost my fiance in the World Trade center. And. And so I thank you for, you know, your service and what you did for us, because I searched high and low for him. I was working at Bloomberg News at the time. I was on it, I was covering it. You know, I was there as a producer, but covering it, talking to him in the building. He was in the second building that got hit, but the first building that fell. And as you said, there was no, you know, identification on most people because it had disintegrated or whatever. And we looked for him and didn't find him until essentially right around New Year's Eve. And every so often I would get a letter in the mail and it would just have, like a credit card that was frayed on the sides or an ID card or something, and it would come to my house and. And that actually gave me hope because I was like, they're closer to finding him. Even though, of course that didn't mean anything. But those things were. At least I had. You know, remember the time you like, didn't know anything. And you just wish you knew something and anything to hold on to. First you're like, maybe they're okay underneath somehow. Maybe they made it out. And I just didn't know. You know, you have hope in all sorts of weird ways. And then it became, I need them to find the body because I need to know what happened. I don't. I have to know what happened. I need to know if he was burned. I need to know if you know, what it was. So eventually they found him. I got a call. I guess it's kind of blurry, I can't remember, but I got a call and it was blunt force trauma. Was the cause of death. So I guess my question for you is, when they found him, was it likely someone like you that decided the cause of death? Or were pieces of bodies and bodies transported to places, to morgues, and you guys were going through the pieces to figure out who they were and how they died? Like, how did that process go down?

[Barbara Butcher]

First of all, I'm so, so sorry. That is so tragic to lose your fiance like that. You know, the resilience you have to just pick up and keep going is beautiful. And I'm so, so sorry for you. You know, we already knew the cause of death. Every one of them were murdered, every single one by the terrorists. And our biggest concern was recovering the remains and identifying every single one. And as you probably know, of the more than 2,000, I think 2,430 something people were killed. We had more than 20,000 remains, some of them tiny, tiny, smaller than a dime, some of them even a piece of bone weighing one gram or less. And yet we had to take every single one of them and do DNA testing, do dental records, everything we could to identify them, to return the remains to the families. That's the number one objective. We know how they died, we know when they died. We know who did it, we know what time it was, we know everything about it except who they were. And so that became our mission. And Dr. Hurst said that we would do whatever it takes for as long as it takes until every single person has been found and identified. You know, the impossibility of that. 40%. After 24 years, 40% of the people remain unidentified. And that is because the forces of that implosion, explosion and collapse were overwhelming. Absolutely overwhelming. Wow.

[Rachel Yucatel]

I didn't know that that was the number that still hadn't been identified.

[Barbara Butcher]

That's true, yeah. And may I ask, were you able to have any remains to be buried?

[Rachel Yucatel]

Yes, I. I Was I, you know, they wouldn't let us see him, you know, but there were remains to send to the funeral home and bury him. Y. And I want to say that I remember asking and they said that he was for the most part intact. It just for whatever reason, I guess he was underneath stuff so they couldn't get to him for, you know, that four months later or whatever it was. And so I didn't ask too many more questions, but I needed to me, I needed to know if he was like, if there was part of him left because it just helped put it into perspective for me, maybe what he went through a little bit more. You know, I think for all of us that had somebody close to us, you wanted to know what their last minutes were like. And that to me was most important.

[Barbara Butcher]

Absolutely. And most of the people died from the blunt force trauma. I mean the compression forces, that is the collapse forces. People's heads were traumatized so, so sharply, so suddenly that most of them, I'd say, you know, died very quickly and from blunt force trauma. Yeah.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Hopefully very quick and painlessly. All right, so in doing your job, what do you think was the most interesting? I guess I'll say case that you came across that still, you know, lives in your mind today?

[Barbara Butcher]

All of them, frankly, every single case was interesting to me. Even if it was just, you know, a straight out drug deal where three 15 year old boys were shot on the top of the rooftop top because they shorted the boss or something like that. Right. You know, I recall that. Was it easy to figure out what happened? Of course they were shot, it was a homicide. But what was more interesting to me was the fact that these were three 15 year old boys who, their job, their, their purpose was delivering drugs. How does that happen? It's just, it's just so outside the ex. My experience of growing up now, my experience as an adult, being a death investigator and being in this business for more than 25 years now I see the endless number of ways that people die and the endless number of reasons, but it doesn't mean I accept them. The casualness with which one could shoot three teenagers. Yeah, that. That's what they had in their lives. It. These things haunt me. Some cases, I mean it's, it's not funny, but the fact that. Well, a man was a, a baker, was working in a. With the dough in the bakery and kneading the dough, putting his hands in there, putting it all around, and he died. Accident with the machine. But on autopsy, when they opened up his abdomen, he had tapeworms, thousands of tapeworms. So now I can't get. I can't get over the fact that the bread that they made is sold. I mean, oh, my gosh, we're infected from that. I mean, it's. It's. It's not funny, but it's just one of those strange things in life. Damn it. That's going to stick with me now. How can I eat bread? But there was a case where I was quite certain that the wife had murdered her husband. It was reported as a suicide by an overdose of insulin. And it bothered me a lot because when the police, the daughter, came home and found him dead in the bed, and there was a little note that just said, sorry, scribbled. She called her mother. Her mother worked a little boutique nearby, an art gallery with gifts and things, and she owned it. They were quite wealthy. And she walked home from the gallery and found him and then called his psychiatrist, who walked over about five blocks. And neither one of them called 91 1.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Oh, my goodness.

[Barbara Butcher]

Until they were together. And they said, oh, let's call 91 1, right? And then. So when I came into the room, you know, I saw the man.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Was she having an affair with the therapist?

[Barbara Butcher]

That was my belief. As I walked into the room where the two of them were sitting, Detective said to me, barbara, come on, this one's a little funny. Let's do this interview together. And as soon as I walked in, the chemistry between those two people was so electric. She was beautiful. Italian accent, Chanel suit, fabulous. He was in a, you know, bespoke gray suit, thick, dark hair, wavy. And he had that kind of relaxed insistence that superior people have, right? There I am in my cheap trench coat, my Talbot suit. And when I went, I extended my hand to the wife to say, you know, I'm so sorry for your loss. And she presented her hand to me like that.

[Rachel Yucatel]

No way.

[Barbara Butcher]

Did you want me to kiss it?

[Rachel Yucatel]

Oh, my gosh.

[Barbara Butcher]

And there was a way, the way they were sitting. They were far apart but leaning and curving toward each other. And to them, I was a nuisance. They were superior, and I had a very strong feeling.

[Rachel Yucatel]

So did they get away with it?

[Barbara Butcher]

Yes, they did. Because. Well, first of all, the psychiatrist, you know, he said, I've been treating him for depression. And the wife said, yes, he was terribly depressed, and he had diabetes and it was hard to control. I asked, oh, who's his endocrinologist? May I have the name? And the psychiatrist said, oh, I treat his diabetes. Like what? What it's A complex and dangerous disease. Psychiatrists don't treat it. It. Right. So I had figured that the insulin in the bottle, which was empty now, had been changed for a stronger insulin. And so it was an accidental overdose. That was actually a murder. That was my belief. It still is. But there was nothing, nothing to prove that. Wow. And for a while, I watched the Times wedding announcements to see if they would again. Then I gave it up.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Right. Oh, my gosh. So do you have a different relationship with death now that you've seen it in all ways, shapes and forms? Are you scared of death?

[Barbara Butcher]

No, I'm not scared of dying. I'm scared of the way of dying. My hope is that I should be walking through a neighborhood and someone sees me and says, ha, you had an affair with my partner. I'll be 90 years old and they'll shoot me in the back of the head and I won't know what happened.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Right. And it'll be quick.

[Barbara Butcher]

Quick. Even though I'm 90, people will say, my God, the tragedy. She was so vital, so spry.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Right.

[Barbara Butcher]

She had a love affair and died for it. Right. It's a lot better than laying around in bed at 90 and people thinking, my God, why doesn't she just go away? So I'd like something dramatic and sexy. However, I do fear so many ways of dying because there is evil in the world. I've seen it. I have PTSD over it. I'm scared of people to a certain extent. So I'm hyper vigilant all the time now. Mind you, I get excellent therapy for this, for ptsd. Excellent therapy. I'm getting over it gradually. Right.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Well, I'm curious. Are you more of a recluse as a person or are you out there all the time? I mean, does it make you not trust people?

[Barbara Butcher]

You know, I go back and forth with that. I'm an extroverted introvert. I enjoy being alone. I live in my head a lot. But when I get to know people, I love being around them. I go out all the time to see my friends. I'm out most every evening, but because I like to be around people I trust. But walking down the street by myself at night, my head swiveling, I'm taking in everything around me.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Yeah.

[Barbara Butcher]

No one's gonna get near me.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Right. Okay, so you have a show out. You. How close is this to reality? You guys are covering real cases.

[Barbara Butcher]

Oh, yeah, these are my cases. Yeah.

[Rachel Yucatel]

And so tell people, you know what we should know about the show that, like, that we should be why we should be watching.

[Barbara Butcher]

The show takes a death and shows you from the very beginning how it was investigated, what it looked like when I got, what it felt like for us. And I've got the detective who originally did the case with me. So we're talking through the case, but now we're going to show you how it was solved, how it happened, how we solved it, how the perpetrators were caught. And because these aren't cold cases, these are ones that we've solved. But as I go along, I like teaching the viewer, the crime fan, the true crime fan, how we do it. I like to teach them about rigor mortis, what it means and how it gets there and what it doesn't mean and how you can fake rigor mortis. So I like to teach them about those things. So I do talk a lot about what that finding meant. And some of the cases are like, this season, we did half of them in New York, my cases, and half of them out in Las Vegas and Virginia, because there are detectives I know out there, and we've talked about these cases. So I go out, meet up with them, and we go through the case there.

[Allie Jackson]

Right.

[Barbara Butcher]

So it's a, you know, it's a mystery, it's true crime, and it's a little bit of a teaching experience.

[Rachel Yucatel]

I agree. I've loved watching it. It was absolutely a teaching experience, but also interesting to watch because I'm a true crime fan. You've also written a book, what the Dead Know. And what did you want people to finally understand about the people that do this work?

[Barbara Butcher]

Well, you know, the first draft of that book I sent to my editor. I went to meet with him, and he said, barbara, where are you? I said, I'm right here. He said, no, where are you? In this book, I want to see what you see and feel it and smell it and hear it. I want to be there with you. Rewrite it. So I said, oh, you want me to cry? He said, yeah, go deep. I did. I rewrote the book and I made it much more personal. And in the book, I talk about the interesting cases or the strange things I've seen and learned, but moreover, what it feels like to be a person doing that work, a detective, medical, legal, death investigator, what we go through, what it is, how it changes lives, and the fact, you know, I speak a lot about this at conferences, how much we need help. PTSD is a killer. It absolutely is. And so, yeah, I want people to know what it's like to do that job, to be in my shoes. There so, yeah, the book is full of cases. It teaches a few things, but it also shows you what it's like to do that work. Yeah.

[Rachel Yucatel]

And how hard it is. Yeah. All right. Is there something that you're doing now or are you filming? Are you still actively a death investigator?

[Barbara Butcher]

I did private work for a while after I left the medical examiner's office, but that became too heartbreaking. You know, families may not agree with what police determined, and they asked me to reinvestigate. The majority of the time, it is what the ME said or what the police said. It breaks their hearts because they want something different. I do have a case right now, my last case, in which the ME was wrong and I can prove it. So it's still rattling around in court, but so now in a. In an act of self preservation, I decided to do creative things in life, like write the book, like do the TV show. So right now the TV show is airing. It'll be done November 29th, and I'm looking forward to a second season. Currently, the show is doing very well, from what I see.

[Rachel Yucatel]

I can imagine. Yeah.

[Barbara Butcher]

And I'm also. We're starting to produce a podcast.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Amazing.

[Barbara Butcher]

Yeah. Where I interview experts in the particular realm of what the case was like. If it's DNA, I'll bring on a DNA scientist. If it's a machinery death, I'll bring in a forensic engineer. So, yeah, so the podcast, I like to stay busy.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Good. And will you bring up cases that are current in the news and talk about your thoughts on them?

[Barbara Butcher]

Yes, I will. You know, I do get asked to do that a lot. I. What did I do last cnn? Oh, the Gene Hackman death.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Oh, yeah.

[Barbara Butcher]

Yeah. So I did a lot of interviews on that, and I opine on various cases, but I'm very careful about that because if you're not at the scene, if you don't know what the scene held, you don't have the photographs, the reports of the original people, you can. You can get fooled. So, you know, I. I'm. I tell the evidence and I tell my interpretation of it without saying, definitely a murder.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Right. But are death investigators, like, friends? Like, could you pick up the phone and call the death investigator in the Karen Reed case and. And be like, what the hell happened.

[Barbara Butcher]

On the Karen Reed case? I can pick up the phone and call the forensic pathologist who did the case. X an excellent job on it. Yeah. I'm friendly with a lot of the folks in the business, so it is a good thing. Yeah.

[Rachel Yucatel]

All right. Well, I am so excited to keep watching. I will be really excited if there's a season two. Anything else on the horizon, a bucket list that you want to accomplish in life?

[Barbara Butcher]

Yes, I'd like to see the movie. The movie Barbara Butcher.

[Rachel Yucatel]

That's right. I love it. And by the way, it's the perfect name. Is that your real name name?

[Barbara Butcher]

Yes, it is. Butcher is my name and it's one of the best gifts my daddy ever gave me. It's so perfect for this job.

[Rachel Yucatel]

It's so perfect. And I know people call you Dr. Butcher because it sounds so perfect. You are not a doctor. Just explain that because I know that people try and take credibility on the, on the stand and say you don't know what you're talking about because you're not a doctor. But explain why. Why you're not and why it doesn't matter.

[Barbara Butcher]

Yeah, the doctors, the forensic pathologists, they do the autopsy is based on anatomy and physiology. The person who does the scene investigations doesn't do autopsies, doesn't need to know all the medicine, but needs to know the scene and the body in the scene. We're trained to be observant, interpretive, thorough and detailed. But we don't do autopsy. So you don't need to be a doctor. You need to be smart and have a medical background or no forensic background.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Amazing. All right, guys, you need to pick up the book what the Dead Know and also make sure you're watching oxygen, 9pm Saturdays. The death Investigator with Barbara Butcher. Thank you so much for joining us today. I wish you the best of luck.

[Barbara Butcher]

Thank you. It was a pleasure to meet you.

[Rachel Yucatel]

Thank you so much for listening to Misunderstood. I'm your host, Rachel Yukatel. Please be sure to subscribe to the show and give us a five star rating and review. You can support the show by joining our [e-mail] misunderstood with Rachel Ukatel. Do you have ideas for the show or want to reach out? Email [e-mail] that's spelled M I S SS Understood. Thank you so much and I'll see you next time.

[Allie Jackson]

If you're a podcast host, listen up. This one's for you. My name is Allie Jackson. I'm the host of Finding Mr. Height, a dating and relationship podcast that I've been doing for four years now. Sharing my positive and practical approach to dating that's built on my own life experience. And I wanted to share another experience that I've had. My secret behind monetizing my show. It's called Red Circle, and I was just telling my colleague about how much I love their platform. With Red Circle, not only am I getting an seamless hosting experience, but I also love the support I receive in ad sales. It's not just typical ad sales either. It's targeted opportunities based on my show and my life. And the platform is super simple. You just set your preferences and Red Circle matches you with sponsors that align with your show. You can vet every opportunity and their platform gives you great analytics. More recently, too, my Red Circle team has brought me opportunities outside of my podcast on social media to really augment the podcast partnerships. Bring them full circle. I just can't recommend them enough. If you want to give it a try, go to redcircle.com to get your free trial. That's redcircle.com for a free trial.