S18 Ep85: What The Dead Know: The Life Of A NY Death Investigator w/Barbara Butcher

True Crime Tuesday presents What The Dead Know: The Life Of A NY Death Investigator with Chief Medical Examiner/Investigator/Author, Barbara Butcher! Barbara Butcher was early in her recovery from alcoholism when she found an unexpected lifeline: a job at the Medical Examiner’s Office in New York City. The second woman ever hired for the role of Death Investigator in Manhattan, she was the first to last more than three months. The work was gritty, demanding, morbid, and sometimes dangerous – she loved it. Butcher (yes, that is her real name, and she has heard all the jokes) spent day in and day out investigating double homicides, gruesome suicides, and most heartbreaking of all, underage rape victims who had also been murdered. In What the Dead Know , she writes about investigating more than 5,500 death scenes, 680 of which were homicides. In the opening chapter, she describes how just from sheer luck of having her arm in cast, she avoided a boobytrapped suicide. Later in her career, she describes working the nation’s largest mass murder, the attack on 9/11, where she and her colleagues initially relied on family members’ descriptions to help distinguish among the 21,900 body parts of the victims. On Today's show, Barbara opens you up a little to her world, professional and personal, and shows us why it takes not just strength, but the best of our humanity to do what she does. Get your copy of "What The Dead Know ..." here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/What-the-Dead-Know/Barbara-Butcher/9781982179403 #crime #truecrime #truecrimepodcasts #truecrimetuesday #barbarabutcher #whatthedeadknow #newyork #murderinvestigation #forensics #policeprocedure #deathinvestigator #medicalexaminersoffice #murder #dnaevidence #crimescene #forensicevidence #suicide #alcoholicsanonymous #september11th #911 #dumbcrimesstupidcriminals #TimDennis #beercitybruiser #ringofhonorwrestling #floridaman #drugcrimes #foodcrimes #stupidcrimes #funnycrimes #stolenkittens #sexcrimes #burritothrow