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Podcast Summary: The James Altucher Show - Episode with Barbara Butcher
Episode Overview In this gripping episode of *The James Altucher Show*, James Altucher interviews Barbara Butcher, a renowned forensic investigator from New York City. Barbara shares insights from her career spanning over two decades, focusing on her book, *What the Dead Know*, which explores the mysteries of death, the investigation process, and the emotional toll it takes on those in the profession.
Key Themes
Life and Death Investigations
- Career Insights: Barbara discusses her experiences as a forensic investigator, detailing the various cases she has encountered, from homicides to suicides.
- Understanding Death: Throughout the episode, Barbara emphasizes the profound lessons that can be learned from the deceased, urging listeners to contemplate the narratives left behind by those who have passed.
Emotional Impact of the Work
- Detachment vs. Empathy: Barbara explains the necessity of emotional detachment in her job to remain effective. However, she acknowledges the difficulty of maintaining that detachment over time, leading to emotional numbness in personal life.
- Coping Mechanisms: The conversation touches on how professionals in this field often cope through various means, including therapy and support from colleagues, which was less acknowledged in the past.
Specific Cases and Their Implications
- Angry Suicides: Barbara discusses a concept she introduces in her book regarding individuals who commit suicide after harming others. She reflects on one case where a man set a booby trap in his suicide, showing the complexity of human emotions and actions.
- Personal Stories: Throughout the episode, Barbara shares poignant and sometimes horrifying stories from her career, including a case involving a family murder and the emotional toll it took on her.
The Nature of Evil
- Casual Evil: Barbara describes instances of seemingly casual evil, such as individuals who commit violent acts without remorse. She emphasizes the prevalence of such cases in her work and the moral dilemmas they present.
- Media Representation: Barbara critiques how television and media portray forensic investigations, noting the discrepancies and sensationalism involved, which often misrepresents the reality of the job.
Death and Society
- Cultural Perceptions of Death: The episode explores how death is treated in society, how it impacts families, and the narrative that records the lives of the deceased.
- Historical Context: Barbara provides historical insights into the evolution of forensic science and its significance in modern justice systems.
Key Takeaways
- Understanding the Dead: Death investigators hold a unique position in society, providing closure and answers to families while also grappling with the emotional weight of their discoveries.
- The Importance of Support: Emotional well-being is crucial for those working in high-stress environments, and seeking support is a necessity rather than a weakness.
- Fascination with Mortality: The human fascination with death and the stories behind it is a timeless topic, showing how people relate to the experiences of life and loss.
Conclusion This episode of *The James Altucher Show* offers listeners an in-depth look at the life of a forensic investigator through the eyes of Barbara Butcher. Her stories not only provide chilling insights into the nature of death but also encourage a broader understanding of human emotions and the way society handles loss and tragedy. Through her work, Barbara reminds us of the importance of empathy and the lessons that can be learned from those who have passed away.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Look, as a manager of people, as an employer, as an entrepreneur, and as even an investor in startups, I can tell you the most important thing for your business is the quality of people. people you hire. The best part is that great candidates are already on LinkedIn. Employees hired through LinkedIn are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. And I will tell you that the great thing about LinkedIn is that you're not just looking at random people. You're able to see the people who your friends and trusted peers and colleagues who they trust and who they've hired in the past and who they recommend.
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1:25People die in very strange ways some of the time. And I know this because I just spoke to Barbara Butcher, who just published the book, What the Dead Know, learning about life as a New York City death investigator. Here she is, Barbara Butcher.
1:44This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is The James Altucher Show.
2:00Barbara, have you ever seen a ghost in the 5 ,300 dead bodies that you've investigated? No, because, no, I haven't. I've seen ghosts in my own realm, my own personal realm, but never a dead body on scene. And you would think that there would be some, because supposedly they only haunt the death's location if they died badly and with a great emotional upheaval. And almost 100 % of the dead bodies you've seen died in an unpleasant way. Well, a very large number of them, yes. A very large number of them. So who knows? I mean, the ghosts may have been watching me while I did my examination and my work.
2:46I hadn't thought about that. But wait, you said something very interesting at first. You said you've seen ghosts in your personal ROM, which is an interesting way to put it, your personal ROM. I'll leave that aside for a second. But what ghosts have you seen? I was just talking about how she would have been my great aunt and my great uncle were arguing and fighting up on a stair landing. in my great-grandmother's home. And he was very jealous and he thought that she was running off with somebody, another man. So he shot her and stuffed her body behind a trunk. Then he shot himself out on the stair landing.
3:25So, you know, somebody heard the shot, came running up and found him dead. They didn't find her immediately. It was because the body was stuffed behind the trunk and they searched and they said, oh, she must have run off with that other man. When they eventually found her a huge uproar. Now there's two people dead and they had a little baby that died very shortly afterwards. They said it died of heartbreak back then. Okay. So now here I am a kid playing in the same area. And every time we go up those stairs to the back room, there's a cold spot on the landing, the stair landing. And it feels creepy.
4:03It makes a pit of your stomach go bad. that we'd run through it, whatever that was. When my mother was a little girl, she slept in the room upstairs next to that landing, and she'd hear people fighting and crying from a long way off. And she thought nothing of it until she got older. She mentioned it to my great-grandmother, and she said, oh, honey, that's the one of your aunts. She'd die, you know, her husband. He'd kill her. Then he'd kill himself. I mean, can you imagine that the pain and the anger to lead to like, I mean, you probably can't imagine because you've seen it a lot of times, but just I always wonder about these suicide murders, murder someone that commits suicide.
4:46Like you have so much anger and pain. You do the deed and then you must feel so guilty or so worthless or like you can't even imagine life going on and then you kill yourself and you don't want to get caught, I guess, too. So you kill yourself. Well, actually, that's the first chapter of my book is about the angry suicides. Why do so many people who kill themselves go out and shoot somebody else first? That was an interesting case, the situation with your great-grandmother and great-grandfather. That was very intensely personal. Yeah. Whereas in your first chapter, can you describe that one, the angry suicide?
5:20Sure. That was a case I went to where the police called and said, oh, you've got a suicide. A guy hanged himself in the 2-8 precinct or wherever it was. And when I got there, it was pitch dark, absolutely pitch dark. So I asked the cop, what's up? He goes, I don't know. I guess the guy didn't pay his electrical bill, but there's no lights here at all. now I was a little out of sorts that night because I had cut a tendon in my hand with a saw had some surgery now my arm was in a cast from my hand to my elbow and I wasn't getting around too well so I was grumpy in pain and not functioning at my best so I'm pissed off that I got to go in there and look around with a flashlight to find anything and there's not much to be said except that this is an extraordinarily lonely apartment.
6:16It's a guy who's probably just sat in his apartment by himself for years, never did much of anything. But there he is hanging in a doorway from an overhead pipe. And with the flashlight, I'm scanning him. I don't see much that's unusual. There's things we look for. For instance, if you were to strangle a person with a ligature or with your hands and then string them up to make it look like a suicide, I'd know about it because there are certain signs we look for. Anyway, we used Polaroid cameras back then. I think this was back in 93, 92. And the flash is going off and I'm just taking all the pictures top to bottom.
7:04And I say, yeah, all right, this looks like a suicide. No big deal. Let's go home. well no big deal for me certainly was for the guy now before I leave I go to cut him down normally I stand up on a stool or something hold on to the ligature so that he doesn't crash to the floor and I cut above the knot with my knife and I realize I can't do that my hand's in a cast and there's nobody else around. My driver is an older fellow and the cop, they got union roles, so I'm not going to ask him. So I figured, oh wait, I'll just call the office. When the morgue people get here, the morgue wagon drivers, I'll ask them to cut the guy down, let him down easy and take him away.
7:54So off I go back to the office and I'm preparing to write my report about the case. And of course, I'm reviewing and labeling the photographs. And I come upon one photograph where I notice, oh, this is interesting. What is this plugged into the wall? It's an orange extension cord, the kind you use for outdoors, heavy duty. Hmm, wait a second now. What's that doing there? Turns out it's around his neck. That's his ligature. That's pretty good because it won't break. It's nice and strong. But as it trails off from behind his head, it's plugged into the wall. And I'm like, wait a second, what does this mean?
8:38I thought there was no electricity there. Why would it be plugged in? So I call back to the scene and I'm thinking, oh shit, there is electricity. This is a booby trap. And sure enough, I asked the cop, you know, he answers the phone. I said, go and screw in the light bulbs and make sure that they're dead. He screws in a light bulb. It's live. This guy set it up to make sure, to make it look as if there was no electricity in the house, unscrewed all the bulbs, whatever. And then plugging this in, he knew that somebody would come along to cut him down. That person, me, would be electrocuted. Maybe didn't.
9:25Was it going to be enough of an electrocution to kill you? I don't know. I've asked engineers and they say varying things. Depends on how I was grounded, if I was grounded, you know, what kind of, but either way I would have been hurt at the very least. And, you know, And then I started wondering, what the hell? Why do people do this? Why do people just, why not just kill yourself and be done with it? Why do you have to take someone else with you? And so I classify that as the angry suicide. And why do you think someone does that? I think the anger of being in pain, emotional pain. If you've ever experienced deep emotional pain, and I'm sure you have, it's it's horrifying it's devastating and what's even more devastating is I think if you're a very isolated person no one reaches out to you no one says hey you look you look awful what's going on or I haven't spoken to you in a while are you lonely you want to hang out no one reaches out to these isolated people because they've they've well they started it they built walls around their lives.
10:42But that doesn't stop the anger that comes from feeling all that pain. No one cares. So I think it's a screw you to the world. It's almost like you said, there's no one who calls them. There's no one who cares. It's almost like they want to have meaning in someone's life. And by electrocuting them as part of their suicide, they're definitely going to have meaning in someone else's life for the first time. Sure. They won't be forgotten. Now this particular guy, this case I did, he won't be forgotten because it left enough of an impression on me that I wrote a chapter of a book on it. Why did you make that the first story you tell?
11:25You have so many fascinating stories. Good question. When you were sitting down to type, What made you type that case first? You know, when I opened up, when I started writing the first sentence, I wanted to be talking about the people around me. Mr. Wells, my driver, the woman who works on the switchboard. I just wanted to open up in a very general, like, oh, here, I'm at work, la-di-da, this is what we do. but now here's the work I'm gonna go look at a dead guy wow so I opened it up that way just here's my work a day life and um something weird happened so the intention was not to talk about angry suicides right from the from the top but just to talk about oh here's how my day at work goes, but look how it turns.
12:29And I guess the point in that story is that I was bitching and moaning about having my hand in a cast. It was ruining everything. And it hurt like hell. So if I hadn't had my hand in a cast, I would have cut through that wire. Maybe I would have been killed. Maybe I just would have been badly hurt. But regardless, it just started me thinking. So that's how that chapter started out as the first one, talking about my everyday job and then, oh, look at this. Because of your job, it's almost impossible to start that book in a bad way. That's true. Because you could just start, you could just put yourself in the middle of any of the hundreds or thousands of stories you've been involved with and just start typing and that's going to be a riveting story.
13:26And it's because, A, I guess we're just fascinated. You know, I've never seen a dead body, for instance. So we're just fascinated by someone whose job it is to investigate these things. And of course, there's TV shows that, you know, glorify it and whatever. And every story, like you say, has a lot of pain in it for it to end up as it did. And even if it wasn't foul play, it's like there was the one story you told, you know, two drunk people and they wake up and one of them is dead. And obviously the other guy has a broken bottle. So obviously the other guy did it. But you believed him that he said he just couldn't remember what happened.
14:08Like what happened there? Well, as an alcoholic, I can tell you all about blackout drunk. drunk, when you literally remember nothing of what happened to you or what you did. I've had friends, alcoholics, who were out at a club one night and woke up in Paris or Bermuda. Two friends, one in Paris, one in Bermuda. I mean, just woke up and said, oh my God, where am I? And they remembered nothing of how they got there. So yeah, I'm very familiar with being a blackout drunk. And I think it's the second chapter where I describe my last night of drinking. I actually don't remember any of that night. The only reason I was able to write it is because of the friends who were with me and told me what happened.
15:01I don't remember that stuff. When you're blackout drunk, do they think you're blackout drunk? No. I'm talking. I'm walking. I'm doing everything normally. Well, as normal as you can be when you're smashed out of your face. But, you know, it just seems like, oh, she's a drunk. There you go. But they don't know that I have no idea what's going on. So when this man, and that case really bothered me a lot because of the fact that the guy, the dead guy, was covered in the blanket that I had given him as a Christmas present, that season when I went around giving out blankets to homeless guys. And so that bothered me a lot.
15:50And what bothered me even more was that his best friend, who sat with him, drank with him, lived with him, as much as you can call that living under the exit ramp on the FDR, he killed his friend and had no idea what happened. None. and to be told by the police, oh, you just killed your best friend, you slashed his face, you slashed his throat, and he doesn't remember it, that's pretty awful. And is that then, it's hard to classify that. Is that then considered manslaughter? Yeah, probably. The prosecutors would have a field day with that, maybe second or third degree murder because it was no prior intent.
16:38It was just an argument over the bottle. Do you think he's out of jail now? I think he's dead now. The way he was drinking, who knows?
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18:21So you were, you were really living like the hard life. And I don't mean like that you had a hard life, but you were making your life hard by, by drinking, departing. You were, you were kind of going in and out of goals and then failing them and, and trying to move forward, but two steps forward, three steps back because of the alcohol, like what, and you describe this in the book, but I want to hear you talk about it. What changed things for you? I guess truly hitting bottom, and that's always the way that people get sober, is when enough is enough. I had been so sick for so long, and my life had sunk to the point of where I was working off the books part-time in a button store.
19:13you know just people would come in and say excuse me my dear but I must have a very very important button for my mink coat it must be an important statement button yes ma 'am of course we have many such wonderful buttons let me see what I can get for you oh yes and please please make sure it's an important button oh for Christ's sake you know before that I had been a hospital administrator administrator responsible for health care in the South Bronx, you know, working with politicians there, getting clinics open, getting things for people, helping people. But I drank my way right out of that. What does that mean?
19:54Like, did you just not show up for work one day? No, lots of days. What does it mean? I sat in my office with a hangover with the door closed. So I didn't go to meetings. I didn't speak to people. I was snappish to my secretary. I do all this without Yeah, I bet. I just, I wasn't working effectively. I wasn't, my heart wasn't in it. And I was miserable over some stupid relationship. So, you know, it was a combination of misery factors. I was a miserable bitch to be around. And eventually my boss just called me in and said, I don't know what the hell's wrong with you. I said, nothing, what are you talking about?
20:36Nothing's wrong with me. Well, you're not the person I knew two years ago. So I left. He got me out. He fired me. And there I am working in a button store, and I'm drinking every night cheap wine, the Concha y Toro,$5.99 and a half gallon. A delicious wine, though, by the way. I've seen it at many death scenes. it is the drug of choice for the poverty stricken alcoholic which I was at the time so I'm working in a button store my master's degree is for nothing all the studying I did all the the career work I did it's all for nothing because I'm sitting here now oh and I live in a in a studio apartment that is probably 170 square feet it was tiny and No kitchen to speak of, just a toilet and a place to put a bed.
21:37And so I had really hit bottom. I was nobody. I did nothing except drink and eat fried chicken from a Chinese restaurant every night. And were you telling yourself, eventually this will stop when good things happen to me? Or did you think, oh, I'm heading to someplace bad? I don't think I thought at all. Quite frankly, I don't think I had a thought in my head. You know, wait, I'm going to take that back. There's a little arrogance there, the arrogance of the alcoholic in thinking that I'm a deep person. I'm a thinking person. I'm a sensitive soul. Oh, I love to laugh at that. And I drink to numb the pain of existence.
22:29or so you know you can make it up it's it's all the same it's a but i kind of believe that it's kind of an escapism but escape from what a job a relationship a life a home all those things sure no responsibility sitting there paying 120 bucks a month for an apartment work part-time and watch tv the rest of the time or go out with and have affairs so that was a useless life and that was the turning point of my life, really. That morning when I woke up and I said, oh my God, enough is enough. I'm really sick. So thank God. And then what? Then I got sober. Went to an AA meeting and then another one and another one and another one.
23:17And they take very good care of you an AA. They really care. They stay sober by getting other people sober. And it was wonderful. I discovered a whole new life. And, you know, I'm not saying that I was an AA fanatic, but I discovered a whole new me. After I sort of detoxed when all the alcohol washed out of me, I sort of remembered that I was relatively smart, that I had a good education, and that I had good ideas. I never did anything about them, but I had them. And then you said, I'm going to cut up dead people. Well, actually, I'm giving away the whole book here. Never worry about giving up the whole book because there are so many great stories that will just...
24:10I felt like I was watching 10 thriller movies in a row. So there's no way you can give away the book. So it's okay if you tell stories. I think the common mistake people have on podcasts is they think, oh, people listen to this podcast, they're not going to buy the book. It's the exact opposite. You go on the podcast, so people buy the book. Okay. Okay. Well, in AA, you get, because it is a disease, alcoholism, you get certain benefits. In New York State, they have something called EPRA, the Employment Program for Recovering Alcoholics. They teach you how to work, how to be a working person. And my sponsor told me to go.
24:52So I said, all right, what the hell, I'll go because you do what you're told in AA. And so I joined that program. And they did all those tests. Minnesota multiphasic personality preferential blah blah blah to see what kind of work would be best for me what was my personality type and eventually the guy my counselor after a few weeks said well we've got the results and you should either be a poultry veterinarian or a coroner I said poultry why what well okay go ahead well you know why why poultry he said well you know when you were working as a PA in surgery, physician assistant, you got too attached to your patients.
25:42When they didn't get better, when they died, it really bothered you. You became emotionally bereft. So if you worked with puppies and kittens, it would be the same thing, would really affect you. But chickens, nobody cares about chickens. They have beady little eyes. They're not good pets. I said, oh, wait a second, I'll take coroner. I said, yeah, People are already dead. You don't have to worry about them dying on you. But wouldn't you have to think about, oh, it's so sad that, I don't know, this spouse killed this other spouse and then killed herself or killed himself. Wouldn't that make you feel, like put yourself in that situation?
26:24Or do you get numb to that a little bit? No, you never go numb, but you do detach. And that is the essence of that job, is the ability to cultivate detachment. If I went into a scene where, well, I saw many children killed, murdered by their parents. And if I were to go in there and think about that poor kid looking in their mother's eyes as she raised the knife, I'd lose it. I would be completely useless. There's no way I could do the job if I felt or thought about the things that happened to those people. So you draw a curtain, you detach from your emotions, and then get about the business of the job.
27:07You're working for the victim to get justice, justice for them, for their families. And you concentrate on that. And so this might be a cliche to ask. I'm sure many people have asked you this, but you brought up, you've seen many children who have been murdered. What is one that maybe almost affected you or affected you the most? Oh, they all affected me in some way. I just didn't realize it for years. I thought I was well detached. But over the years, over a 10-year period, it built up and up and up until I was frozen emotionally. Detachment, you can't do it selectively. unless you're really quite healthy, and I'm not, I'm a neurotic lunatic, I was unable to now have feelings in my own personal life.
28:01My relationships were going to hell. I was detached from everything. But there were cases that affected me so badly in the moment. I remember once going home after seeing a little boy who had been murdered, And his little brother who survived, a three-year-old, was hiding behind a curtain. His little bloody footprints were throughout the living room. He had walked in the blood of his parents and his brother. And now he's hiding behind a curtain. When I got home, I must have looked like white as a ghost and shocked because my partner said, oh, my God, what's the matter with you? And I said, I don't know, but I have to get out of me.
28:51I can't be inside me right now. And I just ran and got in the bed and I pulled a sheet over my head. I don't know what that was supposed to do, but I didn't want to be in my own body, in my own mind at that moment. And there was nothing I could do about it. But you can never unsee what I saw. And that was a bad day. And what happened? Can you describe the story? Oh, sure. drug dealers it was a Dominican family mother father 17 year old son 12 year old son and then a three-year-old I believe oh yeah so the 17 year old was working for some low-level drug dealers in the neighborhood just doing distribution and they were looking for him I guess he picked up too much money or he didn't turn everything into them, whatever.
29:49And when they came to the home, they killed the whole family. Now, what I suppose and what the detectives surmised is that they probably said to the father, tell me where your son is or I'll kill your wife. And he said, I don't know. Killed her. And they said, tell me where you're, I'll kill your 12-year-old son. They killed him. and they didn't know where the baby, they didn't know the baby was there. And then finally they just killed everybody and left. That's what drug dealers do. And this is back in the early 90s, late 80s, there was 2 ,400 homicides every year in New York City. Imagine 2 ,400, now you get 400, it's a big deal.
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30:35But it was all the drug dealers killing each other. And it's very impersonal, very violent um and i saw a lot of that it was absolutely no humanity it was just pure evil anybody that could kill a kid what are you gonna do sure i imagine that they eventually found a 17 year old and killed him too oh and why do you think there's uh so much fewer homicides now um couple of reasons i think malcolm gladwell wrote something really interesting about how after abortion became legal. Oh, it's Freakonomics, chapter one of the first Freakonomics. Yeah, that, you know, there were fewer unwanted babies born into poverty.
31:19And so when that cohort reached the age of 20s, 21 or 18, whenever they would normally start killing, there weren't as many of those kids that had grown up badly. And therefore there was less crime. I have another theory, which is like the opposite of exponential growth. Maybe the word is deponential. In other words, okay, I like it, right? I like a good neologism. So let's say that Dennis is angry at Fred and Bill because they went into his territory. So Dennis goes and kills Fred and Bill, two homicides. But Fred and Bill were each going to kill at least three people in the coming weeks over various drug wars.
32:12So now we don't have those homicides because those killers are dead. So the more the drug dealers killed each other, the homicide went down, down, down. Eventually, they wiped each other out. You know, that's actually a pretty good theory. I like it, right? I may publish it. I guess because you would figure the next generation, like every few years, there's another crop of kids that wants to be drug dealers. But if they all start getting killed too, eventually it's got to run dry the supply of drug dealers. Yeah. So that and, you know, Rudy Giuliani would probably attribute it to the broken windows theory.
32:52There's tons of theories, but maybe it's a little bit of each. Now, when you first started as a medical examiner, were you kind of like shocked or you pretty much knew what to expect? Because you had already been working as a physician's assistant. You had been in operating rooms. You'd seen people at the brink of death or dying. Was there anything that shocked you in particular when you first started? You know, I'm a good actress, and I make it a point not to be shocked or frightened. When I was there for that informational interview the first day and I walked around and they took me to the autopsy room, saw a guy with a knife sticking at him.
33:30Oh, I wonder if his killer was right-handed or left. I cultivate an air of detached curiosity. And I did it real well. And so the guys, I was the only woman at the time. The guys were a little shocked by me, maybe even a little scared. Damn, nothing seems to bother her. It's like an ice queen over there. But then in my training, I was supposed to watch a couple of autopsies, learn the procedures. And I was with this woman, Dr. Jackie Lee. She was doing the autopsy of an eight-year-old girl who had been raped and smothered and thrown in a garbage dump. I think the Daily News or the Post called her angel in hell.
34:17It was a big story. And we're doing this autopsy, and I was consumed with horror. I was awestruck by how much evil it took to do this deed. And I said to Jackie, how do you do this every day? How do you live seeing this and knowing this? And she said, when you leave here, surround yourself with things of beauty, love, good food, music, art. the nature, everything. Just do it every single day. Do something creative. Do something wonderful. Well, I tried, and I think it helped. I got a little house in the country eventually up in the Catskills, and so I had grass and leaves and trees and a cat and a dog, and it was good.
35:12I think that helped me. But you wouldn't go back to that every day, though. What would you do every day? Every day, that's a good question since I wasn't drinking and I was often tempted, believe me. I think going to AA meetings, and I had a nice social life there too. It was fun people. I think having a decent social life helped me. And I did write at the time. I journaled. I wrote little stories. None of them were any good, but who cares? writing was something creative for me. So that helped. Eventually, though, it didn't work anymore. Did they ever find out who raped and killed that girl? Oh, sure.
35:57He practically confessed. In a very self-righteous way, he told police, well, I went and picked up this woman in a bar. We were having a good time, and I gave her$50 to go get us some cocaine so we could party some more. And she took the money and she left. So I went to her house, and she wasn't there, but her daughter was there. So I took her daughter. And he said this with such self-justification. I'm like, well, of course I took her daughter. She took my$50. And that really knocked me for a loop. I thought, wow, that's amazing. Absolutely amazing. Yeah. But there is that kind of casual evil out there, isn't there?
36:42And I have a question about, I mean, you've dealt with a lot of suicides. Would you say obviously there's more suicides than homicides or what's the statistics on that? It's very hard to get track of suicide statistics, actually. It kind of is because they're always a few years behind. But interestingly, New York State has the lowest suicide rate in the country. and a doctoral student was doing a thesis on that and came and interviewed me and he asked why do you think that is why does New York have such a low suicide rate I said Greek diners we have Greek diners in the city on Long Island all around they're open 24 hours a day you can always go in in the middle of the night if you wake up and you're like oh shit I want to die I don't want to die.
37:33No, you can go out to the diner and see people for a few minutes. You can have a cup of coffee. You don't have to eat alone every day. You can go in the diner and be around people. You can talk to the guy behind the counter. You think that really is it? You think it's just that you could find companionship? Because New York is also, you know, when I moved to New York originally, uh it's like 1994 it struck me that it's you know it's the cliche of there's millions of people but there's no one to talk to that's right new york is a town for people exactly like me who want to be surrounded with lots and lots of people but don't want to have anything to do with them it's the perfect town for the the introvert um you know it's like my childhood i'm the oldest of nine kids.
38:24I was surrounded by people and I didn't want anything to do with any of them. So, you know, it's New York is a natural for people like that, right? But I think the suicide rate, it's probably more because of our strict gun laws. There are fewer suicides here. That's what the postdoc fellow thought anyway.
39:01When someone commits suicide, a lot of it is hanging. From your first chapter to Jeffrey Epstein, they all seem to hang themselves. This seems to be like a really, and I don't know if I'm getting too much into particulars here, but it seems like a really stupid way to kill yourself. Like it's guaranteed to be enormously painful. Not at all. In fact, exactly the opposite. It's interesting. Don't you like, first you break your neck, so you're just hanging there conscious with a broken neck until you suffocate? No, not at all. It's really interesting. Here's the physiology of it. To die by strangulation or hanging or ligature, there's three mechanisms.
39:44One is cutting off the airway. So when a man strangles a woman and presses his thumbs into her larynx, it cuts off the airway, and that hurts. That's really an awful, painful way to die. Your brain is screaming for oxygen, and it's awful. Another way is to block off the carotid arteries so that blood doesn't go into your head. It keeps coming out through the veins, but you block the carotids, no blood to the brain, you black out within a fairly short time. It is an oxygen deprivation situation and it is very painful, yes. But then there's the fun way and that is only blocking the jugular veins.
40:33So if you were to put a soft ligature, let's say a belt or a tie around your neck and just lean into it, there's just enough pressure to stop the jugular veins, to occlude them. So now you can still breathe. The blood can still go through the arteries into your head, but it can't come out. So you black out very slowly and it feels great. All kinds of endorphins and weird chemicals are released from this oxygen, this state, oxygen deprivation state, and you black out and it feels really good. Now, how do we know this? Because people do it for fun. They do it during masturbation. It's called they.
41:20I should say men do it during masturbation because women aren't usually that stupid. However, there are plenty of women who do it. So what they do is during the acts of self-pleasure, they'll put a soft ligature, like a sanitary pad on a rope or a soft belt from a dress. And they'll just lean into it enough, even kneeling on the floor. Remember Mick Jagger's girlfriend? That's how she committed suicide. Loren something. Anyway, once you block those jugular veins you black out slowly and it's very pleasurable now when a person does this during masturbation they have a safety release and that is you tie one end of the ligature to your wrist so that when you eventually pass out your wrist drops and opens the ligature does it always work no and by then i guess you're unconscious You're unconscious.
42:24You don't feel it. And you die in flagrante delicto. And eventually I will come to the home and see this person naked and perhaps having some pornography there or things like that. And cops will say, oh, look, this guy committed suicide. No, he didn't. He was having fun. He was playing bad boy games and he died. How often have you seen this? Oh, tons, tons and tons. There's a whole chapter in the book on that. So it's like a common thing. Yes, very common, very common. And similar, what about like rough sex deaths? I guess the most famous is that one, Jennifer Levin and Robert. Robert Chambers.
43:12Robert Chambers, yeah. He says it was, you know, rough sex, and he strangled her to the point where she died. He wasn't believable, but plenty of people do strangle each other during sex for that very reason of occluding the jugular vein so that you get that rush. And why wasn't he believable? I think the violence done to her body, the marks on her neck, the scratches, he probably had scratches on him, indicated that she was fighting for her life. So maybe they got into an argument? What's the theory? Maybe they got into an argument? He said that she, I believe he said that she squeezed his genitals and it made him go into a rage.
44:09Who knows? Who knows? Man, there's so much like just weirdness out there. I know. That's the wrong word. Like most like the evil. Yeah, well, there's evil. There's strange things. But, you know, there's plenty of happy things, too. There's people who are heroic and try to save others and die that way. Well, no, that's not happy at all, is it? That's tragic. Geez, I'm really getting down here, James. Yeah, I don't mean to depress you. No. But what are some cases where, because of your examining, you helped solve the case? Oh, sure. Plenty of them. It's not the job of the medical examiner or the medical legal death investigator to solve the case, but rather to contribute the evidence and the interpretation and the opinion that helps direct the investigation of the police and support it and help them prove what they believe to be so.
45:17So there were plenty of times where I found something that could either prove or disprove a case. And one of my favorites is I was called to a tenement building. On the first floor, there was a guy laying dead on the ground, the bottom of the staircase, with a bullet hole in his head. And all around him, up and down the whole hallway, were shell casings of a.22 handgun or rifle. And I was looking at the guy, and the bullet wound was a little funny. It didn't have the typical ring abrasion where the bullet enters, at least like a little abrasion as it goes in. It didn't have the perfect concentric formation that it should.
46:05and I'm looking around and the staircase right across from it is a wall with a corner like this, a sharp corner, and it's got that stone coping on it or molding, and it comes to a very sharp point. So I'm smelling the guy too, and he stinks of alcohol. So I realized, wait a second, I don't think this guy was shot. I think he was drunk. He fell down the stairs and hit his forehead on the point at the corner of this wall, this stone coping here, because that has a more split stellate look, like a little starburst. But then the cops said, well, wait a second. Well, what about all these shells on the floor?
46:47So we're looking around and we go back outside because it ends in an alleyway. And there are targets. Turns out this was a literal shooting gallery where kids would come and practice in this tenement. They'd stand in the hallway by the front door and shoot out through the back door into the yard where they had a target up on the fence. So all their shell casings were on the floor. It had nothing to do with this guy. It was just a coincidence. And the cops were mighty happy when I said, nah, this isn't a homicide. This is an accident. Less work for them. And have you ever been, like I've ever seen something where it was a suicide, but you've concluded it was a homicide?
47:35Sure. And there's a story like that in the book. The problem is I will never, ever know. It's a long story and it's, you know, of a man who was found dead supposedly by suicide, but everything in me said, there's something wrong here. This doesn't fit. And it was largely based on his wife and the man I thought was her, I surmised, was her lover. There was something about the chemistry between the two of them. It was electric. And it was a weird story. You know, why should he be dead here? The whole, nothing about the story made sense. However, it was a suicide, plain and simple, based on the autopsy and the evidence at hand.
48:28Anything else that I surmised was strictly my own fantasy, my own internal storytelling. It was based on a feeling I had. And you can't convict people based on a feeling you have. You have to, in an investigation, write and demonstrate only the evidence, only the evidence that you see and can record. You don't put your own stories in, your own fantasies, or I think this one killed that one. That's not our job. Our job is to present evidence and determine a cause of death and a manner of death, the manner being homicide, suicide, accident, natural, or act of war. That's a whole manner of death unto itself.
49:18So, yeah, there were quite a few cases where I might have thought something else happened. No way I could prove it. And then, and you were also involved in helping identify victims of 9-11. Like, given what an emotional shock that was, obviously, to that area and then to the city and then to the country. I remember at that time there were a couple of hotels set aside where parents and family of victims were there and there was pictures up all over the place. And because I actually lived like a block away. So I had to stay in one of those hotels. So I saw everything that was going on and everybody was just in obviously so much pain and anguish.
50:05What was that like? What was that experience like? It was horrible. It ruined everything. It really did. It ruined everything. It damn near destroyed our city, our economy. And all those people, all those innocent people, just everything from stockbrokers with a cup of coffee saying hi to their staff in the morning or the busboy cleaning up at Windows in the World, the janitor, just regular folks going about their day. and suddenly they're at the center of the greatest mass murder in U.S. history. And why did it ruin everything? For me, personally, because my job was always interesting, always fun, you know, often emotionally devastating, but still I had a good time.
50:57I loved working with cops. I loved figuring out puzzles and I loved seeing how people lived. Going into someone's home when they die, you have carte blanche to see what their lives are like. And it's interesting. Yeah. Along comes 9-11. There's really nothing to investigate. We know what happened. We know where it happened. We know who did it. We know why. The only thing we don't know is who are the victims. So the whole investigation centered around identifying the people who had been killed. and there's nothing fun about that there's nothing interesting about that it's just sad sad sad every day and it's so overwhelming because there are more than 20 000 pieces representing fewer than 3 000 people so it was not an you know the job if it was enjoyable before it certainly wasn't now And then the family's coming in every day to our office to give us hair samples or toothbrush samples for DNA or just to talk to us to see him.
52:10Anything yet? Have you found him? Do you have any idea where he was located? Being faced with that kind of grief is absolutely overwhelming. There's no way to process that or to go out and have a good time afterwards. that was bad bad bad yeah i mean how many people do you think you identified um i think because again things were scattered everywhere yeah i think it's it's close to 60 percent of the victims have been identified and that's after what is it 22 years now almost 22 years and it took that long which just goes to show you the enormous forces, the devastating nature of that attack, the fireball, the crash of the airplanes, the collapse of the building, all those things.
53:06Many people, I believe, were literally vaporized. There's nothing left, nothing. So they never will be identified. And what about, I mean, there was also the people who jumped, I guess because it was so hot at the top that they felt that this was a better end for them than waiting for it to happen. Now, this is one of those cases where I think words really matter. Did they really jump? Because jump implies suicide. And I think those people wanted to live. I don't think any of them wanted to die. So did they jump or were they pushed out by flame and smoke. I choose the latter. Yeah, I think it's the latter.
53:51I agree with you. Yeah. Nobody said, oh, I'm going to jump because this will be a better desk. I think they were hanging onto window frames that were broken out and behind them flames were licking their backs or the smoke was, the heat was absolutely just so intense. And the pain was so intense. They just went. Yeah. So they were murdered. Not suicide, murdered. Yeah, no, I agree. Suicide's definitely the wrong word. And it's just a horrible day all around. Yeah, it was. So there wasn't anything good that happened. And, of course, it changed our whole notion of ourselves in terms of our safety and security.
54:35You know, now you can't even get on an airplane without having your water bottle confiscated and your face lotion and take off your shoes. And I mean, you know, everything's changed. And now, would you recommend this as a job for somebody? A good career path? Oh, yes. Yes, I would. However, however, with the very, very strong caveat that they get therapy, that they participate participate in debriefing sessions, that they work with their colleagues to express their feelings. Back in my day, that was very much discouraged. I remember asking my boss, who I worshipped, he was my mentor, and I said, Doc, you know, a lot of us are getting kind of a little hinky.
55:27There's a lot of drinking, a lot of affairs, gambling, you know. People are really affected by this stuff. He said, no, Barbara, we're strong people. We do this work because we can. We are the strongest of the strong. And I said, oh yeah, okay, that sounds good. I'm strong. But no, that's not the way of it. I think only now in the past year or two have people begun in the business, have people begun to realize just how bad the emotional effect is of this kind of work, be it police officers, firemen, emergency room personnel, and most of all, medical legal death investigators. It's devastating work.
56:09Like among your colleagues, has there been anyone, I mean, obviously this is the case, but what's an example of someone who really couldn't handle it ultimately? Sure. One of the guys I first worked with, he started using drugs. He told everybody he had narcolepsy, but he didn't. He was just stoned. And he fell off a chair at a victim's house once while interviewing the family. He's just passed out. And so he was fired after three tries. They sent him to rehab two or three times. And on the third time, he just didn't take. So they let him go. And he wound up hanging himself. he did get sober for a brief time but it didn't stay it's a damn shame with a nice guy Vietnam and so Vietnam vet he's certainly seen his share of tragedy yeah but this was too much yeah I think he already had PTSD and then you put this on top of it some of my colleagues became heavy drinkers.
57:16Some got sober, some didn't. And some just quit. They said, I remember one very lovely young woman, just a pretty, fun, vivacious, lovely girl. I think her name was Nicole. She did it for a while and she was good at the work. And then she said, what the hell am I doing to myself? I belong in the world of art. And she went into styling and makeup and hairdressing. you know that's well i guess i don't know if you want to say makeup's related because you're not it's not like you're the you know person who dresses them up for a funeral the mortician right no i never yeah no that's a that's a interesting job but no not for us no what are some of the ridiculous things you've seen in movies uh you know speaking of that like obviously there's a lot of forensics done in movies and police you know investigation tv shows.
58:12And then there was that show Six Feet Under, which was all about, you know, morticians. So are you ever watching like these shows with friends and you say, that's bullshit. Like it never happens that way. Always, always. I'm very annoying to watch true crime with. I'm always yelling, what? He missed the whole point. There's blood spray on the wall. What the hell? Or I guess the worst offenders are the police procedurals, you know, the CSI, NCIS, all that. They depend very much on technology and bright lights and hard driving music and young scientists, criminologists who wear a four-inch heel to work and a miniskirt.
58:54It just doesn't, you know, it's not like that. You didn't wear a four-inch heel and miniskirt to work? Sometimes, occasionally. When I was on call and I'd be out at a club or a party and they'd call me in for a case and I'd show up in a black dress and heels and the cops were like, wow, holy shit. She really knows how to do it. But that was rare. What they do is, the first thing they do is they compress the timeline. They get DNA results within 15 minutes. They get genetic genealogy in seven minutes. That's, of course, the most obvious thing. And that's okay because you got 42 minutes to tell a story.
59:34So what the hell? Go ahead and compress everything. But what is annoying is when they out and out put in something that is so odd. For instance, I saw one, I just started watching them because I'm writing an article, an essay on this right now called What TV Gets Wrong. I can't wait to read that. Oh, yeah, it's a fun story. And, you know, everything in the show was exaggerated, but that was okay. I was enjoying it. I was having a good time until the very end. A decedent is laying on the autopsy table, and the director of the CSI unit comes in, stands over her, pets her head and her face of the dead woman, and bends down and kisses her forehead.
1:00:25I was like, what the fuck? Never, never, never have I kissed a victim. Never, never, never. Could you imagine it possible at all? No, not unless, no, no, absolutely not. The most I ever did, sometimes when I was feeling particularly spiritual or religious, I'd make a little sign of the cross over the head or sometime a little Jewish star. the person would just make like a little motion over their head and say to myself, go in peace, rest in peace. You know, so saying goodbye to them, but I would never kiss them. Jesus. Let me ask you, in your investigating, you obviously have to like cut people open and see what happened.
1:01:11What's like the most unusual thing you have found inside somebody or at least even like a physiological thing, like a strange biology. um oh you know this wasn't my case but it was at uh one of the you know you have a conference each week to go over your cases and one of the medical examiners brought in one um a guy who worked as a baker um in some you know like entamines or silver cup one of the local places and when they cut him open and he had been shot you know so no big surprise there what his cause of death was but When they cut him open, they found that he was infested with worms, tons of worms.
1:01:56But then they showed us the worst part. In the bakery where he worked, he didn't have gloves. He'd put his hands into the dough. His job was to knead and stretch the dough that we were eating in our bread, and he was filled with worms. That was awful. First off, how do you get filled with worms? Well, you know, you catch a worm from eating something or from, I mean, like kids get worms because they, well, I hate to be vulgar and graphic, but, you know, they pick at their noses where occasionally there are worms. And then it goes through the digestive system and out through their little rectums and they itch and they scratch it.
1:02:43And then it makes eggs and they touch another kid. So it spreads among children very easily. but if you go to certain tropical countries, you get worms in almost everything. Their eggs are everywhere, and people get used to it. You can have a symbiotic relationship with your worms, actually. Oh, my God. They can live there forever and never bother you, but it certainly bothers us to see all those worms inside of Jesus. Oh, that's – I don't know. I honestly don't know how you could do it. I admire you for doing it because it's obviously a function we need to have in society. When did forensic investigators start?
1:03:25Like it used to be people would just kill people and then, oh, this person was dead. He was obviously killed with a sword and you would know. Actually, it started for the reason of money. Coroner, the term coroner relates to the crown. so in England back in I guess as early as 1200 1300 around there when a person died the king who owned the land or the duke needed someone to investigate that death and see if the person had any assets any money or property which would rightfully now belong to the crown and so the named coroner, as in crown. And so they would investigate the deaths and that became a profession.
1:04:13But at first it was only about the money. It wasn't until later on, some 100 or 200 years, that it became about justice. As the justice system grew, it became necessary to find out how a person died and who did it. So sheriffs and coroners worked together in ancient England to find out how a person died so that they could have trials. Now, is there ever a time when you just can't tell how someone died? Like they didn't, as far as you could see, and as far as the doctors could see, you can't, they didn't just die from disease or a tumor. Like, is there some drug that's hidden in the blood that they take or what?
1:05:02Yeah, there is a category of manners of death called undetermined. And that is when you literally cannot find any reason for their death. You can't see what killed them and you can't see why or how they died. So you might, somebody might, you know, smell something in their building and say, somebody's dead in there. Call the police. Police come in and find the person laying on the floor, let's say 45 years old, young, healthy, and they're just dead. So on autopsy, you don't see anything, no disease process, no myocardial infarction, no heart attack, brain looks okay. Who knows? So in those cases, it may be as simple as a cardiac arrhythmia, you know, the electrical pulses that cause the heart to beat with regularity.
1:05:58Maybe there was an interruption in that electrical flow and they just died. Maybe they did eat something poisonous, but we do toxicology on everybody. You test the eye fluids, the blood. Maybe they might have been allergic to something that the allergy didn't stick around. It just killed them. Possible, but then you might see the signs of anaphylactic reaction like swollen lips, the airway being swollen shut, redness, you know, things like that. Yeah, it's happened several times. The last one I remember was a mummy. And I think I mentioned him in the book. He was a complete mummy. There was nothing but the skin and bones, and his insides had all been eaten away by rats.
1:06:46So he mummified in this dry building where he lived. It was a squat, an abandoned building. And there was a bullet rattling around in his chest, in this hollow chest. And I said, geez, look at that. The cop said, oh, I guess somebody shot him. No, not at all. How would we know if that was an old war wound, if he accidentally shot himself once, or if somebody shot him now, or he committed suicide, or he had an accident? We have no way of knowing. All we know is there's - Was there a bullet hole in his skin? No, the skin was so degraded. I mean, it was just, it was like, he looked like a pile of autumn leaves.
1:07:29Wasn't that a nice analogy? Very poetic. Yes, very poetic. You know, when I took his arm to try and turn him over, the arm just came off in my hand. It was just like brown leaves of parchment-like skin. And it was very strange to look at. Why I always remember him is he had a brand new pair of Timberland boots on his feet. And the boots looked great, but they were just skeleton feet in them. And just a skeleton covered in parchment-like skin. What happens to those boots? Do they get sold like in a used clothing store? Gee, I don't know. I mean, we bring them into the medical examiner's office in their clothing.
1:08:16and they put the clothing in a bag. So if there's ever any family that shows up, we give them their possessions. And I, you know, I had this vague memory of those boots going missing. And I said to this medical student, did you steal those boots? No, no, no, I wouldn't take a dead man's boots. But I was just busted his chops, you know. Well, thank you for what you do. Thank you for your service. If I'm ever killed, I hope you're the medical examiner. Yeah. You know, I do. I joke a lot. But the truth is, it's a very rewarding job in terms of not just getting justice, because that's so important, but getting answers for the families of the victims.
1:08:58Yeah. We serve the family. So it was a good, rewarding job in that sense. Well, it's such a fascinating book. Again, story after story. And this is really people are concerned with life and they're concerned with death. And this book is half of that. So, so great book, really riveting. I mean, they should make a movie out of your life, which they probably will. You're probably going to get the, sell the rights to this book, to some movie studio. I have. Oh, there you go. I hope it was very lucrative and I hope they make the movie. Oh, you know how Hollywood is. It's a mess, but yeah, I think. Who should play you?
1:09:39Oh, you know, I wish Edie – it should be me at the age of about 40, and I wish the hell Edie Falco could play it, but I guess that wouldn't work out. I don't know. Edie Falco, I don't know. She seems not tough enough. I kind of see like a 40-year-old Jodie Foster. Yeah, yeah, that could work. That could definitely work, yeah. Well, thank you so much again, Barbara Butcher, author of What the Dead Know, Learning About Life as a New York City Death Investigator. Just a riveting, you could tell through some of the stories Barbara's already told us, just a riveting book. Thank you again. And I hope you don't see any more ghosts because that sounded pretty scary.
1:10:21That sounded scarier than some of your investigations. It was. Thank you so much, James. And stay safe. Be careful. I'll try. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.
From the publisher
Discover a world shrouded in mystery as you step into the shoes of New York City's top forensic investigator, Barbara Butcher. We've secured an exclusive podcast interview where Barbara takes you on an eerie journey, recounting tales from her critically acclaimed book, "What the Dead Know."Peek behind the crime scene tape and unearth lessons that only the silent can teach. With a career spanning over two decades, Barbara's wealth of experience is beyond riveting - it's a profound exploration of life, death, and the spaces in between.Tune in to this thought-provoking discussion as Barbara dissects real-life cases, relives unforgettable encounters, and discusses her path-breaking work. She'll unravel the cryptic language of the deceased, deciphering the stories they leave behind - a skill she has honed and shares in her thrilling new book.A warning though - once you start listening, there's no turning back. You're about to uncover "What the Dead Know" - are you ready?Don't forget to pick up your copy of Barbara Butcher's incredible new book on Amazon. Don't miss this chance to unravel the mysteries of the silent world!-----------What to write and publish a book in 30 days? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/writing to join James' writing intensive!What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air!------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book Skip the Line is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltucher.com/podcast.------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to "The James Altucher Show" wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsStitcheriHeart RadioSpotifyFollow me on Social Media:YouTubeTwitterFacebookShow Less
------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air!------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book, Skip the Line, is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltuchershow.com------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to "The James Altucher Show" wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsiHeart RadioSpotifyFollow me on social media:YouTubeTwitterFacebookLinkedIn
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