BARBARA Butcher is a world-renowned death investigator whose storied career has involved scores of brutal and unspeakable tragedies.
A legend in her field, she has worked on an astonishing 5,500 death scenes, 680 homicides and been involved in mass disasters such as 9/11, the 2004 Thailand Tsunami and the bombing of the London Underground in 2005.
World-renowned death examiner Barbara spoke exclusively to The U.S. Sun about her incredible career[/caption]
The case of Bryan Clay and the murder of a mom and daughter in Las Vegas in 2012 is detailed in Oxygen’s new show[/caption]
Yignacia Martinez and 10-year-old daughter Karla were killed in a home invasion while her two other children hid from the killer[/caption]
“It’s been an extraordinary life,“ she told The U.S. Sun at CrimeCon. “A damaging, soul-crushing life.”
NORMALIZED DEATH
Thousands of harrowing, haunting images have stayed with her.
In her new show on Oxygen, which debuts this weekend, Barbara highlights how murder cases are solved by experts like herself, who extrapolate every, single detail at a crime scene in a desperate bid to nail the perpetrators.
“We count on her to set us in the right direction,” says a cop in the trailer to The Death Investigator with Barbara Butcher.
Witnessing the darkest corners of reality has admittedly left her numb.
She talks about a phenomenon called first responder syndrome.
The term is often used to describe the collection of mental and emotional health issues experienced by individuals in emergency services roles, such as police officers, firefighters, paramedics, and emergency medical technicians (EMTs), due to the nature of their work
While Barbara was working in Manhattan, there were 2,400 homicides a year.
Death became normal.
“Everybody’s getting killed left and right because it’s all you see. And it’s not true at all,” she explained. “It’s a feeling.”
When she sat down with The U.S. Sun in Denver earlier this month ahead of the release of her new show, one particularly tragic incident sprang to mind.
While examining bodies on a mortuary slab is part of the day job, the New York native would regularly rock up at crime scenes as a representative of the medical examiner’s office.
GUIDING LIGHT
She helps the authorities shape the investigations to find the killers.
“If the police own the scene, I own the body,” she said while recalling seeing grizzled cops with 25 years experience crumble into emotional, teary wrecks upon witnessing a gory murder.
A home invasion in Las Vegas in 2012, which is featured in the first season which takes forensic look into 10 different cases over the coming weeks, upset her like no other.
An intruder, Bryan Clay, 27, had raped and killed Ignacia Martinez and her 10 year-old daughter Karla.
Dad Arturo was savagely beaten to within an inch of his life.
I have seen some of the worst crimes, but it has been extraordinary.
Death Investigator Barbara Butcher
Scared out of their little minds, two of the couple’s young children hid from the killer until he finally fled the scene.
“When it was safe,” Barbara recalls, “the two little children came out and walked through the blood of their mother. It is one of the worst cases I’ve ever seen.”
Dealing with the aftermath of such an awful scene would crush most people, but this woman is battle hardened like no other.
MENTAL ANGUISH
When she became just the second female ever to be hired as a death investigator in Manhattan, there was no training.
No rulebook on how to cope with the horrors which would occupy body, mind and soul for decades.
“During 9/11, I said to my boss that we were starting to get a little wacky,” she revealed.
“I told him it was overwhelming, and maybe we should have some counsels in here. But he said we were strong and didn’t need ‘that stuff, we do this because we can.’
“That was the only time I’ve ever known him to be wrong.”
As a result of experiencing such mental anguish, Barbara now makes a point of highlighting to the next generation of death investigators the need to embrace the damage it does to the psyche and the families of victims.
“There is some lunacy left in me, “ she candidly admitted. “The work just grinds you down.”
It is, however, rewarding and valuable too.
No more so than when she was flown to Thailand by the United Nations following the catastrophic tsunami of 2004 which left 230,000 people across 14 countries dead.
Once she was on the ground, Barabra was working closely with the Thai government to try and identify European victims, many of whom were already “massively decomposed” following one of the worst natural disasters in history.
Specialized extraction techniques were used. But the work was difficult and demoralizing.
“All we had was a few teeth, “ she recalled. “Everything else is essentially rotted.”
It wasn’t just blood splattered crime scenes which are forever seared into her mind.
Interviewing Tony Lee Simpson, who colluded with his gay lover to embark on a killing spree in New York City in the early 90s was a standout.
She vividly recalls looking into his “flat, cold eyes like a wolf” and realizing his characteristics bore all the chilling hallmarks of a “completely psychopathic, cold-blooded killer.”
“He assessed what was going on around him and how I could be of use to him, ” Barbara said. “He didn’t see me as a person. It’s like I’m an object. How can I be of use to him?”
Despite the mentally tortuous nature of her profession, she still claims “it was the best job in the world.”
Her 2023 novel What The Dead Know examined her decades in the field, detailing how a sterling recovery from alcoholism helped her find the job which would shape the rest of her life.
“I didn’t just see how people die, but how they live,” she said.
“And I’m endlessly curious about how people live and how they die. And I got to do a little something. I got to give answers to families. I got to give justice to them. So it was a good thing.
“This show is a platform to tell the stories that I’ve known and kept in my head since 1992. I have seen some of the worst crimes, but it has been extraordinary.”
Barbara Butcher says she has kept decades of stories in her head after visiting thousands of death scenes during her career[/caption]
Death investigators play a key role in helping cops decipher crime scenes[/caption]
