Unlock Secrets from Beyond the Grave | Barbara Butcher (NYC Forensic Investigator)

[00:00:06] [SPEAKER_01]: People die in very strange ways some of the time and I know this because I just spoke to Barbara Butcher who just

[00:00:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Published the book what the dead know learning about life as a New York City death investigator

[00:00:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Here she is Barbara Butcher. This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host

[00:00:30] [SPEAKER_01]: This is the James Altucher show

[00:00:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Barbara have you ever seen a ghost in the 5,300 dead bodies that you've investigated?

[00:00:47] [SPEAKER_00]: No, because no I haven't I've seen ghosts in my own realm my own personal realm, but never a dead body

[00:00:56] [SPEAKER_00]: You know on scene and you would think that there would be some because supposedly they they only haunt

[00:01:04] [SPEAKER_00]: The death's location if they died badly and with great emotional

[00:01:09] [SPEAKER_01]: upheaval and almost 100% of the

[00:01:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Dead bodies you've seen died in an unpleasant way well a very large

[00:01:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, a very large number of them so who knows I mean the ghosts may have been watching me while I did my examination at my work

[00:01:28] [SPEAKER_01]: I hadn't thought about that, but wait you said something very interesting at first

[00:01:32] [SPEAKER_01]: You said you've seen ghosts in your personal realm, which is an interesting way to put it your personal realm

[00:01:38] [SPEAKER_01]: I'll leave that aside for a second

[00:01:40] [SPEAKER_00]: What what ghosts have you seen I was just I was just talking about how my

[00:01:46] [SPEAKER_00]: She would be 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

[00:01:54] [SPEAKER_00]: He was very jealous and he thought that she was running off with somebody another man

[00:01:59] [SPEAKER_00]: So he shot her and stuffed her body behind a trunk

[00:02:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Then he shot himself out on the stair landing

[00:02:06] [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know somebody heard the shot came running up and found him dead

[00:02:11] [SPEAKER_00]: They didn't find her immediately

[00:02:14] [SPEAKER_00]: It was because the body was stuffed behind a trunk and they searched and they said oh

[00:02:18] [SPEAKER_00]: She must have run off with that other man when they eventually found her. Oh huge uproar now

[00:02:24] [SPEAKER_00]: There's two people dead and they had a little baby that died very shortly afterwards

[00:02:29] [SPEAKER_00]: They said it died of heartbreak back then okay, so now here. I am a kid playing in the same area

[00:02:36] [SPEAKER_00]: And every time we go up those stairs to the back room is a cold spot on the landing the stair landing

[00:02:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And it feels creepy. It makes the pit of your stomach go bad

[00:02:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Then we'd run through it. Eee, whatever that was

[00:02:50] [SPEAKER_00]: When my mother was a little girl

[00:02:52] [SPEAKER_00]: She slept in the room upstairs next to that landing and she'd hear people fighting and crying from a long way off

[00:03:00] [SPEAKER_00]: And she thought nothing of it till she got older. She mentioned it to my great grandmother

[00:03:05] [SPEAKER_00]: And she said oh honey that's so money you and she died, you know her husband he killed her then he killed himself

[00:03:13] [SPEAKER_00]: I

[00:03:14] [SPEAKER_01]: 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

[00:03:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Lot of times but just I always wonder about these suicide

[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Murders

[00:03:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Murder someone they commit suicide like you have so much anger and pain

[00:03:29] [SPEAKER_01]: You do the deed and then you must feel so guilty or so worthless or like you can't even imagine

[00:03:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Life going on and then you kill yourself and you don't want to get caught I guess too so you kill yourself

[00:03:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh well actually that's the first chapter of my book is the you know about the angry suicides

[00:03:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Why does so many people who kill themselves go out and shoot somebody else first?

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_01]: That was an interesting case the situation with your great grandmother great grandfather

[00:03:55] [SPEAKER_01]: That was like very intensely personal. Yeah, whereas your first chapter. Can you describe that one the angry suicide? Sure that was

[00:04:05] [SPEAKER_00]: A case I went to where they you know the police called and said oh you've got a suicide a guy hanged himself in the

[00:04:11] [SPEAKER_00]: 2-8 precinct or wherever it was and

[00:04:15] [SPEAKER_00]: When I got there it was pitch dark

[00:04:18] [SPEAKER_00]: absolutely pitch dark

[00:04:20] [SPEAKER_00]: So I know I asked the cop what's up because I don't know

[00:04:23] [SPEAKER_00]: I guess the guy didn't pay his electrical bill, but there's no lights here at all

[00:04:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Now I was a little out of sorts that night because I

[00:04:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Had cut a tendon in my hand with a saw had some surgery now

[00:04:37] [SPEAKER_00]: My arm was in a cast from my hand to my elbow and I wasn't getting around too well

[00:04:42] [SPEAKER_00]: so I was grumpy in pain and

[00:04:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Not functioning at my best

[00:04:47] [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm pissed off

[00:04:48] [SPEAKER_00]: But 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

[00:04:55] [SPEAKER_00]: extraordinarily lonely apartment

[00:04:58] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a guy who's probably just sat in his apartment by himself for years never did much of anything

[00:05:04] [SPEAKER_00]: but there he is hanging in a doorway from an overhead pipe and

[00:05:11] [SPEAKER_00]: You know with the flashlight. I'm scanning him. I don't see much

[00:05:14] [SPEAKER_00]: That's unusual. There's things we look for

[00:05:18] [SPEAKER_00]: For instance if if you would have strangled a person with like a ligature or with your hands and then string them up to make it look like a

[00:05:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Suicide I'd know about it because there are certain signs we look for

[00:05:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I had we used Polaroid cameras back then I think this was back in 93 92

[00:05:39] [SPEAKER_00]: And the flash is going off and I'm just taking all the pictures top to bottom

[00:05:45] [SPEAKER_00]: And I say yeah, all right. Just looks like a suicide no big deal. Let's go home

[00:05:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, no big deal for me certainly was for the guy

[00:05:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Now before I leave I go to cut him down

[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Normally I stand up on a stool or something

[00:06:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Hold on to the ligature so that he doesn't crash to the floor and I cut above the knot

[00:06:08] [SPEAKER_00]: With my knife and I realize I can't do that my hands in a cast

[00:06:14] [SPEAKER_00]: And

[00:06:15] [SPEAKER_00]: There's nobody else around my driver is an older fellow and the cop they got union rolls

[00:06:21] [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm not gonna ask him

[00:06:24] [SPEAKER_00]: So I figured oh wait, I'll just call the office when the morgue people get here the morgue wagon drivers

[00:06:30] [SPEAKER_00]: I'll ask them to cut the guy down

[00:06:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Let him down easy and take him away

[00:06:35] [SPEAKER_00]: so off I go back to the office and I'm preparing to write my report about the case and

[00:06:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, I'm reviewing and labeling the photographs and I come upon one photograph where I notice

[00:06:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, this is interesting. What is this plugged into the wall? It's an orange

[00:06:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Extension cord the kinds you use for

[00:06:57] [SPEAKER_00]: For outdoors heavy-duty

[00:07:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Hmm. Where wait a second now what that's do what's that doing there?

[00:07:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Turns out it's around his neck. That's his ligature

[00:07:08] [SPEAKER_00]: That's pretty good because it won't break. It's nice and strong

[00:07:12] [SPEAKER_00]: But as it trails off from behind his head, it's plugged into the wall

[00:07:18] [SPEAKER_00]: And wait a second. What does this mean? I thought there was no electricity there. Why would it be plugged in?

[00:07:24] [SPEAKER_00]: So I call back to the scene and I'm thinking oh shit. There is electricity. This is a booby trap and

[00:07:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Sure enough. I asked the cop, you know, he answers the phone. I said go and screw in the light bulbs

[00:07:38] [SPEAKER_00]: and make sure

[00:07:40] [SPEAKER_00]: That they're dead he screws in a light bulb. It's live

[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_00]: This guy set it up to make sure to make it look as if there was no electricity in the house

[00:07:53] [SPEAKER_00]: unscrewed all the bulbs whatever and

[00:07:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Then

[00:07:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Plugging this in he knew that somebody would come along to cut him down that person me

[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Would be electrocuted

[00:08:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe did was it be enough of an electrocution to kill you? I don't know

[00:08:10] [SPEAKER_00]: I've asked engineers and they say varying things

[00:08:13] [SPEAKER_00]: depends on how I was grounded if I was grounded, you know what kind of but either way I would have been hurt

[00:08:20] [SPEAKER_00]: at the very least and

[00:08:23] [SPEAKER_00]: You know that I started wondering what the hell why do people do this?

[00:08:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Why do people just why not just kill yourself and be done with it?

[00:08:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Why do you have to take someone else with you? And so I classify that as the angry suicide

[00:08:38] [SPEAKER_00]: and why do you think someone does that I think the anger of

[00:08:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Being in pain

[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_00]: emotional pain if you've ever experienced deep emotional pain, and I'm sure you have it's it's

[00:08:55] [SPEAKER_00]: horrifying it's devastating and

[00:08:59] [SPEAKER_00]: What's even more devastating is I think if you're a very isolated person no one reaches out to you

[00:09:06] [SPEAKER_00]: No one says hey, you look you look awful. What's going on or I haven't spoken to you in a while

[00:09:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Are you lonely you want to hang out?

[00:09:14] [SPEAKER_00]: No one reaches out to these isolated people because they've they've well they started it

[00:09:20] [SPEAKER_00]: They built walls around their lives

[00:09:22] [SPEAKER_00]: But that doesn't stop the anger that comes from feeling all that pain no one cares

[00:09:31] [SPEAKER_00]: so I

[00:09:33] [SPEAKER_00]: think

[00:09:34] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a screw you to the world

[00:09:36] [SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like that. It's it's like you said there is no one who calls them

[00:09:41] [SPEAKER_01]: There's no one who cares it's almost like they want to have meaning in someone's life and by

[00:09:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Electrocuting them as part of their suicide. They're definitely gonna have meaning in someone else's life sure for the first time

[00:09:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Sure, they won't be forgotten now this particular guy this case

[00:09:58] [SPEAKER_00]: 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

[00:10:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Why did you make that the first story you tell you have so many fascinating stories? Hmm good question

[00:10:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Like what when you were sitting down to type

[00:10:13] [SPEAKER_01]: What made you type that case first?

[00:10:17] [SPEAKER_00]: You know what I when I opened up

[00:10:21] [SPEAKER_00]: The when I started writing the first sentence. I wanted to be talking about the people around me

[00:10:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Miss miss de Wells my driver the the woman who works on the switchboard

[00:10:35] [SPEAKER_00]: I just wanted to open up in a very general like oh, hey, I'm at work. La di da

[00:10:40] [SPEAKER_00]: This is what we do but now here's the work. I'm gonna go look at it dead guy Wow

[00:10:47] [SPEAKER_00]: so I opened it up that way just here's my work a day life and

[00:10:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Something weird happened

[00:10:58] [SPEAKER_00]: So the intention was not to talk about angry suicides right from the from the top

[00:11:03] [SPEAKER_00]: But just to talk about oh, here's how my day at work goes

[00:11:07] [SPEAKER_00]: but look how it turns and

[00:11:13] [SPEAKER_00]: The I guess the point in that story

[00:11:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Is that I was bitching and moaning about having my hand in a cast, you know, it was ruining everything

[00:11:24] [SPEAKER_00]: And it hurt like hell

[00:11:27] [SPEAKER_00]: So if I hadn't had my hand in a cast I would have cut through that wire

[00:11:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I would have been killed. Maybe I just would have been badly hurt but regardless

[00:11:38] [SPEAKER_00]: It just started me thinking

[00:11:40] [SPEAKER_00]: So that's how that that chapter started out as the first one talking about my everyday job and then oh look this

[00:11:49] [SPEAKER_01]: You know because of your job, it's almost impossible to start that book in a bad way

[00:11:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Because you could just start you could just put yourself in the middle of any of the hundreds or thousands of stories

[00:12:02] [SPEAKER_01]: you've been involved with and just start typing and that's gonna be a riveting story and

[00:12:08] [SPEAKER_01]: It's because a I guess we're just fascinated, you know

[00:12:13] [SPEAKER_01]: I've never seen a dead body for instance

[00:12:14] [SPEAKER_01]: so we're just fascinated by someone whose job it is to

[00:12:18] [SPEAKER_01]: investigate these things and of course there's TV shows that you know glorify it and whatever and

[00:12:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Every story like you say has a lot of pain in it for it to end up as it did

[00:12:30] [SPEAKER_01]: And even if there wasn't foul play

[00:12:33] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like there was the one story you told

[00:12:35] [SPEAKER_01]: you know to drunk people and they wake up and one of them is dead and

[00:12:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Obviously in the other guy has a broken bottle

[00:12:43] [SPEAKER_01]: So obviously the other guy did it but you believed him that he said he just couldn't remember what happened

[00:12:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Like what happened there? Well, um as an alcoholic I can tell you all about blackout drunk

[00:12:57] [SPEAKER_00]: When you literally remember nothing of what happened to you or what you did I've had friends

[00:13:04] [SPEAKER_00]: alcoholics who

[00:13:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Were out at a club one night and woke up in Paris or Bermuda

[00:13:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Two friends one in Paris one of Bermuda. I mean just woke up

[00:13:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Said oh my god, where am I and they remembered nothing of how they got there so

[00:13:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm very familiar with being a blackout drunk and I think it's the second chapter

[00:13:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Where I described my last night of drinking

[00:13:33] [SPEAKER_00]: I actually don't remember any of that night

[00:13:36] [SPEAKER_00]: The only reason I was able to write it is because of the friends who were with me and told me what happened

[00:13:43] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember that stuff

[00:13:45] [SPEAKER_01]: When you're blackout drunk do they think you're blackout drunk?

[00:13:50] [SPEAKER_00]: No, they I'm talking. I'm you know walking. I'm doing everything normally well as normal as you can be when you're

[00:13:57] [SPEAKER_00]: smashed out of your face, but

[00:14:00] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I just seems like oh she's a drunk there you go

[00:14:03] [SPEAKER_00]: But they don't know that I have no idea what's going on

[00:14:07] [SPEAKER_00]: so when this man and that case really bothered me a lot because of

[00:14:14] [SPEAKER_00]: the fact that the guy the dead guy

[00:14:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Was covered in the blanket that I had given him

[00:14:21] [SPEAKER_00]: as a Christmas present one that that season when I went around giving out blankets to homeless guys and

[00:14:29] [SPEAKER_00]: So that bothered me a lot and

[00:14:33] [SPEAKER_00]: What bothered me even more was that his best friend?

[00:14:36] [SPEAKER_00]: 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?

[00:14:46] [SPEAKER_00]: He killed his friend and had no idea what happened none and

[00:14:52] [SPEAKER_00]: To be told by the police. Oh, you just killed your best friend. You slashed his face. You slashed his thru

[00:14:59] [SPEAKER_00]: And he doesn't remember it. That's pretty awful

[00:15:03] [SPEAKER_01]: And is that then it gets hard to classify that has that been considered manslaughter?

[00:15:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, probably, you know, the prosecutors would would have a field day with that

[00:15:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe second or third degree murder because it was no prior intent. It was just an argument over the bottle

[00:15:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Do you think he's out of jail now? I think he's dead now the way he was drinking who knows

[00:15:44] [SPEAKER_01]: So you were you were really living like the hard life

[00:15:49] [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't mean like that you had a hard life

[00:15:51] [SPEAKER_01]: But you were making your life hard by by drinking the partying

[00:15:55] [SPEAKER_01]: you were you were kind of going in and out of goals and then failing them and and

[00:16:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Trying to move forward but two steps forward three steps back because of the alcohol

[00:16:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Like what and you describe this in the book, but I want to hear you talk about it like what what changed things for you?

[00:16:13] [SPEAKER_00]: I guess truly hitting bottom and that's that's always the way that people get sober

[00:16:21] [SPEAKER_00]: is

[00:16:22] [SPEAKER_00]: When enough is enough I had been so sick for so long and my life had

[00:16:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Sunk to the point of where I was working off the books part-time in a button store

[00:16:36] [SPEAKER_00]: You know just people would come in and say excuse me my dear, but I must have a very very important button

[00:16:44] [SPEAKER_00]: For my mink coat it must be an important statement button. Yes, ma'am. Of course

[00:16:49] [SPEAKER_00]: 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

[00:16:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh for Christ's sake

[00:17:00] [SPEAKER_00]: To before that I had been a hospital administrator

[00:17:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Responsible for health care in the South Bronx, you know working with politicians there

[00:17:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Getting clinics open getting things for people helping people

[00:17:14] [SPEAKER_00]: But I drank my way right out of that

[00:17:16] [SPEAKER_01]: What does that mean like did you just not show up for work one day? No, that's a day

[00:17:21] [SPEAKER_00]: What is it a day? I sat in my office with a hangover with the door closed so I didn't go to meetings

[00:17:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't speak to people. I was snappish to my secretary

[00:17:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Am I I do all this without?

[00:17:33] [SPEAKER_00]: that

[00:17:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, I just I wasn't working effectively. I wasn't my heart wasn't in it

[00:17:41] [SPEAKER_00]: And I was miserable over some stupid relationship

[00:17:44] [SPEAKER_00]: so, you know, it was a it was a combination of

[00:17:47] [SPEAKER_00]: of

[00:17:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Misery factors

[00:17:51] [SPEAKER_00]: That was a miserable bitch to be around and

[00:17:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Eventually my boss just called me in and said I don't know what the hell's wrong with you

[00:17:58] [SPEAKER_00]: I said nothing. What are you talking about? Nothing's wrong with me? Well, you're not the person

[00:18:02] [SPEAKER_00]: I knew two years ago

[00:18:05] [SPEAKER_00]: So I left or he he got me out

[00:18:08] [SPEAKER_00]: He fired me and there I am working in a button store and I'm drinking every night

[00:18:14] [SPEAKER_00]: cheap wine the Contra etoro 599 the half gallon

[00:18:18] [SPEAKER_00]: A delicious wine though by the way, I've seen it at many death scenes

[00:18:25] [SPEAKER_00]: It is the drug of choice for the poverty

[00:18:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Stricken alcoholic which I was at the time

[00:18:33] [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm working in a button store my master's degree is for nothing all the studying

[00:18:39] [SPEAKER_00]: I did all the the career work

[00:18:41] [SPEAKER_00]: I did it's all for nothing because I'm sitting here now when I live in a in a studio apartment that is

[00:18:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Probably 170 square feet it was tiny

[00:18:54] [SPEAKER_00]: no kitchen to speak of just a toilet and place to put a bed and

[00:19:01] [SPEAKER_00]: So I hit but I had really hit bottom. I was nobody I did nothing

[00:19:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Except drink any fried chicken from a Chinese restaurant every night and were you telling yourself?

[00:19:14] [SPEAKER_01]: eventually

[00:19:15] [SPEAKER_01]: this will stop when good things happen to me or

[00:19:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Did did you think oh, I'm heading to someplace bad? I don't think I thought at all

[00:19:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Quite frankly. I don't think I had a thought in my head. I

[00:19:30] [SPEAKER_00]: You know wait, I'm gonna take that back

[00:19:32] [SPEAKER_00]: There's a little arrogance there the arrogance of the alcoholic in thinking that I'm a deep person

[00:19:39] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a thinking person. I'm a

[00:19:42] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a sensitive soul

[00:19:46] [SPEAKER_00]: I love to laugh at that and and I drink to numb the pain of existence

[00:19:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Or so, you know, you can make it up. It's it's all the same. It's it but I kind of believe that it's kind of an escape

[00:19:59] [SPEAKER_00]: But escape from what a

[00:20:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Job a relationship a life a home all those things sure no

[00:20:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Responsibility sitting there paying 120 bucks a month for an apartment work part-time and watch TV the rest of the time

[00:20:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Or go out with and have affairs

[00:20:16] [SPEAKER_00]: So that was a useless life

[00:20:20] [SPEAKER_00]: And that was the turning point of my life really that

[00:20:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Morning when I woke up and I said oh my god enough is enough. I'm really sick

[00:20:29] [SPEAKER_00]: so

[00:20:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Thank God

[00:20:33] [SPEAKER_00]: And and then what then I got sober went to an AA meeting and then another one and another one another one

[00:20:40] [SPEAKER_00]: And they take very good care of you in AA. They really care

[00:20:44] [SPEAKER_00]: they stay sober by getting other people sober and

[00:20:49] [SPEAKER_00]: It was wonderful, I discovered a whole new life and

[00:20:54] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm not saying that I was an AA fanatic, but I

[00:20:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Discovered a whole new me

[00:21:00] [SPEAKER_00]: After I sort of detoxed when all the alcohol watched washed out of me. I sort of remembered that I

[00:21:09] [SPEAKER_00]: was

[00:21:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Relatively smart that I had a good education and then I had good ideas. I never did anything about them

[00:21:18] [SPEAKER_01]: But I had them and then you said I'm gonna cut up dead people

[00:21:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Well

[00:21:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, I'm giving away the whole book here

[00:21:27] [SPEAKER_01]: but never worry about giving up the whole book because there are so many great stories that will just I

[00:21:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Feel I felt like I was watching 10 thriller movies in a row

[00:21:39] [SPEAKER_01]: So you there's no way you can give away the book. So it's okay if you tell stories

[00:21:43] [SPEAKER_01]: I think the common mistake people have on podcasts is they think oh people listen to this podcast

[00:21:48] [SPEAKER_01]: They're not gonna buy the book. It's the exact opposite you go on the podcast so people buy the book

[00:21:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, well in AA you get

[00:21:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Because it is a disease alcoholism you get certain benefits in New York State. They have something called

[00:22:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Epra the employment program for recovering alcoholics they teach you how to work how to be a working person

[00:22:13] [SPEAKER_00]: and my sponsor told me to go so I said alright what the hell I'll go because you do what you're told and Ella and

[00:22:19] [SPEAKER_00]: AA and

[00:22:22] [SPEAKER_00]: So I sorry I joined that program and

[00:22:28] [SPEAKER_00]: They did all those tests

[00:22:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Minnesota

[00:22:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Multiphazic personality preferential blah blah blah to see what kind of work would be best for me

[00:22:39] [SPEAKER_00]: What was my personality type and eventually the guy my counselor after a few weeks said well

[00:22:45] [SPEAKER_00]: We've got the results and you should either be a poultry veterinarian

[00:22:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Or a coroner. I said poultry my boy whoa

[00:22:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, yeah, go ahead. Well, you know why my poultry

[00:22:58] [SPEAKER_00]: He said well, you know when you were working as a PA in surgery physician assistant

[00:23:03] [SPEAKER_00]: You got to attach to your patients when they didn't get better when they died really bothered you

[00:23:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's you got became emotionally bereft

[00:23:12] [SPEAKER_00]: So if you work with puppies and kittens, it would be the same thing would really affect you

[00:23:18] [SPEAKER_00]: But chickens nobody cares about chickens. They have beady little eyes. They're not good pets. I said, oh wait a second

[00:23:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I'll take coroner

[00:23:27] [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, people are already dead. You don't have to worry about them dying on you

[00:23:33] [SPEAKER_01]: But wouldn't you have to think about oh, it's so sad that I don't know this

[00:23:38] [SPEAKER_01]: spouse killed this other spouse and then killed herself or killed himself like when that

[00:23:43] [SPEAKER_01]: Make you feel

[00:23:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Like put yourself in that situation or do you get numb to that a little bit?

[00:23:49] [SPEAKER_00]: No, you never go numb

[00:23:50] [SPEAKER_00]: But you do detach and that is the essence of that job is the ability to

[00:23:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Cultivate

[00:23:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Detachment if I went into a scene where

[00:24:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I saw many of children killed murdered by their parents

[00:24:06] [SPEAKER_00]: 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

[00:24:13] [SPEAKER_00]: I'd lose it. I would be completely useless

[00:24:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah

[00:24:16] [SPEAKER_00]: There's no way I could do the job if I felt or thought about the things that happen to those people

[00:24:22] [SPEAKER_00]: so you draw curtain you detach from your emotions and

[00:24:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Then get about the business of the job. You're working for the victim to get justice justice for them for their families and

[00:24:38] [SPEAKER_00]: You concentrate on that and

[00:24:40] [SPEAKER_01]: And so

[00:24:41] [SPEAKER_01]: This might be a cliche to ask I'm sure many people have asked you this but like you you brought up

[00:24:47] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you've seen many children who have been murdered

[00:24:50] [SPEAKER_01]: What is like one that maybe almost affected you or affected you the most? Oh

[00:24:56] [SPEAKER_00]: They all affected me in some way. I just didn't realize it for years. I thought I was well detached

[00:25:02] [SPEAKER_00]: But over the years over a ten-year period it built up and up and up until I was frozen

[00:25:09] [SPEAKER_00]: emotionally

[00:25:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Detachment you can't do it selectively

[00:25:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Unless you're really quite healthy and I'm not I'm a neurotic

[00:25:18] [SPEAKER_00]: lunatic I

[00:25:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Was unable to now have feelings in my own personal life my relationships were going to hell. I

[00:25:27] [SPEAKER_00]: was detached from everything but

[00:25:31] [SPEAKER_00]: there were cases that

[00:25:33] [SPEAKER_00]: That

[00:25:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Effected me so badly in the moment. I remember once going home after seeing a little a little boy

[00:25:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Who had been murdered and his little brother who survived a three-year-old was hiding behind a curtain

[00:25:50] [SPEAKER_00]: his little bloody footprints

[00:25:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Were throughout the living room

[00:25:55] [SPEAKER_00]: He had walked in the blood of his parents and his brother and now he's hiding behind a curtain

[00:26:03] [SPEAKER_00]: When I got home

[00:26:05] [SPEAKER_00]: I must have looked like white as a ghost and shocked because my partner said oh my god

[00:26:10] [SPEAKER_00]: What's the matter with you? I said, I don't know but I have to get out of me

[00:26:14] [SPEAKER_00]: I

[00:26:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Can't be inside me right now and I just ran in it got in the bed and I pulled a sheet over my head

[00:26:21] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what that was supposed to do

[00:26:23] [SPEAKER_00]: But I didn't want to be in my own body in my own mind at that moment

[00:26:28] [SPEAKER_00]: And there was nothing I could do about it, but you can never unsee

[00:26:34] [SPEAKER_00]: What I saw and

[00:26:36] [SPEAKER_01]: I was a bad day and and what happened like what can you describe the story? Oh sure

[00:26:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Drug dealers it was a Dominican family mother father a 17 year old son

[00:26:49] [SPEAKER_00]: 12 year old son and then a three-year-old

[00:26:53] [SPEAKER_00]: I

[00:26:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Believe oh yeah, so the 17 year old was working for some low level drug dealers in the neighborhood

[00:27:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Just doing distribution and they were looking for him. I guess he picked up

[00:27:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Too much money or he didn't turn everything into them whatever

[00:27:12] [SPEAKER_00]: And when they came to the home

[00:27:15] [SPEAKER_00]: They killed the whole family now what I suppose and what the detectives

[00:27:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Surmised is that they probably said to the father tell me where your son is or I'll kill your wife

[00:27:26] [SPEAKER_00]: And he said I don't know killed her

[00:27:29] [SPEAKER_00]: And they said tell me where she I'll kill your your 12 year old son they killed him and

[00:27:36] [SPEAKER_00]: They didn't know where the bait they didn't know the baby was there and then finally they just killed everybody and left

[00:27:40] [SPEAKER_00]: That's what drug dealers do and this is back in the early 90s late 80s. There was

[00:27:49] [SPEAKER_00]: 2,400 homicides every year in New York City

[00:27:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine 2,400 now you get 400. It's a big deal

[00:27:58] [SPEAKER_00]: But it was all the drug dealers killing each other and it's very impersonal very violent

[00:28:06] [SPEAKER_00]: And I saw a lot of that

[00:28:08] [SPEAKER_00]: It was absolutely no humanity. It was just pure evil anybody that could kill a kid

[00:28:14] [SPEAKER_00]: What are you gonna do? Sure. I imagine that they eventually found the 17 year old and killed him too. Oh

[00:28:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And why do you think there's so much fewer homicides now?

[00:28:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Couple of reasons. I think Malcolm Gladwell wrote something really interesting about how after

[00:28:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Abortion became legal. Oh, it's for economics chapter one of the first week. Yeah, yeah

[00:28:38] [SPEAKER_00]: That you know, they were fewer unwanted babies born into poverty and so

[00:28:43] [SPEAKER_00]: when that cohort reached the age of

[00:28:46] [SPEAKER_00]: 20s 21 or 18 whenever they would normally start killing

[00:28:52] [SPEAKER_00]: They weren't as many of those kids that had grown up badly

[00:28:57] [SPEAKER_00]: And therefore there was less crime. I have another theory which is like the opposite of exponential growth

[00:29:04] [SPEAKER_00]: I maybe the word is deep potential in other words

[00:29:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I like it right? I like a good neologism

[00:29:12] [SPEAKER_00]: so let's say that Dennis is angry at

[00:29:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Fred and Bill because they went into his territory

[00:29:22] [SPEAKER_00]: so Dennis goes and kills Fred and Bill two homicides but Fred and Bill

[00:29:28] [SPEAKER_00]: We're each gonna kill at least three people in the coming weeks

[00:29:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Over various drug wars. So now we don't have those homicides because those killers are dead

[00:29:39] [SPEAKER_00]: So the more the drug dealers killed each other

[00:29:43] [SPEAKER_00]: The homicide went down down down eventually they wiped each other out, you know, that's actually a pretty good theory

[00:29:50] [SPEAKER_00]: I like it right? I may publish it. I

[00:29:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Guess because you would figure the next generation like every few years is another crop of kids that wants to be drug dealers

[00:30:00] [SPEAKER_01]: But if they all start getting killed too

[00:30:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Eventually, it's got a run dry the supply of drug dealers. Yeah

[00:30:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so that and you know, you Rudy Giuliani would probably attribute it to

[00:30:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Broken windows theory this is tons of theories, but maybe it's a little bit of each now

[00:30:19] [SPEAKER_01]: What what's the when you first started as a medical examiner?

[00:30:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Were you kind of like shocked or you pretty much knew what to expect because you had already been working as a

[00:30:28] [SPEAKER_01]: You know physicians assistant. You've been in operating rooms

[00:30:31] [SPEAKER_01]: You'd seen people, you know at the brink of death or dying

[00:30:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Like was there anything that shocked you in particular when you when you first started, you know

[00:30:40] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a good actress and I make it a point not to be shocked or frightened when I was there for that

[00:30:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Informational interview the first day and I walked around and they took me to the autopsy room

[00:30:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Sort of guy with a knife sticking at him. Oh, I wonder if his killer was right-handed or left. I

[00:30:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Cultivate an air of detached curiosity

[00:31:01] [SPEAKER_00]: and I did it real well and

[00:31:04] [SPEAKER_00]: So the guys I was the only woman at the time

[00:31:07] [SPEAKER_00]: The guys were a little shocked by me. Maybe even a little scared. Damn nothing seems to bother her

[00:31:13] [SPEAKER_00]: It's like an ice queen over there

[00:31:15] [SPEAKER_00]: but then in my training I was supposed to watch a couple of autopsies learn the the procedures and

[00:31:24] [SPEAKER_00]: I was with this woman. Dr. Jackie Lee

[00:31:27] [SPEAKER_00]: She was doing the autopsy of an eight-year-old girl who had been raped and smothered and thrown in a garbage dump

[00:31:35] [SPEAKER_00]: I think the daily news or the post called her angel in hell was a big

[00:31:41] [SPEAKER_00]: It was a big story and we're doing this autopsy and I was

[00:31:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Consumed with horror. I was awestruck by how much evil it took to do this deed

[00:31:55] [SPEAKER_00]: And I said to Jackie what how did you do this every day?

[00:31:59] [SPEAKER_00]: How do you live seeing this knowing this and she said when you leave here surround yourself with things of beauty

[00:32:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Love good food music art the nature everything just

[00:32:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Do it every single day do something creative do something wonderful

[00:32:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I tried and I think it helped

[00:32:25] [SPEAKER_00]: I got a little house in the country eventually up in the Catskills

[00:32:29] [SPEAKER_00]: And so I had grass and leaves and trees and a cat and a dog and it was good

[00:32:35] [SPEAKER_01]: I think that helps but you want to go back to that every day though. What would you do every day every day?

[00:32:43] [SPEAKER_00]: As a good question since I wasn't drinking and I was often tempted believe me I

[00:32:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Think I think going to AA meetings and I had a nice social life there too. It was fun people

[00:32:58] [SPEAKER_00]: I think having a decent social life helped me and I did write at the time. I

[00:33:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Journaled I wrote little stories none of them were any good, but who cares writing was something creative for me

[00:33:11] [SPEAKER_00]: So that helped

[00:33:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Eventually though it didn't work anymore. Did they ever find out who?

[00:33:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Raped and killed that girl. Oh sure he practically confessed in a very self-righteous way

[00:33:24] [SPEAKER_00]: He told police well, I went and picked up this woman in a bar

[00:33:28] [SPEAKER_00]: We were having a good time and I gave her $50 to go get us some cocaine so we could party some more

[00:33:35] [SPEAKER_00]: And she took the money and she left so I went to her house and

[00:33:40] [SPEAKER_00]: She wasn't there, but her daughter was there. So I took her daughter

[00:33:44] [SPEAKER_00]: And he said this was such

[00:33:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Self-justification like well, of course I took her daughter. She took my $50

[00:33:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and that really knocked me for a loop

[00:33:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Wow

[00:33:58] [SPEAKER_00]: That's amazing

[00:34:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely amazing. Yeah, but there is that kind of casual evil out there isn't there and

[00:34:06] [SPEAKER_01]: You know I have a question about I mean you've dealt with a lot of suicides

[00:34:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Would you say obviously there's more suicides than homicides or what's the statistics on that?

[00:34:16] [SPEAKER_01]: It's very hard to get track of suicide statistics actually it kind of is because they're always a few years behind

[00:34:24] [SPEAKER_00]: But interestingly, you know New York State has the lowest suicide rate in the country and

[00:34:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Doctoral student was doing a thesis on that and came and interviewed me and he asked

[00:34:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Why do you think that is? Why does New York have such a low suicide rate? I said Greek diners

[00:34:43] [SPEAKER_00]: We have Greek diners in the city on Long Island all around. They're open 24 hours a day

[00:34:50] [SPEAKER_00]: 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

[00:34:55] [SPEAKER_00]: I want to die

[00:34:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Now you can go out to the diner and see people for a few minutes

[00:34:59] [SPEAKER_00]: You can have a cup of coffee. You don't have to eat alone every day

[00:35:03] [SPEAKER_00]: You can go in the diner and be around people

[00:35:05] [SPEAKER_00]: You can talk to the guy behind the counter

[00:35:08] [SPEAKER_01]: You think that really is it you think it's I don't know just that you could find companionship because New York is also

[00:35:16] [SPEAKER_01]: You know when I moved to New York originally

[00:35:19] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like 1994

[00:35:21] [SPEAKER_01]: it struck me that

[00:35:24] [SPEAKER_01]: 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

[00:35:28] [SPEAKER_00]: New York is a town for people exactly like me who want to be surrounded with lots and lots of people

[00:35:35] [SPEAKER_00]: But don't want to have anything to do with them

[00:35:38] [SPEAKER_00]: It's the perfect town for the the introvert

[00:35:43] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's like my childhood on the oldest of nine kids

[00:35:46] [SPEAKER_00]: I was surrounded by people and I didn't want anything to do with any of them

[00:35:53] [SPEAKER_00]: It's it's New York is a natural for people like that, right?

[00:35:57] [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I think the suicide rate. It's probably more because of our strict gun laws

[00:36:03] [SPEAKER_00]: There are fewer suicides here. That's what the postdoc fellow thought anyway

[00:36:24] [SPEAKER_01]: When someone commits suicide a lot of it is hanging from your first chapter to Jeffrey Epstein

[00:36:31] [SPEAKER_01]: 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

[00:36:37] [SPEAKER_01]: But seems like a really stupid way to kill yourself like it's guaranteed to be enormously painful

[00:36:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Not at all. In fact exactly the opposite. It's interesting. Don't you like don't you like first you break your neck

[00:36:49] [SPEAKER_01]: So you're just hanging there conscious with a broken neck until you suffocate. Nope not at all

[00:36:54] [SPEAKER_00]: It's really interesting. Here's the physiology of it

[00:36:58] [SPEAKER_00]: um

[00:36:59] [SPEAKER_00]: to die by

[00:37:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Strangulation or hanging or ligature

[00:37:04] [SPEAKER_00]: There's three mechanisms one is cutting off the airway

[00:37:09] [SPEAKER_00]: So when a man strangles a woman and presses his thumbs into her larynx

[00:37:14] [SPEAKER_00]: It cuts off the airway and that hurts. That's really an awful painful way to die

[00:37:19] [SPEAKER_00]: your brain is screaming for

[00:37:22] [SPEAKER_00]: oxygen and it's awful

[00:37:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Another way is to block off the carotid arteries so that blood doesn't go into your head keeps coming out

[00:37:33] [SPEAKER_00]: through the veins, but you block the carotids no brain no blood to the brain you black out

[00:37:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Hmm within a fairly short time

[00:37:44] [SPEAKER_00]: It is an oxygen death deprivation situation and it is very painful. Yes, but then there's the fun way

[00:37:51] [SPEAKER_00]: And that is only blocking the jugular veins

[00:37:56] [SPEAKER_00]: So if you would have put a soft ligature, let's say a belt or a tie around your neck and

[00:38:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Just lean into it. There's just enough pressure to stop the jugular veins to occlude them

[00:38:09] [SPEAKER_00]: So now you can still breathe

[00:38:12] [SPEAKER_00]: The blood can still go through the arteries into your head, but it can't come out

[00:38:17] [SPEAKER_00]: So you black out very slowly and it feels great

[00:38:22] [SPEAKER_00]: All kinds of endorphins and weird chemicals are released from this this oxygen

[00:38:29] [SPEAKER_00]: This this state

[00:38:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Oxygen deprivation state and you black out and it feels really good now

[00:38:36] [SPEAKER_00]: How do we know this because people do it for fun?

[00:38:39] [SPEAKER_00]: They do it during masturbation. It's called they I should I should say men do it during the

[00:38:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Masturbation because women aren't usually that stupid. However, there are plenty of women who do it

[00:38:51] [SPEAKER_00]: So what they do is during the acts of self-pleasure?

[00:38:56] [SPEAKER_00]: They'll put a soft ligature like a sanitary pad, you know on a on a rope or a

[00:39:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Soft belt from a dress and they'll just

[00:39:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Lean into it enough even kneeling on the floor remember Mick Jagger's girlfriend

[00:39:13] [SPEAKER_00]: That's how she committed suicide

[00:39:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Loren something anyway

[00:39:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Once you block

[00:39:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Those jugular veins you black out slowly and it's very pleasurable

[00:39:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Now when a person does this during masturbation

[00:39:29] [SPEAKER_00]: They have a safety release and that is you tie one end of the ligature to your wrist

[00:39:35] [SPEAKER_00]: So that when you eventually pass out your wrist drops and opens the ligature

[00:39:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Does it always work? No

[00:39:44] [SPEAKER_00]: And by then I guess you're unconscious. You're unconscious. You don't feel it and you die in

[00:39:51] [SPEAKER_00]: flagrante delicto

[00:39:53] [SPEAKER_00]: and

[00:39:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, I will come to your home one

[00:39:57] [SPEAKER_00]: I will come to the home and see this person, you know naked and

[00:40:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps having some pornography there or things like that and cops will say oh look this guy committed suicide

[00:40:08] [SPEAKER_00]: No, he didn't he was having fun. He was playing bad boy games and he died

[00:40:14] [SPEAKER_00]: How often have you seen this? Oh tons tons and tons is a whole chapter in the book on this

[00:40:19] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like a common thing. Yes very common very common and and similar. What about like rough sex?

[00:40:27] [SPEAKER_00]: deaths hmm, I guess the most famous is that one Jennifer Levin and

[00:40:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Robert Robert Chambers Robert Chambers. Yeah

[00:40:37] [SPEAKER_00]: He says it was you know rough sex and he strangled her

[00:40:43] [SPEAKER_00]: To the point where she died

[00:40:46] [SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't believable

[00:40:49] [SPEAKER_00]: But plenty of people do

[00:40:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Strangle each other during sex for that very reason of occluding the jugular vein so that you get that rush

[00:40:59] [SPEAKER_01]: And why wasn't he believable?

[00:41:02] [SPEAKER_00]: I

[00:41:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Think the violence stunned to her body

[00:41:06] [SPEAKER_00]: The the the marks on her neck the you know the scratches they probably had scratches on him

[00:41:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Indicated that you know she was fighting for her life

[00:41:16] [SPEAKER_01]: So so maybe they got into an argument like what's the theory like maybe they got into an argument or hmm?

[00:41:23] [SPEAKER_00]: He said that she I believe he said that she squeezed his genitals and it made him go into a rage

[00:41:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Who knows?

[00:41:34] [SPEAKER_00]: who knows

[00:41:36] [SPEAKER_01]: and it's just a there's so much like

[00:41:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Just weirdness out there or I'm not the wrong word like most like evil

[00:41:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well is evil. There's strange there are strange things, but you know

[00:41:50] [SPEAKER_00]: This there's plenty of happy things too

[00:41:53] [SPEAKER_00]: There's people who are heroic and try to save others and die that way

[00:41:57] [SPEAKER_00]: You know there's well no that's not happy at all is it that's tragic

[00:42:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Geez, I'm gonna get down here

[00:42:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't mean to depress you know

[00:42:09] [SPEAKER_01]: But what are some cases where because of your examining you helped solve the case?

[00:42:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh sure plenty of them

[00:42:17] [SPEAKER_00]: It's not the job of the medical examiner or the medical legal death investigator

[00:42:22] [SPEAKER_00]: To solve the case but rather to contribute the evidence and the interpretation and the opinion

[00:42:29] [SPEAKER_00]: that helps

[00:42:31] [SPEAKER_00]: you know direct the investigation of the police and support it and

[00:42:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Help them prove what they believe to be so

[00:42:40] [SPEAKER_00]: So there were plenty of times where I

[00:42:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Found something that could either prove or disprove a case and one of my favorites is

[00:42:50] [SPEAKER_00]: I was called to a tenement building on the first floor

[00:42:53] [SPEAKER_00]: There was a guy laying dead on the ground at the bottom of the staircase with a bullet hole in his head

[00:42:59] [SPEAKER_00]: and all around him up and down the whole hallway were

[00:43:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Shell casings of 22 rifle of a 22 or handgun or rifle and

[00:43:10] [SPEAKER_00]: I was looking at the guy and it

[00:43:12] [SPEAKER_00]: The bullet wound was a little funny. It didn't have the typical ring

[00:43:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Abrasion where the bullet enters at least like a little abrasion as it goes in

[00:43:23] [SPEAKER_00]: It didn't have the perfect concentric

[00:43:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Formation that it should

[00:43:28] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm looking around and

[00:43:30] [SPEAKER_00]: The staircase right across him is a wall with a corner like this a sharp corner

[00:43:36] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's got that stone coping on it or molding and it comes to a very sharp point

[00:43:43] [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm smelling the guy too and he stinks of alcohol

[00:43:47] [SPEAKER_00]: So I realized wait a second. I don't think this guy was shot

[00:43:50] [SPEAKER_00]: I think he was drunk

[00:43:52] [SPEAKER_00]: He fell down the stairs and hit his forehead on the point at the corner of this wall this stone coping here

[00:44:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Because that has a more a split

[00:44:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Steal eat look like little starburst

[00:44:06] [SPEAKER_00]: But then the cops said wait a second. Well, what about all these shells on the floor?

[00:44:11] [SPEAKER_00]: so we're looking around and we go back outside because it ends in an alleyway and

[00:44:16] [SPEAKER_00]: There are targets turns out. This was a literal shooting gallery

[00:44:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Where kids would come and practice in this tenement

[00:44:25] [SPEAKER_00]: they stand in the hallway by the front door and shoot out through the back door

[00:44:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Into the yard where they had a target up on the fence

[00:44:33] [SPEAKER_00]: So all their shell casings were on the floor. It had nothing to do

[00:44:37] [SPEAKER_00]: With this guy was just a coincidence and they were the cops were mighty happy when I said nah

[00:44:43] [SPEAKER_00]: This isn't a homicide. This is an accident less work for them

[00:44:49] [SPEAKER_01]: And

[00:44:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Have you ever been wrong like I've ever seen something where it was a suicide, but you concluded it was a homicide?

[00:44:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Sure, and there's a story like that in the book

[00:45:02] [SPEAKER_00]: The problem is I will never ever know

[00:45:06] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a long story and it's you know of a man who was found dead

[00:45:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Supposedly by suicide, but everything in me said

[00:45:14] [SPEAKER_00]: There's something wrong here. This doesn't fit and it was largely based on his wife and

[00:45:23] [SPEAKER_00]: The man I thought was her my surmised was her lover

[00:45:28] [SPEAKER_00]: It was something about the chemistry between the two of them. It was electric and

[00:45:33] [SPEAKER_00]: It was a weird story, you know, why why should he be dead here?

[00:45:37] [SPEAKER_00]: The whole nothing nothing about the story made sense. However

[00:45:42] [SPEAKER_00]: It was a suicide plain and simple

[00:45:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Based on the autopsy and the evidence at hand

[00:45:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Anything else that I surmised was strictly my own fantasy my own

[00:45:57] [SPEAKER_00]: internal storytelling it was based on a feeling I had and

[00:46:03] [SPEAKER_00]: You can't convict people based on a feeling you have you have to in an investigation

[00:46:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Write and demonstrate only the evidence

[00:46:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Only the evidence that you see and can record

[00:46:18] [SPEAKER_00]: You don't put your own stories in your own fantasies or I think this one killed that one. That's not that's not our job

[00:46:24] [SPEAKER_00]: our job is to present evidence and

[00:46:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Determine a cause of death and a manner of death the manner being homicide suicide accident natural or

[00:46:37] [SPEAKER_00]: active war

[00:46:38] [SPEAKER_00]: That's a whole manner of death unto itself. So, yeah, there were quite a few cases where I

[00:46:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Might have thought something else happened no way I could prove it

[00:46:49] [SPEAKER_01]: and then and you were also involved in in

[00:46:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Helping identify victims of 9-11

[00:46:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Given what an emotional shock that was obviously to that area and then to the city and then to the country I

[00:47:03] [SPEAKER_01]: remember at that time

[00:47:04] [SPEAKER_01]: There were a couple hotels

[00:47:07] [SPEAKER_01]: set aside where

[00:47:08] [SPEAKER_01]: parents and family of

[00:47:11] [SPEAKER_01]: victims were there and there was pictures up all over the place and

[00:47:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Because I actually lived like a block away. So I had to stay in one of those hotels

[00:47:20] [SPEAKER_01]: so I saw that was going on and

[00:47:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Everybody was just in obviously so much pain and anguish. What was that like? What was that experience like?

[00:47:30] [SPEAKER_00]: It was horrible. It ruined everything. It really did it ruined everything

[00:47:37] [SPEAKER_00]: It damn near destroyed our city our economy our but

[00:47:43] [SPEAKER_00]: and all those people all those innocent people just

[00:47:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Everything from stockbrokers with a cup of coffee saying hi to their staff in the morning or the bus boy cleaning up at windows in the world

[00:47:55] [SPEAKER_00]: The janitor just regular folks going about their day and suddenly they're at the center of the greatest mass murder in US history

[00:48:05] [SPEAKER_00]: and

[00:48:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Why did it ruin everything for me personally because

[00:48:10] [SPEAKER_00]: My job was always interesting always fun

[00:48:15] [SPEAKER_00]: You know often emotionally devastating, but still I had a good time. I loved working with cops

[00:48:21] [SPEAKER_00]: I loved figuring out puzzles and I love seeing how people lived going into someone's home when they die

[00:48:28] [SPEAKER_00]: You have carte blanche to see what their lives are like and it's interesting

[00:48:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, along comes 9-11

[00:48:36] [SPEAKER_00]: There's really nothing to investigate. We know what happened. We know where it happened

[00:48:41] [SPEAKER_00]: We know who did it we know why the only thing we don't know is who are the victims

[00:48:48] [SPEAKER_00]: So the whole investigation centered around

[00:48:53] [SPEAKER_00]: identifying the people who had been killed and

[00:48:56] [SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing fun about that. There's nothing interesting about that. It's just sad

[00:49:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Sad every day and it's so overwhelming because there are more than 20,000 pieces

[00:49:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Representing fewer than 3,000 people

[00:49:14] [SPEAKER_00]: so

[00:49:15] [SPEAKER_00]: It was not an end, you know the job if it was enjoyable before it certainly wasn't now and

[00:49:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Then I you know the family is coming in every day to our office to give us

[00:49:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Hair samples or toothbrush samples for DNA or just to talk to us to see anything yet if you found them

[00:49:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Do you have any idea where he was located?

[00:49:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Being faced with that kind of grief is

[00:49:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely overwhelming

[00:49:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's no way to process that or to you know go out and have a good time afterwards. That was bad

[00:49:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean how many people do you think you identified?

[00:49:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Um, I think because again things were scattered everywhere

[00:50:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it's it's close to 60% of the victims have been identified and that's after

[00:50:08] [SPEAKER_00]: What is it 22 years now almost 22 years?

[00:50:13] [SPEAKER_00]: It took that long

[00:50:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Which just goes to show you the enormous forces the devastating

[00:50:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh nature of that attack, you know the fireball the crash of the aeroplanes the collapse of the building all those things

[00:50:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Many people I believe were literally vaporized. There's nothing left nothing

[00:50:36] [SPEAKER_00]: So they never will be identified

[00:50:38] [SPEAKER_01]: And what about I mean there was also the people who jumped I guess because it was so hot at the top

[00:50:45] [SPEAKER_01]: That they felt that this was a better

[00:50:48] [SPEAKER_01]: End for them

[00:50:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Then waiting for it to happen

[00:50:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Now this is one of those cases where I think words really matter

[00:50:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Did they really jump because jump implies suicide and I think those people wanted to live

[00:51:03] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think any of them wanted to die. So yeah, did they jump or were they pushed out by flame and smoke?

[00:51:11] [SPEAKER_01]: I choose the latter. Yeah, I think it's the latter. I agree with you

[00:51:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, nobody said oh, I'm going to jump because this will be a better death

[00:51:18] [SPEAKER_00]: I think they were hanging on to window frames that were broken out

[00:51:22] [SPEAKER_00]: And behind them flames were licking their backs or the smoke was the heat was

[00:51:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, oh just so intense

[00:51:30] [SPEAKER_00]: And the pain was so intense. They just

[00:51:33] [SPEAKER_00]: went

[00:51:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so they were murdered not not suicide murdered

[00:51:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, I agree suicides suicide's definitely the wrong word and

[00:51:43] [SPEAKER_01]: It's just it's just a horrible day all around. Yeah

[00:51:46] [SPEAKER_01]: So it wasn't anything good. Yeah, it happened and of course it changed our whole

[00:51:53] [SPEAKER_00]: notion of ourselves

[00:51:55] [SPEAKER_00]: In in terms of our safety and security, you know now you can't even get on an airplane without having your

[00:52:02] [SPEAKER_00]: water bottle confiscated and your your face lotion and take off your shoes. I mean, you know

[00:52:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Everything changed and now

[00:52:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Would you recommend this as a job for somebody?

[00:52:16] [SPEAKER_00]: A good career path. Oh, yes. Yes, I would however, however with the very very strong caveat that they get therapy

[00:52:26] [SPEAKER_00]: that they participate in

[00:52:30] [SPEAKER_00]: debriefing sessions

[00:52:32] [SPEAKER_00]: That they work with their colleagues to

[00:52:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Um express their feelings

[00:52:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh back in my day that was very much discouraged. I remember asking my boss who I worshiped

[00:52:44] [SPEAKER_00]: He was my mentor and I said doc, you know, we're a lot of us are getting kind of

[00:52:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Little hinky there's a lot of drinking a lot of fairs gambling

[00:52:53] [SPEAKER_00]: You know people are really affected by this stuff. He said no barber. We're strong people

[00:52:58] [SPEAKER_00]: We do this work because we can we are the strongest of the strong

[00:53:02] [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, oh, yeah, okay. That sounds good. I'm strong

[00:53:06] [SPEAKER_00]: But no, that's not the way of it

[00:53:08] [SPEAKER_00]: I think only now in the past year or two have people begun

[00:53:12] [SPEAKER_00]: In the business had people begun to realize just how bad the emotional effect is

[00:53:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Of this kind of work be it, you know, police officers firemen

[00:53:22] [SPEAKER_00]: emergency room personnel and most of all

[00:53:25] [SPEAKER_00]: um medical medical legal death investigators, uh

[00:53:30] [SPEAKER_00]: It's it's a devastating work. So you like along your colleagues as there have been anyone

[00:53:35] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, obviously this is the case but what's an example of someone who really couldn't handle it ultimately?

[00:53:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Sure. One of the guys I first worked with, um

[00:53:43] [SPEAKER_00]: You know he

[00:53:45] [SPEAKER_00]: started using drugs

[00:53:47] [SPEAKER_00]: He told everybody had narcolepsy, but he didn't he was just stoned and he

[00:53:52] [SPEAKER_00]: fell off a chair at a

[00:53:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Victim's house once while interviewing the family. He's just passed out

[00:53:59] [SPEAKER_00]: And um, so he was fired

[00:54:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Um after three tries they sent him to rehab two or three times and on the third time

[00:54:08] [SPEAKER_00]: He just he didn't take so they um, they let him go

[00:54:12] [SPEAKER_00]: And uh, he wound up hanging himself

[00:54:15] [SPEAKER_00]: um, he did get sober for a brief time but

[00:54:19] [SPEAKER_00]: It didn't stay

[00:54:21] [SPEAKER_00]: It was a damn shame. He was a nice guy

[00:54:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Vietnam vet

[00:54:25] [SPEAKER_01]: And so vietnam vet he's certainly seen his share of tragedy. Yeah, but this was too much

[00:54:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think he already had PTSD and then you put this on top of it

[00:54:36] [SPEAKER_00]: um

[00:54:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Some of my colleagues became heavy drinkers some got sober some didn't

[00:54:41] [SPEAKER_00]: And some just quit they said I remember one very lovely young woman just a

[00:54:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Pretty fun vivacious

[00:54:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Lovely girl

[00:54:52] [SPEAKER_00]: I think her name was nicole

[00:54:53] [SPEAKER_00]: 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?

[00:54:58] [SPEAKER_00]: I belong in the world of art and she went into styling and makeup and hair dressing, you know

[00:55:06] [SPEAKER_01]: That's well, I guess

[00:55:08] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you want to say makeup is related because you're not it's not like you're the

[00:55:13] [SPEAKER_01]: You know person who dresses them up for a funeral the mortician, right? No

[00:55:17] [SPEAKER_00]: I never count. Yeah. No, that's a that's an interesting job. But no not for us. No

[00:55:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And 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

[00:55:29] [SPEAKER_01]: forensics

[00:55:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Done in movies and in police, you know investigation tv shows

[00:55:34] [SPEAKER_01]: And then there was that show six feet under which was all about you know morticians

[00:55:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so what what what do you are? Are you ever watching like these shows with friends and you say that's bullshit

[00:55:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Like it never happens that way always always i'm very annoying to watch true crime with

[00:55:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, i'm always yelling what he missed the whole point is blood spray on the wall. What the hell or

[00:55:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, I guess the worst offenders are the police procedurals, you know the csi and cis all that

[00:56:04] [SPEAKER_00]: they depend very much on on technology and bright lights and

[00:56:08] [SPEAKER_00]: hard driving music and

[00:56:11] [SPEAKER_00]: um young scientists

[00:56:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Criminologists to wear a four inch heel to work in a mini skirt. It just doesn't you know, it's not like that

[00:56:19] [SPEAKER_01]: You didn't wear a four inch heel and mini skirts

[00:56:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes

[00:56:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Occasionally I when I was on call and I'd be out at a club or a party and they call me in for a case

[00:56:29] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'd show up in a black dress and heels and the cops were like wow, holy shit

[00:56:35] [SPEAKER_00]: She really knows how to do it

[00:56:38] [SPEAKER_00]: But that that was rare

[00:56:40] [SPEAKER_00]: um

[00:56:41] [SPEAKER_00]: You know what they do is the first thing they do is they compress the timeline they get dna results within 15 minutes

[00:56:48] [SPEAKER_00]: They get genetic genealogy and in seven minutes

[00:56:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, that's that's of course the most obvious thing and that's okay because you got 42 minutes to tell a story

[00:56:57] [SPEAKER_00]: So what the hell?

[00:56:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Go ahead and compress everything

[00:57:01] [SPEAKER_00]: but

[00:57:02] [SPEAKER_00]: What is annoying is when they out and out

[00:57:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Put in something that is so odd

[00:57:08] [SPEAKER_00]: For instance, I saw one. I I just started watching them because i'm writing an article an essay

[00:57:14] [SPEAKER_00]: On this right now called what tv gets wrong

[00:57:18] [SPEAKER_00]: And I can't wait to read that. Oh, it's a yeah, it's a fun story

[00:57:22] [SPEAKER_00]: And you know everything in the show was exaggerated. That was okay. I was enjoying it

[00:57:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I was having a good time until the very end

[00:57:29] [SPEAKER_00]: A decedent is laying on the autopsy table

[00:57:33] [SPEAKER_00]: and

[00:57:33] [SPEAKER_00]: The director of the csi unit comes in stands over her

[00:57:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Pets her head and her face of the dead woman

[00:57:44] [SPEAKER_00]: And bends down

[00:57:45] [SPEAKER_00]: And kisses her forehead

[00:57:47] [SPEAKER_00]: I was like what the fuck?

[00:57:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Never never never have I kissed a victim never never never

[00:57:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Could you imagine it possible at all? No, not unless

[00:58:02] [SPEAKER_00]: No, no, absolutely not the most I ever did

[00:58:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes when I was feeling particularly spiritual or religious

[00:58:10] [SPEAKER_00]: I'd make a little sign of the cross over the head

[00:58:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Or sometime a little Jewish star the person was I just make like a little motion over their head and say to myself

[00:58:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Go in peace rest in peace

[00:58:23] [SPEAKER_00]: You know so saying goodbye to them, but I would never kiss them Jesus

[00:58:28] [SPEAKER_01]: And let me ask you in your investigating you obviously have to like cut people open and see what happened

[00:58:35] [SPEAKER_01]: What's like the most unusual thing you have found inside somebody?

[00:58:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Or at least even like a physiological thing like a strange biology

[00:58:45] [SPEAKER_00]: um

[00:58:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you know, this wasn't my case

[00:58:48] [SPEAKER_00]: But it was at one of the you know, you have a conference each week to go over your cases

[00:58:53] [SPEAKER_00]: And one of the medical examiners brought in one

[00:58:56] [SPEAKER_00]: um a guy who worked as a baker

[00:58:59] [SPEAKER_00]: um in some

[00:59:01] [SPEAKER_00]: You know like entomines or silver cup one of the local places

[00:59:05] [SPEAKER_00]: and

[00:59:06] [SPEAKER_00]: When they cut him open

[00:59:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Then he had been shot, you know, so

[00:59:10] [SPEAKER_00]: No big surprise there what his cause of death was but when they cut him open they found that he was

[00:59:15] [SPEAKER_00]: infested with worms

[00:59:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Tons of worms

[00:59:19] [SPEAKER_00]: But then they showed us the worst part in the bakery where he worked

[00:59:24] [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't have gloves. He'd put his hands into the dough

[00:59:28] [SPEAKER_00]: His job was to knead and stretch the dough that we were eating in our bread and he was filled with worms

[00:59:37] [SPEAKER_00]: That was awful

[00:59:39] [SPEAKER_01]: First off, how do you get filled with worms?

[00:59:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, you catch a worm from eating something or from I mean like kids get worms because

[00:59:48] [SPEAKER_00]: they

[00:59:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I hate to be vulgar and graphic but you know, they pick at their noses

[00:59:55] [SPEAKER_00]: where occasionally there are

[00:59:57] [SPEAKER_00]: worms

[00:59:58] [SPEAKER_00]: And then it goes through the digestive system and out through their little

[01:00:03] [SPEAKER_00]: rectums and they itch and they scratch it and then it makes eggs and they touch another kid

[01:00:08] [SPEAKER_00]: So it spreads among children very easily

[01:00:12] [SPEAKER_00]: But if you go to certain tropical countries

[01:00:15] [SPEAKER_00]: You get worms in almost everything their eggs are everywhere and you know, people get used to it

[01:00:20] [SPEAKER_00]: You can you can have a symbiotic relationship with your worms actually

[01:00:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, they can live there forever and never bother you

[01:00:27] [SPEAKER_00]: But it certainly bothered us to see all those worms inside of Jesus

[01:00:32] [SPEAKER_01]: uh, that's

[01:00:34] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't I don't know. I honestly don't know how you could do how you could do it

[01:00:38] [SPEAKER_01]: I admire you for doing it because it's obviously

[01:00:41] [SPEAKER_01]: a function we need to to have in society when when did forensic investigators

[01:00:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Start like it used to be people would just kill people and then oh this person was dead

[01:00:52] [SPEAKER_01]: He was obviously killed with a sword

[01:00:54] [SPEAKER_01]: And you would know

[01:00:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, it started for the reason of money

[01:01:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Coroner that the term coroner relates to the crown

[01:01:04] [SPEAKER_00]: so in england back in

[01:01:07] [SPEAKER_00]: I guess as early as 1200 1300 around there when a person died

[01:01:13] [SPEAKER_00]: The king who owned the land or the duke

[01:01:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Needed someone to

[01:01:18] [SPEAKER_00]: investigate that death and see if the person had any assets any money or property

[01:01:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Which would rightfully now belong to the crown

[01:01:27] [SPEAKER_00]: And so the name coroner as in crown

[01:01:30] [SPEAKER_00]: and so they would investigate the deaths and

[01:01:34] [SPEAKER_00]: That became a profession, but at first it was only about the money

[01:01:39] [SPEAKER_00]: It was only till it wasn't it wasn't until later on some hundred or 200 years that it became about

[01:01:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh justice as as the justice system grew

[01:01:50] [SPEAKER_00]: It became

[01:01:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Necessary to find out how a person died and who did it

[01:01:57] [SPEAKER_00]: So sheriffs and coroners worked together in ancient england to find out how a person died so that they could have trials

[01:02:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Now is there is there ever a time when

[01:02:08] [SPEAKER_01]: 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

[01:02:16] [SPEAKER_01]: They didn't just die from disease or a tumor

[01:02:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Like is there some drug that's that's hidden in the blood that they take or or or what?

[01:02:25] [SPEAKER_00]: um

[01:02:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there is a category of matters of death called

[01:02:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Undetermined and that is when you literally cannot find any reason for their death

[01:02:35] [SPEAKER_00]: You can't see what killed them and you can't see why or how they died

[01:02:40] [SPEAKER_00]: um

[01:02:41] [SPEAKER_00]: so you might

[01:02:43] [SPEAKER_00]: somebody might uh

[01:02:45] [SPEAKER_00]: You know smell something in the name in their building and say somebody's dead in there call the police

[01:02:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Please come in and find the person laying on the floor. Let's say 45 years old young healthy

[01:02:57] [SPEAKER_00]: And they're just dead

[01:03:00] [SPEAKER_00]: So on autopsy

[01:03:02] [SPEAKER_00]: You don't see anything no disease process. No myocardial infarction. No heart attack the brain looks okay

[01:03:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Who knows

[01:03:12] [SPEAKER_00]: So in those cases it may be as simple as a cardiac arrhythmia

[01:03:17] [SPEAKER_00]: You know the electrical pulses that caused the heart to beat with regularity

[01:03:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe there was an interruption in that electrical flow and they just died

[01:03:26] [SPEAKER_00]: um

[01:03:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they did eat something poisonous, but we do toxicology on everybody

[01:03:32] [SPEAKER_01]: You test the eye fluids the blood. Maybe they might have been allergic to something that

[01:03:37] [SPEAKER_01]: The allergy didn't stick around it just killed them

[01:03:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Possible, but then you might see the signs of anaphylactic reaction like swollen lips the

[01:03:45] [SPEAKER_00]: The airway being swollen shut

[01:03:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Redness

[01:03:49] [SPEAKER_00]: You know things like that. Yeah, it's happened several times. I you know the last one I remember was um

[01:03:56] [SPEAKER_00]: A mummy

[01:03:57] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think I mentioned him in the book. He was a complete mummy

[01:04:01] [SPEAKER_00]: There was nothing but this skin and bones and his insides had all been eaten away by rats

[01:04:09] [SPEAKER_00]: So he mummified in this dry building where he

[01:04:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Lived it was a squat an abandoned building

[01:04:16] [SPEAKER_00]: And there was a bullet rattling around that his chest

[01:04:20] [SPEAKER_00]: In this hollow chest. I said geez look at that it cops it. Oh, I guess somebody shot him. No

[01:04:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Not at all

[01:04:27] [SPEAKER_00]: How would we know if that was an old war wound?

[01:04:31] [SPEAKER_00]: If he accidentally shot himself months

[01:04:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Or if somebody shot him now or he committed suicide or he had an accident

[01:04:39] [SPEAKER_01]: We have no way of knowing all we know is was there a bullet hole in his in his skin

[01:04:45] [SPEAKER_00]: No, there was the skin was so degraded. I mean it was just it was like

[01:04:49] [SPEAKER_00]: He looked like a pile of autumn leaves

[01:04:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Was not a nice analogy. Very poetic. Yes very poetic. You know when I

[01:04:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Took his arm to turn try and turn him over the arm just came off in my hand

[01:05:02] [SPEAKER_00]: It was just like like brown leaves of a parchment like skin

[01:05:07] [SPEAKER_00]: And uh, it was very strange to look at why I always remember him as he had a brand new pair of timbreland boots on his feet

[01:05:15] [SPEAKER_00]: And the boots looked great, but they were just skeleton feet in them

[01:05:20] [SPEAKER_00]: and

[01:05:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Just a skeleton covered in

[01:05:24] [SPEAKER_01]: In parchment like skin. So what happens to those boots so they get sold like an uh

[01:05:29] [SPEAKER_01]: used clothing store

[01:05:31] Uh

[01:05:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Gee, I don't know. I mean we we bring them into the medical examiner's office

[01:05:37] [SPEAKER_00]: in their clothing

[01:05:39] [SPEAKER_00]: And uh, they put the clothing in a bag

[01:05:41] [SPEAKER_00]: So if there's any ever any family that shows up we give them as their possessions

[01:05:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Um

[01:05:47] [SPEAKER_00]: And I you know, I had this vague memory of those boots going missing and I said to this medical student

[01:05:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Did you steal those boots?

[01:05:55] [SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no, I wouldn't take a dead man's boots

[01:05:57] [SPEAKER_00]: But I was just busted as chops, you know

[01:06:00] [SPEAKER_01]: well

[01:06:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for what you do. Thank you for your service

[01:06:06] [SPEAKER_01]: If I'm ever killed, I hope you're the medical examiner

[01:06:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so you know, I do I joke a lot, but the truth is it's a very rewarding job in terms of not just getting

[01:06:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Justice because that's so important, but getting answers for the families of the victims

[01:06:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, um, we serve the family. So it was a was a good rewarding job in that sense

[01:06:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's such a fascinating book again story after story and this is really

[01:06:32] [SPEAKER_01]: People people are concerned with life and they're concerned with death and this book is half of that

[01:06:38] [SPEAKER_01]: so

[01:06:40] [SPEAKER_01]: So great book really riveting. I mean they should make a movie out of your life, which they probably will

[01:06:46] [SPEAKER_01]: You're probably gonna get the sell the rights to this book to some movie studio. I have

[01:06:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, there you go

[01:06:54] [SPEAKER_01]: I

[01:06:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Hope it was very lucrative and I hope they make the movie. Uh, you know, hollywood is it's a mess, but yeah

[01:07:00] [SPEAKER_01]: I think who should play you?

[01:07:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, oh, you know, I wish eddy

[01:07:04] [SPEAKER_00]: It should be me at the age of about 40s

[01:07:07] [SPEAKER_00]: And I I wish the hell eddy falco could play it, but I guess that's that wouldn't work out

[01:07:12] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know eddy falco. I don't know. She seems um not tough enough

[01:07:18] [SPEAKER_00]: I kind of see like a 40 year old jody foster. Yeah. Yeah, that could work. I could definitely work. Yeah

[01:07:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, thank you so much again barba butcher author of what the dead know learning about life as a new york city death investigator

[01:07:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Just a riveting you can tell through some of the stories barba's already told us just a riveting book

[01:07:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you again

[01:07:40] [SPEAKER_01]: And I hope you don't see any more ghosts because that sounded pretty scary that sounded scarier than some of your

[01:07:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Investigations it was thank you so much james and

[01:07:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Stay safe be careful. I will I'll try okay

[01:07:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you