What the Dead Know: Learning About Life as a New York City Death Investigator - Hardcover

Butcher, Barbara

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1982179384 ISBN 13: 9781982179380

Verlag: Simon & Schuster, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

A “remarkably candid and sensitive” (The Wall Street Journal) true crime memoir from Barbara Butcher, a trailblazing New York City death investigator, who reveals the untold stories behind more than 5,500 death scenes, including the nation’s most horrific tragedy: the 9/11 attacks.

When Barbara Butcher was early in her recovery from alcoholism, she found an unexpected lifeline in a job at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in NYC. As only the second woman ever hired for the role—and the first to last more than three months—she became a vital force in the world of forensic science and criminal investigations.

Over the next two decades, Butcher worked thousands of cases: gruesome homicides, suspicious suicides, heartbreaking scenes involving underage victims, and complex mass casualty investigations. In her unforgettable account, she invites readers into the gritty, high-stakes world of crime-scene investigation, from the autopsy room and morgue to tense moments at active crime scenes. Along the way, she uncovered how confronting death every day gave her a new perspective on life—and ultimately saved her from becoming a statistic herself.

In vivid, darkly humorous prose, Butcher recounts how she narrowly avoided a boobytrapped suicide scene, and how, during 9/11, she and her colleagues worked tirelessly to identify victims using scraps of clothing, DNA, and the memories of grieving loved ones. Her honesty, resilience, and sharp wit make this a standout in the genre of first responder memoirs and women in law enforcement.

“Breathtakingly honest, compassionate, and raw” (Patricia Cornwell) and “completely unputdownable” (Adriana Trigiani), What the Dead Know is a powerful, insider’s look at the world of death and the lessons it teaches us about how to live. Fans of forensic memoirs, cold case investigations, true crime, Kathy Reichs, Patricia Cornwell, and TV series like CSI or Mindhunter won’t be able to put this down.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Barbara Butcher, MPH, was Chief of Staff and Director of the Forensic Sciences Training Program at the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner. She was responsible for overall agency management, strategy, and inter-agency relations. She lives in New York City.

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Chapter One: The Angry Hanging Man CHAPTER ONE THE ANGRY HANGING MAN
“Hey, Barbara, you got a hanging man in the Three-Four Precinct. You want me to call you a driver?” Charlene’s voice was low, as if all this death business was a dirty secret. “Sure, Charlie, send me your best. Just give me five minutes to slap on some lipstick.” She laughed, as if I were going out husband-hunting instead of looking at dead people.

Putting down the phone, I felt that familiar little thrill I got when there was a decent case to investigate, something other than the natural death of an old man with heart disease found in a locked apartment. I liked to figure things out, to find clues and solve puzzles, to locate the cause behind the effect. Fortunately, that was my job. As a medicolegal investigator (MLI) with New York City’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME), I scrutinized the scenes of fatal accidents, suicides, and homicides to determine cause and manner of death. And I loved every minute of it.

This time my excitement was tempered by the aggravation of having my arm in a cast, the result of a stupid accident with a saw and a stubborn piece of wood. I would have been home recuperating if I hadn’t run out of sick time. That’s why I was in the office dealing with hospital cases rather than investigating out on the street—“on tour,” as we called it. Now I was alone on the night shift, with no choice but to answer the call, despite being one-handed and in pain. I picked up my tour bag full of equipment and—bitching, complaining, and just generally feeling sorry for myself—went out front to meet my driver.

Most OCME drivers were called by their first names: Rick or Nathan or the occasional Maureen. But Everett Wells was a dignified older gentleman we referred to as “Mr. Wells.” It was a mark of respect, even if it was at odds with his nickname, “Shake and Bake.” He earned that one for his habit of alternately stomping on the brakes and accelerator while blasting the heat. He may not have been the greatest driver among the fifteen or so at OCME, but he was my favorite. Mr. Wells was protective of me, insisting on accompanying me into buildings, while other drivers preferred to nap in the car. I was always glad when we worked a shift together.

He grabbed the tour bag from my hand. “You know I can’t let a lady carry a heavy bag,” he said. “Don’t look right.”

“Thank you, Mr. Wells. Does Mrs. Wells know you’re out with me tonight?”

“Mrs. Wells knows everything. You want Kentucky Fried after we do this?” It was either that or McDonald’s, as we could never sit down for a decent meal without my radio going off for another case.

We got to the address on the call sheet—a run-down tenement in Washington Heights, sandwiched between a bodega/numbers drop and a family-owned funeral parlor. There was no elevator, so we tromped up the stairs through the layers of smells that permeate many old New York buildings. Boiled cabbage on the first floor, Pine Sol over God knows what on the second. Then we reached the third floor.

Once you know the smell of death, you can pick it out in a flower shop. Strangely sweet with a bitter undertone, like a strawberry milkshake made with garlic. After a few weeks on the job, I could walk any block in New York and point out a building where someone was decomposing.

“This is it,” I told Mr. Wells.

“Good, he said, “because my knees are on the fritz.”

A young police officer let me into the pitch-black apartment. The streetlights were barely visible through the dingy windows, but I had a feeling the place would likely be dark even in full daylight.

“No electricity,” said the cop. “Probably didn’t pay the bill. The squad detectives already left. I’m just sitting on the body.”

“Well, that wasn’t very nice of them. I run all the way up here to hang with the boys and they couldn’t wait five minutes. Do you think they were scared?”

“Well, it is spooky as hell there in the dark with him swinging from a rope,” PO Kennedy said with disarming sincerity. He was taking me seriously, so I ran with it.

“Well, maybe you oughta get them back here. If they were afraid, I’d be a fool to go in without backup, don’t you think?” I held his eyes for a minute before smiling.

“Oh right, yeah, ha,” he said, when he realized I was teasing. “You’re not scared of anything, are ya? Is that why they call you Dr. Butcher?”

“Um, no. Butcher is my real name.”

Now it was his turn to laugh. “I know, just busting your chops. My flashlight’s almost dead. You got one?”

Kennedy told me that it looked like a straight-out suicide, that the tenant across the hall had called the police when he checked on the man for two days but got no answer. Concerned neighbors always did welfare checks in the middle of the night, or at least it seemed that way to us from the number of calls we received at 3:00 a.m. That’s the thing about death. You can smell it through tiny cracks in the walls, and it wakes you from a sound sleep.

I looked around for signs of a break-in, robbery, or fight, but the thick dust overlaying everything was undisturbed. The apartment was secured, the doors and windows locked. That in itself didn’t rule out a homicide. Even killers have keys, and most apartment doors just slam-lock without having to use one. A hanging could also be an accident, as in autoerotic asphyxiation. “Bad-boy games,” as I liked to call them.

We went around the cluttered apartment with its sad, characteristic smell that screamed of “I’ve-given-uppedness,” a sour odor of mildewed papers and despair. I took in the oak strip floors, worn past the varnish down to the pale color of sawdust. The easy chair that was anything but, springs shot through the seat. A pile of unread newspapers and an old TV Guide. I knew the place had last been painted in the ’60s because of the wall color, the same avocado green briefly popular on refrigerators back then.

My flashlight beam found a heavy, late-middle-aged white man hanging from a pipe over the bedroom doorway. His bare feet were on the floor, leaving him standing but slumped, his back hunched and knees bent. A small stool lay overturned nearby. The man’s face was swollen and red. His tongue, purple and thick, protruded between his lips, forced out by the ligature that was pulled up tight beneath his chin and hidden beneath the fat neck rolls.

I tried to turn on a lamp, but it, too, was dead. Searching with the flashlight, scanning it over the body, I could see no signs of a struggle. No defense wounds or trauma. A fight would have left scratch marks, broken or bloody fingernails, scrapes on his face. Pulling up his eyelids, I found petechial hemorrhages, the result of blood pressure building up in his head and bursting through the thin membranes of his eyeballs and undersides of the lids. When a hanging person is semi-suspended, the arteries continue pumping blood into the brain, but the softer veins are compressed, so the blood can’t get out. If he didn’t have those hemorrhages or a reddened face or a swollen, protruding tongue, I would have been suspicious. There was always the chance that he could have been killed and then strung up to make it look like...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Simon & Schuster
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1982179384
• ISBN 13: 9781982179380
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: webstar; casetta@mondadori.it; ; Via Mondadori 1,; Segrate Milano; 20090; Italien