Camp Gagnon - NYC Investigator Uncovers Satanic Ritual Murder & More Stories | Barbara Butcher

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

Barbara Butcher, former death investigator for the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME), joins us today to talk about the most darkest crime scenes that she has personally worked on. WELCOME TO CAMP! 🏕️Shoutout to our sponsors: Ultra and Hims & Hers Gett 15% OFF For New Customers With Code “CAMP” Who You Visit http://takeultra.comFor Simple, Online Access to Personalized and Affordable Care for Hair Loss, Visit: http://hims.com/campWant the even WILDER theories?SIGN UP TO THE PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/CampGagnon👕🧢 Shop CAMP Merch: https://camp-rd.com/collections/ufo🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets: https://markgagnonlive.com🎩👽 Daily Dose Of History: https://www.dailytodayinhistory.comTimestamps:0:00 Intro1:47 Santeria Murders + Zombie Rituals8:47 Using a Psychic to Find Bodies14:07 Psychic Medium Police15:30 Hiding Emotions24:35 Split Brain Experiment28:02 Difference In Men & Women Deaths32:38 Women Killers + Clark Fredericks Story35:57 Investigating Jonathan Levin’s Murder42:00 Forgetting Head at Crime Scene#podcast #foryou #interview #mystery #horror #knowledge #history #science #campgagnon #film #crime

Now, there are people who practice voodoo out of Haiti. What scared me is that part of the rituals was to either cure someone of something or curse someone with something. And what's really interesting about that is it works. Santaria, voodoo, satanic ritual murder. These types of deaths are very rare, but they do happen. And when they do, somebody has to walk into that room. Someone has to step over the candles and the blood and the animal remains, the altars, the strange symbols carved into the walls and figure out what actually happened.

And that person is our guest today, Barbara Butcher, the former NYC death investigator who has walked into thousands of violent scenes, murders, ritual deaths, grifters, psychopaths, the darkest stuff that the city produces at 3 a.m. And she's the person that they call when someone's gone and no one knows why. And today we're going into all the weirdest corners. we're talking about the voodoo ritual deaths, what it's actually like walking into a Santaria altar scene and the time that she actually worked with a psychic to locate a victim. We also talk about the symbolic crime scenes like curses and fear-induced deaths and

the placebo effect. Is it possible that someone can really die because they believe that they're cursed? This episode is fascinating, but it is dark and uncomfortable, so I encourage you to watch it with some discretion. And if you're interested in crime, in ritual death, and ultimately what death can really teach us about how to live. This is the episode for you. Barbara is fantastic and an amazing storyteller, and I think you guys are really going to enjoy it. So without further ado, sit back, relax, and welcome to camp.

I wanted to ask you specifically, you've dealt with so many cases where the scenes are fairly cut and dry. You can tell more or less what happened here. There's some type of gang affiliation. There's some random act of violence. I want to know about the cases that seem more ritualized. that seem like they have weird details that are strange, unexplainable, perhaps connected to some type of ritualized murder

or some type of religious crime where you showed up to a scene and you looked around and you said, this is bizarre and unlike anything I've ever seen. What comes to mind? Centuria. Centria is a valid form of religious practice of worship. using the old gods from African origins or Hispanic, Cuban, Dominican origins, where, you know, when slaves from Africa were brought to the islands and intermarried with the local indigenous people,

a lot of the old gods came with them. And so this form of worship came up. Somehow in there, they became a sacrificial element. Now, I have never seen a person sacrificed in a centauri ritual. But I did come to a house, an apartment. Someone was dead, a woman, and there was an altar. I can't remember the god to whom it was, but it was a huge altar, filled with all kinds of offerings, you know, an apple, a piece of cooked flesh, a little burned pot with something in there that looked like a bone.

And all around the house, there are different icons and figures of the gods. And I thought, does this have anything to do with her death? And sadly, I don't remember what she died from. I wish I could remember. A lot of things I blocked because they scared me, you know, so I don't have the memory anymore. I cannot remember if she was murdered or it was a violent death. Right.

But I cannot place it because it scared me. Really? Yeah. And, you know, we had an anthropology consultant at the time. This is, again, back in the 90s, and who came and said, that little bone there, the burned bone, that is an animal bone. So I was like, thank God, because it looked like a human figure. Mm-hmm. And the little pieces of meat were like organs from an animal, like a charred heart.

And what scared me is that I believe that part of the rituals was to either cure someone of something or curse someone with something. Now, there are people who practice voodoo out of Haiti, a particular brand of this so-called voodoo religion, in which there are curses put on people and spells and all kinds of. of things. And what's really interesting about that is it works. In Haitian culture, there have been many cases of people who, they were told that the voodoo priest has put a curse upon you and you're going to die. You're going to wither away and die in a month. And you know, they stop eating and they get hysterical and freaked out and they actually do die of fear of terror. Wow. So it's a placebo. Yeah, yeah. It's like a mental response to a physical threat that is terrifying because you think of the voodoo priests, the voodoo gods, are going to destroy you. And I'm wondering if there are any studies on that. I'd like to read a book about it. Because it happens.

That is fascinating. Have you heard of the book The Serpent and the Rainbow? I've heard that name. I don't know. Would you mind Googling that, Christos? This was written by a anthropologist from Harvard. that went down, I believe it was, to Haiti. And he was specifically looking at these witch doctors that were performing these types of spells, curses, to the people of the island. And Chris just feel free to correct me if I'm off on this, because this has been a long time since I've read the excerpts.

But there was a specific case where there was a witch doctor, or I guess a voodoo priest, that was giving people drugs to effectively make it look like they died. And then they would handle the burial process. And then they would exhumed them. And they'd come back to life. And they weren't dead and they came back to life. And they either used this as proof of their divine powers that I can save this person,

bring them back to life. And there's been a couple cases where the priests, these voodoo priests, would then enslave these people, where effectively they lived in their homes as like indentured servants and they would continue to give them drugs. That's the origin of zombies. Right. The zombie tale comes out of that where people are restored to life. A Harvard ethnomotonous, Wade Davis that investigates Haitian food and pharmacology basis of zombies. So he travels to Haiti to undercover how these priests are using potion-induced near-death states to create these zombies as a part of this secret society's social control.

Yeah. And it sounds insane. It is. But is documented by what seems like a credible ethnobotinist that has done his diligence in this type of research. I want to know what they use. Was it like a sysinolene? But that stops you from breathing. So it couldn't be that.

That's a complete paralytic. Right. I'm not sure. Wow. I wonder what they used. Strange, right? Yeah. And this turned into a film in 88.

But it's such a bizarre thing. Like the fact that I guess this is the question, right? Because sometimes I wonder about like these types of like curses and things like that. Because there's a part of me that's rude in a reality where I go, I've never seen anything like this. I can't fully submit to this idea that. you're going to cast a spell on me, but if you believe that it's true and perhaps there's some type of external medical force

or a drug that's involved, could you create the effect as if it is true? And then in the minds of the people that are watching it, it becomes reality. Sure. And then in that case, is it fair to say, oh, it's complete bullshit where you're like, well, technically,

this guy did raise someone from the dead. Yeah. But not literally, but in the minds of the people around him and the mythos that he's, built up, contributes to his influence on the island. It's power. Yeah, absolutely. He can, he has control over life and death.

He can bring you back. I mean, the most power. Wow. Yeah. I got to read that book. Yeah, I wonder, I wonder if you'd find it interesting. You know, the other thing I saw that was really just strange, if you remember the case of Irene Silverman, a well-to-do woman who lived on the Upper East Side, had a beautiful townhouse,

and there were two grifters who came into her life. Chante Kimes and her son Kenneth Kimes. They were grifters, con artists, very, very close, very close. And Irene Silverman welcomed them into her home. They persuaded her that they were, you know, good intellectual people, and they were looking for work in New York, and they had university appointments, you know, whatever they talked you're into. You should let them stay. Their goal was to kill her and take over the house, like have her sign it over to them in some way. They were really grifters. They had had a long history of these kind of crimes. Anyway, she disappears. Can't find her anywhere. And police are looking for her everywhere. You know, like, what could this possibly be? Did they kill her? They never, ever found a body. However, it is known that the foundation of a building next door was being re-poured and a townhouse was built on top of it before anyone thought to say, wait, she might be under there. So that was a weird thing. But anyway, I was called by a psychic who said, listen, I'm a psychic.

I think I know where Irene Silverman is. I think I know how to find her. And it's in a field in New Jersey by the marshes. She said, this Saturday, would you like to go with me and see if we can do it? Yeah, sure. I mean, I'll do anything as interesting and new and crazy. I like to learn stuff. So we go out, she's got a divining rod, you know, the kind that dips when you find water or dead bodies. Delcing rods, that's it. And so we start walking through the field. Now, what I know is that it is possible to find bodies in a field by looking at several things.

One is the depression in the ground, approximately the size of a person. Because when you dig a hole, put something in it, and then bury it back up, there's a lot of air in that dirt. So you'll see that it's sunk in a bit. That's a good way to find someone, right? And I learned that the FBI Academy took one week course on, you know, killers and how they hide bodies and stuff. So much fun. Wow. And so I was looking for that.

I was also looking for areas where the grass, this was summer, was particularly green and rich because the body, as it decays, makes great nutrients for plants and trees. But here's the thing. As we're walking through this field, we come upon a railroad track, and it looks to be abandoned because there's grass growing up between the rails. And on the tracks, I see the head of a dog, still got a little bit of flesh adhering to it, a pot, like the ashes in it, something that was burned, a pestle that you used to grind up ashes. Oh, a cross, like a Christian cross, and was just laying there. There were all these things, and for some reason I thought, this is protecting the area.

It's a dog. It had long canines, you know, and it looked like a vicious skull of a vicious dog. And all these other things, what did they mean? Was there some kind of sacrifice here? Was there some way to put a spell on the area? that no one went in? It was scary. Of course, I went in anyway.

I wish I had the photographs of that. Of course, I turned them all in with my report, but I wish I had those photos today because it was an odd little altar set up in the way the dog's head was facing that if you walked up this path, you would see the dog. Anyway, we did not find Irene Silverman, obviously. She's never been found.

And my boss declared her dead. after years of, you know, because no one, and they couldn't put murder charges on Sante and Kenneth Kimes because they didn't have a body. Eventually, though, they came up with enough evidence to try them, and they were grifters who were charged on other things, too. So they wound up going to prison. I think Shante died and Kenneth is probably still alive. Wow.

And the biggest punishment to them, they put them in separate prisons. They needed to be together. It was a, what do they call that, a folly adieu? When two people come together and share a madness, and it grows between them. Wow. So, all kinds of strange things in this world, isn't there? What did the psychic or the medium, what was her explanation when you walk away and she goes, ah, it didn't work? She said we're probably just not getting the appropriate, not raise, she used another term.

The appropriate signals are not coming up. the energy, the energy forces were not near the problem. It was a huge field. We couldn't do the whole damage. Yeah, there's a lot of energy. She knew what she was following her stick. It's like Wi-Fi a little bit. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

You get a better signal. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Have you ever heard of this working? Like something like a medium or some type of assisted psychic or anything? Because you hear about these stories where like, oh, this police department consults with this person and they were able to use them, da-da-da. Have you heard of it being used in other cases? I have, not in New York City, but there have been cases where psychics, for some reason, did know something.

So maybe they knew it from a neighbor. Maybe they heard something that led them somewhere. But they had a certain fact or something that helped and turned out to be true. Like maybe they knew something that no one else knew but the police. So maybe they knew a cop who happened to spill it to them. Right. But whatever it is, for some reason it seemed. Like the psychic did the deal, figure something out.

I don't know how that works. But for the most part, and of course, then they're going to call her back two years when they get into the similar case, right? Of course. So, you know, I'm psychic to the police. I'm a psychic consultant for the North Dakota town, police, and village, perceptual, homicidal, whatever. Right. So, I don't know. That's interesting.

I've never heard anything where a psychic really, really knew something and led to the arrest of the perpetrator, arrest and conviction. So I've never heard of that. Before we move on, any other cases that you saw that you thought the circumstances around this are just bizarre, they felt like they had some type of weird mystique to them? No. You know what? A lot of it is blocked. Really? Yeah, it is.

I get a glimpse in my head of like a strange scene and then it goes away Because it scared you specifically? Yeah What scared you about it? A force that I didn't understand or know That was there really any Any notion of this voodoo or this Santoria being powerful in some way?

A curse? I mean, look, I'm an intelligent person I don't believe in curses except when you tell people they're going to die and they die. Sure. Because they're psychologically attuned that way. So I don't know, but there are certain things. I remember walking into strange cases.

And then it goes like blank. Hmm. So, and I know, for instance, it was a case that really, really bothered me. I won't go into it. It was really upsetting. And so with my psychiatrist, I was doing this exposure therapy for PTSD to, you know, get this case out of my head, make it stop haunting me. And so she asked me to describe it, describe it over and over and over again, till it loses some of its power. And I described it in great detail.

A couple months later, I'm looking through my paperwork, some old files and stuff. and I find that very case. I'm reading it, and I'll go, wait a second. No, that's not how it was. They were not in the living room and the kitchen. No, no, they were over behind the curtains. Wait a minute, that's not possible. I see it in my head. I see it exactly as it was. I know, because I was there. And now I look at my report and I wrote something completely different. That frightened the hell out of me. and I told my psychiatrist, I said, look, that whole case I just described to you, it didn't happen that way. And she said, it's all right, calm. I said, am I going crazy? Am I losing my mind? She said, no, calm down.

Here's the point. When you went into that case, you were so horrified. It was involved torture and stuff. That you weren't there. You shut down so completely that your emotions, your mind, your heart, they weren't really there. So you did your work in some kind of detached fugue state, and you went away, and you had an image of your mind, and it stuck there. But that's not really how it was. Your version, my version, was not as bad as the real version. Oh, really?

Yeah. It was worse than I thought. It was worse. I remembered it as being horrifying, but it was actually, when I read the report, it was more high-farring than I remembered. So I can see why my mind changed it. Wow. But that scared the hell out of me. I thought, am I crazy?

Can I believe what I see, what I hear? No, your psyche attempted to protect yourself, it seems like, right? Yeah, my psyche turned it off, protected myself, and then created a scenario. But to read my own report and say, well, wait a minute. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. In fact, I even called one of the detectives who had been on the case with me. I said, look, you're not going to believe this, but do you remember such and such and such?

He said, no, it was actually they were beaten over here. Like, oh, really? I said, I'm remembering it differently. He says, don't worry about it. You closed off. You put it, you filed it, you closed it. It came out back through your brain in small parts. And your brain had some of the pieces.

created a new story to tie the pieces together. Yeah, it did. That is so strange. To make it less horrible for me. Wow. So that, but that's scared to hell on. In fact, I went to see a neurologist. I told him what happened.

I said, look, am I crazy? Said, no. Just your psyche protected you. Wow. Hey, we're going to take a break really quick because I need to talk to the fellows. All right, if you're a woman, you can skip forward. I don't really care.

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Now let's get back to the show. There's cases that are, I've read not the exact same, but similar to this, when people have a, I forget what it's called, I think it's called a Colosodomy, I think, when there's basically a B. Corpus callosum. Yeah, so there's a bifurcation of the corpus callosum where you're right in your left brain hemispherically or basically separated. Yeah. And as a result, they have these weird phenomena where they don't always track exactly what they saw,

but they create new stories in their mind based off of what their visual input is. So they don't create an extremely coherent story. But I don't exactly remember the details of this specific study. But they basically had these specific patients and they showed them either like a shovel or like a chicken, foot or something like random symbols. And they, I forget exactly what it was, but depending on what they showed them, they couldn't exactly remember what the image was that they saw. Creases, would you actually mind trying to Google?

Google Shovel chicken foot corpus callosum study. I think this is going to connect. Yeah. We got to see it, though. I mean, I have heard about corpus callosum injury or post-surgical division where they can now taste sounds. Oh, interesting. Yeah, or the colors have a certain sound to them.

And, you know, LSD does that. Interesting. Well, someone I know saw notes, musical notes coming out of a radio. That's what it is. So when asked, okay, so scroll to the very top here. So, yeah, to the top of the section. So this is the classic split-brain experiment where neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga demonstrated the specialized function.

So basically, the patient was shown two different images simultaneously. A chicken foot and then a snowy winter scene. And the patient was asked to pick a corresponding picture from a set of cards using both hands. And then scroll down, Christos. Now, the left hand, controlled by the right brain,

pointed to a shovel. The right hand controlled by the left brain pointed to a chicken. Yeah. And then when asked why they chose, the left hemisphere basically had to make sense of the right hand's action. So then they made up a story in their brain that said, you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed. Yeah, yeah. And so because of the separation of the brain where they're not talking to each other, they're seeing these two images and then when they're asked to pick them, they're picking them and then their brains creating a story to make sense of what they saw. Yeah. And I wonder in your case, you're basically disassociating. Yeah. And you're pulling in these random images and then your brain needs to make up a story to make sense of these images that are in your brain. Yeah. And that doesn't fully make sense because you're missing some of the pieces of it. You're saying on brain damage.

You're saying I'm crazy. Don't you dare. I'm damaged, but I'm not that kind of damage. Maybe it might be better if you were a little bit more damaged. Maybe. Then you forget more. Yeah, I'd forget a hell of a lot more. But, you know, I'm working on it.

That's fascinating, isn't it? Yeah, it's strange how our brains will tell us stories in order to protect ourselves. Yeah. And, you know, that kind of detachment just occurred to me. It's very much like a lobotomy. When you destroy the frontal lobe, you know, emotions disappear. Of course. You're calm.

Right. And that's like really cutting off your emotions permanently. So I was able to lobotomize myself psychically. Right. You know, cut off my emotions. What a strange thing. Bizarre. I'm curious in your experience, do men and women kill differently?

Yeah. How? Yeah. Men are more aggressive. It's guns. Even when you look at statistics, men kill themselves with guns, blow their heads off, sometimes stab themselves in the heart. Women, being less angry, take sleeping pills. Now, the difference is, and I talk about this in the book, the angry versus the sads.

Angry people, they're so depressed, they're in so much pain, and no one in the world is helping them. No one notices, no one asks them, hey, are you okay? So they jump off a building and they make a huge mess and a huge sound and scare people. Big blast. Hey, screw you all. This is what you did to me. Yeah. You're going to feel me now.

Yeah. I exist. You know how this was? Yeah, now you know. Now you see me. Mm-hmm. You didn't see me before. And then there's the sad, you know, a broken heart, take pills, sit in the tub and just fall asleep and die.

Or carbon monoxide, just sit in your car and go peacefully. They're sad. But I think women being less aggressive, less destructive than men, don't want to blow their brains out. You know, maybe they'll, maybe not. I thought, you know, not many people much anymore. I haven't seen that in a long time. Hmm. Yeah, that's odd.

I wonder why. Well, there's so many easier ways to do it now, including that stupid book that I hate. What's it called? It's an instruction manual for... There's 13 reasons why. No, it's like last. I don't know. Christos, can you pick up as a book?

Manual. Was it like a fictional book? No, it was real. It was a bestseller. It was how to commit without, you know, too much pain, without too much damage. A complete manual. No. Final exit.

That's what it was. Final exit. Final exit. Yeah. White cover, I think. Strange. And it was a popular book. Oh, very. Yeah, third edition. Oh. A New York Times bestseller. Look at that. Look at that, huh? Let me see the earlier editions. Wow.

Building regulations. Now, that's something weird. Okay. I might need the final exit after reading that one. Yeah. All right. No, I remember seeing that book several scenes and it pissed me off to no end because what it should have started with is an explanation of the nature of depression. chemical nature, the incidental nature, like a horrible tragedy, the illness, you know, I'm dying in pain. It should have explained those things and then talked about treatments. Now, the following antidepressants can especially help with the short-term tragedy, okay? These ones are for long-term, and here's what you can call. Or you can talk to your priest.

Talk but talk to someone, you know, and here's the number. It's the hotline. Right. And they didn't do that. They said, if you want to die, here are ways to do it that are less painful, more peaceful. You know, they tell them how to take pills, that's that they wouldn't vomit. I think it was vodka and sleeping pills for a while was a big one. Wow.

Yeah. So I don't like that book. Now, as far as external crimes and anger, when men are killing other people, or what? when women are killing other people. Is the modality that they use is it different? You know, I think men shoot more, of course. They strangle more. I don't know that I've ever heard of a case

where a woman strangled another woman. It's hard to strangle a man for most women. But, yeah, strangulation is so personal and so aggressive and almost sexual. Yeah, look at me, I'm going to kill you. Women, all right, let's see. Who are the big women kill us? Eileen Warnos.

You know, she shot them. Have you dealt with any scenes of women killers? Oh, yeah. There was a woman who killed her daughter's rapist. Wow. Yeah, it was a very long time ago. Yeah, I applauded her. What happened to her?

She was in jail. I don't know what eventually happened to her as far as charges, but I'm sure there were some. The rapist got off, and that's what really threw her into the next. Oh, wow. Crazy. I spoke with the guy, Clark Fredrickson.

That was his name, I believe. He was from New Jersey, and he was as a boy by a guy in his town. He was the sheriff of the town that was boys, and he was one of them. And then years later, when he's like 40, yeah, here it is, Clark Fredericks. I'm sorry, Clark. Clark, he runs into him just at, like, a store, and he's there. And he sees the guy that was a kid that sent his whole life off track. He got into spirals of addiction and self-hatred and this long, like, tumultuous life,

much of which was caused by this man. Yeah. And he's there. Now a much older man with a young boy, the same age that Clark was when this thing happened to him. And Clark went over to his house and he killed him. Good. I mean, come on. Good.

Good for you, Clark. And then Clark went to prison and he got the minimum. I think it was like five years. And I believe he told me, and this might be, I might be getting some of the timeline and details of this wrong. So I apologize if I am. But he said that when he gave his testimony when he was getting sentenced, because I think he pled guilty and he said, yeah, I did this, yada, yada.

And I don't even think it went to a trial because I think he just pled. But when he gave his testimony of the sentencing, they stood up and applauded him. all the people in the courtroom, and I think the judge himself said, it pains me to have to do this to you because the system failed you for so many years that you had to do something rash and put your own life on the line

to get justice for what happened to you and for so many other people. So it pains me to send you to prison for even a day. But according to the state law, I have to sentence you to a minimum of five years. Yeah. And I think he ended up doing like three, three and a half or something like that.

And now he works for reform for these types of crimes. I applaud him. Yeah. How many young boys did he? Did he destroy? How many lives? Well, he told me that there were other boys in his town that killed themselves, got addicted to drugs and ended up dying, and it came out later that they were victims of the same guy.

So had the system came in sooner and dealt with this monster, how many lives would have been saved? Rough justice. Right? You look, I don't believe in killing anyone. I don't even kill bugs. I let them out. I put them out the window. Of course.

And vigilanteism should be discouraged. Right. But sometimes you really, you get it. You understand it. If the system is failing these people that are the most vulnerable in our society, what other choice is there? Yeah. Right?

Like, what is recourse for this? Because, okay, he could sue them, the statute of limitations. This happened 30 years ago. Right. Okay. Well, you can try to get enough evidence. There's probably none. It's all been destroyed.

Yep. Yeah, I don't know what you do in that case. Damn, I'm getting depressed. Okay. The last thing I want to ask you before we leave. What high-profile deaths have you dealt with, and what can you share with me? Like famous, famous people? Yeah.

Hmm. I don't think I've had any. Well, yeah, Jonathan Levin. His daddy was Gerald Levin, the president of Time Warner. Hugely powerful man. And his son, Jonathan, was known. for being the most amazing teacher that I've ever heard of. He came from a wildly wealthy family.

He could have been anything he wanted. Instead, he became a school teacher and went and taught in the poorest schools in the Bronx. Wow, good for him. And he encouraged these kids. He worked with them. He gave them his personal time. Any student had his phone.

They could call him any time. They were in trouble. They could come over and talk to him. He was a wonderful, wonderful man, a teacher who was celebrated everywhere. And then two of his students, it was Cori Arthur and Montoon Hart. They called Jonathan, said, oh, look, I need to talk to you right away. They went over to his house. And then they tortured him to get his pin code, his bank code, for the...

you know, that little cash. What's the hell of the name? ATM. ATM, thank you. His ATM code. They tortured him with a steak knife. They stabbed him. They cut him slowly.

Oh, it's horrific. And then, you know, eventually they just killed him. And I did the case, and it was heartbreaking. This guy lived, and he lived like a typical bachelor. Just a messy little house and messy little apartment. He had a nice girlfriend. He had a lot of friends. He was loved in the community in the Bronx.

And these kids just like, you know, they gave him the, he gave him, of course. He gave him his ATM code. They went and took, I think, $800 out of his, whatever the limit was, out of his account. I think that's nearly what he had, you know. Probably had 900. They took 800. And then they went back and killed him, you know. So that was so famous.

that was all over the country, because not just who his father was, this incredibly powerful man, but because of who he was, that he was a really good man. And when I think about him, it's with sorrow, but also it's almost celebrating the fact that despite this horrible death and all the things he went through, he helped so many kids. I mean his funeral was crowded with students from all over the Bronx, thousands. Did you go? Yeah, no, I didn't go to the funeral. Have you gone to funerals of cases that you've investigated?

No. No. I would feel intrusive on the family's grief, and don't forget, I'm a poor reminder of what happened. This one lady, she used to visit her son. She came up from Virginia, and her son was a gay guy, and they'd go out for nice dinner, go to the theater and, you know, just gossip and drink good wine, have a wonderful weekend together, very close. And then he got tested for HIV, and he was terrified of what the result might be. He called his mom. She came up. You know, they went to docks for seafood. They had a really good weekend,

and they were sitting on his bed, laughing and drinking wine. He said, I got to go to the bathroom. And then she waited and waited and, like, 10 minutes passed, and she didn't see him. Went out in the living room, she sees the window wide open. And there's a note on a stereo speaker that says, Don't tell anybody about this. My diagnosis or eight, and it was a nasty note. It was nasty to this woman he was so close with. I come in and I'm talking to her and she's looking at me like her eyes are in such dilated shock.

And I said, did your son have any diseases like, like depression or anxiety. And she said, diseases, what diseases? I don't know. And I said, was there anything terrible that happened? I don't know. I don't know. Then she turns around, she turns to the wall and starts smashing her head against the wall as hard as she can. And I grab her by the shoulders. I turn around. I said, what are you doing? She said, you're a nightmare. I'm trying to wake up. You are a nightmare. And I just held her for a while. until she calmed herself, but I told her, I gave her my card. I said, look, if you have any trouble, the funeral homes, you need help, just call me.

And I was glad she didn't. I wouldn't go to the funeral. I wouldn't do anything because I was a nightmare. Yeah. I don't want to be a nightmare. I can get it. I understand their perspective. Yeah.

It's sad. So if I show up at a funeral, I might. might be somebody's nightmare. Yeah. I mean, it requires a lot of self-perspectives. I'm sure there's moments and funerals you probably wanted to attend. I can imagine there's people that you connected through, even posthumously, or their families. Yeah, especially the child deaths, the child murders.

Yeah. I couldn't imagine. But on the other hand, you know, I'd walk through the projects with my bag and my little jacket and guys would be sitting outside on the bench and they'd say, hey, you hear from me? I'm like, nope, another day you don't have to work with me. And they say, yeah. They said, I don't want to wake up one morning and see you hovering over me. No, sorry. I'm like, yeah.

I get it, you know. On that topic, are there any, and this is going to sound morbid. So. It's all morbid. This in particular. Are there any funny things you've ever uncovered? Any scenes you've walked into and you go, well, that is a little ironic. It's a little silly.

It's a little. You know, there are things that sometimes make me laugh just because they're ironic, but it's a dark laughter. It's a laughter of pain. I do remember the one out on Riverside Park there was a torso and a separated head from it. And a medical examiner in training went to the case with the investigator. And as he, you know, was taping it off. The police were moving around, and suddenly the head started rolling down this little hill. And this medical examiner, a nice young woman, she's jumping up and down going, the head, the head, the head. But here's the kicker. They call the morgue wagon after they're done with the investigation, and they pick up the body, and they bring it back. And it's like, where's the head? They said, well, you told us to pick up the body.

We didn't see any hedge. No. Go get the hedge. Creastas, don't laugh. This is serious, dude. I know. What is wrong with you? This is morbid.

You can't be laughing about this stuff. But if I don't laugh, I will die of sadness and despair. Yeah, you need to release valve. Yeah, I do. And it's dark humor. Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, you talk to military guys. They'll tell you the same thing.

Oh, sure. Yeah. Like the darkest jokes. Yeah, cops, firefighters. People on the front line seem the worst of society. I typically have a pretty morbid sense of humor. You know, I remember going through a big black trash bag on the side of the stick because it was a body chopped up in it.

And I'm, you know, opening it up and I'm starting to pull things out. And the cops are all around me looking in. And I said, hey, give me a hand, would you? Oh, never mind. I found one. My God, is that morbid? Is that insensitive? Is that horrible?

It's terrible. And Christos thinks it's funny for some reason. He's sitting over here laughing at this awful thing. But it was too much of a good joke because I was so freaked out at looking at a chopped-up body. It's a true comic. That is the words of a true comic. You don't want to make the joke. Yeah, you don't want to.

It's just too perfect. It's just too perfect. It's like what other opportunity are you going to have to say it? I needed to stop being freaked out for a minute, so I made a joke. Yeah. And now you understand where comedians come from. I know. from the dark deaths

of despair. And that concludes our conversation with Barbara Butcher. Isn't she just fantastic? I truly love listening to her stories and hearing her perspective on death and more importantly, her thoughts on life.

Now I have good news. If you didn't know, I did another episode with Barbara. If you haven't seen it, you can click it right here. Thank you guys so much for being a part of what we're building here at the campsite.

You're welcome anytime, and I'll see you next time. Peace.