The Death Investigator with Barbara Butcher is giving Oxygen viewers a different perspective on true crime. In each episode, Barbara Butcher is opening up the world of death investigation to a TV audience. It’s a part of the process that many viewers aren’t aware of. But beyond that, each episode is surprisingly emotional as Barbara reunites with the detectives she collaborated with on every case. It’s a moving reminder of how much death also affects the living.

Barbara spoke to TVBrittanyF.com about why she decided to pursue a television show. Plus, she explained what led her to the field of death investigation and what continues to interest her. And learn what it’s like for her to work with Wolf Entertainment, which also produces the Oxygen hit Cold Justice, to make The Death Investigator a success.

Brittany Frederick: Death investigation is a part of the criminal justice world that audiences are not regularly exposed to. What got you involved in the field?

Barbara Butcher: It was a career counseling service. To go back a bit, when I was a child—say about 10 years old—I had a chemistry set, a dissecting kit, and a microscope, and I loved investigating deaths. The kids in the neighborhood would bring me roadkill. I’d open it up carefully and see that the rib cage was crushed and the lung was hemorrhaging, then I’d say, see, on the outside we have squiggly black lines. That means that this raccoon was run over by a car, and that’s the cause of death. So even as a child, it was there for me.

I worked in surgery for years. I worked as a hospital director, and I was bored, so I went to a career counseling service. They gave me all the tests and said you should either be a poultry veterinarian or a death investigator. I said, poultry? Why poultry? Well, in surgery, you’re working with patients, you get very attached, and if they don’t do well it’s heartbreaking for you… But chickens, they have beady little eyes. No one cares about them. I said no, I’ll take the dead people. Figured I couldn’t get that attached, but I forgot they have families. And I do get attached. I get involved.

It’s a big step to do a TV show and put yourself and your cases in front of a national audience. What made that appeal to you?

I left the agency and I started doing private work. It was heartbreaking working for families and reinvestigating cases, and I thought I need to do something creative. So I wrote a book about my adventures and about what it was like investigating homicides, suicides, accidents all over New York City. It’s called What the Dead Know. And then after writing that book, I got some attention. People started talking to me about doing a show, and then Dick Wolf talked to me about doing a show. And you can’t get better than that, right?

We talked about what I could possibly do, and came up with this show which investigates and reinvestigates some of the most compelling cases that I’ve ever done. It’s it’s a show about the mystery, the crime, but it’s also about the people, the victim, the families and most of all, the police detectives and the death investigator. What is this like to be in that world? And I think it gives the viewer a really good idea of what it’s like to be me.

Revisiting these investigations for the book and now for The Death Investigator, has that distance given you a different perspective on any of your experiences?

Yes and no. Yes in the sense that it’s a relief, in some ways, to tell the things that I’ve been feeling and seeing to people. A secret makes you sick, and I’ve got a lot of secrets, and in sharing them, I feel better. But on the other hand, I still mourn some of those people. There are some cases I cannot get out of my head.

In fact, tomorrow I’m going to court in New York to testify in a homicide I did 18 years ago. The perpetrator was the person I thought it was, and now I get some justice, but I can’t forget that case—mother and daughter killed. We do some very interesting cases in this show, and I think the viewer will learn a lot, both intellectually about forensics and emotionally.

You mentioned working with Dick Wolf. He’s obviously very known in the scripted crime space, but Wolf Entertainment has done a lot of great true crime content. What’s it like to work with them and Oxygen as creative partners?

Working with Oxygen is absolutely terrific. They really get the true crime space. They know the audience, and I think they’ve done a hell of a job putting this show together, based on my stories and what I’ve done. They really highlight so much of what means something to me. And having Dick Wolf, you can’t get any better than that. His creative mind, his touch for the genre, his touch for crime, his touch for the people involved in it is brilliant, and I’m really proud to be a part of that.

With all of their experience and as many true crime shows as there are, how did you decide what you wanted The Death Investigator with Barbara Butcher to be?

We considered many different things—cold cases, missing persons, things like that—but eventually I realized what I want to do is share the things I know from a very deeply personal point of view. I wanted to speak to the viewer, and I think that this was the perfect platform for it, going back to my cases with the detectives who did them with me, and talking with those detectives.

Some of these guys, they’re tough as can be, but they choke up because they remember that feeling. They remember the drive to get justice for a victim. And I remember that too, and I think that translates well in this show. You see what we really are like and what our jobs are really like, so I couldn’t ask for a better platform.

Is there anything that you want the audience to take away from your series? Something you want to leave them with, either technically or emotionally?

There are two things. One is, I want them to have fun. Learning the forensics, learning how investigations are really done on the scene, in the moment.

And the second thing is that I feel very deeply that every single person is a universe unto themselves. Every person has a mother, a father, sisters, brothers, lovers, children. They form the center of a number of people. So every murder, every homicide, every suicide affects an entire universe of people. And I just want people to understand how it’s not just a statistic. It’s not just a headline. It’s a person who lived and breathed and did something in this world.

The Death Investigator with Barbara Butcher airs Saturdays at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on Oxygen. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Oxygen.

Article content is (c)2020-2025 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.