Death investigator Barbara Butcher reveals the ‘worst’ way to die

Although no one likes to think about how they’re going to leave this world, debates over what the ‘worst way to die’ is have popped up at some point or another for most people - and now, a death investigator has weighed in on the gruesome question.

Barbara Butcher, American forensic scientist and former death investigator for the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner, spoke to LADbible Stories as part of the Honesty Box series, where she delved into what her job is really like.

Surprisingly, Butcher’s ‘worst’ death is not the most gory or terrifying scenario you can imagine, but instead one that happens to 300,000 annually worldwide - drowning.

She explained: “I think drowning for me personally. Yeah, the idea of air hunger, of choking, and struggling, and inhaling water and vomiting. That sounds like a really, really awful way to die.”

Butcher also spoke out on the most unusual way to die, which she says actually happened.

The death investigator explained: “When an elevator door opens, there's a slight, slight chance that that elevator will suddenly drop, and if you happen to step into the elevator at the critical moment and it drops, you're going to be compressed horribly between the top of the elevator and the floor.”

She added: “It's happened and it is an awful, awful thing.”

Butcher outlined that it’s ‘generally death by misadventure’ that leads to the most unusual deaths, things like ‘subway surfing, riding on the top of a subway car as it speeds through a tunnel full of steel projections and wires and things that are guaranteed to knock your head off’.

She spent 23 years in her role at the NYC Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) and was consulted on international mass fatalities.

'There is nothing worse'

Throughout her career, the expert has investigated more than 5,500 crime scenes, 680 of which were homicides, so she’s all too familiar with death - including how it smells.

Butcher has decades of experience as a renowned expert in medicolegal death investigation (LADbible Stories)

“It's unmistakable,” Butcher explained. “Now, an ordinary dead body found fairly quickly just smells warm and organic, an earthy kind of smell. But a decomposed body, my God, there is nothing worse.”

She added the smell that comes from a decomposing person is ‘hellacious’.

Adding: “Basically, what happens is the bacteria that live in our body, we keep them in check with our immune systems.

“Once you die, there's no immune system, and now those bacteria can run wild. And as they begin eating things, blood cells, flesh, tissue, they give off a gas.

“And that gas is like nothing you could ever imagine. It's like a strawberry milkshake made with garlic and dog faeces.

"I can walk past any building in New York and tell you if somebody died, 'cause I'll smell it on the street.”

You can watch the full interview on LADBible’s YouTube channel here.