What the Dead Know

by Barbara Butcher

  • Simon & Schuster
  • 2023
  • ISBN: 978-1982179380
  • 288 pages
  • WorldCat
What the Dead Know book cover
About the Book

In What the Dead Know, Barbara Butcher writes with the kind of New York attitude and bravado you might expect from decades in the field, investigating more than 5,500 death scenes, 680 of which were homicides. In the opening chapter, she describes how just from sheer luck of having her arm in a cast, she avoided a boobytrapped suicide. Later in her career, she describes working the nation’s largest mass murder, the attack on 9/11, where she and her colleagues initially relied on family members’ descriptions to help distinguish among the 21,900 body parts of the victims. ebook icon Audio book icon

Now featured in the five-part docuseries on Netflix, Homicide: New York
Barbara Butcher
About the Author

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.

Photograph by Anthony Robert Grasso

Official website of Barbara Butcher

Interview

Transcript

Host a Book Discussion

  • Join us for a book discussion of What the Dead Know

    Do you want to share this book with your reading group? The Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) has made it easy to promote and discuss.

    • Discussion Guide PDF
    • Social Media JPG
    • Poster PDF* [8.5 x 11]
    • Reading Club Bookmark PDF


    * How to edit PDF files

Terms of use: Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) staff offer these health discussion resources for educational use. The materials included do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the author, publisher, or the sponsoring agencies of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).