Death Investigator Reveals the Most Terrifying Way to Die
A veteran death investigator said in an interview that drowning is, in her view, the most frightening way to die, and described the smell of a decomposing body.
Death investigator Barbara Butcher spoke candidly about her profession in an interview for the "Honesty Box" series produced by "LADbible Stories," including what she considers the most horrifying way for a person to die.
According to Butcher, the scariest scenario is drowning, a cause of death that claims roughly 300,000 lives worldwide every year. She explained that the thought of gasping for air, choking and inhaling water strikes her personally as an especially terrifying way to go.
The investigator also noted that the strangest deaths tend to result from recklessness and accidents, citing the example of riding on top of a subway car as it passes through a tunnel filled with steel beams and cables.
Career and experience
Over the course of her career, Butcher has investigated more than 5,500 crime scenes, 680 of which were homicides. That experience has also given her deep familiarity with how different death scenes smell.
She said a body found relatively soon after death typically has an organic, earthy smell, while a decomposing body's odor is far worse. This occurs because bacteria normally kept in check by the immune system multiply freely after death, consuming tissue and blood cells and releasing gases in the process. Butcher described the resulting smell as highly distinctive and unforgettable.
