Barbara Butcher, a forensic scientist who has investigated more than 5,500 deaths for New York City's Office of Chief Medical Examiner, has revealed one case so harrowing she had to flee the room.
Butcher, one of America's leading experts in the field, has examined thousands of fatalities, including 680 homicides, for the department. In a recent interview, she described an accidental death that shook her to her core.
A fatal accident caught on camera
Speaking to LADBible for their Stories YouTube series, Butcher recounted a fatality involving a man who was filming himself through a mirror and lost his life when disaster struck. The man, thought to be around 30 years old, had been attempting to capture himself engaging in an intimate personal moment while on fire, which Butcher believed may have been for his own viewing pleasure at a later date.
She recalled: "The one that bothered me though was setting oneself on fire. So this guy, I think, he's about 30 years old. He set up a mirror and a camera so that he could watch himself on fire whilst masturbating and film it. For what? I guess his later pleasure, looking at it after dinner one night."
How the tragedy unfolded
Having viewed the video footage herself, Butcher was able to describe precisely how the tragic accident unfolded, as well as pinpoint the moment she believed everything went catastrophically wrong.
She said: "So he poured alcohol on himself and lit it. Now, alcohol burns off very quickly, It's like a blue flame running across your arms."
"And he probably would have survived if he hadn't added more alcohol when there was still flame around the back of his neck. It was in his hair and he caught on fire completely."
Butcher revealed that in his state of panic, the man knocked the bottle over onto the floor, worsening the situation. She continued: "And then he spilled the alcohol, so the rug, he was standing on a little shag rug, that caught on fire and he was burning. And this is all captured on film."
A death she could not watch
The footage proved too much for Butcher. She said: "I saw the beginning of that film and when the accident started, when he dropped that alcohol I ran out of the room, like 'This is too awful'."
Despite everything she has witnessed throughout her career, Butcher insisted it remained among the most harrowing deaths she had encountered. She said: "It's one of the awfulest deaths I've ever seen. He was beating at himself like, trying to...didn't work."
