In her 20-plus years in the field as a death investigator, Barbara Butcher has seen more than 5,500 crime scenes. That takes a real toll.

“This is soul-crushing work,” the medicolegal expert acknowledged in an exclusive interview with Oxygen.“You’re seeing really strange things.”

Countering that by seeking out “beauty” in life was key to surviving, she explained while detailing her new true crime series The Death Investigator with Barbara Butcher, airing Saturdays at 9/8c p.m. on Oxygen. 

In the gripping new series, Butcher guides viewers through harrowing stories behind some of the most shocking and compelling murders of our times. 

It’s a turf Butcher—who dissected roadkill as a girl and understands that her surname raises eyebrows considering her career— knows well. Butcher reflected when asked how she was able to decompress and unwind after a long day as a death investigator.

Barbara Butcher’s question about her career

“When I first started in my training, I was watching the autopsy [of an] 8-year-old girl who had been raped and smothered,” said Butcher. “Absolute horror.”

So much so Butcher had to speak up at the time. “I said to the pathologist, a woman named Jackie Lee, ‘Dr. Lee, how can you stand this day after day, seeing this evil, this horror, this suffering?’”

The response she got has stayed with Butcher for decades. “She said, ‘Barbara, the only way you’re going to survive the death, despair and destruction that you’re going to see is by filling your life with beauty.’”

Lee’s words of wisdom came like a prescription. “‘Every day when you leave this place, do something creative and beautiful,’” Butcher recounted. “‘Hug a tree, paint something, listen to music, eat good food, cook love and just be part of the creative world, the natural world of beauty.’”

Butcher acknowledged that at the time she was skeptical. “Well, I thought, ‘Oh, that’s some hippie trippy stuff,’” she said. “‘I’m not going to listen to that.’”

But she eventually heeded the advice. “When I finally did, [I] got myself a little country house, a dog, a couple of cats, some trees I could hug,” she shared. “It helped so much.”

And it still does. “That was the only thing that helped me,” she said, adding that she relies on another tool. “And now, of course, a great deal of therapy for PTSD.”

The Death Investigator with Barbara Butcher premieres new episodes every Saturday at 9/8c on Oxygen.