I get asked this all the time, how do I do what I do? How do I walk into a stranger’s home, step around a lifeless body, wade through blood, bugs, and heartbreak… and then go home and sleep at night? In this episode of Pushing Up Lilies, I’m pulling back the curtain on what it’s really like to be a Death Investigator. From the chaos of crime scenes to the quiet moments of reflection afterward, I’ll walk you through how I mentally, emotionally, and spiritually manage this work. It’s not just about what I see, it’s about what I carry. Join me as I share the tools, mindset, and stories that help me navigate this uniquely intense profession, and why, after all these years, I still feel called to it. * Listener discretion is advised.
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00:06
Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies. I'm your host, Julie Mattson. Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
00:24
Do I have some stories for you? Are you ready? Hey y'all, we're here for another episode of Pushing Up Lilies. I'm so excited about the murder mystery party that is this Saturday again at Hurry House Restaurant in Crossroads, Texas.
00:44
It's Saturday from 6 to 9 and we are gonna mingle for that first hour and the actors are gonna visit with the group and determine who might be a good actor to take part in the play. One of the guests will be the murder victim.
00:58
So that's gonna be a lot of fun. That will be mingling hours just a chance for them to kind of see the personalities and meet everybody. We're gonna have drinks, we're gonna have appetizers and then we'll serve the meal from 7 to 9.
01:13
It's gonna be chicken and steak fajitas and it's gonna be fun. It's gonna be super exciting. Gonna be in middle bar area and we're gonna have some raffle items so y'all will have the opportunity to win some things which is also a lot of fun.
01:32
So, if you haven't bought your tickets don't forget go on evanbrite.com and then you can also go on my website www.pushinguplilies.com and you can purchase your tickets. It's been a pretty quiet week for me.
01:47
Knock on wood because I'm working again tomorrow but the county's been pretty good to us so far on Monday and Tuesday. I had a possible overdose slash alcohol toxicity case yesterday. And I just kind of want to visit a minute about family.
02:06
Sometimes, and I know I've talked about this before, the family wants to see the victim. A lot of people still think that that's how the medical examiner's office identifies people, is that the family goes up to the ME's office and we just show you this body that's covered in blood and missing parts, and you identify them.
02:28
Back in the day on Quincy, I don't know how many of y'all are my age and remember that, but they used to pull out a drawer, look kind of like a filing cabinet. The body was in there and they unzipped the bag, and the family member would like dramatically be like, that's her, you know?
02:43
We just don't do that anymore. It's too traumatizing for the family. We do scientifically identify people because, I mean, identical twins, like, we just need to know for sure who they are. We... fingerprint them at the medical examiner's office and we match those up to arrest records or DL fingerprints and if that doesn't work, we will resort to dental records.
03:10
We call the family of the person that we assume the deceased is and we ask them who their dentist was, we reach out to the dentist, we get records and our forensic odontologist will match those up. So, we don't pull a drawer out anymore and expect family to see their loved one.
03:30
Now many times they are the ones who found them on the scene and there's nothing we can do about that so that's a good way to positively identify somebody but this guy's family wanted to see him and I did let them in although he was on his stomach so they couldn't really see his face but I think the stepdad just kind of wanted to scope it out.
03:53
I get it he handled it very well and that's another thing we have to do is kind of fill out the family to try to see how we think they're going to react and if we think that you know it could cause issues then we don't let them.
04:09
It's a case by case basis also an investigator by investigator basis. Some of our investigators will never and would never let a family member see their loved one. Like I said it's not the same all the time, so it just depends on what the injuries are and who the family is and how they're responding to the situation.
04:32
Something I wanted to talk about today is a question that I'm asked all the time. How do I do what I do? How do I walk into a stranger's home, walk around a body, step through dead bugs, blood, all the things that are in a scene and still sleep at night?
04:53
How do you unzip a body bag or zip a body bag and look at into a face that no longer looks back. And then go home and pour a glass of wine and carry on. To not, I'm gonna tell you, it's always the same sound when dispatch is calling us.
05:10
That ring, it's loud and abrupt, and it's always when you least expect it, however you always expect it. So, it's kind of strange.
05:25
When you're on call, you definitely can't make plans because as soon as, I mean, it never fails at the office. As soon as we leave for lunch at 11, the phone rings. Now, it might be a hospice, it might not be a case we need to go on, but that dadgum thing rings as soon as you leave the office.
05:44
Sometimes it scares me. Sometimes I'm just calm and relaxed and at the office, have my little heater on under my desk, chilling, and then my phone rings and it like shocks me. And I don't know why, because.
05:56
I'm at work and that's what happens. Our phone rings and then we respond. But back in the day when I worked in Harris County and I worked nights when I was new to this job, it might've been 2 a.m. Of course, because we were so busy, I was in the office.
06:12
Our office is small enough now that our night shift gets to actually work from home. But I can remember when I first started working as a death investigator, I was new and I worked 6p to 6a and I hated the shift, but it's what I had to do to get my foot in the door and work what is my dream job.
06:33
No one ever dies at a convenient time. Sometimes it's during dinner. Sometimes it's right in the middle of laughing at something completely ordinary. And then suddenly you're reminded that somewhere someone has just died.
06:47
Now, as a forensic death investigator, you do learn that death does not keep business hours. And when we get a call, that dispatcher's voice is usually calm. They are trained to sound detached. Sometimes we'll chit chat.
07:02
Sometimes there's no time for that because they're really busy. And oftentimes I hear calls going on in the background when they call me and I'm just like, oh, it makes me nervous. Reminds me of the days when I worked in the emergency room.
07:14
The ironic thing is many of our dispatchers have been working for years. And we've talked on the phone. I mean, can you imagine how many times in the last 15 years? And some of them I've never met. But when we get a call, we grab our gear, we get our gloves, our camera, our evidence bag, our shoe covers, and we head out.
07:35
And we drive through the streets. At night, it was lit by porch lights squinting, trying to find the home address to make sure we were at the right place. Of course, the police cars are always there, that helps.
07:48
But sometimes the department complex, it's hard to find the building. There’s all kinds of struggles when it goes to figuring out where you're supposed to be. But you think about the family waiting outside holding their breath and not quite ready to accept what's happened.
08:06
When you turn onto the block where your scenes at, that switch in your brain slips and the compassion stays there but the emotion takes a step backwards. You're no longer the friend, the nurse, the mom, you're the investigator.
08:22
Now every death scene has a story and sometimes it's loud and chaotic with flashing lights and especially following a car accident. There's the fire department and the police department. Sometimes they're sobbing family.
08:36
Sometimes it's just quiet, the faint hump of a ceiling fan over a body that's already starting to cool. But the first thing you notice is not the body, it's the silence, the stillness of a home where a heartbeat has stopped.
08:55
and you scan the room because you're trying to see everything but not touch anything. You notice like, is there alcohol? A remote control on the floor, a photo of the grandkids, a photo of the family, an empty glass.
09:14
Everything means something or it means nothing. But we can't decide until we actually see the body. And when we do, we pause. Not out of fear, but more out of respect. Kind of a ritual, I think, that most investigators won't admit they have.
09:34
But in this job, the dead are our teachers. When we go to the scene, we learn from the deceased person. We look at their position. We look at lividity. We check temperature and we look at the surroundings.
09:48
So the mind of a death investigator is a really strange place to live. It's a balance between logic and empathy, science and instinct. You're constantly toggling between two truths, the clinical and the human.
10:06
But while others see tragedy, we see data. Again, the position of the body, lividity, insect activity, the temperature, prescription bottles on the nightstand, empty alcohol bottles in the trash, drugs present, things that could be drug paraphernalia.
10:26
If we see a spoon on the floor, is there a lighter? Is there any indication that they were using drugs? Are there any syringes? Do we see any residue? Our brain kind of becomes a camera lens and it zooms in and out and it just catalogs all the details.
10:42
In the end, we learn to compartmentalize. And that's not because we're cold, but because we have to be clear-minded. Emotion can contaminate evidence. But later when we get high, home, we may see images, we may remember mother's scream or a note left behind.
11:02
And I typically will pour glass online and just kind of take a breath. That's how we survive. Many death investigators have issues with alcoholism. I know several who have started smoking because of the job.
11:17
I luckily have not picked up either one of those habits, but many have. Many have a really hard time surviving it. People assume that our job hardens us, and I guess it does a little. But I have actually experienced the death of a loved one many times.
11:36
And I share my experiences with families because there are similarities. And I feel like that kind of shows them that I'm human and shows them that even though I'm not upset that their loved one died because I didn't know them.
11:52
that I have been where they're at and I survived. And I survived one day at a time. But it does make you notice life a little bit differently. You see beauty in small details that a lot of people overlook.
12:06
What seems like the end of the world are a big deal to some people isn't to us. Because we see the worst that can happen, and we see what families are going through. And so, when someone pulls out in front of me on the road, it's not a big deal.
12:23
It's just not a big deal. I'm still here to talk about it. We do also carry the heaviness of what others can't handle. We recognize the smell of death and the exact color of lividity and the color of bruising and we actually know what a human bone feels like.
12:40
I've held a decapitated head in my hand, like how many people can say they've done that? And we definitely know what sorrow sounds like in every language, in every culture. The morgue is also sacred ground too.
12:54
And I can remember when I worked in Harris County, the first time I stepped in the morgue, I felt evil. And at that time, there happened to be a lot of murder victims. And the man who killed them, it's just kind of a creepy feeling.
13:11
It just felt evil. The first time I walked into an autopsy suite, I really kind of expected fear. But instead, I felt clarity. But the air was very sterile, and it smelled terrible. You wanna touch nothing and everything at the same time.
13:30
Every step really has a rhythm. And the doctors have a rhythm, how they do things every day. There was structure, and within the structure, there was peace. But autopsy is not gruesome, it's very precise.
13:45
And it's science at its most honest. You learn to read the human body like a map, you know. notice old scars, they become roads, tattoos tell stories, and then bruises are footprints left by trauma. To see if people don't lie, their bodies speak, but you have to know how to listen.
14:06
Sometimes the job follows you home uninvited. You'll be cooking dinner, and you catch a wisp of something that reminds you of decomposition. You walk past a playground, and you remember maybe a child death that you went on.
14:21
Sometimes you close your eyes at night and see faces. You don't always wanna talk about it, we just deal with it. I remember when I worked in Harris County, I had a death that occurred in the apartment complex where I lived.
14:32
And it was a retired sheriff's deputy, and he had a canine dog. And he passed away, several weeks went by, and the dog actually started to eat the body because there was no food left in the house. And it was in my apartment complex.
14:49
Not my building, but in my complex. And so, a couple of nights later, I had a dream. It was a very strange dream. It was the only time I've ever had a dream that I remember about this job. But it was a couple, and their daughter had passed away during the night, and they had a cruise planned and they knocked on my door because they knew I worked for the medical examiner's office.
15:12
They wanted to know if they could put her body on the couch until the investigators got there because they needed to go to port and catch their ship. It seems so real, y'all. I got up out of bed, and I walked into my living room and checked my couch to make sure there wasn't a body there.
15:29
So, here's the truth. Those memories fade, but they never vanish. And like fingerprints, they kind of become a part of us. We all have a little bit of a dark sense of humor, as do first responders and RNs and a lot of people in healthcare and law enforcement.
15:47
But I actually podcast and that's because storytelling is my way of making sense of it. It's my way of giving the dead a voice again and helping the living understand the weight that we carry. People often assume that we're detached and that we can't afford to feel that empathy is actually our greatest tool.
16:09
And a lot of people think, oh, you work with dead bodies, you don't have to deal with people. We are dealing with people on their worst day, maybe the worst day of their life. And you can't read a scene without emotion, and you can't understand violence without compassion.
16:24
And you can't advocate for the dead if you don't still care about the living. So, the trick is balance. You learn to care just enough to see the person, not just the case, but not so much that their pain becomes your own.
16:40
Because you burn out really fast if it does. And when you burn out, you don't just lose your job, you lose a part of your humanity. becomes a part of you. Every death investigator remembers the smell.
16:54
It's not really something you can describe. It's kind of a sweet, metallic, earthy smell. You smell it once and it imprints itself on you. And years later, a whiff of something similar, again, old meat, damp carpet, it can send you back to a scene instantly.
17:12
Smell is memory. And in this job, memory can be a weapon and a wound. A lot of people learn tricks of the trade. They put peppermint oil under their nose, and they put Vicks in their mask. I don't do any of those things that many investigators do and even more law enforcement do.
17:31
But no matter how many tricks you learn that smell kind of always tends to find its way in. I've gone to a restaurant after leaving a scene before forgetting that I smell like a decomposed body. So, I'm going to go to a restaurant after forgetting that I smell like a decomposed Watching people make faces because they can't figure out where the smell's coming from.
17:50
I stayed in line hoping nobody figures out that it's me. But how can I eat? My husband always asked me, how do you go to the scene, pick up body parts, and come home and eat, as if nothing happened. But I put it behind me, but it still remains in the back of my head.
18:07
I have to move forward, I can't really ponder on what happened. It was the same when I worked in the ER, bad things happened to good people. And bad people. But you're responsible for taking care of everyone, whether they're good or bad.
18:21
You go home from the hospital, and you feel somewhat responsible. How is it that we saved a prisoner who had a history of sexual assault, but we couldn't save the small child? How did that prisoner have the right to live when that child wasn't allowed to live?
18:36
But you learn over time that you really have very little control. Although you did your job to the best of your ability. Knowledge definitely challenges you. And once you see what people can do to one another, and what time can do to a body, those are things that you really can't unsee.
18:55
I lock my doors twice. And sometimes I might walk to the door and check it. And walk back again 10 minutes later and check it. And I still ask my husband if he locked the door. Did he check the doors? You appreciate small things like laughter, warmth, safety, because you've seen what happens when those things go away.
19:14
But you also lose a little bit of innocence. You stop believing that bad things only happen to other people. You realize that life is very fragile and sometimes cruel. Tomorrow isn't promised. And death kind of teaches you how to live.
19:32
And I think that's what it's done for me. Every investigator always kind of has that one case that follows them. For me, it's not really the gruesome ones, it's more the quiet ones. The elderly. woman found in her chair after weeks alone.
19:49
The teenager who committed suicide said, tell my mom I'm sorry. Or the recently divorced man who's living in a hotel that still has his wedding ring in his pocket. Those are the ones that keep you up, because they remind you of how invisible pain can be and how fragile connection is.
20:12
If there's one thing that this job has taught me, it's that truth and emotion can actually exist at the same time. You can measure lividity patterns and still cry in your car. And you can photograph wounds and still whisper a prayer.
20:28
Science and soul, they're not opposites, they're partners. And the best investigators know how to listen to both of them. Every scene tells two stories, what happened and what it meant. So why do we do it?
20:41
Why do we keep walking into darkness? when it would be so much easier to look away. It would be so much easier for me to work as a nurse in the ER, as a nurse in labor and delivery. I can tell you that it probably pays more to do that.
20:56
But every decedent deserves a voice, and every family deserves an answer. And because for people like me, death isn't necessarily the end. It's the beginning of a story that needs to be told. Getting into the head of an investigator isn't about learning how to tolerate death.
21:16
It's about learning how to honor it. So, we carry the stories that other people can't. And we remind the living that every heartbeat is temporary and sacred. If you've made it this far, I just want to say thank you for being brave enough to step into my world every once in a while.
21:34
Maybe now you might understand why we talk a little bit differently and why we sometimes are silent mid conversation. Or why our humor kind of seems a little bit dark. It's not that we're insensitive, we're just trying to survive.
21:50
We live our lives surrounded by reminders of what can go wrong and that's what makes us love what goes right even more. So, to every pathologist, investigator, nurse, first responder, doctor, I see you and I know the weight that you carry.
22:09
And I know that even when no one else understands, you do your job because somebody has to do it. I so appreciate the listeners who come back week after week to learn about life through the lens of death and keeping the conversation alive.
22:27
Because when we talk about death, we actually honor life. And so that'll give you a little idea of kind of what goes on in our heads. You know, my husband often wonders how I do the job and you love it or you hate it.
22:41
We've had new investigators that lasted a week. And we have police officers who don't want to go into a death scene. They prefer to wait outside. I'm okay with that. I'm comfortable in a room alone with a dead body.
22:55
And I don't want to put them in a position that they're uncomfortable. But I've seen a lot of police officers puke at scenes too. So that happens. I've seen funeral home staff do the same. I've never done that, but I did learn a long time ago that you need to eat before you go.
23:13
But anyway, this is kind of what goes on in our heads. We may have a sick sense of humor, and most nurses and law enforcement, first responders and doctors, we just do. And it's not meant to be disrespectful.
23:28
It's kind of our mechanism to survive. I thank you so much for listening. And I really appreciate everyone coming back. And I know a lot of the stories are hard to hear. And I definitely understand if there's some that you can't listen to because I know one would start talking about animals and eating the deceased people.
23:49
Some people are just like, no, I can't hear that. And I get it, but I don't want to leave that out because I want you to see what I see and to kind of feel what I feel and maybe understand what we actually go through and why we are the way we are.
24:03
Anyway, I so appreciate every one of you. I hope that you have an amazing rest of your week. I hope to see a lot of you at the Pushing Up Lilies first annual murder mystery dinner this weekend. Have an amazing week.
24:16
I'll talk to y'all soon. Bye y'all. Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies. If you like this podcast and would like to share with others, please do me a quick favor and leave a review on Apple Podcast.
24:31
This helps to make the podcast more visible to the public. Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at PushingUpLilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.