World's Worst Job? Meet the Couple Who Clean Up After Messy Deaths

By Liz Langley, Orlando Weekly. Posted January 3, 2009.

It looks like a lot of gear; I'll find out how it feels when I'm allowed to shadow Michael on a job.

. . .

The neighborhood has a youthful energy and prosperity about it. Watching neighbors load coolers into their cars and go about their errands, the phrase "fatal stabbing" seems misplaced, like a curse word that slips out in polite company. This is not where you imagine such a thing happening.

The first thing Michael does is establish a "safety zone"; it's a blue plastic tarp on the floor between the scene and the doorway so that nothing is tracked from the scene out of the house. In the bedroom there's a large, dark stain on the carpet, a light blood spatter on the walls and smears of blood on the door frame. The walls are covered with notations the police have left, sticky-note style, noting every fleck and fluctuation in the pattern. Everything in the room that's left (there's not much) gets trashed, and Michael begins to take the police notes off the wall. Since there is no fingerprint dust, he says, they probably know who did it.

I ask if the stain on the carpet is blood.

"It could be blood," Michael says. "Or it could be coffee or wine or chocolate milk. It could be a thousand things." This is a you-never-know business, and a reason why it's difficult to give sample prices. Some jobs are as low as $300 -- the airplane incident, for instance. Others are as high as $5,600. Michael likens it to a car repair; you can't call a mechanic and say you got in an accident and need an estimate -- they have to see the car.

After removing the police tape, Michael washes the walls down with a strong disinfectant that also loosens up dried blood. The clean walls will be sprayed with a sealant. A restoration company will likely repaint. Then there's that carpet. Michael has a liquid blood detector that will foam up -- like hydrogen peroxide on a cut -- if blood is present. He sprays the stain, and it fizzes and foams; it looks like the sound Pop Rocks make.

Now that we know it's blood, Michael has to see how much of it has seeped in and where. He cuts out a square of the stained carpet; it's a bit larger than an album cover. The blood has soaked through the padding beneath down to the cement under that. He goes through two sessions of scrubbing, using the blood detector as a guide, to make sure the area is clean. It remains for him to pack up all the equipment, including the stuff that's going to the official disposal facility.

That the process of cleaning up after murder is accomplished in the time you'd pass at a long lunch is astonishing, and after this solemn and surreal experience, I'm proud of myself. I didn't freak out or pass out. I was brave.

Then the phone rings. Would I like to go on another call?

. . .

The last one took two hours. This one will take three days. Day one will be the bug-bombing, which I won't be there for. Day three is going to be taking up big chunks of the linoleum-tile floor. I won't be there for that either.

I'll be there for day two. And day two will be with me for awhile.

On a sunny weekday morning at 10 a.m., I arrive at an apartment where three people were killed. The crew – Carmen, Michael and a subcontractor from a debris removal company -- has already started to haul the furniture out of the house. All of it. Couches, tables and mildewed air mattresses are taken out through the front door and pushed through windows and end up in the giant dumpster that Chris will haul away. I freak when red liquid starts pouring out of a couch; when a plastic bottle clatters onto the ground, I realize it was red Powerade. Before going in, I can see that there is blood – clumped, thick, smeared and tracked -- inside the door, and that the apartment feels squalid; the air is so oppressive it has weight.

"Careful, there's cucarachas over your head," Michael says when I finally step inside, and sure enough, there's a cadre of German roaches and other small bugs that survived the bombing. I pop outside. I'll do this a dozen times before the day is over.

The power has been off for sometime and when Michael opens the refrigerator, the stench about knocks everyone over. I pop outside. The deodorizer that he usually dilutes in a gallon of water gets splashed around the room, not quite like champagne after a race, but you get the idea, and the clearing of the air makes everything feel less swimmy. What I thought was dirt all over the walls turns out to be fingerprint dust (it looks like black eye shadow). Another shooting apparently took place in the hallway where there's more blood, and in another room, "R.I.P." is spray-painted on the wall in huge red letters; Michael says it's likely that someone broke in to do it.

See more stories tagged with: health, murder, cleaning

Liz Langley is a freelance writer in Orlando, FL.

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