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How Crime-Scene Clean-up Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:13
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and uh that makes the
0:17
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know freshly shaven. Mm hmm. I got
0:22
Speaker 1: rid of the beard. Yeah, I cleaned up this crime
0:24
Speaker 1: scene of the face, your hair sticking on a really
0:28
Speaker 1: weird way? Is it out from my hat? Thank you?
0:32
Speaker 1: Now it's even crazier. Please don't like, lick your thumb
0:35
Speaker 1: and come over like mommies to do the I should
0:38
Speaker 1: say for those of you who might be experiencing some
0:40
Speaker 1: sort of alarm or terror right now. Chuck kept the goatee.
0:43
Speaker 1: He just shaved the beard. Part of the parts that
0:46
Speaker 1: made it a beard, I guess the burnside mutton chops yeah,
0:50
Speaker 1: and the neck fuzz Yeah. Looking good, Thank you, Chuck.
0:54
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen a movie called Curdled No, it's
1:00
Speaker 1: a little sleeper produced by one Quentin Tarantino. It's about
1:04
Speaker 1: this very quiet, kind of demure woman who um gets
1:09
Speaker 1: a job as a crime scene clean up person. It's
1:11
Speaker 1: the girl from pulp fiction the cab driver, right. I
1:16
Speaker 1: believe she. I believe she was the taxi driver who
1:18
Speaker 1: drove Bruce Willis around after the boxing match from Pulp Fiction.
1:21
Speaker 1: Oh really heard of that movie. I haven't seen it,
1:23
Speaker 1: but I think that's her. It's worth seeing, is it.
1:25
Speaker 1: But now that i've I've read this crime scene cleanup
1:28
Speaker 1: article on our fair site how stuff works dot com. Um,
1:32
Speaker 1: I realized just how far off the mark some of
1:34
Speaker 1: the details were on that was it pretty far? Yeah,
1:38
Speaker 1: a little bit. Have you seen Sunshine Cleaning? No, but
1:41
Speaker 1: from the previous that one looks pretty far off the
1:43
Speaker 1: mark to like I remember seeing them carrying out like
1:46
Speaker 1: a mattress and just like you know, um, Mrs Brady
1:51
Speaker 1: spring cleaning type outfits, you remember that was she had
1:54
Speaker 1: like the little de rag and she had like the
1:56
Speaker 1: little clam diggers rolled up and like some converse on,
1:59
Speaker 1: just like cute is a button. That was one of
2:01
Speaker 1: the jokes of the scenes. Actually, they were carrying out
2:02
Speaker 1: this Amy Adams and the other girl carrying out this
2:04
Speaker 1: nasty like bloody mattress and one of them dropped her
2:08
Speaker 1: end and the other one fell on the bloody stain,
2:10
Speaker 1: and it was just like it's really good movie though,
2:14
Speaker 1: actually was it? Yeah? That's great? Is it by the
2:16
Speaker 1: people who made a little Miss Sunshine or am I
2:19
Speaker 1: just confusing that because the name it's a little indie
2:21
Speaker 1: though Alan Arkin was in it, so maybe so I
2:23
Speaker 1: wonder it's good. All right, Well, um, both of these
2:27
Speaker 1: movies are utter frauds when it comes to the details,
2:30
Speaker 1: right chuck uh yeah for the most part. Okay, let's
2:33
Speaker 1: talk about crime scene clean up, the real stuff, because
2:35
Speaker 1: there's nothing cute or about it. It's actually horrific work
2:41
Speaker 1: and it takes a very specific kind of person and
2:44
Speaker 1: the those people last in average of about eight months
2:46
Speaker 1: before they get burned out in this business, right yeah, alright,
2:49
Speaker 1: So it's actually called it's it's part of the cleaning industry,
2:53
Speaker 1: and the it's a niche part of the cleaning industry,
2:57
Speaker 1: very niche, not very heavily marketed in traditional channels. Ext
3:00
Speaker 1: it's not how it works. Um, but it's called CTSD
3:03
Speaker 1: con Crime and Trauma Scene decontamination, right and um, basically
3:10
Speaker 1: what it is is it is a cleaning service on steroids.
3:14
Speaker 1: There's no Mrs Brady outfits. You're wearing full bio hazard
3:18
Speaker 1: has matt suits, no French Maids going on here, nothing
3:21
Speaker 1: like that, because you're dealing with some really dangerous stuff.
3:24
Speaker 1: You're dealing with um blood which often feature appropriately enough
3:29
Speaker 1: blood borne pathogens. Um, you're cleaning up meth labs. Yeah,
3:34
Speaker 1: that's um. And a lot of times you're you're um.
3:37
Speaker 1: And we should probably warn people this. This is gonna
3:39
Speaker 1: get a little graphic here. You can do what I'm
3:42
Speaker 1: seeing without being a little graphic, right, But I mean
3:44
Speaker 1: you're cleaning up like there may not be a body
3:46
Speaker 1: there anymore, but you're picking up pieces of bone that
3:49
Speaker 1: the the crime scene investigators missed. Um, you're scraping brain
3:54
Speaker 1: off of walls. It's not normal work, right, Yeah, I
3:59
Speaker 1: mean I think that's where the decontamination part of the
4:02
Speaker 1: CTS deacon comes in. It's not just cleaning. You're you're
4:05
Speaker 1: actually your goal is to return the spot to its
4:09
Speaker 1: original condition. So like, you don't it made a point
4:12
Speaker 1: in this article, like you don't just clean the carpet
4:15
Speaker 1: because if the carpet has a two inch blood stain
4:18
Speaker 1: on the carpet, there's probably a two foot blood stain
4:21
Speaker 1: under the carpet on the floorboard. Right, Yeah, So cleaning
4:24
Speaker 1: the carpet doesn't work. You gotta cut the carpet out,
4:27
Speaker 1: maybe cut the base baseboards outright. So it is Decontaminations
4:32
Speaker 1: who wrote this. Julia Layton, she's she's got the goods.
4:35
Speaker 1: She definitely has the goods, but the way she put
4:37
Speaker 1: it has to be actually clean, not just apparently clean, right, Yeah,
4:41
Speaker 1: which I do apparently cleaning in my house, but I
4:44
Speaker 1: mean we're not cutting up carpet and replacing floorboards or anything.
4:48
Speaker 1: Um So, it takes a very certain type of person
4:52
Speaker 1: um because of the gore that you're going to have
4:56
Speaker 1: to deal with in a large number of your cases.
5:00
Speaker 1: Um So, a lot of the people in um the
5:02
Speaker 1: ct S dacon industry, or former or maybe even current
5:07
Speaker 1: e M t S emergency room nurses, people who are
5:10
Speaker 1: already trained to deal with this kind of thing. Yeah,
5:14
Speaker 1: that that one articles. And you know, I think that
5:15
Speaker 1: that company said they hire a lot of former firemen,
5:18
Speaker 1: and I would think probably military people, people that have
5:21
Speaker 1: dealt with high stress and uh, dead bodies basically. But
5:27
Speaker 1: it's not just that, I mean you have to um also,
5:29
Speaker 1: as a crime scene clean up person, you have to
5:33
Speaker 1: have a sympathetic nature, is one of the points in
5:36
Speaker 1: this article. Right, sympathetic but not empathetic, right, because there's
5:40
Speaker 1: a lot of times when all the the ambulance is gone,
5:45
Speaker 1: the cops are gone, but the family is still there
5:48
Speaker 1: and they may be sitting there sobbing while they're watching
5:51
Speaker 1: you clean the house. Um. And you you have to
5:54
Speaker 1: be able to, yeah, sympathize with them without getting caught
5:57
Speaker 1: up in what they're experiencing, right, and you have to
6:00
Speaker 1: be able to remain detached, but you have to be um. Uh,
6:06
Speaker 1: you have to be understanding to what they're going through too. Yeah.
6:09
Speaker 1: The one guy in that article that they interviewed said
6:11
Speaker 1: that he's cried along with families and stuff like that.
6:15
Speaker 1: And um, I think they also said that some companies
6:19
Speaker 1: offer grief counselors along with their service. Yeah, the upon
6:23
Speaker 1: request apparently, if you want a grief counselor usually that
6:26
Speaker 1: can be factored into the price or else the company
6:30
Speaker 1: will will give it to you for free. Yeah. In
6:32
Speaker 1: Sunshine Cleaning, there was never anyone at the scene, but um,
6:35
Speaker 1: it was realistic in some ways because one of the
6:37
Speaker 1: subplots involved um. One of the girls found a wallet
6:42
Speaker 1: and an identification from the deceased and ended up looking
6:46
Speaker 1: up her daughter and befriending her daughter, but not telling
6:49
Speaker 1: the daughter that she had cleaned up her mother's suicide
6:53
Speaker 1: or homicide scene. So they kind of dealt with that,
6:56
Speaker 1: you know, delicately. That's great. Yeah, that's probably the one
7:00
Speaker 1: thing you should deal with delicately, right, UM, because some
7:04
Speaker 1: of the stuff that you're cleaning up is pretty rough stuff.
7:07
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the three main scenes that you're
7:11
Speaker 1: going to encounter as a UM clean up technician, Joshes
7:17
Speaker 1: Number one, you've got violent death, which is homicide, suicide
7:21
Speaker 1: or bad luck accident type of thing. You've got a decomposition,
7:26
Speaker 1: decomposing body happening, and meth labs is a lot of
7:31
Speaker 1: their business comes from meth labs that have exploded. Because
7:34
Speaker 1: meth labs are known for exploding. I don't even know
7:38
Speaker 1: that they necessarily have to have exploded. I think just
7:41
Speaker 1: the fact that there is a meth lab there that
7:43
Speaker 1: it means that you have to decontaminate the scene absolutely. Apparently,
7:46
Speaker 1: meth labs UM are so toxic that they're UM capable
7:51
Speaker 1: of making people who live in a former meth lab
7:55
Speaker 1: sick like a decade on UM. Some of the toxins
7:58
Speaker 1: that you're running into are things like acetone, methanol, benzene, iodine,
8:07
Speaker 1: hydrochloric acid. This is like the ingredients of meth. Right,
8:11
Speaker 1: this is what people are snorting. Kids. Unless you want
8:14
Speaker 1: to turn into a disgusting, haggard wreck mess of a human,
8:20
Speaker 1: stay away from meth. Meth equals death. Just look at
8:23
Speaker 1: those pictures. You've seen those pictures on the internet that
8:25
Speaker 1: showed the before and after. Yeah, oh god, that that
8:28
Speaker 1: should be like on billboards in Oklahoma. We should probably
8:30
Speaker 1: podcast on meth sometime. We have a good article. It's
8:33
Speaker 1: liked tom she wrote it. Really, yeah, we absolutely should.
8:36
Speaker 1: Um So one of the one of the reasons why
8:39
Speaker 1: meth labs are so dangerous is because you are going
8:43
Speaker 1: to absorb the stuff through your skin. You leave the
8:45
Speaker 1: toxic breads to do not just on walls, but on
8:48
Speaker 1: the air as well. So another UM, I guess prior
8:52
Speaker 1: job experience that is good to bring to the table
8:55
Speaker 1: if you're a crime scene clean up person is construction
8:58
Speaker 1: background or at the very least militian, because a lot
9:01
Speaker 1: of cases, like with UM meth labs, like if it
9:04
Speaker 1: was a house or an apartment or something, you have
9:06
Speaker 1: to knock everything out. Anything that UM can't be put
9:10
Speaker 1: in some sort of decontaminating chemical. UM has to be
9:14
Speaker 1: taken out, thrown away. That includes drywall, floorboards, carpet, all
9:17
Speaker 1: this stuff until it's just down to the bones of
9:20
Speaker 1: the building. Yeah, or they will tear it down or
9:23
Speaker 1: more likely, uh, haul the trailer away. Well, let's talk
9:27
Speaker 1: about this. We said that you're not wearing, um, just
9:29
Speaker 1: normal everyday spring cleaning clothes. You're wearing like a full
9:32
Speaker 1: on biohezard suit. Right. What are some of the other, um,
9:36
Speaker 1: I guess tools of the trade chuckers. Well, there's there's
9:39
Speaker 1: a laundry list, Josh. You you definitely want your protective gear. Um,
9:44
Speaker 1: you have to have biowaste containers like big fifty five
9:48
Speaker 1: gallon drums to hold this stuff. You can't just throw
9:50
Speaker 1: it in a bag into the back of your van. No,
9:53
Speaker 1: there's regulations you gotta follow. Um, you're gonna have your
9:57
Speaker 1: regular cleaning supplies that you would need to clean up
9:59
Speaker 1: any kind of you know, mops and disinfectants and that
10:01
Speaker 1: kind of thing. You've got your more hardcore supplies like
10:05
Speaker 1: industrial strength, like hospital strength, the disinfectants, right, which only
10:11
Speaker 1: allow the merca bug to survive. Really, now, there's like
10:15
Speaker 1: hospital acquired mercer infections. I don't know anything about that. Yeah,
10:19
Speaker 1: or they like get used to the industrial cleaners in there,
10:22
Speaker 1: Like these superbugs are like bring it when you spray
10:24
Speaker 1: it on them, it's worse than ticks. You can have
10:28
Speaker 1: an ozone machine which removes odors. You can have a
10:31
Speaker 1: fogger which they will use to shoot um stuff into
10:35
Speaker 1: like air ducks to get rid of odors. Right, well,
10:38
Speaker 1: it'll um. It takes a chemical and kind of gets
10:41
Speaker 1: it around corners and stuff. You get everywhere with it
10:44
Speaker 1: when you have when you run it through a fogger,
10:45
Speaker 1: apparently you've got some enzyme solvents you want to kill bacteria,
10:50
Speaker 1: and it can also liquefied dried blood, which can be
10:52
Speaker 1: pretty nasty to get out once it's equagulated and dried, right,
10:55
Speaker 1: which is why you want shovels. Yeah, Apparently chuck after
10:59
Speaker 1: what three hours to two hours and blog coagulates into
11:03
Speaker 1: kind of a jelly like goo that you can shovel
11:06
Speaker 1: into bags. So gross, but very very thick bags, biohezard bags.
11:11
Speaker 1: They also include in this article putty knives to scrape
11:14
Speaker 1: brain matter from the wall because apparently brain when it
11:17
Speaker 1: dries becomes like cement, and we'll stick to something like
11:20
Speaker 1: cement which is really gross and sad. You can also
11:24
Speaker 1: use a steam basically a steamer to steam it back
11:29
Speaker 1: into gooiness. Yeah. And then my favorite thing, which is
11:32
Speaker 1: be the first thing in my van, would be the
11:34
Speaker 1: no touch cleaning system. And these are like big long
11:38
Speaker 1: scrubbing brushes, uh, heavy duty sprayers, things like that, like
11:43
Speaker 1: pressure washers and no touch cleaning system seems like the
11:46
Speaker 1: smartest cleaning system, yes it is. Yeah. Then, like you said,
11:49
Speaker 1: you want some carponry tools, probably ladders, stuff like that,
11:52
Speaker 1: and then a camera because you need to take before
11:55
Speaker 1: and after pictures for insurance, and you wouldn't think about that, right,
11:57
Speaker 1: And actually apparently most insurance covers this, right, Yeah, insurance
12:03
Speaker 1: covers it a lot of times. Or if it's a homicide,
12:06
Speaker 1: I think it's paid for by the state, by the
12:09
Speaker 1: federal government really Crime Victory Victim Reparations Agency. Okay, and
12:14
Speaker 1: I know the state agencies that do that too. So well,
12:16
Speaker 1: we're getting aheair of ourselves. I don't mean to jump
12:19
Speaker 1: the gun, but let's talk more about some of the scenes. Specifically,
12:23
Speaker 1: we talked about meth labs, Chuck. One of the other
12:25
Speaker 1: big ones that you'll be called out too, that makes
12:28
Speaker 1: quite a message when a decomposing body is found, right, absolutely,
12:33
Speaker 1: he had to call him decomps in the in the trade. Uh,
12:36
Speaker 1: that's not gonna be like usually, it's not gonna be
12:39
Speaker 1: some big nasty um blood sprays and like brains and things.
12:43
Speaker 1: It's not gonna be all over the place, but it
12:45
Speaker 1: can be pretty nasty because a decomposing body, Josh, is
12:50
Speaker 1: really gross. Your body swells up, um insects move into
12:54
Speaker 1: your body and take up residence. Your organs are going
12:57
Speaker 1: to digest themselves, and your skin liquefies. Yeah. Remember we
13:00
Speaker 1: talked about um rick or mortis or no I think
13:03
Speaker 1: it was on the Body Farms episode. We talked a
13:05
Speaker 1: lot about how decomposition works. So if you want to
13:07
Speaker 1: know more about d COMP, go listen to our Body
13:10
Speaker 1: Farms um eppie right. Yeah, And of course there's the smell.
13:14
Speaker 1: You can't talk about decomposition without the smell. And as
13:17
Speaker 1: Julia Layton puts it, it would bring an average person
13:20
Speaker 1: to his knees. Yeah that's bad. Yes, apparently it's ammonia.
13:25
Speaker 1: It's an ammonia based smell created by d COMP like
13:28
Speaker 1: the litter box. Yeah, you ever cleaned out of litter box.
13:31
Speaker 1: I have toxic plasmos is all over the place, that's right. Um.
13:35
Speaker 1: The other thing too with a d comp is and
13:37
Speaker 1: this you know, you don't think about these things when
13:39
Speaker 1: you hear about it on the news. But someone actually
13:41
Speaker 1: has to go behind after the body has been removed.
13:45
Speaker 1: There's probably liquefied parts of the body there. And there's
13:49
Speaker 1: also maggots that have already feasted and have the blood
13:53
Speaker 1: inside of them, and you gotta get it. You gotta
13:55
Speaker 1: get rid of them too, because they're carrying you know,
13:57
Speaker 1: disease maybe right, And you have to basically scour the
14:01
Speaker 1: place looking for maggots, collect the maggots, and then you
14:04
Speaker 1: dispose of them through burning, right, tastes like burning. That's dcompey,
14:31
Speaker 1: that's dcom. Now let's get down to the one that
14:33
Speaker 1: everybody's fascinated with that all the movies are about. And
14:36
Speaker 1: those are murder scenes, suicide scenes, accidental shootings, basically where
14:41
Speaker 1: somebody was shot it's specifically in the head, I guess
14:44
Speaker 1: is the worst. I mean, you've seen Full Metal Jacket, right,
14:46
Speaker 1: remember pile? Yeah, someone had to clean that up. Somebody did. Yeah,
14:50
Speaker 1: I'll bet it was a joker. Well, somebody in the
14:52
Speaker 1: art department for the movie. But uh, yeah, a violent
14:56
Speaker 1: death is not good because there's gonna be lots of blood,
14:59
Speaker 1: especially sue sides they say are probably the worst for
15:01
Speaker 1: the blood. Yeah, which is why I guess I can't
15:05
Speaker 1: see shooting yourself in the head at home. That's just
15:08
Speaker 1: so so much of a problem. It's just a huge problem.
15:11
Speaker 1: At least go to a hotel or a motel. And
15:13
Speaker 1: that Hunter Thompson did, he shot himself in his basement
15:16
Speaker 1: while he's on the phone with his wife. But I mean,
15:19
Speaker 1: I think it's fine for him that he was on
15:22
Speaker 1: the phone with her because apparently he'd let her know
15:25
Speaker 1: that this was happening. This wasn't like a she had
15:27
Speaker 1: no idea that something like this was going to happen.
15:29
Speaker 1: But at home. He did it at home, which I
15:32
Speaker 1: can understand wanting to be at home. But yeah, I
15:34
Speaker 1: guess shooting yourself in the head if you're going to why,
15:37
Speaker 1: I don't see why you would do it at home. Yeah,
15:39
Speaker 1: I agree. Uh, And like we said earlier, it has
15:42
Speaker 1: to be really, really clean, So any bodily fluid is
15:45
Speaker 1: a potential pathogen. And not only that, but after you leave,
15:50
Speaker 1: if you don't get it all up, it can lead
15:52
Speaker 1: to mold and bacteria and cause people to get sick
15:55
Speaker 1: like months afterward. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you have to, like
16:00
Speaker 1: you said, restore this place to the state it was
16:04
Speaker 1: in before the trigger was pulled, right, Yeah. And it
16:06
Speaker 1: can take up to I mean a few hours to
16:08
Speaker 1: up to like forty eight hours to do this. Yeah.
16:14
Speaker 1: And apparently a good crime scene clean up company is
16:17
Speaker 1: gonna charge you about six hundred bucks an hour. It
16:20
Speaker 1: ain't cheap, um for one room with lots of blood
16:23
Speaker 1: for a homicide or suicide, it's gonna cost between three
16:27
Speaker 1: and sixth grand I guess right. One of the reasons
16:30
Speaker 1: why it's so expensive is because these people don't just
16:33
Speaker 1: take the stuff home and throw it in their trash
16:35
Speaker 1: out front. Right. There are really specific permits and rules
16:39
Speaker 1: that govern disposal of this, which, by the way, we
16:42
Speaker 1: should say the actual industry itself is not regulated. It's
16:46
Speaker 1: not nationally regulated. No, but they generally follow Ocean's bloodborne
16:50
Speaker 1: pathogen standards, which requires training and certification itself. Um, But
16:55
Speaker 1: to be a crime scene cleanup technician that you don't
16:58
Speaker 1: there's no national certification or even state or local certification.
17:02
Speaker 1: It's just company training. Yeah yeah, right, and but um,
17:05
Speaker 1: you know, we'll talk about the training in a minute.
17:07
Speaker 1: But they obviously want to do a good job because
17:08
Speaker 1: the last thing you want is I mean, the turnover
17:11
Speaker 1: is already high enough, you know. Um. But like we said,
17:14
Speaker 1: there is plenty of permits and um standards and procedures
17:17
Speaker 1: to follow in disposing of this waste. Right, yeah, you
17:20
Speaker 1: can't just like you said, you can't throw in the
17:22
Speaker 1: dumpster like they do in Sunshine cleaning. You have to
17:24
Speaker 1: incenterate it. And there are medical waste incinerator companies and uh,
17:29
Speaker 1: the one thing I thought they charged by the pound,
17:31
Speaker 1: which I thought was kind of gross. But how else
17:33
Speaker 1: are you gonna do it? Because it's a pound of nastiness. Yeah,
17:36
Speaker 1: And the other thing I thought was kind of gross
17:38
Speaker 1: was they a lot of them have minimum charges. So
17:41
Speaker 1: if you don't have the minimum you have to keep
17:44
Speaker 1: this uh bio human bio waste in van, well, not
17:49
Speaker 1: in your van, but if it's hot and in like
17:51
Speaker 1: a refrigerated space until you have collect enough of it
17:54
Speaker 1: to go to the incinerator. You know, I'll bet it's funny.
17:56
Speaker 1: I'll bet the same um, the same companies that that
18:00
Speaker 1: operate medical waste incinerators also just so happen to have
18:03
Speaker 1: some cold storage units that you can put your waist
18:06
Speaker 1: in until you have enough to burn to But I'll
18:09
Speaker 1: bet it's I'll bet if you're in the industry for
18:11
Speaker 1: a while you're friends with some guy who operates it
18:14
Speaker 1: and you kick him like fifty bucks to throw your
18:15
Speaker 1: stuff in with somebody else's or whatever. But you better
18:20
Speaker 1: be incinerating it following proper procedure, else you're a horrible jerk, right,
18:24
Speaker 1: And it's not just the gore that has to be
18:27
Speaker 1: disposed of. Um, if you have just deconstructed a house
18:31
Speaker 1: that was a meth lab, you've got to do something
18:34
Speaker 1: with this waste. Again. Can't just take it to the
18:36
Speaker 1: dumpster you came and take it to a normal dump.
18:38
Speaker 1: You have to take it to special dumps that are
18:40
Speaker 1: um out of public reach, right right, Um, And just
18:44
Speaker 1: transporting it you have to have a special permit for that, right,
18:47
Speaker 1: You have to have a has Met permit. Yeah, my friend, uh,
18:50
Speaker 1: my friend Timmy has he works in has Matt Disposal
18:53
Speaker 1: And now yeah you met Timmy. Now he does a
18:56
Speaker 1: lot of um like trained derailments and stuff like that,
18:59
Speaker 1: but he used to live in Oklahoma, and in Oklahoma
19:02
Speaker 1: nothing but nothing but meth labs and he had to
19:05
Speaker 1: do He didn't do crime scene cleanup, but he he
19:08
Speaker 1: worked on teams that investigated sites, I think. And he
19:11
Speaker 1: said that he saw bodies that had dirt the body
19:15
Speaker 1: that they've shoveled dirt in their mouths and would choke
19:18
Speaker 1: on it sometimes because apparently once whatever badness happens and
19:22
Speaker 1: it becomes airborne, it's such a like awful reaction, like
19:27
Speaker 1: that you're breathing this in, they start just putting something
19:30
Speaker 1: in their mouth to try and quell this nasty taste.
19:34
Speaker 1: So they would like stuff dirt in their mouths until
19:36
Speaker 1: they died. It's not nasty, said, that's horrible. It's another
19:39
Speaker 1: reason not to cook or do meth. What a mini um.
19:44
Speaker 1: So let's say you all this is like yeah, yeah, yeah, okay,
19:50
Speaker 1: and you're looking to earn no, I don't know, between
19:53
Speaker 1: thirty five and fifty grand without a high school diploma.
19:56
Speaker 1: We should say, um, what what do you need to
19:59
Speaker 1: do to be come a crime scene clean up technician? Well,
20:03
Speaker 1: we already talked about some of the UH traits they
20:07
Speaker 1: look for in somebody like to be empathetic and maybe
20:09
Speaker 1: to have prior training with the dead bodies and stuff
20:12
Speaker 1: like that. But they will actually give you test um
20:14
Speaker 1: to make sure that you won't like throw up on
20:17
Speaker 1: the scene in front of a family. Yeah, it's like
20:19
Speaker 1: monster's ball. Yeah, that would be awful to go. Can
20:23
Speaker 1: you imagine losing a family member in your home and
20:26
Speaker 1: then someone coming in to clean it and then they
20:28
Speaker 1: start throwing up all over the place. Plus, if you're
20:30
Speaker 1: the owner of the company, that's just extra work, that's
20:33
Speaker 1: more clean up that you can't charge for. Right, So
20:37
Speaker 1: they will actually put you through a test to pass
20:40
Speaker 1: a gross factor that um. It ranges from like looking
20:43
Speaker 1: at pictures of dead bodies to actually cleaning up dead
20:46
Speaker 1: animals carcasses to make sure that you won't vomit. And
20:49
Speaker 1: I wonder if they tell you that it's actual like
20:52
Speaker 1: human stuff, but it's actually like a fox. Oh like
20:56
Speaker 1: Halloween when you when you reach into the shape grapes
21:00
Speaker 1: and their eyeballs. Yeah. Um. You also really really really
21:05
Speaker 1: need to get a hepatitis B vaccine every five years.
21:08
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, as many letters as there
21:10
Speaker 1: are types of hepatitis I would get a vaccine for
21:13
Speaker 1: each of them probably every month. Yeah, what do we
21:16
Speaker 1: get for Yeah, so we can still wouldn't qualify huh. Um. Also, Chuck,
21:22
Speaker 1: even if you are a very strong person, we like
21:26
Speaker 1: we said, the turnovers about eight months on average, and
21:29
Speaker 1: you are um really at risk for a couple of
21:34
Speaker 1: stress disorders UM, critical incident stress syndrome and secondary traumatic
21:39
Speaker 1: stress disorder. And basically the first one is you were
21:42
Speaker 1: on site of like horrific events routinely it's tough to
21:47
Speaker 1: shake off. And then the other one is if you
21:49
Speaker 1: become too attached to the families grief you're you, you
21:54
Speaker 1: basically can leach off of their post traumatic stress disorder
21:57
Speaker 1: and have secondary stress disorder, can very traumatic stress disorder. Yeah.
22:01
Speaker 1: They also obviously look for people going in that don't
22:04
Speaker 1: have any sort of like depressive disorders to things like
22:07
Speaker 1: that that probably wouldn't be a good job to put
22:09
Speaker 1: someone who was manic depressive to crimes and cleanup situation. Chuck,
22:14
Speaker 1: not at all. Uh. Let's talk about the business a
22:40
Speaker 1: little bit. I think you said six hundred dollars an hour,
22:43
Speaker 1: but a room can like a bloody room can cost
22:47
Speaker 1: up to like three thousand dollars to get clean. I
22:49
Speaker 1: thought it was three to six. Yeah, it's one to three.
22:51
Speaker 1: I misspoke. I'm sorry. Well, it could be six depends
22:54
Speaker 1: on how many people were killed in there. I mean,
22:56
Speaker 1: if it was a really nasty scene, it could be six.
22:58
Speaker 1: I'm sure. And you said also that the Crime Victim
23:02
Speaker 1: Reparation Act pays for agency. Agency pays for, um, the
23:09
Speaker 1: cleaning bill if it's a homicide. UM, if it's I
23:13
Speaker 1: don't know if it's a suicide, because I know that
23:14
Speaker 1: insurance generally doesn't cover suicides for anything. But maybe if
23:18
Speaker 1: it's an accidental death or something like that, your homeowners
23:20
Speaker 1: insurance will cover it. In most cases, you're not going
23:24
Speaker 1: to have to pay the bill. Um. And we said
23:26
Speaker 1: also that marketing and advertising can be tricky. Hotels and
23:31
Speaker 1: motels are the two largest businesses that have to deal
23:34
Speaker 1: with this suicide. So if you own a ctsdcon company,
23:38
Speaker 1: you probably go to every hotel and motel convention there is,
23:43
Speaker 1: which appropriately are held in hotels. Uh. And you hand
23:46
Speaker 1: out cards, right, You hand out cards to homicide detectives,
23:51
Speaker 1: You make friends with ambulance drivers. You just make sure
23:54
Speaker 1: that everybody is going to contact these families first if
23:57
Speaker 1: they're asked, you don't want to pimp in your card.
24:00
Speaker 1: But if if the families like, what are we gonna
24:02
Speaker 1: do about this, they can say, well, I know this
24:04
Speaker 1: guy is good. Yeah, that's actually how it worked in
24:06
Speaker 1: Sunshine Cleaning. Yes, Amy Adams was a regular house cleaner
24:10
Speaker 1: making beans, and her boyfriend was Steve Zon and he
24:14
Speaker 1: was a homicide detective. Steven is great and he's awesome
24:18
Speaker 1: and he um he he told her like, you know,
24:21
Speaker 1: you can make a lot more money by doing this,
24:23
Speaker 1: and he got her her first job and first referral,
24:26
Speaker 1: and it just kind of grew from there. Um, it's
24:29
Speaker 1: a burgeoning business, right. Yeah. And apparently if you like
24:34
Speaker 1: to name your business after yourself first day and last name,
24:37
Speaker 1: this is the this is the industry for you. This
24:41
Speaker 1: in waste disposal. Yeah, what was the company from San Francisco?
24:44
Speaker 1: In there there is um Neil Smithers crime Scene Cleaners, Inc. Right,
24:50
Speaker 1: And and they have people they send out all over
24:52
Speaker 1: the country. Now, but I think it said that they
24:54
Speaker 1: do about four hundred cleanups in San Francisco alone each year.
24:58
Speaker 1: This is two thousand six. That's more than one a day.
25:03
Speaker 1: Is well, And here we reach to the debate right.
25:06
Speaker 1: The crime scene cleanup companies literally make money off of tragedy, right,
25:13
Speaker 1: horrific tragedy. And a lot of people argue like that
25:17
Speaker 1: there's this kind of commercialization of death, of tragedy, and
25:21
Speaker 1: and that why are we so okay with this? Um?
25:24
Speaker 1: And I can kind of see that, like maybe this
25:27
Speaker 1: is something that should be a free service of a
25:28
Speaker 1: police department, worked into the budget or something that a
25:31
Speaker 1: city does, right. Um. But at the same time, you
25:36
Speaker 1: can really make a case like, if you need someone
25:39
Speaker 1: like this, it's a really good thing that they're around,
25:42
Speaker 1: whether it's a commercialization of death or not, because before
25:46
Speaker 1: this it was up to the family to do it,
25:49
Speaker 1: or maybe some friends of the family or something like that.
25:52
Speaker 1: But isn't that just way way worse. I don't even
25:57
Speaker 1: cleaning up your loved one's brains in your home, Yeah,
26:01
Speaker 1: that's obviously way way work. But like a private toach
26:05
Speaker 1: truck company comes and gets a car after car accident,
26:08
Speaker 1: so that's not taken care of by the police, so
26:11
Speaker 1: sort of sort of the same thing. I definitely fall
26:13
Speaker 1: in the line like, yeah, this is fine, this is
26:15
Speaker 1: perfectly acceptable capitalism. Yeah, well, and until it is covered
26:19
Speaker 1: by the police department. Then somebody's should be making money,
26:23
Speaker 1: and it should be top dollar because it's no fun
26:26
Speaker 1: to clean up brains and bone out of drywall. You know,
26:29
Speaker 1: I know, And I mean if you leave it to
26:31
Speaker 1: the city, can you imagine the job of a city
26:33
Speaker 1: worker would do. And well, that's the other point, man.
26:35
Speaker 1: These people are paid good money because they restore it
26:38
Speaker 1: to its original condition, and your right, I would not
26:41
Speaker 1: want to see the employee doing it. If you're a
26:43
Speaker 1: city employee who is good at your job, we apologize
26:46
Speaker 1: in advance. It's the rest of the people in your
26:49
Speaker 1: field that make it hard on you. Um. And if
26:52
Speaker 1: you are a crime scene cleanup technician, we want to
26:55
Speaker 1: hear from you. Oh yeah, Uh send us an email
26:58
Speaker 1: uh to the email address that I will give at
27:03
Speaker 1: the end of the show because I got ahead of myself.
27:06
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about crime scene clean up,
27:08
Speaker 1: go type that into our search bar. Crime scene is
27:10
Speaker 1: crime hyphen scene clean up is clean hyphen up uh,
27:14
Speaker 1: and we'll take you to this really really good article. UM.
27:18
Speaker 1: And that means now, friends, that it's time for listener mail.
27:24
Speaker 1: Jerry had a big problem with the hyphen thing. Like
27:26
Speaker 1: you were you were out of the room getting some coffee,
27:28
Speaker 1: and I had to explain to the hyphens and that
27:30
Speaker 1: you've capitalized the first one and you don't capitalize the second.
27:34
Speaker 1: I can see that. And she said, this is the
27:36
Speaker 1: most difficult title we've ever had, Is it really? She said?
27:40
Speaker 1: She said, yes, Okay, she's tittering. H Josh. This is
27:44
Speaker 1: prison email part two. We had part one? Was it
27:49
Speaker 1: right before this one? Are we going to split those up? Uh?
27:52
Speaker 1: We have to have the one that we recorded go first,
27:56
Speaker 1: or else we've got two and then one. Okay, so yeah,
27:59
Speaker 1: this came out on this is Thursday. Right. That's more
28:02
Speaker 1: confusing than college football rankings in quantum physics. Uh so
28:06
Speaker 1: this is the end of the prisoners email the guy
28:09
Speaker 1: who was busted for math and then went on the
28:10
Speaker 1: lamb and then went to prison and is now a fine,
28:13
Speaker 1: upstanding citizen. We will continue with this. Food items available
28:18
Speaker 1: from the commissary like ramen noodles, can corn or chicken,
28:21
Speaker 1: and soda pop were valuable for trade as well. Pack
28:23
Speaker 1: of rama noodles were often uses currency for bets on
28:26
Speaker 1: things like football games. To the betting rama noodles on
28:29
Speaker 1: a football game, I guess when you're in the whoscal
28:32
Speaker 1: you're doing what you can to, you know, make it
28:34
Speaker 1: just like the outside. Or prizes and handball tournaments organized
28:40
Speaker 1: by enterprising inmates who would often keep five as an
28:44
Speaker 1: entry fee for putting the tournament together. Huh that crazy.
28:48
Speaker 1: I think it's crazy that this guy wasn't in a
28:51
Speaker 1: minimum security federal prison and he was still playing handball. Yeah. Uh.
28:56
Speaker 1: There were two escapes during the year that I was
28:57
Speaker 1: at the camp. One person took a blanket and threw
29:00
Speaker 1: it over the top of the barbed war fence. That
29:02
Speaker 1: was just regular barbedar, he said, not razor wire, and
29:05
Speaker 1: he climbed over in the middle of the night, and
29:06
Speaker 1: that was pretty much how he got out. Did they
29:08
Speaker 1: catch the guy? Uh, Yes, both were caught. The second
29:12
Speaker 1: guy left his job at the State and motor pool
29:15
Speaker 1: during the day, so I guess he just got in
29:17
Speaker 1: one of the cars and left, which is pretty smart
29:20
Speaker 1: way to escape. It's a pretty typical way to escape. Again, Well,
29:23
Speaker 1: that's actually what he says. He stole a state vehicle
29:25
Speaker 1: and he said both were caught in under forty eight hours. Shank,
29:28
Speaker 1: And here's just some little points he makes. Shank is
29:31
Speaker 1: indeed both a bourbon and noun, although shiv was much
29:34
Speaker 1: less common in usage. Somebody said it was east coast,
29:38
Speaker 1: west coast, but another credibility, well, this is Nevada, so
29:41
Speaker 1: shank is what they said there. In addition to the whole,
29:44
Speaker 1: the special housing unit was known as the shoe as
29:47
Speaker 1: an s h U, and it was more frequently referred
29:51
Speaker 1: to as the shoe than the whole, So we were
29:53
Speaker 1: sort of wrong in that one. And one of the
29:55
Speaker 1: more colorful terms that you can here in prison was
29:59
Speaker 1: to key stir something. Yeah, and can you imagine what
30:02
Speaker 1: that might be? Of course, I mean to hide something
30:05
Speaker 1: in a very uncomfortable place. You wreck them, yeah, not
30:08
Speaker 1: like this stop watch? Did you not know that you did?
30:12
Speaker 1: You get dysenterry from that when you put a watch
30:14
Speaker 1: in your keys there or a wrist watch. Sorry, it
30:17
Speaker 1: wasn't a stop I got dyson. Tearry little man. Another
30:24
Speaker 1: term was man walking, which meant that correction officer was
30:27
Speaker 1: out in the yard walking around, so someone would yell
30:29
Speaker 1: out man walking, and that was a cue to hide
30:31
Speaker 1: any contraband or desist any activities like tattooing, which was
30:37
Speaker 1: you didn't want the corrections guys to see tattooing each other.
30:40
Speaker 1: They're heavy critics. Exactly. I've already written much more than
30:45
Speaker 1: I intended, Guys. I could go on for much longer
30:47
Speaker 1: about many of the topics, including racism, which was extreme,
30:51
Speaker 1: the power structure, and what it was like not having
30:53
Speaker 1: freedom even though I worked outside the camp and mostly
30:56
Speaker 1: an unsupervised fashion. Uh, favor trading and so on and
31:00
Speaker 1: so on. It's weird that I have so much to
31:02
Speaker 1: write about even though I was only in total for
31:06
Speaker 1: about eighteen months. So it wasn't three years. It was
31:08
Speaker 1: eighteen months total. Eighteen months, man, can you imagine? Oh
31:12
Speaker 1: my god. So that's the end of part two of
31:14
Speaker 1: the prison prisoner email. It's part two of two. Huh yep.
31:17
Speaker 1: And he's on the up and up now and we
31:18
Speaker 1: wish him all the best. It sounds like he's doing
31:20
Speaker 1: really good. Thank you, anonymous jail bird. We appreciate you.
31:23
Speaker 1: Who doesn't work here? Right? It is not Jonathan Stricklin. Okay, um,
31:28
Speaker 1: let's see if you have a we already did this
31:30
Speaker 1: this whole email thing, right, crime scene clean up? Uh,
31:34
Speaker 1: just say the email address. Yeah, Just send your emails
31:37
Speaker 1: to Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com for
31:46
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it
31:48
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com. Want more house stuff Works,
31:52
Speaker 1: check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
31:54
Speaker 1: com home page