Murder Scene Cleanup Question

A friend of mines father was a New York City detective back in the 60s and 70s he always said Barney Miller was the most accurate program.

I think Gator pretty much hit the nail on the head. I've been to several murder scenes and as a general rule the place it happens isn't worth the price of a professional clean up. Clorox is your friend.
I'll not comment on Workman Guy for hazmat removal like asbestos That would be illegal-like throwing away paint cans by placing them in your neighbor's garbage can late at night while in your ninja suit

The Apartments I use to own with my brother, had 2 shotgun slayings about 25 years apart.The first was an obvious drug killing when the door was opened. Obvious? Yup, it happened along with 3 or 3 others in less than 19 min., and all the"Targets" were well knon to the P.D.
The second, the resident/victum was shot gunned in the head opening the door, moments after arriving home. The P.D. took carpet samples and finger printed all knobs and handles and all, I mean every wall in the place. The victum was Jordian (I think) all the photos they ask me about looked East Eouropean. Then thay said robbery even though Almost $79,000 was left in unit.
Clean up was I sealed the walls where finger prints were taken ( took 2 coats of primer) painted the walls ,patched the carpet with a piece from the closet, had carpet and unit cleaned (normal). Moved a new family in a week and a half after the murder,and didn't have an extra $50 in the turn-over. If a service did this, it would be new carpet $1200, crime scean clean-up $1500-2000, and a special recoating of unit of about $900, plus normal paint and clean.

just a sidethough here please rename this something along the lines of murder scene cleanup question for a book I'm writing because the titles a little misleading and it makes it sound like you just knocked someone off.

Having been involved in the unfortunate aftermaths of incidents I will not detail (except to say that those of you who think that a human body "stays intact" after jumping from a significant height to concrete also watch too much TV). The people I dealt with hired a professional restoration service to detail clean EVERYTHING and did so using biosuits and heavy duty chemicals. As both scenes were released by detectives in a few hours, the "teams" were ready to go when the word was given. By the next morning, you couldn't even tell what had happened.

The trick to cleaning up blood is actually to just let it set a little while. That seems counter intuitive, since it tends to stain, but if you're worried about catching something from it, then HIV dies after exposure to air after about a day. Hep is more of a problem.

The good folks that make Chlorox actually sell a readily made bleach spray. It comes in a concentration perfect for killing viruses, cleaning up bodily fluids, etc.

The carpet and padding usually had to go, unless someone was thoughtful enough to put a shower curtain under the body. Or to kill themselves in the shower - pull the curtains shut, turn the water on and it really contains that mess. Most tenants ruin the carpet and padding shortly anyway, so it's not that big of a deal.

Now if you have hardwood floors, it just means a good scrubbing. Same with concrete, steel and most industrial type flooring. At worst a bit of sanding and some stain.

Burning some coffee grounds is said to help with the smell. Put them in a frying pan and turn up the stove.

OSHA regs and putting on a good show to make the cost seem worth while are probably the reasons behind a clean up crew wearing suits. I suppose large corporate or institutional budgets would cover it. But for the average guy... hire yourself a Workman Guy. (Though OSHA regs likely exist for a reason. By the time Dan fired Guy, Guy was covered in open sores, vomiting regularly, and complaining of persistent liquid bowels with traces of blood. His new job? Short order cook.)

There is actually a product called "DNA Away" that is supposed to be used in labs for this that and the other, but can actually clean up and area to where even TV's CSI would be hard put to find anything. (Putting Drano down the drain also takes care of hairs, etc.) That might be relavent if for some reason the scene had to be cleaned up to the point that no evidence at all remained. For whatever innocent and legal reason someone would want to do that of course. OCD maybe. Yeah, that works.

Kavinsky said:

just a sidethough here please rename this something along the lines of murder scene cleanup question for a book I'm writing because the titles a little misleading and it makes it sound like you just knocked someone off.

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Hadn't thought of that, but the other answers make it clear that no one else thinks that, thank goodness. I believe that my explanation makes it clear why I posted.

And no one here has been murdered in a similar setting. It would have made the news, probably big-time. The biggie was whether the fictional heroine could have been admitted to view the crime scene to comment on how it might have been affected, seeing as she works there. And I wanted to let things there get back to normal ASAP, as much as they could.

Seems as if the lead detective will determine how long they need the yellow tape and security on the place. I may have some administrators argue over who pays for cleanup. Probably won't go into detail about what's needed.

It just struck me that crime shows never get into that stuff. It just disappears in the plot. Actually, I don't think I've seen it in other books, either.

I suspect that this will interest some other members, too. Clearly, I do have some flexibility in how I describe the issue. I just didn't want to look too implausible.

But thanks for your concern. I can see how you might think that, I guess.

Is this a great forum or what??? Burning coffee grounds to cover the odor of death-who'd a thunk it??? Let's make this one a sticky.

When I worked in the car business, we occasionally got a re-pop with some serious funk going on with the interior. Not a dead body, but like some winos had lived in it for 6 months without ever leaving (ever!) or rolling down the windows.

Our cleanup guy would fire up the steam jenny and steam the seats, carper, and trunk for most of a day.

Then park it in the sun with some cut up apples in it. Apples cut into 5 or 6 pieces, placed on paper plates. The worse the funk, the more apples. Usually less than a dozen was plenty for anything.

Several years ago I made the mistake of spilling several qts of blood in the trunk of my old car. Couldn't get rid of the smell with any cleaning agent known to man. 2 weeks and 6 apple later, all good. left 2 apples under the front seat for the next month or so, just in case.


Note, NEVER buy a used car that smells like fresh apples..............

charlie sherrill said:

The cleanup is left to the property owner unless it happened outside. I've had the FD wash down parking lots at bars a few times. It helps keep the patrons from slipping down and getting hurt. My Momma didn't raise me to clean up crime scenes. The worst ones are the "stinkers" who are found several days after their death. The last one of those I went to the guy had been there long enough he was coming apart. While I was there I overheard the landlord offer the new tenants the first months rent for free if they cleaned up the mess. I guess they took the deal because I later saw them dragging the matress the guy died on to their pickup. Bottom line: The cleanup is left to the property owner.

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This has been my experiance as well. I can't remember the last time we had a murder or suicide in a middle or upper middle class home who had insurance or could afford to pay someone else to do the clean up. Most of the time it's family or friends who do the dirty deed.

I was on a double homicide a few years back where a young mother and her toddler were killed while the husband was at work by a doper with a hatchet. The kitchen and living room looked like someone took a bucket of paint and sloshed it all around the place. When the scene was released several neighbors came over and cleaned it up so the husband/father and the rest of the family didn't have to see it.

The closest I got to such cleanup involved a stray cat in a late stage of putrefaction. I am not an expert in decomposition or hazardous cleanup, but this is from personal experience.

I had been aboard my sailboat in Florida (high heat, high humidity) then I sealed the hatches and flew back home. About a month later, I flew back to the sailboat, opened the main hatch, went down the companionway, and saw this blob which appeared to be a dead cat. No tags. It must've jumped in and hidden just before I closed all the hatches.

Fortunately, it had died on a non-porous surface near an opening that drained into the bilge so all the fluids went down there and just had to be pumped out. If it had decided to be comfortable in its last moments and expired on a cushion, I would have just tossed the cushion and the body out, but I would have had to order a complete set of custom "marine" (as in overpriced) cushions. If it had expired on a part of the floor far away from a bilge drain, I would've had to clean more floor area.

The smell wasn't as bad as one would expect. I think once a body gets to the liquefaction stage of decomposition, the really bad smell of death, probably caused by the production of gases, diminishes.

I was able to scrape it off with a scrap piece of thin plywood and the body remained fairly intact. There were still a few maggots crawling in it.

There was one spot, also on a non-porous surface, where it had urinated and defacated, so I had to clean that, too. I didn't find any other spots.

The one thing that took a while was the cleanup of all the flies. The surviving ones eventually flew out. However, there were dead flies all over the boat interior and even after using my vacuum cleaner to clean them up, I was discovering dead flies weeks later, in my books, in my charts, in various storage spaces.

Texas Star said:

Hadn't thought of that, but the other answers make it clear that no one else thinks that, thank goodness. I believe that my explanation makes it clear why I posted.

And no one here has been murdered in a similar setting. It would have made the news, probably big-time. The biggie was whether the fictional heroine could have been admitted to view the crime scene to comment on how it might have been affected, seeing as she works there. And I wanted to let things there get back to normal ASAP, as much as they could.

Seems as if the lead detective will determine how long they need the yellow tape and security on the place. I may have some administrators argue over who pays for cleanup. Probably won't go into detail about what's needed.

It just struck me that crime shows never get into that stuff. It just disappears in the plot. Actually, I don't think I've seen it in other books, either.

I suspect that this will interest some other members, too. Clearly, I do have some flexibility in how I describe the issue. I just didn't want to look too implausible.

But thanks for your concern. I can see how you might think that, I guess.

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Yeah thats why I took a look at the thread, I was like wait what? Surely you cant be serious

In the real world of murders it's usually the insurance companies that pay for the clean up or if it's your house, you get to clean it up.

I've been to enough to not care who cleans it up at this point.

Carpet, wood floors etc..bleach, soap and elblw grease.

Murder scenes are neither glamorous or fun to be at. I hate criminal TV shows and how they find the clue and how they solve the case in one hour. It's simply not that easy.

Hours of work because some dumbass thinks they have the right to kill someone and it's usually something so stupid it's pitifull.

Then they get to court and don't have the guts to admit it or own up to it. Because they are cowards in the first place or they it's someone elses fault..

The problem is no one accepts responcibility for their actions.

neorebel said:

Murder scenes are neither glamorous or fun to be at. I hate criminal TV shows and how they find the clue and how they solve the case in one hour. It's simply not that easy.

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People don't die as neatly in real life as they do on TV, either. Pretty gruesome to watch the life go out of someone's body no matter what the reason they were murdered.

TV shows create a lot of false impressions of people who don't know any better. Everything from good guys shooting guns out of bad guys hands, to doctors saving the obviously dead, to detectives neatly wrapping up a case in one hour (minus commercials). Courts don't work like they do on TV either. Trials are tedious affairs with witnesses sitting for hours or days waiting to be called.

The whole thing is a pain in the *** from start to finish, but the reality doesn't make good TV and won't sell cars or deodorant.

"The First 48" is a good show. Of course, it's real cops dealing with real murders, and they don't always solve the cases. Occasionally, you'll see a high-dollar piece of equipment being used, but, most of the time, it's boots on the ground and tracking down leads that solves the crime.

ECS

Thank God I was born with a strong constitution.

4 Homicides, assaults and fatal auto accidents over the years I spent in law enforcement. You develop an emotional detachment to the horrible things you see.

And most of these crimes are solved by good old fashioned legwork. And the fact that most perps can't keep their mouths shut. Friends and relatives have helped solve more crimes than CSI ever thought of.

Thanks for the help. There is some interesting stuff here, if sad. But murder is a sad event.

I am willing to bet if any of the CSI actors saw a real crime scene where the blood and guts had been out there for a few days in the hot sun they would be tossing their cookies for darn sure. I guy I used to work for and a friend of mine was on the job as a cop for only two weeks in July when they got a call. The neighbor had not been seen for about a week or so and the papers were piling up in front of the door. Well guess what, he died in bed and was really not in the best of shape when they found him and the smell was pretty rough too. I can tell you in jail we have had some pretty good fights, one where a guy got stabbed repeatedly in the face with an issue fork. Blood was pretty much all over the place. I also remember when we had a guy try to off himself by taking a razor (took the blade out) and laid himself open really well. The blood was running out of the cell and down the stairs. I ended up watching him in the hospital that night and the next day after they patched him up he tried it again and we had to stop him. To this day I can recall looking down at his right forearm and can see his two bones as he had cut through the tendon.
I still would like to see some of those actors at a real crime scene.

The cops are done when they tell you they are done. As far as the clean up goes, there are companies out there that do that sort of thing. I think there was a special on History channel about it this past summer. Looked into starting a clean up business a few years ago but too many already in my area. Typically insurance pays some/most of the clean up bill. Nothing like a dead body for 3 weeks in a house in Florida in the summer!!!

Blujax-I agree, it's hard to believe that the same folks put out CSI Las Vegas and the Miami trash. Flapjack.