Crime Scene Cleaners Reveal the Most Disturbing Things They've Seen on the Job

Crime scene cleanup workers have a rather unpleasant job - they have to remove all the remnants of a crime that has taken place. Sometimes cleaning crime scenes involves mopping up a small pool of blood, while other times the room or house can look more like a horror movie. The crime scene cleaner stories included here, all from Reddit, are disturbing, to say the least. 

Redditor spctrbytz commented:

Me and a buddy ended up doing a make-ready on a condo that had been the scene of a very bloody fight/murder. No body by the time we got there, just blackish blood pooled [on] the floor of the kitchen, splattered all over the inside and outside of the refrigerator, ceiling, and cabinets.

We received very scary news after we were done, [we] found out the victim was HIV+. This was over 25 years ago, and the only person I knew then that had HIV had already died.

The smell of that place stuck in my sinuses or somehow scarred my brain... for a week or so, I would catch whiffs of the rotten blood when I wasn't there.

Redditor dirty_hooker shared:

I'll take some liberties here. I'm a tow truck operator. The crimes I've cleaned up are of the DUI/reckless driving variety. I've cleaned up death and gore. Mostly you try not to think about it and load the vehicle without getting inside it. Sometimes you make dark jokes to lighten the humanity of what you see. It's not that you enjoy it. Rather, it'll sicken you to think about it. It's given me nightmares. It is grotesque work that would make the most jaded Live Leaks junkie puke in shame. I've seen vehicles torn in half, families carted away in meat wagons, and animals (including a moose) writhing with broken limbs (that one actually sucks a little more).

A few years ago I had the unfortunate task of cleaning up a wreck, literally fishing it out of the trees, of a guy I had worked with at a different company a few years prior. I didn't know whose vehicle it was at the time and found out to my dismay a few days after. He was drunk and running from the [Sheriff's] Deputies. He had gotten his pick-up [truck] going fast enough down a curvy road the the deputies had backed off. (Police edition Tahoes move very quickly.) He lost it off a curve and it crashed into some trees and was stuck there on its side and upside down about 4 feet off the ground. They used the jaws of life to cut open the cab of his truck and snip the mounts of his seat to pull him out of where the rear window / C pillar used to be. Only because he was 30 seconds ahead of the LEOs and 5 minutes from a hospital with a helipad did he survive that night.

The thing about a roll over is that all of the junk that is in your cab, all of the shit that has rolled under your seats over the years, all the shit in your cubbies hits the ground and we have to clean it up. On flat pavement this goes pretty quickly with a shovel and trash bags. Because this incident was in the grass and brush we were picking it up by gloved hand. Because the guy lived on the side of a mountain he carried spare blankets, sleeping bag and pillows in his truck in case [he] was ever stranded. All of that soft stuff became body-sized tampons soaked in blood. It was the single bloodiest accident I've ever had to clean.

According to crackercortex:

A small Cessna plane crashed on our ranch - not Government Canyon State Park as was reported. They came out with a body crew, then a wreckage cleanup crew. I went out 24 hours later with my dogs... in hindsight, should not have brought the dogs. It was really eerie - the swath cut through thick, oak underbrush - and dogs coming back to me with strands of flesh covered in leaves, etc in their mouths. We put the pieces they found in a trash bag...Lots of them... but then what do you do with it? Give it to the family? Put it in the trash and walk away?

From fightinscot:

My brother in law responded to a suicide attempt before Thanksgiving. The call came in from the husband saying three rounds had been discharged. So they send multiples deputies thinking it was a possible murder suicide. They get there and she snot herself in the face and was missing basically the right side of her cheek. So there was blood in the living room. She went to the bathroom and her husband tackled her there and she put another round into her head, causing a superficial wound and finally, he wrestled the gun away from her body and she shot herself through the dresser which her hand was under and it hit her in the arm causing some nice arterial spray. My brother in law shows up and secures the scene for [t]he paramedics who try to treat her and she is fighting them all the way to the door leaking blood all over.

He said the house looked like someone tried to field dress a live deer.

Shared by demoneyesturbo:

I've cleaned up after a lot of car crashes. A lot of it is very ghastly, as I'm sure you can imagine. One thing I learned early is how sharp bone shards are. They're very, very sharp and can easily cut through gloves and your skin.

Worst part is how often there are alcohol bottles in the cars or just a general smell of alcohol on dead bodies.

Cookingforaxl told this story:

As a fiduciary, we were called in for a lot of different tasks related to the estate of a deceased client. One such task was entering and cataloging the entire home of a woman who passed away (I don't remember from what but it was natural causes.) She had a dog who eventually died of dehydration but not before trying to chew his way out of the front door.

She and the dog were found several months after she died. Their bodies turned to liquid and literally melted into the carpet and then the concrete floor underneath. By the time we were on the scene it was a haz-mat situation. I had to 'suit up' (wear protective garments, gloves, foot coverings and masks.) We entered the home after the body had been removed. There were millions of dead and live flies all over the house, in every room.

We had to first document, and then dispose of, every single thing in the house. Anything that had to do with food (cooking, eating, storing) had to be disposed of because it was all considered a bio-hazard. You couldn't just take the items and wash them, they had to be removed and tossed. Even the appliances had to go. The smell was horrid and seemed to permeate the walls.

A comment from Redditor Laughing_with_myself:

I was at a scene recently where someone jumped off a balcony onto the street below. The balconies of the second and third floors extend out further than the others. The person left pieces of themselves on the third floor and the rest of them continued down to the second floor.

Redditor shawndamanyay contributed:

I own a carpet cleaning & restoration company.  

When a morbidly OBESE woman dies (she [was] easily 500 pounds) and nobody finds her for three weeks...the bodily fluids leak out everywhere, so badly that they penetrate all the way through the mattress, drip into the carpet, penetrate the pad, and go THROUGH the wooden sub floor.

$20 respirators are worth the money.

Shared by katgib13:

My husband is a firefighter/paramedic and one accident he responded to still freaks him out and it was years ago. Early 20s couple out drinking on Halloween and having fun with friends got into a fight and left. Boyfriend thought driving 100 mph while drunk was a swell idea. Hits pole, splits car in half, and it's a mess. Rips her leg off, but didn't kill her. Walking up to the scene, they see a Halloween mask on the ground. The kind that covers your whole head, has hair and everything. Fast forward a minute and they realize [it's] not a mask. Dudes head was degloved. DEGLOVED. My husband had to help the coroner collect body parts, which included the chicks leg wedged under the dash, complete with high heel on, and the "mask," of course. I have no idea how he does it.

From slapass_slapass:

I [was] once working for a company contracted to clean a biohazard from a city housing apartment complex. The man who lived there had a fight with one of his friends who proceeded to stab him and escape. He was left without a phone and bleeding from multiple stab wounds. He knocked on his neighbors doors repeatedly, based on the blood stains in the hallway, but no one answered. He bled out and died in his apartment.