Murder Cleaners by Edit International

By Ron Laytner Copyright 2009 Edit International The United States is facing so many disasters - It's biggest banks and brokerage houses going broke or being taken over, millions of homes lost or seized, American auto manufacturers in danger of collapse, major floods and drowned crops â&#x20AC;&#x201C; that more and more troubled people are committing suicide or resorting to murder. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why the strange US Murder Cleaners industry is booming. Murder cleaning is a secretive almost unknown American business. The country has so many guns and violent deaths that more than 100 of its biggest cities have murder cleaners at work. The US is not the most dangerous place on earth. America with 300 million people has about 13,000 murders a year. South Africa, with 47 million has 22,000. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve all glimpsed murder cleaners in the movies, pulling up in small, unmarked white vans in films like La Femme Nikita and Pulp Fiction. They work for secret US government agencies and get rid of bodies and all traces of those killed in the line of national interest. 1

In American real life gangsters and serial killers still dispose of bodies in the desert around Las Vegas and in the Florida Everglades. Most are never found. But in every US city local government or federal coroners do legitimate body removal. The murder cleaners come in next to remove all traces of what happened.. The American industry was pioneered by Joan Dougherty, a petite middle-aged woman living in Fort Lauderdale, 20 miles north of Miami, Violent death has made her wealthy and successful.

“A relative was killed about 25 years ago. I asked the police who would clean it up and they told me ‘You will. There’s nobody else that does such a job.’ Members of companies like Joan Dougherty’s AA Trauma Cleaning Service of Fort Lauderdale, McNulty’s American Bio Cleaners of Missouri and Texas’ Houston Trauma Cleanup which is made up of off duty police officers, do everything else. They are part of the continent-wide American Bio Recovery Association with almost 100 members. 2

The costs of restoring a site to pre murder or suicide averages about $3,000. It must be protected against diseases carried by blood and air - AIDS, hepatitis and tuberculosis. Blood saturated carpets, curtains or furniture are cut up, broken down, put in plastic-lined containers, dated and disposed of within 30 days at special bio hazard dumps where the material is incinerated. “When we are finished no one will ever find a single drop of blood or piece of human tissue,” says Dougherty proudly. “We make it safe for people to move back in.” With the floods across the Mississippi basin affecting hundreds of American towns industry workers will be also be fighting mold and damage in saving homes that were under water. Joan Dougherty and her colleagues in various American cities enter crime scenes wearing ‘space like’ level C protective suits made of nylon with all ends taped over and special rubber stockings inside heavy rubber boots. They wear a double set of rubber gloves and breathe through a full face respirator containing its own oxygen supply. “I just detach myself. My head tells me I am just going in and cleaning. I would go crazy if I focused on anything other than that,” Dougherty says. “I usually go in these days to train new recruits. Most of my time is spent getting contracts and dispatching crews to crime scenes.” 3

Sometimes Joan and her employees even bring new evidence to police investigations. “We often find spent bullets investigators missed hidden inside walls or furniture. Murder weapons such as knives sometimes show up.” For as long as it takes, Murder Cleaners scrub and sanitize the crime scene using industrial strength disinfectants, deodorizers, steamers and chemical foggers. Dougherty now uses some of the latest forensic sciences equipment. “We have an expensive thermal imaging camera. With infra red rays we can see traces of blood unseen by the human eye. We can see where a body has lain on a concrete floor. In one case an old lady who lived in a terrible mess with 39 cats, died and was removed along with 33 of her pets. The thermal imaging camera found six more dead felines in the apartment.” Joan is continually hiring new recruits: “Most are off-duty policemen, firemen and paramedics. But we turn down more than 70 per cent, They like the big money they can earn. (About $200,000 a year) Many of them can stand the sight of blood but a lot lose control when they see vomit or a dead pet. It’s very hard work cleaning crime scene areas while sweating in a hot hazmat suit, sucking in air in a respirator while trying to see through a fogged mask.” In just a few years Joan Dougherty has expanded from two employees to eighteen dispatched by radio from headquarters. Don McNulty and his Kansas City company, Bio Cleaning Services of America, has expanded into three American States. “This may be the least known and fastest growing of all businesses, “says McNulty. “Humans have to clean up after their dead. This is a new industry in the modern world.” McNulty says people learn how to make bombs on the internet and it’s a problem but the internet is also the greatest place to help new industries form. “All our association members confer every day on the Internet.” 4

Some cases he remembers well. “My company murder-cleaned a rented Kansas City home in which five men were shot to death. Three were killed first. The killer lived in the house for two weeks with the bodies then killed two more men who came by before fleeing. A man was later arrested and is now awaiting execution on death row. “The landlord paid almost $3,000 for the cleanup. The five bodies lay undiscovered for a week. And yet the home of a young man shot in the head with a big .357 Magnum a week earlier took even more work.” America’s murder cleaners have seen it all, including bodies that lay undiscovered for weeks and months on end. Don McNulty says his worst case was just such an ‘unattended’. An 82 year-old man who lived by himself died in his bathroom near Kansas City, Missouri in the middle of winter. “He lay dead for ten days with the thermostat turned up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 Celsius) until police were notified and the body was removed. It took a week to get the house back to normal. Says McNulty, "It was hard to breathe, and so unhealthy, even through my respirator, that I suffered from flu-like symptoms for a week, had nightmares for a year and have never gotten over it.” Sometimes the work is easy and well paid. Other times it’s the roughest job imaginable but even then murder cleaners earn about $400 an hour Says Dougherty: “My most tragic case was a 12-year-old boy who committed suicide with a shotgun in his divorced mother’s bedroom when he was home alone. I broke down and cried.

“The mother was totally distraught. In a suicide every survivor feels guilt whether it’s deserved or not. What could a 12 year old boy be possibly thinking of to take his own life? “I see suicides every week. It is the most terrible and selfish of all crimes because the person who dies also murders the minds and hearts of the people who love them for the rest of their lives.” Don McNulty described just two days in April in Kansas City: “First, a man murdered his two children and wife and a brother-in-law. Then he fled to Nicaragua and killed himself there. Four days later a nearby man shot his livein girlfriend and her seven year-old daughter, then their pet dog and finally himself.” Says Joan Dougherty in Florida, “Some of my employees say they sense the presence of souls around murder scenes. And, if the killer has not been captured, they lock themselves inside a dwelling fearing he might return.” Don McNulty founded a Trauma Counseling Network to which anyone involved in violent death is provided free help. Many attending are police. McNulty says he actually enjoys his work and finds it fulfilling. “I talk to the family of the dead at the beginning. I hold them and cry with them and somehow help get them through the pain. When I go home at night I sleep soundly, knowing I did some good for those suffering so much bad.”

Joan Dougherty disagrees, â&#x20AC;&#x153;We are not trained grief counselors. My people would go crazy if they got emotionally involved. I teach them to mind their own business. We have a job, a terrible job, but a job to do. Time will heal the hurts.â&#x20AC;? The End By Ron Laytner Copyright 2009 Edit International

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To purchase publishing rights to this or any of our stories please contact Edit International at: ron@editinternational.com Phone#: 001 954-566-6167 Fax#: 001 954-630-9741