Corpse Cleanup

[bloodrayne]

Crime Scene Cleaners
The Real "Mr. Wolf"
by Daniel Rodriguez, staff writer
December 8, 2003 05:05 PM

A recluse’s life ended in the same manner that he had lived-unnoticed. His overweight corpse lay unmoved in a bathtub full of water as nature took its course. His body went through the cycles of death, rigor mortis followed by the process of decomposition. His flesh began to shrivel and then bloat as gases escaped his decomposing body. Bloating of the flesh is normal after death but the water made the process significantly exaggerated.

Every now and then a drop of water would wander out of the bathtub’s faucet and fall on his bloated body. Of course, the man’s neighbors would have no way to know what was happening, but the water had begun to pool, eventually flowing out of the tub. Water damage began to appear on the ceiling below. But water wasn’t the only thing leaking from the floor above. The man’s flesh had rotted away from the body with the water and had seeped in the same cracks that the water had, raining its putrid load on the unsuspecting occupants below.

When Neal Smither reached the scene, the police and paramedics still hadn’t figured out how to get the body out of the tub. Crime Scene Cleaners, his company, specializes in “homicide, suicide, and accidental death” clean-up and had been called to solve the problem. During the time the body had been allowed to rot, the flesh had expanded more and more, until it finally sealed the bathtub like a cork.

“Their problem was that they couldn’t get their hands around him to strap him and yank him out of the tub,” remembers an amused Smither. The police needed Smither to help them poke a hole under the man’s collarbone. “We were then able to feed our water pump hose through the hole, turn it on and release the pressure which allowed the body to sag a bit and lift him out.”

When bodies are found and vital liquids are released, he’s available to wipe up the puddles. Its service may be gruesome, but it just comes down to a clever business strategy. Crime Scene Cleaners makes money by doing the stuff that no one else wants to do.

“Any famous case you’ve heard of, I’ve probably worked on,” Smither brags, mentioning that he was the one who disposed of the mattresses that the Heaven’s Gate cult committed suicide on.

Smither, who hails from a Capitola, started the company after losing his job as a mortgage broker almost eight years ago. He had planned to be a mortician until he had an epihany. After watching the movie Pulp Fiction, he was inspired by the character Mr. Wolf, who helps Samuel Jackson and John Travolta clean a brain-splattered car. Smither immediately knew that he could make money in a business that provided the same service.

Most people assume that paramedics or the police clean the scene of a bloody crime. This has never been true. The responsibility of the grim task goes to the family members of victims or landlords who had the unfortunate luck to have a tenant decompose on their property. Blood can be a nasty substance, and is a vector for disease.

That’s why California has recently passed regulations that fine anyone up to $20,000 for improper disposal of medical waste. When Crime Scene Cleaners is called, the legal responsibility to properly dispose of the waste goes to them, and a grieving parent or annoyed apartment manager isn’t going to have to worry about getting a fine from the government for putting bloody sheets in the trashcan.

When Smither started Crime Scene Cleaners, he was only the third registered company in the state to provide those services but has quickly surpassed the first two.

“It sounds exciting and really different, and it is, but after that wears off it becomes work,” Smither sighs. “It becomes like any other job you’ve ever had."

The scene that the Crime Scene Cleaners arrive at on an overcast November afternoon is unusually serene. A mother plays with her young son on the sidewalk. Workers dig a driveway in a house across the street. The only sign that something is wrong is a nervous older man standing with an aging and visibly shaken hippie. The hippie’s brother has shot himself in the head. The body had not been found for a few days.

Shawn Clark and Jake Hansen pull up in big Ford F-150 trucks, with the Crime Scene cleaners’ logo on the side. Clark has been working for the company for the last year and half and is Smither’s protégé. He apologizes to the dead man’s brother for their delay, completely ignoring the apartment manager. Smither established a company policy to never deal with anyone who isn’t paying for the job after an encounter with one too many bossy hotel or apartment managers.

“Most of these guys barely graduated high school, if that,” says Smither in disgust.

As Clark and Hansen suit up in their hazardous material suits, bystanders gawk. A woman slows down as she passes by in her car, her eyes bugging out when she sees the logo.

“You’re not really cleaning a crime scene,” she asks.

“No, it was natural,” assures Clark. The woman, mollified, pulls away. Clark and Hansen love to see the reaction on people’s face as they realize what the trucks are for. Almost every car that drives by seems to contain a new shocked face.

Inside the apartment, the room where the man died is relatively clean. There is, however, a putrid smell that lingers in the air.

“Once you’ve been in it for awhile, you can tell by the smell, without even seeing it, pretty much what you’re going to be dealing with and what you’re going to need,” says Smither.

A small dried bloodstain is visible on one of the pillows. When the comforter is pulled back, an even more gruesome sight is displayed. Dried brain matter clings to the blanket and blood has soaked through the mattress. In addition, after looking around the room, Clark spots a pool of blood and unidentifiable chunks sitting on the carpet and gore on a bookcase filled with eastern philosophy books and karate manuals.

“If it’s a small caliber gunshot to the head, generally it’s just going to make a hole in the head,” explains Smither. “It’s going to spin around and bounce around and it’s going to stop. The person is going to bleed out through that hole, so you have a big puddle.”

The crew works fast. That is their specialty. They are guaranteed to be at a job in under an hour, and most jobs take only an hour to complete.

“It’s volume for us. I’ve priced everything cheap,” says Smither of his company’s quick service and cheap rates. Hourly work can cost anywhere from $200 to $600. “The faster we do [a job], the more we’re making.” It’s the kind of fast, in-and-out service that Americans expect. Only Crime Scene Cleaners specialize in a grislier work than flipping burgers or washing cars.

The death industry even has its own slang. ‘Decomp’ is used in place of decomposition, so Smither might say, “We have a decomp job in Menlo Park.” ‘Kitty house’ is slang for houses filled with garbage or animal feces. Smither loves cleaning kitty houses. The jobs can go on for days, and for companies that charge hourly rates, this means a big jackpot. Kitty house jobs often involve the dregs of society, and some of the things Smither has seen are unbelievable. On one job a man was so fat that he couldn’t get out of bed. When he needed to go the bathroom, he would defecate into his hand and fling it away from the bed. By the time the county found out about it, there was a deep layer of waste covering everything.

“The problem of it is the guy’s too fat to move and refused any help. So he sat there in the bed while our crews in full respiration gear scrapped all the shit. And when I say all the shit, I mean there were pathways through the house,” Smither remembers with a disgusted look in their face.

Smither's outlook on life is bleak. He estimates that 80 percent of the people that he meets through his work are “scumbags,” while only 20 percent are good people. One can tell Smither’s outlook and disposition were not changed by the gruesome job but suited for it.

These days, Smither doesn’t even go out to the jobs. After a series of unfortunate mishaps, one where he slipped on spinal fluid and another where he caught a mystery ailment from a diseased corpse and almost died, he has opted to run the business from his house and a small office in Orinda. Although he is still constantly on the phone trying to set up new partnerships with coroners, working with employees and dealing with government regulations. His wife, Lindy, who happens to be his former bank teller, helps in the administration of the company. Her curiosity about the name of the company on the checks Smither cashed led to their first date.

“He said, ‘I’ll take you on a ride along but you have to go on a date with me,’” recalls Lindy. They now share a house in quiet suburban community in the East Bay with their young son, Jack. When asked if he thinks that his child might end up warped from his father’s line of work, Smither is unapologetic.

“He’ll just have to learn to deal with it. Death is our business.”

The future is bright for Crime Scene Cleaners and Neal Smither. Or as bright as it can be considering it is a business fueled by death. The once youthful flower children have begun to wilt, and Smither foresees that the baby boom will lead to a death boom for his business. Smither has also begun to think of writing a book about his life. He has already sold the rights to his life as a movie. But until his next job, he’ll do what he always does.

Sit around and pray for death.