Here is a scenario:
Mr and Mrs Jones comes home from work. They discover that Little Johnny had enough of this world and took a 12 gauge to his head. The family is totally distraught. After the ambulance/examiner take the body away, who cleans up the remnants of Johnny? Is that left to the family or is there someone else that does that?
Planning on a grand exit, but don’t want to inconvenience the wrong people?
Once the police have finished digging the shotgun pellets out of the wall and have decided they’ve gotten all the evidence they need, then yes, it’s up to Mr. and Mrs. Jones to clean it up, just as they’d have to clean up any mess at their homes.
One can hire professional cleaning services that won’t be - shall we say - emotionally involved with the cleanup, but it’s up to the property owner/manager to decide how to clean it up.
That damn Little Johnny again. Neither the police nor the ambulance crew are responsible for the mess that he has made other than investigating the incident and removing the body from the house. The family is responsible for cleaning up the bits of brain and blood all over his wall and dribbled onto the floor.
Obviously, the parents will not be expected to do this themselves. Friends of the family will often pitch in IME. There happens to be a business to fill every need these days. A company like http://www.crimeclean-up.com/ will help your family avoid such aupleasantness if you live in an area that they service.
The same is true for messy crime scenes.
We should have taken all those Little Johnny jokes as a warning sign and a cry for help. I always knew that boy would end up in trouble.
AFAIK, the property owner/tenant is responsible for cleanup, though the police/ambulance service/mortuary will usually remove all of the pieces of flesh, bone, gray matter, etc.
If you want a good deal on a car, find one that was the site of a suicide, especially one involving a firearm or one that went undiscovered for a few weeks. The smell is nearly impossible to remove, even after replacing all the upholstery. A friend once bought such a 1992 ZR1 Corvette in otherwise excellent condition for $18000, a steal of a price. Six months and $4500 later, he sold it for $16000. That was the approximate value of the drivetrain, suspension, etc.
You may remember hearing about the “Shipyard Shootings” in Seattle and the man-hunt that ensued a couple of years back. I was good friends with one of the guys that was killed. The paramedics cleaned up most of it(the solid parts) then some family, friends, and shipyard staff cleaned up the rest(blood and whatever). I was down there about a year ago moving some furniture in the same office where it had happened. I was trying to slide a file cabinet from a corner of the office and noticed that it was stuck to the floor with dried blood. I ended up having to clean that part of it.
Sorry if I grossed you out.
Nah. I just heard a story about this kind of thing and it kind of struck a nerve with me, so I wanted to find if it was plausible or not.
Yech.
My parent’s next-door neighbors had kid kill himself in the bathroom just as you described. They (essentially) closed the door and never went in there again. Eventually they moved, I don’t know who cleaned the bathroom.
The apartment downstairs from me was the scene of such a suicide. The guy sat down on his john and huffed lead from his .45.
His bathroom is right below mine, but his was an efficiency apartment. The man lived alone. It took five days for another neighbor to notice his door was cracked the whole time, and investigated. Fortunately, it was winter.
When the police arrived, they estimated the time of death and asked me if I had heard anything. That’s when I recalled the noise I had heard that Wednesday evening, and remembered assuming it was just normal city noises.
(OK, here’s the on topic part!) The next day, the property manager brought in a cleaning crew. Just a bunch of guys who clean up big messes - and charge appropriately, I’m sure. Then the manager refinished the entire bathroom.
I used to think my story was creepy, having a dead guy shoot himself in the room just under my bathroom, and then sit there for five days. But then a coworker of mine told the story of how somebody died in their sleep in the adjacent apartment to his. The bedrooms shared a wall. Both residents beds were against that wall. The person wasn’t discovered for two weeks. In the middle of summer.
Please tell me there’s a typo in those figures!
My best friend blew his brains out in my appartment, so I know first hand. The authorities didn’t clean up anything. They left brain, un-identified goo and fluids, blood, and skull fragments. I was forcibly removed from the premisis by my friends(litterally thrown out the door bodily, and the door locked behind me), and a couple of them stayed behind and cleaned up while the rest of us went to Dennys and try to come to terms with what just happened. they even had to clean up the bloody footprints going down the stairs. One of them put the remains in a trash bag and burried it in his back yard. He got stopped by a cop on the way for speeding. The cop informed him that it was illegal to transport human remains in such a manner. He told the cop “Well, you guys left them there. What did you want me to do with them? throw them in the dumpster for the cats to eat? put them down the disposal?”. He got out of the ticket. Damn that sucked.
Does this mean no more little johny jokes?
Nope. Eighteen thou when he bought it. He had just started as a rebuilder and thought it would be a good deal. The dead guy had sat in the car for two or three days in summer and the smell in the car, even after a complete upholstery and carpet replacement, was unbearable. It seems that the inner surface of the fiberglass had absorbed the odor and would not let go. I remember seeing the car at his shop and asking about it. He gave me the key and offered me a test drive. I got as far as sitting in the driver’s seat and that was enough. It seems to be a rule of thumb for rebuilders that cars that have held a dead body in the summer are only good for parts, apparently for good reason.
This was back in about '95 or '96. Of course, ZR-1 engines are worth more now than they were then but sixteen thou was about right.
My cleaning service is called “Crime Scene Clean-up” (not the same one in that link) and they are sometimes cancelling because, you know, there was some double homicide and they have to remove the spleen from the ATM machine, or something like that.
NPR had a story recently about a company in Seattle that specializes in crime scene clean-up. The company’s name is BioClean. They said that they staarted the business because they found out that it was usually up to the relatives and friends to clean-up after a suicide or murder.
Here’s the link to the segment (it requires Realplayer to play): http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/atc/20010516.atc.08.ram
I just read a book called Other Peoples’ Dirt by Louise Rafkin. She had worked as a cleaning woman for a long time, and the book is about her experiences and other peoples’ experiences cleaning other peoples’ dirt.
She devotes one chapter to a woman who specializes in this type of crime-scene clean up. It is a fascinating read, and I’d highly recommend it if you are interested in the details of how a professional crime-scene cleaner works.
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This comes from my brother who is fairly well versed in Japanese culture (still with my brother you never know)
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In Japan where suicide by throwing oneself into the path of oncoming commuter trains is not unheard of
it is policy to charge the family of the deceased for both the cleanup and the lost time of the railway facility.
According to a Reuters report I have on file here, East Japan Railway Co. reported 212 suicides at its stations in 1999. I can see how they’d get irritated.
[hijack]The reason I filed it is that the article describes one of their countermeasures that was being implemented: full-size mirrors opposite platforms. A spokesman for the company said, “Specialists say it makes it difficult for a person to jump if they think someone is looking, say from the opposite platform.” He went on (I swear! It’s in the article!), “We hope that by putting up these big mirrors, people will reflect before acting.” 
[/hijack]
I heard that NPR segment when it first ran. It’s fascinating, expecially because the women who run it just sound so normal, and they look at it as doing a good deed, almost.
My BIL had an accident that resulted in a lot of blood being all over his room. My MIL had to hire a special cleaning service that could handle blood. Ugh.
After years of bad health, my friend’s dad comitted suicide with a shotgun in the garage.
After the investigation was over, my friend cleaned up… and the task did him no good emotionally, to put it mildly.
Director Errol Morris included a segment in his TV series “First Person” on a woman who runs a crime scene cleanup service. I poked around IMDB but couldn’t find the specifics on the particular episode, though. Sorry. It may be one of the other videos previously referenced here.
As for the smelly death car, Snopes says it has the stink of the Urban Legend all over it.