It’s hard to imagine the harrowing sights those who work in crime scenes are confronted with day in day out, but for crime scene cleaners Tom DeSena and Steve Walters, there are still some that stand above the rest.
While most of what we know of crime scenes comes from Netflix true crime documentaries and sensationalised blockbuster thrillers, Tom shares a glimpse into what it’s really like over on his TikTok account @thesoulmediators, where he posts some of the most gruesome and shocking fatalities he cleans up across the US.
His videos show the harrowing extent of what’s left behind after police have collected evidence, with several of the gruesome clips going viral among true crime fans feeding their morbid fascination.
Admitting he’d never initially planned to get into this industry, Tom, from New York, graduated from university with a degree in criminal justice but struggled to find the right job, until an ad for his current company popped up on Indeed and he just ‘ran with it’.
“I was like, You know what? This looks interesting. It’s not something that I’m scared of,” he told LADbible.
The duo have seen it all (Supplied)
His colleague Steve, however, was already acquainted with the world of death.
Steve was a licensed funeral director for a decade before moving into crime scene cleaning after deciding to ‘help families another way’.
When a job comes in, the pair will be sent a document containing the location, a brief description of what happened and some contact information.
“Usually, the first thing we’ll do is we’ll go in, we’ll meet the family, we’ll say sorry for your loss, or we’ll give condolences, try and make it a little more comfortable for the family or whoever it is,” Tom explained.
“We’ll take pictures, we’ll update our office. They’ll kind of see the damage, or they’ll see what exactly we’re dealing with. We take room measurements. There’s a lot of paperwork that goes into it, too. So, we do that stuff. We start setting up machines.
“Each job is different, though. Sometimes, if it’s not a long [body] decomposition, maybe we’ll clean a little first. If it’s been a long time, we’ll run some certain machines and we’ll let it sit for a little bit. If there’s a lot of bugs, like roaches, we’ll run bug bombs.”
The Florida-based duo have seen it all – from unattended deaths to gruesome shootings and even murder-suicides, but there’s one scene that’s been forever burned into Tom’s mind.
In late 2022, he walked into the job he’ll ‘never forget’.
Tom and Steve both have scenes which stick out to them (Supplied)
“The customer was a man maybe in his 50s. The incident was a suicide-homicide. So they were all military veterans, three brothers. The youngest brother, I guess he had a lot of issues. It was a while ago, but I remember – and the older brother came to the house. The younger brother lived with the mum because I guess he wasn’t in good shape,” he said.
“Something happened. They got in some disagreement or whatnot, and the older brother came in, and he had a key to the house, and he went in the house when the brother was by himself, and he must have been going through some episode, and he had a machine gun, and he had a whole barricade set up in the living room, he set up the couches, and he set up blankets and stuff. And it was kind of sheltering himself, like he was in a war.
“And you can imagine, as soon as the older brother opened the door, he did that [killed him], and then he went down in the basement, and he took his own life as well. And it was really wild. I mean, it was really, really wild.”
Meanwhile, for Steve, a job in North Carolina has been forever etched into his memory.
“The parents were in the early 20s, maybe 21,22 and they had a three-year-old son.
Tom runs a TikTok detailing the job (Supplied)
“Their house was kind of connected to their parents’ house – they lived in the back of it, and they had a dog, I’m not going to say the breed, but the dog got a hold of the three-year-old son, and you could just go in and close your eyes, and you could just picture how the dog had the child in its mouth, which is tearing its head, and there was just blood spattered everywhere.
“And when we first got there, the parents, they wouldn’t even go into the house. And then by the time we were done, I got them, they were able to walk through the house, and they were feeling better. So, yeah, that’s one of the ones that come to mind.”
For Tom and Steve, death is just a part of their daily lives, but there are some aspects they still struggle to contend with even now – one being the smell.
The pair said the smell can be hard to stomach (Supplied)
It’s the kind of thing that ‘stays on our clothes’, says Tom, who admitted the duo can change their outfit two or three times during a ‘big job’.
“The smell stays and it sticks on porous surfaces. So let’s say you pass away in the bedroom. Closet door’s open. All the clothes in the closet stink, all the couches if the door’s open in the living room, all fabric, window blinds and stuff. They all stink.
“A lot of times there are flies as well if it goes longer than a couple days. So, those flies fly around the house. They fly into the buyouts. It gets nasty. The smell is horrible.”
“The only way to really describe it is it’s a smell you can taste,” says Steve.
Of course, many people will be wondering why on earth anyone would want to work a job like this, but for Tom and Steve, the answer is clear – who else is going to?
“Maybe people don’t want to do it, but who’s going to do it?” Tom says.
“Who’s going to do it for these families and help them? Because they’re not going to do it and we’re not going to do it. So who’s going to do it? The police don’t do it.
“If we like it and we do it, well, that’s all that really matters.”
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