 Do you ever wonder what happens when the police leave? Crime scene cleaners are private companies that handle the cleanup after the police are gone. Spalling Decon is one of the nation's largest cleanup companies handling the aftermath of homicides, suicides, decompositions, hoarding, and much more. These are our stories. We are doing a massive level 5 hoard, Sierra and bottles. Everything is new, but it's damaged by the rats. There's a whole reptile room. Looks like they were mostly snakes. So sometimes during these cleanouts, we find things that are disturbing. Is the gun safe in there? These boxes are real empty. Doesn't look like it's a real gun. Is that one loaded? Yeah, hi guys. So Ed and Chris are owners of Spaulding Decon. We actually have Fort Myers and Naples. Also coined as Spaulding Decon Southwest Florida. Here we're in North Fort Myers today. We are doing a massive level 5 hoard. So the story is that it was the sister of the owner of the home and the owners and so the brother-in-law. And unfortunately the sister had went into the hospital and I believe it was in the intensive care even, a really serious condition. The sister came over and kind of got involved looking after the cat and so forth. And they had some reptiles in here as well. I guess it was a shock to her. She had no idea that her sister and brother-in-law lived this way. And so she kind of told us the story that ten years ago they would always come to events and then a few years later he kind of stopped showing up but the sister would still come and then a few years ago she stopped coming. So it seems like there's a story that goes with that how people kind of just recluse from their friends and family and things of that nature. When she called me I took the phone in the van and I can immediately hear the stress in her voice. So I try to remain calm and guide her through what the steps are. She's just devastated that her sister is living this way and she wanted to reach out and be able to help and she really wasn't up for going in. So she hung out by the door a little bit and we walked through the house and we came back out and said, you know, we can definitely help you. She says, well, my sister is in intensive care and when she gets out, you know, I want to be able to present her with your findings and what you can do for her. Oh my... So did they like... He's dried out. Oh, that's a tail. I thought he was on a stick or something. No, he's dried out. So this is the initial first walking in trying to clear out some space so we can get out the door. There's some large bulky items. We're trying to get into the trash bin right now to kind of weigh things down a little bit. They've been lifesavers or hard workers. We do this for fun. Right, they're here for fun. You know, a lot of time porters fall in their homes and that's how things like this get discovered because family has to be called or 911 comes. I mean, how do you get somebody out of here? Well, look at the door. The door is totally destroyed, the frame, because they had to break it down to get in here. Oh my God, imagine a fire. Can you go on with this? Yeah, yeah. I can quest. Oh, oh, oh. Maybe a little silver fish or something. Yeah, oh, it's a calendar. Unfortunately, everything is infested or ruined or might even be inside there. There's more rat droppings than there are cat droppings. And the kitty litter. I think the important thing is, is like what people need to know is that, you know, when you call us, you're either going to get me or Ed, you know, we're going to be the ones you're going to talk to. We're going to be the ones that are going to hold your hand and walk you through the situation and find you help if you need help. She wanted to present her sister some options, but in her mind there was just no way she was going to let her sister go back and live in this condition when she knew about it. So, because, you know, she wasn't sure that maybe at this stage in, you know, in their lives that it would be nice to get a lump sum of money and just walk away from it. Just, you know, be able to have a fresh start. We would work closely with them to find all the items that they absolutely felt were important or that they needed. We would find them, locate them, pack them and move them on a truck to, you know, a reasonable distance location so that they could just start fresh and walk away. They thought about it, apparently, more than we realized and considered that, but, you know, for them, this is their home and they want to move back in their home for the time that they have left. You know, I think both of them have some health issues, so our job now is to make that in a realization for them. Movies, movies, movies. Hey, Joe, where were we putting the crazy movies? The good thing about this is that the rats carry disease and stuff. I mean, you would think that there had reptiles. There'd be snakes in here, but I haven't seen one yet. I don't like them. The rats are, I don't think, house cats. Kind of seven in a bar, yeah, 12. 12 rats in here? With hers, it would make number 12, yeah. But there were seven of them and then two big, they looked like house cats. I thought it was a cat when it ran by. There you go. Now, those are the little guys compared to... We're gonna go. I'm telling you, wow. Acrobatic. Spider rat. There you go. Go, go, go. There's a vacuum under here. Found a body. What's that? I haven't seen him since 1973. What is it? It's a skeleton in a bag. You know, and so one of the things that, as we were meeting with the owner, there's three full pallets of, you know, very expensive red mulch that's been out here for probably over a year. We talked about it. We decided we're going to, you know, donate some man hours and some time to the landscaping just so that if nothing else, when they drive up the street and they look at their home, you know, not only is it clean on the inside, but, you know, it has a freshened, you know, curb appeal look on the outside and a hundred times better than what it was. And I don't think, you know, a tree or a bush has been trimmed in, you know, eight years, so you can only imagine. You know, we can go home when at least we feel good that, you know, we are helping people. We're helping our community that we live in. Found a big nest in the garage with babies and probably about six adults we saw. That's all two in here so far. So sometimes during this clean-out we find things that are disturbing. We get it. It's the cycle of life. We just have to take care of that and those will be buried. We won't throw those in the trash. We know from some of the hoarding scenarios people don't have the resources. They're expensive, you know. This particular one's, you know, in the 20-plus and that doesn't even include any type of put-back repair, you know, deep clean, anything like that. This is just a massive level five and we're trying to connect with some non-profits, some victims, advocate groups that we've run into as we're following our biomedical and biohazard with the cities and the counties. This is our single largest one so far, but coincidentally just this past Sunday we went up north a little further and looked at a hoard that's probably a level five as well. Maybe you can kind of talk about how you deal with that. Right, yeah. I just reassured her, you know, I could just see when she looked at me just that look in her eyes was like, I'm so ashamed. I'm like, we're not here to judge. We're here to help you. We want to help you. We understand that it's an illness and I said, you know, you've taken that extra step and you're going to therapy and you recognize that you have an issue and, you know, she'd been out of her home for a couple of weeks and the first thing she said when we walked through the door was, oh my, I didn't remember it being this bad because the way she described it to me on the phone was like this. And we walk in is like this. Yeah. And you see this guy, he's still kind of in tax but kind of sad thing here is there's a whole reptile room. Looks like they were mostly snakes. I just want to say, I think through, you know, some of the challenges they've had over the years, I believe they may have all died in their cages but we are trying to work with the local main society and some other folks that deal with reptile rescue aquariums and such in there that you know, I think will make a nice thing for a shelter or something. So this is an interesting little find. So we have what we are calling the reptile room back here and apparently he would collect the venom from the snakes. So these are like little vial. These will go along with the donation as well. Electric part for us just trying to read the boxes what's inside. This particular case we're finding everything is new in the boxes but it's been so damaged by the rats with the urine and chewing on the boxes and they're creating little nests and having babies inside of the boxes. You've got to be careful as you can see. Definitely a trash poured. Definitely seeing a lot of overspending buying more than one thing but we kind of thought it was pretty funny that we're finding lots and lots of boxes of trash bags throughout the living room. New in the box. We saw the cat dealing live with one of the monster rats and I can tell you that cat wanted nothing to do with that rat. I think they've come to an agreement that that rat could kick his ass if he had to. That cat was not going to mess with it. He was by far outnumbered right? So it's a little after five and we've just wrapped up day one. We're setting up some rat traps right now I'm just going to try to catch a few of the big ones that are running around still. The homeowner just came through for a quick walk through. Very happy with what she was seeing. So I'm Greg Bowdoin. I've got like 32 years in construction been doing it since I was 18. We heard about this job on Craigslist. Watched the show a bunch of times and never really could imagine what it was like until you step into one of these houses. I'm a hoarder. I'm Jill. Actually I'm a lunch lady. I worked for the school district 17 years. I took some time off because we're replacing the house. So I took a lot of vacation time. Had over 600 hours so we got a little bored with doing the house so we thought we would come out and help these guys. It's unique. The rats the rodents, the garbage the smell I guess you get immune to the smell and you don't mind rats sleeping next to you. I mean it's just the fact that when you touch something I can't wash my hands enough. I go home over the weekend here you're eating dinner at the restaurant. I swear I can smell it. Yeah we're here to help. Make a difference. Make a difference. Maybe change somebody's way of thinking. By going and seeing their house cleaning. So here we are day two. Over here on the right we've started to bring out some of the homeowner's personal items things that still need to be decontaminated. We've got the landscaper here. He's back for day two for himself trimming around the trees so we can get to the windows. So today what we're hoping to accomplish is we are on our second 30 yard dumpster we've got another one coming at noon as we're working hard for restoring this home every single day. There's a new challenge that comes up so we keep moving forward. Ooh did something get you? There's a couple running around. Oh gosh it's coming my way. It was? It's actually worse inside the house than it is up here. Oh okay. Traps tricked but we didn't catch them and sometimes difficult to catch believe it or not rats are pretty smart little characters. As you can see this is the attic space. I'd say the rodent dropping is probably only 20% of the volume is what it is inside the house. I was up here a few minutes ago saw a couple running around looking at me up here so we're going to try to set some traps see if we can't catch a couple while we're down stairs working there's another one just moving. The request here was only trash on the floor but obviously these night stands and so forth I mean it's just absolutely full of trash rat droppings obviously we're going to continue to work with this client so that we can have them understand you know that trash on the floor is this is a much more serious scenario and we can't we can't really just work within that parameter it's just not reasonable so you're in and bottles just everywhere oh my god look at this crate right here it's all to the bottle to piss oh it tooks behind your neck first is that better there's a gun safe in there these boxes are empty this is like a military grade ammo box bomb empty they're not for guns I found tons of marbles and stuff oh one of them has a concealed weapons permit and I know she was looking for this so I just sent her a picture and says you know is this what you've been looking for look in my shoe and I see rat shit I guess that's why you tape tape around the top of your shoe we're able to donate our reptile tanks to a reptile rescue locally which is always fantastic so they're going to be on their way to come pick it up it's a queen now we know that it was look look we got a pookie does it smell good that is the question that's too bad I'm out of that box like like a spring rat trap and jumped on me and I was like ah knocking it off every time I heard somebody scream I'm like another rat found we're here doing it you don't smell it you know somewhere and like smell like a bump somebody pissed on you I got an Ashley's car and she's like oh my god get out it's Friday afternoon we made it for our luck of getting some good workers man we found we found three of the best in Fort Myers it's hard to stop you know it's even one of those things I do a saline nasal flush just to get anything out of your dant because it gets in your nasal passages well that respirator now that's a godsend you lose one of the filters off of it it's like where'd it go where'd it go I found it he did that's why I kept failing out of there I was like where's the filter the rat jumped on me I was like I'm out first thing we're going to do Monday is hopefully go pick up about six or eight rats and the traps that we set little sons of guns and they ate the cheese out of our traps and we didn't catch them last night better luck this time that's what we're going to do oh my gosh 2016 oh my gosh there's one of the vehicles actually in this box fight them oh my god oh my god thanks for watching guys don't forget to like share subscribe and ring that bell to be notified of the next episode for more information visit any of our locations