i know a pair of women that do it (crime and in-home deaths). they make very good money. my guess is they gross over $200k in a year for the team . they drive a brand new 3/4t van equipped with every cleaning supply known to modern man...including a pressure washer and in-truck carpet cleaning rig.

myself? no way i would do it for love nor money.

I'd do it if I had to to feed myself and family, I wouldn't do it for any of the amounts of money listed in the poll.

While I was in the Army a guy in our company, SPC Dane Maxey, killed himself sitting in the drivers seat of his Astro Van, it was about three NC summer days before he was found, weapon of choice I believe was a shotgun. After the investigation was over, they stored his van in out motorpool until his parents could get to NC to pick up his belongings, about six weeks later. His parents asked our 1SGT if he could have somebody clean the van up, before the picked it up, later that same day teh 1SGT asked me and two other buddies if Maxey had been our friend, we all said that we had always gotten along with him and liked him pretty well, but none of us were all that close to him. We got volunteered to clean the van up. It was disgusting, not a chore I would ever want to do again, and certainlyl not one I would do for a reasonable amount of money. The gore and smell were both pretty bad, but we did our best, I don't think that we were able to really get the smell completely out, we got most of the stains out of the seats and carpet, but the headliner was hopeless, plus it had several BBsized holes, appperantly he used birdshot.

ETA: Once we were done, our 1SGT gave us all a four and a half day weekend and the parents of the guy wrote us a really nice letter thanking us that I will never forget. It reminded me that every soldier is a part of a family, and that no matter how they die, thier parents still love them and will miss them.

Quoted: When I was a property manager I saw some pretty nasty stuff, including a putrefied body. Couldn't pay me to do it. Also, you haven't lived until you've opened a freezer stuffed with meat....in an apartment that has had the electric off for a month.

When I first bought my house, I bought it from a bank, as it had been foreclosed on. The previous owners had been renting it, and the previous tenents had been living in teh place for a couple of months with no power, and a fridge full of groceries, then the place went into foreclosure and sat empty for about a year and a half. After a certain period of time, all organic material turns into a goo, there wasn't much difference between the large package of fish and the gallon of milk. I shouldn't have bothered cleaning the fridge but there is a company in the area who will pick up unwanted appliances for free whether they work or not (I think the fridge worked, but i sure as hell wasn't going to use it), and it seemed wrong to make them haul it off in that condition.

I don't know why he decided it would be us, my guess is that the Provost Marshals office told him that it wasn't there responsibility to do anything but the investigation, and he didn't know what else to do. He shouldn't have waited so long is the biggest problem, That van sat fenced off in our motor pool for weeks, and it kind of creeped everybody out because we knew exactly what it was, and what had happened. My guess is that when the parents asked, he figured there was no way he could tell them to pound sand (although he probably, would have been within regs to do so). I think it has a lot to do with him being a ture Brown Shoe type, he was ancient, had served in the Korean war, Viet Nam and the Gulf War (he retired with 45 five year (took an act of congress for him to stay in after thirty I think), and he really believe in taking care of his own.

All the same that is one job I would have rather not done, but all the same I would have rather cleaned it ten times than to have made the guys parents have to deal with it, they were the kindest most decent peole I have ever met, they were farmers and he was thier only son, and even when they came to get his stuff, they wree not bitter at all. The letter they sent still makes me feel sad for them to this day.