Gemma Bath

I'm Gemma Bath and you're listening to True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them.

That balliner job haunts Donna.

She can still see the smiling photos of the couple on the fridge.

But after witnessing what he did to her in that house, she felt her pain in every room.

She thinks of that young woman often.

Donna Naylor was a hairdresser on the Gold Coast of Australia for nearly a decade before deciding to turn her life on its head at the age of 25 to become a crime scene cleaner instead.

It's a job that required her to walk alongside death, witness unimaginable grief and see scenes reminiscent of horror films.

Some jobs took hours.

Some took weeks.

On occasion, she'd need a month.

Donna's job was to make things disappear as if they had never happened.

But what she saw while doing that, it's hard to comprehend.

Donna spent six years as a crime scene cleaner before making the decision to walk away.

She's written a book about her experience.

It's called Bloodstains and Ballgowns.

Donna joins us now to take us inside her world.

Donna, thank you for joining us on True Crime Conversations.

Your first career was as a hairdresser.

How do you go from hair to crime scene cleaning?

How do you become a crime scene cleaner in Australia?