Chapter 1: What warning does the host provide before the episode begins?
A warning before we begin. In this episode, Donna describes several crime scenes in graphic detail. The conversation includes references to domestic violence, suicide, and the death of a child. Please listen with care. Donna Naylor pulls up in front of a house in Ballina, just below the New South Wales Queensland border.
Chapter 2: What graphic details does Donna share about crime scenes?
the first thing she sees is a bloody handprint on the front door. Sheets and doona covers have been plastered on the windows to stop the outside world looking in. If you feel unsafe at any time, I want you to call the police. The officer who lets her in says... She enters, and as soon as her eyes focus on the hallway, she feels a gasp of horror rising in her throat.
It looks like five litres of red paint has been thrown down it. Smears made by hands can be seen all along the walls. It's blood. Endless amounts of blood. She soon discovers it in every room of the house. In the bedroom, a wooden bed frame lies in pieces on the floor. In the skirting board next to it, a gaping hole. This is a murder scene. One of the worst Donna has ever seen.
And she's been hired to clean it. 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?
It was something that I saw on a TV show when I was younger. It was about a man that was cleaning crime scenes. I'd never heard of it before. I didn't know anyone that had heard of it and it just sparked something inside me. He had the personality that I do and he spoke about how much money he made.
So there were two things that, you know, I like helping people as well and I didn't realise to the effect of how much I really liked helping people. So I started researching and my career took off.
How do you become a crime scene cleaner in Australia? Because you were talking about how it's quite a tight-lipped society.
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Chapter 3: How did Donna transition from hairdressing to crime scene cleaning?
So, yeah, you have to be very careful. That was only one incident that I had the whole time. But it's still bothering you. It's still bothering me. Yeah, I must have just mustard wiped.
So we've talked about what you wear, but what do you bring to a job like this? I have a full truckload.
Everything and anything that you can think of, even from a jackhammer through to a tiny toothbrush. It's so wide. I mean, it's demolition as well as cleaning. So you need to make sure that you've got everything that's there.
So it's not as easy as like a spray bottle and a cleaning cloth.
No, it's hard work.
Very hard work. Once you have the job, what does your day-to-day look like? Is it an everyday job? Is it just in, I know you were based in Queensland, or are you being flown across the country?
I was flown and I drove around most of the country. So you're on call 24-7. That's the hardest part. So I could be sitting here chatting with you now, my phone could ring and then I would have to go. So
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Chapter 4: What are the challenges of cleaning a murder scene?
Sometimes I'd be at one job, I hadn't even finished it, and another one would come in. Some jobs can take a day, some can take weeks. Everything's so different. But I was very busy.
You mentioned money. Can we talk money? How lucrative is it?
It's changed now. The market is flooded. I mean, when I started, there wasn't many of us doing it. So we did get paid very handsomely. It is more well known now. There's an episode on The Simpsons that's got a crime scene cleaner. CSI have a crime scene cleaner come in at the end. You've got the movie, The Cleaner, Sunshine Cleaning.
So a lot of people, just like I did, see it and say, I could do this. And so a lot of people do try. So they're on about a quarter of what I was on back then now. Wow. And who is paying you? Who are the clients? Well, this was the thing that really shocked me and was quite sad. It would be people like yourself.
So if you own a home and something happens in your home, it's the homeowner that pays for it. I did do some work with the police. I've done some work with the government as well. Everything is so different, but it's generally the families. And that's the hardest to go there, which is why I liked it. You would want me to turn up.
Having that hairdresser background, I had the empathy that it wasn't, I wanted to help them to make them, you know, make some part of it disappear. It wasn't just money, but to have to say, oh, and by the way, it's going to cost X, Y, Z. it's a hard thing to do. They're already going through so much.
I can imagine not everyone can afford your service. So what would people do if they couldn't afford a service?
So I did have that.
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Chapter 5: How does Donna handle the emotional impact of her job?
I've had that a couple of times. So sometimes they don't have to have us there. It does cause a lot of danger if body fluids are left in the house still. It can make people sick. It's not okay. So I would generally clean up what the worst part of it was and then I would guide them to when the hazardous was gone, I would help them restore it.
But it sounds like, you know, mothers, nephews, aunties are all cleaning up. Yeah. The worst thing they've ever seen because they wouldn't be able to afford someone like you.
There is though sometimes, depending on the scene, there is victim's assist. So sometimes the government will help in certain situations so that bill can go towards myself, the funeral.
Tell me about your first official job. It was another drug lab.
Yes.
Yes. What happened? What was the situation?
That was a little bit scary. There were some naughty people that were involved in that. It was a gentleman who was cooking drugs in his house, in his garage, and he decided to not pay his mortgage. So they came to change the locks and when they did, they saw what they saw. So we got flown up to... you know, take it back over. But he was still out and he was sending people around, threatening us.
By the end, he was okay. There was 150 needles that were on the floor that I found. There was a baby that was crawling around. So, I mean, at the end, he realized for the safety, it was better for us to be there. I mean, he was caught anyway. It wasn't us that caught him. We never worked. I didn't work for the police. You know, I did jobs if they needed us, but I wasn't a part of that.
So once he understood that it was safety, But it was pretty daunting and pretty scary to start with. Especially as your first job.
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Chapter 6: What safety measures does Donna take while working?
That one was mind-blowing. He had roommates. Sorry, guys. I could smell him from the front of the house. That was still living in the house? They were still in the house. The girl was inviting a Tinder date over. I could hear her on the phone while the crime scene cleaners are in the house saying, Yeah.
Did it surprise you how some humans are willing to live this job? Yes, yes.
Make sure you clean your house in case a crime scene cleaner comes in. Change your undies in case you get hit by a bus. Clean your house in case a crime scene cleaner comes through. I can spot hoarding houses a mile away. Why? There's certain aspects to them that once you can see it from the outside, I just know what's going on on the inside. It's very common. And it's not like the show Hoarders.
That's got nothing on what I've got.
Can you describe the cleanup when a body has been there for a number of days? Because I can imagine that takes... a lot of different products, uh, a body decomposing. What does that, what does that involve for you?
Uh, it would probably be my least favorite. It would, you know, there was mush, there was hair, there was maggots. The smell is like, is unbelievable. Um, I'd wipe Vicks under my nose so that I, you know, had a little bit of freshness that was there. But if, if somebody's sitting on a lounge, it will go through the lounge. Um,
So you've got to cut that out because you have to dispose of things the right way as well.
Yeah.
You can't just throw it in the bin. And then it starts seeping. And it will seep up the walls as well.
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Chapter 7: What are the financial aspects of being a crime scene cleaner?
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What made you keep going back? What was rewarding or was it the money? Like, what made you want to keep doing it?
It's a hard thing to say. I enjoyed my job. You know, I got a lot of... I don't know the correct word for it, but I felt so good after doing it and restoring things back to normal. I liked helping the people. You know, as I said before, I'd want me to turn up. You know, if anything was happening to my family, I'd want it to be me. So, you know, I...
The job satisfaction that I got out of it, I was making a difference. I was definitely making a difference. I think so.
You were a hairdresser turned cleaner. I'm interested to know, like some of your colleagues, how they ended up in the job. Did people kind of find their way there in interesting ways?
I mean... as I said, when I started, there was only a couple of us that were doing it. And it was just something that they had started off, you know, doing a cleaning business, which a lot do, and then kind of branched into it and then would just pull, you know, friends that were into it. I could always take someone to a job with me.
So I would take, you know, if I needed to take a friend with me along. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes. Yeah. They had to have a strong stomach.
Yeah.
While working this job, you made a habit to start calling your family every day. When did that start and why did that start?
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