Richard Fleming and his wife, Alicia, went into the crime scene clean up business in Seattle afer she read the book “Mop Men,” says the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It is the story of Neal Smither, whose California-based Crime Scene Cleaners is franchising the idea. Hired after a recent suicide, the Flemings arrived with a duffel bag stuffed with disposable overalls made of the paperlike house wrap called Tyvek; rolls of super-absorbent paper towels; a special organic cleaner with an enzyme that dissolves dried blood; heavy-duty plastic garbage bags; rubber boots; and a pair of respirators.
The Post-Intelligencer describes one clean up job that paid $12,500. Most other jobs carry a flat fee charged to police. “We don’t charge them more than $50 for anything — cleaning their uniforms, their restraining racks, holding cells or their cars,” said Alice Fleming. “We don’t want to get rich off every job — but we do want every job.” The expertise for this kind of work is thin across the state. In Seattle, for example, you can thumb through the yellow pages and find no reference to crime-scene cleaning.
Link: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/257096_crimescene26.html