Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners

by Alan Emmins

  I have mixed feelings as I read the judge’s summary. Not about McKinnon coming to trial; as the judge said, there is probable cause to believe that McKinnon is guilty of the crime. I feel mixed because I am glad that McKinnon is being brought to trial, but disappointed that the transcript has come to an end and that I have no definite conclusion to the story.

  As I close the transcript I find myself instantly digging my cell phone out of my pocket. I am all of a sudden overwhelmed by the idea of attending the trial. There’s a part of me, having worked my way through this story via Shawn of Crime Scene Cleaners, Inspectors Toomey and Pera, and now the preliminary transcript, that finds myself wanting to see McKinnon in the flesh. To watch him answer for the crime.

  MISS MISERY

  On average, 2.5 million people die every year in America. Just fewer than 20,000 of those will be murdered, whereas some 32,500 people will commit suicide. That’s one person every seventeen minutes. For every successful suicide there are eight other attempts. Women attempt suicide more than men, but five times the number of men succeed in taking their own lives. The main determinants of suicide are depression, alcohol abuse, narcotics use, and separation or divorce. The most popular way to commit suicide is with a firearm. There are roughly 17,000 firearm suicides every year, which account for 52 percent of the suicide rate. The most up-to-date stats show that for the year recorded, 5,744 people poisoned themselves with drugs and other substances in a bid to end their lives, and 7,248 people chose suffocation or hanging. Second from last comes cutting or piercing, with 590 suicides. Finally, drowning accounted for 375 people in the recorded year.

  Since hanging around with the Crime Scene Cleaners, I have been giving serious thought to the choice of method by which people put an end to their own lives, and what these methods say about them.

  With a firearm you know you are going to leave an awful mess for somebody to find. Of course, you can choose to carry out this act at home, at work, or at a lover’s, but you could just as well drive into the woods, where you will likely be found by strangers walking their dogs. But, on the whole, suicides by gun seem not to have any consideration for what will be left behind or who will find that mess. It seems that the finality of a gun to the head outweighs all other concerns. When I say finality, of course, now and again people do miss. In general, however, by placing a gun against your head, or against the roof of your mouth, and pulling the trigger, you can be pretty sure of your success. So it could be argued that suicide by gun is first and foremost all about securing your outcome. There is a visual aspect, but I don’t think that is the overriding factor in the decision. Such decisions are born out of pain and the overwhelming desire to put a stop to it immediately. But the reality isn’t always so.

  In fact, people often survive suicide when trying to shoot themselves in the temple or through the mouth. The recoil of the gun is rarely considered, especially by those unused to handling firearms. The recoil often redirects the aim, so people end up removing portions of their frontal lobe and still live, some to tell the tale, others to sit vegetating as a symbol of the act.

  Hanging is a different kettle of fish. I can’t help but see hanging as theater. Sure, death rules the day, but by choosing hanging you have considered the visual aspect of your statement. You are not leaving just the mark of death but a complete and well-composed scene. Because hanging is as much about the preparation and presentation as it is the final result of death. You form an idea of how it should look before you even begin on practicalities. That image is likely to be of an entire room, not just noose, neck, and tongue. Only once you have that wide-angle image, might you start to look around for a suitable beam. What will you use for a rope? It should be strong, of course; you wouldn’t want it to break. (Or would you? It is theater, after all.) You’ll place a chair in the middle of the room and check the height against your noose. You might at that point step down and smoke a cigarette, drink a whiskey, maybe not, but you will give thought to the reaction of the person who will find you: that’s the whole reason for your chosen method. You are playing to an audience of one and generally try to time it so that nobody but the chosen will find you.

  Even though as a method it is relatively clean, hanging is not about the avoidance of mess, it is about visual drama. It’s a photograph that will never fade. Once you have the stage set just so, you will step up to the noose, tighten it around your neck, and kick away the chair. There’s an element of vanity in hanging: you are a showman and you are not so much having the last word as posing the final question.

  In fact, that is what a hanged body often looks like, with its snapped neck and slightly bent legs: a dead question mark.

  Hanging seems terribly unfair. You pose the final question while at the same time telling the viewer that he or she is too late. The person may have the answer but the buzzer has gone. Live with it.

  Hanging is also popular as a cry for help. People set the stage and then wait by the window for their audience to arrive. A friend once relayed a personal story regarding a family member who admitted to planning it this way. It made me think of surprise birthday parties. I couldn’t get beyond the, “She’s here/he’s here/it’s now” moment.

  Surpriiiise!

  Poison by carbon monoxide, on the other hand, is completely without pomp. It’s quiet, mundane even, but, most important, it is incredibly adult and mature. I can’t get away from the fact that poison, especially in a car, is the only true form of suicide. It is just about you, you and death, and in that decision all is calm. It’s calm because of all the methods, carbon-monoxide poisoning comes with a get-out clause that lasts into the process.

  With shooting, you do not start the actual process of killing yourself until you pull the trigger, and then it’s over (recoil permitting) in a flash. With hanging, the process of death begins not with the preparation but when you kick the stool away; it may not be over in a flash, but there is little you can do once the creaking starts. With suffocation by car fumes, the process of killing yourself starts when you close the car door and start the engine. Even with an old carbon-monoxide-producing heap of a car, you will be conscious for a couple of minutes. The process is in motion, but you can open the door and jump out at any time. Sure, you will need medical attention—carbon-monoxide poisoning is very serious—but there is still some time allotted to act on any doubt.

  Carbon-monoxide poisoning is not, like is often believed, clean. It may not even be painless. When carbon monoxide is inhaled, it takes the place of oxygen in the hemoglobin, the red blood pigment that normally carries oxygen to all parts of the body. Carbon monoxide binds to hemoglobin up to several hundred times more strongly than oxygen, and its effects are cumulative and long-lasting, causing oxygen starvation throughout the body. At 6,400 parts per million (0.64 percent), headaches and dizziness come in one to two minutes. Death in less than twenty minutes. But at what point do you pass out? This is hard to record and an unethical experiment. But the effects on the body due to this poisoning are severe and have been reported to include swollen tongues, ruptured capillaries, and burst eyeballs.

  Cutting, wrist cutting in particular, strikes me as being closely linked to hanging. It is a visual communication, but one slightly more aggressive than hanging. Neal described it as “… the final ‘fuck you’ to everyone around you.”

  I think he is right. But it is a prolonged “fuck you.” Death is not instant: if you choose to cut your wrists as a means to death, you are in no great rush. You are not looking for instant death: on the contrary, you want to feel life ebbing out of you.

  Wrist cutting is also artistic.

  There is no denying that it is visually striking. Unless you are going to get up really close, what you are going to see is a body relaxing in a bath of red water, maybe with the arms hanging outside and some blood on the floor. As a piece of art it conjures up something sacrificial. The point being made is not one-upmanship; it’s not about right or wrong, it’s about being superior. “I am be
tter than this, I am better than you, and so I have moved on. Stay put, schmuck!”

  The statement is aesthetic. It is final, undiluted, and as an image it remains cemented in the mind of whoever finds you.

  Building jumpers are looking for something else. They are going out with a rush, riddled with sensation. Then it’s over. Simple as that. One minute you’re flying, then you’re not. It’s a bit like flicking a switch.

  Train jumpers I do not get. What are they thinking? How is jumping in front of a train a serious option for people wanting to die? It’s not guaranteed and certainly not painless. I have interviewed police officers and firemen in New York City who told stories of train jumpers who actually ended up under the trains, mangled, but alive. It’s common that these people get twisted and bound up and are held together by the pressure of the train pinning them in place. Only once the train is moved do they spill out and die. One officer even told me of a case when they didn’t move the train until a loved one had arrived to say good-bye.

  I can’t see any statement with such suicides, unless it is despair. Maybe in a flash you are overcome with rage (dare I say against the machine?) and take a running jump at the nearest symbol of a frustrated life.

  Maybe it is connected to strength, or a lack of it. Maybe you want to die but can’t go all the way. You can manage only 70 percent of the job and need somebody else to see it through. Maybe you are putting the responsibility in somebody else’s hands, making him or her complicit in your demise.

  I remember reading about a woman in Devon, England, who had sat waiting at a bus stop. As the bus went into gear and began to pull away she dashed over, knelt down, and stuck her head in front of the back wheel. She had wanted to die, for sure, but had not the means to carry it out. The most she could do was put herself in death’s path.

  The most expensive suicide I read about in my research was that of Air Force Captain Craig Button, who (according to the official report released by the air force) killed himself by flying his A-10 fighter plane into the thirteen-thousand-foot Gold Dust Peak in Colorado.

  The A-10 Thunderbolt costs $9.8 million.

  If I ever decided that the game was up, an A-10 would suit me just dandy. But if I didn’t have access to an A-10 Thunderbolt, I am certain I would want the least painful and the least messy option available.

  Neal, of course, would not want to hear these words. If I were to start promoting my clean method of suicide he would be bankrupt in no time at all. (On reflection, this isn’t true. He would definitely outmarket me and outwork me.) If Neal were to have a suicide-advice line, it would be on the best way to do it—for him. He would certainly recommend the shotgun as the de rigueur option, double barreled, preferably with you in the center of the room.

  “Okay, so now you’ve got your shotgun loaded. Take a seat in your armchair …”

  A good friend of mine used to work in a large bookshop in Piccadilly, London. When I say big, I mean six floors and half a million books. The exterior and interior of this bookshop are beautiful and a reason to visit in themselves. Inside, there’s a big set of stairs that wind their way around an atrium. It’s the atrium that sticks in my mind, because I remember clearly the day when Sean called me and said, “You won’t believe what’s just happened here: a customer just climbed to the top floor and took a dive down the stairwell.”

  Apparently, after colliding with an art nouveau chandelier, the man proceeded to bounce and crash all the way down to the marble floor in the basement. He died on site.

  No connection was ever made between the man and Waterstone’s Books, and the retailer was in no way accountable. The stairwell had a high railing; the man had dragged over a chair and had stood on it in order to clear the banister.

  I remember thinking that it was a strange place to kill yourself. I mean, what is it he was trying to say? Why a bookshop? Why this bookshop? Who was the audience? I wanted to know this stuff. I didn’t want to accept that the location was meaningless.

  It had to mean something. Tell me it was a protest against a complacent middle class, in particular. Tell me it was a protest against deforestation, or against one particular book.

  I remember talking to Sean a couple of weeks later and asking, “Did you ever hear why that man committed suicide in your shop?”

  “No; it seems there was no connection to Waterstone’s or the location itself. It’s bizarre,” he told me. “But amongst the staff here we have settled on the suicide as being the ultimate form of criticism.”

  So this strange event passed without there really being any knowledge as to why this man chose to commit suicide, or why he chose such a location and method. The easy assumption is that he was depressed, that is the word that most often gets thrown around with suicide. But what about the idea of completion? Suicide is the only way you can complete your story on your terms. If what you are after is total control, then suicide is a must.

  There’s also shame. Death in itself is the ultimate form of escapism. You could get caught in your local village copulating with a farm animal, the shame of which would probably lead you to escape to another town, far, far away from past furry romances. But what happens when the shame is on a much grander scale? Take former Enron executive J. Clifford Baxter, for example, who shot himself through the right side of the head while sitting in his Mercedes. Baxter was reportedly unhappy with Enron practices and ultimately resigned as vice chairman (though he stayed on as a consultant). He had made over twenty million dollars from Enron stocks in the years leading up to the scandal and bankruptcy. He was named in a shareholder lawsuit, was subpoenaed by the congressional committee investigating the Enron affair, and was expected to give evidence.

  In his suicide note he wrote to his wife, Carol, “… where there was once great pride now it’s gone.”

  When it came to escapism, Baxter didn’t just head to the next town over; he escaped to the farthest possible destination.

  Freud wrote that as humans we are driven by two conflicting fundamental desires: the life drive, which concerns itself with survival (reproduction, hunger, thirst, and sex) and the death drive. The death drive represents an intrinsic urge in all of us to return to a state of calm: to an inorganic or dead state. The death drive moves us toward extreme pleasure, which in Freud’s opinion is a state of nothingness; it’s the result of a complete reduction in stimuli, the state a body enters after having been exposed to extremity. Pushed by chaos and noise, sought out by our own desires, any one of us could make the leap to calmer waters. Any one of us is capable of suicide and actually has a built-in desire for the peace it would bring.

  In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus introduces his philosophy of the absurd: man’s futile search for meaning and clarity in the face of an unintelligible world. He poses what he considers to be the only real philosophical question that matters: does the realization of the meaninglessness and absurdity of life require suicide?

  He concludes by comparing the absurdity of modern man’s life with that of Sisyphus, a figure in Greek mythology who was condemned to a lifetime of repeatedly pushing a rock up a mountain, only to see it roll down again. Camus concludes, “The struggle itself … is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

  The conclusion is that the realization of the absurd does not require suicide; quite the opposite, by accepting the absurd we are spared and are rewarded with happiness.

  It’s those who question the meaninglessness of life generally, of their own lives specifically, who are edging nearer to suicide, nearer to Neal Smither and his band of merry men.

  Neal has mastered the absurdity of life. He is Sisyphus. He wakes up each day, kisses his wife and child good-bye, and goes to work, washing away the blood and brains of the previous day’s departures. He comes home, eats dinner, goes to sleep, and wakes up in the morning with the prospect of washing away the blood and brains of the previous day’s departures. I am convinced that Neal will live happily until natural death takes him gently
away.

  MISCREANTS ON THE LOOSE

  It’s eleven a.m. when my phone rings, and I already have a pen in my hand when I answer.

  “Alan—Neal. What’s up, buddy?”

  “I’m good.”

  “You up?”

  “Sure am.”

  “You have fun yesterday?”

  “Yeah, I did. I mean, to be honest with you, I was just relieved that something happened. I was starting to worry that I wouldn’t get enough for my book. But that’s terrible and I—”

  “Dude, never worry. It always comes. You just gotta keep praying for death. And you were praying like a motherfucker, weren’t you?”

  “Yeah, I was. But, Neal … shit. That’s just awful. I mean, I really was, but I feel a bit messed up right now….”

  “Oh, Alan, fuck it. This shit happens without you. They didn’t die because you wanted your story. They just fucking died. Don’t get yourself all wet over it. Anyway, listen, I got a nice one for you. You still want it?”

  Once again I am with Shawn, standing in the middle of the most awful mess. But this is nothing like the continuous dripping of a slit wrist, or the splatter from a shotgun.

  “Apparently,” Shawn tells me, “it was drink. I suppose he just drank until his liver burst.”

  The house is a typical, big, middle-class multiroomed thing in the middle of a street lined with big, middle-class houses. The room in which the bulk of the problem exists was clearly not a pretty sight before it was coated in blood. You can smell the alcohol everywhere, although most of that is coming from the blood. Every surface, the corners of the room, and the adjoining bathroom are filled with beer bottles, wine bottles, and liquor bottles.