⋅Killer Caught in His Own Snare⋅ 

Normally, we are “second responders,” meaning Advanced Bio Treatment professionals are on a crime scene after first responders—paramedics, police, crime-scene investigators, and the coroner— complete their work. So that evidence is preserved, we are not even permitted to enter a crime scene until authorities release it.

But a couple of summers back, we received what appeared to be a pretty routine call to an accident cleanup where bio-hazards in the form of blood and bodily fluids were present. The caller, however, had woven a crafty plot in which our cleaning professionals were unwitting first responders to a crime scene and unknowingly complicit in the criminal act of removing and destroying evidence.

Were it not for the perceptive senior technician on the scene, the caller who hired us likely would have gotten away with an atrocious crime. Instead, his master plan collapsed and he became a cold blooded killer caught in the act.

It was a hot, sticky July morning when we were dispatched to a home near Tampa, Florida. The homeowner, a clean-cut, professional young man named Scott, led our team through the front door  and into the double-car garage, where we immediately saw a large pool of blood next to the driver’s side door of an SUV, which was the only car parked in the garage. Scott then opened the back passenger door on the driver’s side, revealing a leather seat, which was covered in a lot of blood. There was also a pool of blood on the vinyl floor mat behind the driver’s seat.

“Our dog Roper was run over by a car last night, and I rushed him to the emergency vet,” Scott told us, tearing up and coughing.

“He didn’t make it. I can’t bear to –” Scott turned away, crossed his arms on his chest, and hung his head. “And I don’t want my kids to have to see this,” he whispered.

He seemed visibly shaken and struggled to maintain control. “I was hoping maybe you could get it completely cleaned up before they get home from their grandparents’ house, you know, so there’s no evidence of what—happened to Roper.”

Not a problem, I told him.

My first impression was that this was an awful lot of blood for a dog, even for a big dog, even for a very big dog that bled to death.

We cleaned the leather upholstery and we were able to remove all stains, but blood had dripped from the vinyl floor pad onto the carpet and soaked through, so we informed Scott that we would have to remove some of the carpet from the floorboard. Our first clue that something was not quite right was his reaction.

He was adamant that we try to clean the carpet and not remove any of it.

When we explained that any blood that had soaked through could be a bio-hazard and could cause odor problems and that we could only disinfect and deodorize by removing a portion of the carpet, he did not care. He simply wanted the stains gone, so before cleaning and disinfecting, we extracted as much blood as possible with a carpet cleaner.

 

Seeing Through the Facade

That’s when our senior technician made the first of two discoveries that would halt the cleaning and prompt us to call the authorities.

“Hey, come look at this,” he called to me. He had found two teeth under the front seat. They were not a dog’s teeth. They looked like human teeth, and they were very bloody. We just looked at each other.

“Better not touch them,” I said.

A growing sense that something was very wrong with this scene filled us both, and instinctively we started glancing around the garage.

My senior technician walked over to the far corner and was stooping down examining something as I approached him.

“I think you better call the police,” he said. “Now.”

He was looking at a crow bar propped against the wall behind a stack of boxes. The crow bar was caked with partially dried blood and matted hair. I’m no forensic scientist, but this did not look like dog hair.

“I’ve got a sinking feeling that we’re not cleaning dog’s blood out of that car,” my technician said. I had the same feeling.

We had already cleaned away a lot of the potential evidence, and we didn’t want to give this man a chance to get rid of the rest, so we did not open the garage door for fear of alerting him. I quietly called the police, and we pretended to continue working until they got there.

The man who hired us was arrested and charged with murdering his girlfriend and then transporting her body to the county landfill. His brilliant idea to hire Advanced Bio Treatment to remove and destroy all the evidence of his crime backfired on him; leading to a killer caught, thanks to the senior technician’s good eye and good instincts.

Because Advanced Bio Treatment quickly reported the evidence to law enforcement, officials were able to recover the body from the landfill before it, like much of the evidence in the car and garage, was destroyed.

Advanced Bio Treatment’s professionals specialize in removing all evidence of an accident or crime and restoring the home, business, or vehicle to a clean and safe environment—but we prefer to do so AFTER authorities have done their investigation!

We are available around the clock every day of the year. Our goal is to make a difficult, stressful time in your life as easy as possible for you. We work with your insurance company and also with partners in the community should you need assistance with services such as funeral directors and counselling. Please call us at 800-295-1684 for a free quote.