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nebbles1069188 karma

I used to do body removals for funeral homes. Moans are definitely a thing, especially when rolling a body to move them or remove clothing and place blocks. If you move them too much, they will defecate. They'll do that eventually anyhow, but you try really hard not to get that going while you're working with them in gloves and a womens' dress suit! The best part were the looks and freak outs caused both by the hearse, and by an 18-20 year old woman in the front of a hearse lol. You wouldn't believe the number of people who threw the evil eye. I'm near Youngstown, Ohio. You meet all kinds of people, from pro athletes to everyday working folks to the poorest of the poor. You see some tough things. The one baby removal I did was awful, and so much worse in retrospect after losing one of my own children as a 4 day old infant. People my age were also hard, you don't wanna think you're vulnerable to death that young....

nebbles106943 karma

I had a week-old African American female in her 50s, poor health, found by family. Coroner agreed to sign off after talking to her doctor, who said he'd sign off. She was facedown in the pillow, no room to Breathe. Tshirt pulled up, exposing her breasts. Hips on the edge of the bed, crotch at the edge, legs spread wide and hanging off the bed. No underwear. Blanket thrown over her nude lower half when/near the time she died. (This is my theory. Her feces was dry, yet stuck to the blanket. She was dead long enough for extreme skin slip, so bad her hair was slipping off with her scalp. Left the skin of her face on the pillow, so I could see her whole face was IN it, not just face down sleeping with a breathing hole. She was as white as my English/Irish self when we were done.) Dinner with a bite on the fork still on a TV tray on the room, placed kinda haphazardly out of the way. Family said they moved nothing. Said room was messier than she usually kept it, way more stuff on the floor, and drawers were ajar or askew. Closet open when normally closed, per family. I didn't ask, they just offered the info. We took her straight to the funeral home, where she was placed in a casket, externally embalmed (for those not in the know, they just dump some embalming fluid over the body) and the lid was sealed. I think someone got away with a rape/murder.

I'm no death investigator, I was just a 19 year old woman deeply interested in forensics/forensic pathology. It never occurred to me until after that we should have never touched her without the coroner's investigator ok, in person. I look back and it bothers me. Makes me want to go back to school and actually do it. Just gotta let the kids get a little older.

I heard of one my coworkers went on, lady was scraped off the kitchen floor with a snow shovel by the coroner she'd been there so long. Her cats has eaten most of her.

nebbles106937 karma

Thank you

nebbles106911 karma

I think an ambulance crew was in and out quickly once they caught a whiff (still mild thankfully, winter, even though the furnace was on) and maybe saw the skin slip. Doubt they really looked closely at the scene. I can close my eyes and see it (I have a partial photographic memory, it's why I remember everything I want to or was traumatic, and anything I read or watch that I find interesting. It's like my head is full of thumbnails that I can pull up and press play on.) This lady was my first (and only, thankfully) decomp that didn't come from the morgue. Those were pretty mild too.

About 2 years after I left the livery service, I was dating a guy who got a towing job. I brought him to work one morning, we were having an exceptionally hot July, and I went in to chat with the owner, they were my BFF's neighbors and I'd known them for years. I got out of my car, got a whiff of decomp, and told them they had a human corpse in one of their police impounds parked near the building. They tried to tell me the dogs had killed a few cats, and his guys would get rid of the cat bodies today. Guess who never found cats?

For 4 days, I'd drop my boyfriend off, the smell would be worse, I'd tell them I knew what human decomp smelled like, because it's unique, and they had a body. Full denial. After a 5th day, they couldn't handle the stench near the building anymore. They followed their noses to a black S-10 with a hard tam over the bed that they'd towed in 6 days before, found abandoned in a bad neighborhood, whose owner had mysteriously vanished. They got a crowbar, popped the tam, and found the owner of the truck in the back. He had been bound, and double tapped at the back of the head. A "quiet" mob hit. They'd then bagged his head and locked him in the bed of the truck. I RELISHED the "I told you so!"

For those curious, human decomp is like a couple of flyblown deer carcasses in the summer, but worse, and it still isn't the same as the deer carcass smell. Similar, but unique.

nebbles10694 karma

I plan to go into forensics or funerary sciences in another year or 2. My youngest turns 4 in May, once he is in school, I'll be free of all 4 kids and not know what to do with myself.