Ex-Crime Scene Cleaner in Chicago Talks About the Call That Haunted Him Most: ‘You Are Meeting Somebody on The Worst Day of Their Life’

Those who deal with death for a living have seen things normal people will not be able to stomach. Justin (@gringofurioso), who is a former crime scene cleaner from Chicago, shared a call that haunted him the most. It doesn’t involve ghosts, but it was definitely a terrific scene for everyone else involved.

Justin said that he is often asked about the craziest and goriest scene he’s ever been in. His response to the question involved a crime scene involving a husband and a wife.

“I would tell people about the call that still haunts me, and not so much because of the crime scene itself but because of the people involved and what had happened,” Justin told TikTok.

“The story I want to tell you today is one of a man who took his own life with a shotgun in the middle of an argument with his wife directly in front of her,” he disclosed. At the time, this was Justin’s first side call. He packed as usual and got into what he would humorously call his “murder van” for work. It was a white van that he jokingly believes Dexter would drive.

But jokes aside, Justin drove to the scene of the crime. It was a 45-minute drive, and Justin wasn’t given all the details prior to arriving. It was only 20 minutes into the drive that he was even informed that the wife, who had witnessed the grizzly death, would be at the crime scene.

When Justin arrived, he said that the “awfulness” of the scene started before he had even stepped out of his vehicle.

The sound of grief

“At the start, it sounded sort of like a tea kettle that was boiling, like a high-pitched whistle,” Justin described the odd noise. But as he got closer to the house, the sound became even more defined. At first, he thought it was the sound of an ambulance siren wailing off in the distance. But that wouldn’t make sense, as there were no more responders in the area.

“When I turned off the ignition and got out of the car, I realized exactly what the sound was,” he said, feeling his instincts kick in at the time. Justin continued, “It was the woman whose husband had shot himself. She was wailing.” Justin brought the term “keening” up in relation to the sound.

“Honestly, I can only describe it as the sound of pure grief—the sound of total, absolute loss and emotional destruction,” he recalled. Without stepping into the house, the sound alone had haunted Justin.

The crime scene

Justin claimed that the argument happened in the living room. He also said that the man had “a history of putting his hands on her,” the wife. When the last argument reached its peak, the man went into the bedroom, came out with a 0.410 shotgun, and pointed it under his chin.

The man cussed his wife out. Those would be his last words before pulling the trigger. Justin, who had witnessed the scene of the crime, said that he had to deal with a popcorn ceiling.

“The popcorn ceiling above him was heavily cratered and impacted with blood, and brains, and bones. There were a lot of tiny skull fragments that had embedded themselves into the popcorn ceiling,” Justin recalled. Popcorn ceilings are notoriously difficult to maintain and clean because of their uneven texture. Justin said that if the popcorn ceiling were red, it would be especially difficult to discern between the ceiling, bones, and brain matter.

Showing compassion to the grieving as a crime scene cleaner

The wife asked Justin and the rest of the cleanup crew not to scrape the ceiling. Although Justin said it would have been quicker to clean if they’d scraped the ceiling, he chose to honor the request.

“I feel like it’s important to honor those types of requests, not just from a customer service standpoint, but as a crime scene cleaner, you are meeting somebody on the worst day of their life,” Justin said. Although he’s no longer a crime scene cleaner, he showed profound appreciation for his experience.

“Nowhere else in my life had I been able to perform a service for somebody that was so meaningful. I am scrubbing and erasing the horrible memory from their home and making it inhabitable again,” he said. The call was haunting, but Justin gave an update to the wife in the story.

A family friend of the wife found Justin’s story and was able to confirm that the woman is doing better. She went on to remarry a good man and has moved away from the house Justin cleaned up. There’s light at the end of the tunnel, and it seems that she walked right to it.

(featured images: Michelangelo Buonarroti, Jakub Pabis)

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