“The Crime Scene Cleaner,” Frankfurter Neue Presse

The crime scene cleaner

What drives him? How does he process what he sees? Marcell Engel has his own methods. The crime scene cleaner recently reported at a speaking competition – and won. Now he has literally tasted blood and wants to appear more often as a speaker.
BY UTE VETTER

Frankfurt

He comes wherever death has left its mark. Marcell Engel (46) wipes up blood, scrapes away tissue residues, removes bugs, body fluids and the smell of corpses. If necessary, he has to break open walls and floors. For a quarter of a century, the 1.98 meter tall, 115 kilogram, athletically built man (“I used to box, now I appreciate Asian martial arts”) has been a retrospective witness to crimes, accidents and suicide. He is called to apartments where bodies have lain for weeks and the windows are black with flies. “Many people can't stand that for long, the dropout rate in the job is very high, you have to be mentally stable,” says the founder and managing director of the Frankfurt company “Akut SOS Clean – The Special Cleaner”, which operates throughout Germany.

Crime scene cleaning is a tough job. Physical work combined with extreme psychological stress are reasons why there is a shortage of offspring. “It can’t be the salary; a good crime scene cleaner can earn between 2,500 and 3,500 euros net,” says Engel. Around 300 people work for him on a permanent and freelance basis; including 100 qualified pest controllers alone. To ensure that inexperienced colleagues stay mentally on track, Engel recommends, among other things, movement exercises to achieve positivism and self-confidence before going to a crime scene. “I often get looked at strangely for that, but I don’t care,” says the giant, stands up, stretches his arms towards the sky, clenches his powerful hands and breathes deeply in and out. This helps you not to “break yourself down”. Because the following applies to many missions: “We clear away the lives of deceased people.”

Dramatic cases

Engel, born in Bad Soden, spent his childhood and youth in Niederrad. He has been living in Bad Soden again for three and a half years; with his second wife, their three small children and the 27-year-old son from his first marriage. “The older one is already involved in the company,” says the father proudly. When asked about special missions, he remembers. For example, the 240 kilogram woman who lay dead in her apartment unnoticed for a long time. “She experienced bullying at an early age because of her obesity, buried herself at home for years and died of obesity.” Relatives told him about it. Another woman, morbidly jealous, beat her submissive husband around the apartment with a hammer so mercilessly that the blood sprayed all the way to the ceiling. "She was sick. After the crime, she smoked a cigarette on the balcony. She was barefoot, her bloody footprints were everywhere. Her husband survived, seriously injured."

Engel got his job via a detour. "I trained as a coachbuilder and car mechanic. Every now and then I would fix up used cars and sell them for a little profit. When I found out that a man had killed himself with a shot in the head in one of these cars, I found it exciting," he says. When selling, he did not withhold the relevant information. “I am an honest person,” he emphasizes.

He soon changed gear, first working in the security/alarm systems sector before founding his first cleaning company. He has long been a specialist, has completed “at least 40 qualification certificates and further training courses”, uses knowledge from chemists, writes hygiene plans and manuals, has been disinfecting Bundeswehr aircraft since 2015 (they could bring pathogens with them from missions abroad), has been a partner of the Bundeswehr since this year and supports military facilities in operations to combat pandemics and epidemics by designing disinfection measures and special strategies. Also for them
He works for the Federal Police, Deutsche Bahn and Lufthansa Technik.

Borderline experiences

Engel is an ambitious man. He wants to start an academy. Because: “There are many good cleaning ladies. But good special cleaners are rare.” smells of decay
Putrefactive processes, odors in hoarder apartments or from excessive animal husbandry, mold, feces, nicotine, butyric acid or fire damage cannot be removed simply by cleaning. “Only complete destruction of the odor molecules leads to neutralization and odorless and germ-free room air.” The places where corpses were found often left behind a strong smell of decomposition, especially if the body had been lying for a long time - including in the surrounding apartments, stairwells and hallways.

Professional disinfection and odor neutralization is carried out in accordance with relevant laws. He neutralizes the odors using hot steam that penetrates deep into every building material using bionizers (helper bacteria) and/or ozone generators as well as a halogen disinfection odor conversion. He has specially developed a “Smoke-Ex”. And then I studied chemistry and now bio-chemistry. What he no longer does: Clean and clear out a hoarder's apartment when the resident is at home. “I can’t take this anymore.” And he generally doesn't talk about cases in which children play a role.

Over time, Marcell Engel developed an ever greater desire for cleanliness. Also in private life: "Yes, I like to clean and help around the house. Cleaning is my passion." And he is curious: When the Notre Dame church in Paris burned, he thought about the heavy metal contamination there, because his job also involves dealing with fire damage and the decontamination of sometimes highly toxic substances. He looked for the French fire damage renovator, contacted him, and in October he will go to Paris, find out more, learn something - and create documentation.

 

Death and wisdom of life

He is a doer. For example, in 2014, when the topic of Ebola came up, he created a hygiene advice hotline for the federal government. “I didn’t earn anything from it, but I wanted to be able to call this collaboration and use it for my own benefit,” he says. He now also has a knack for self-promotion. He recently fascinated the audience with his story at an international “Speaker Slam,” a speaker competition, and, despite being a newcomer, received the “Excellence Award” from the expert jury. Over 200 participants from 18 nations were represented in Düsseldorf, and he was one of the finalists who were honored for their five-minute presentation.

This inspires Engel, he now has a PR consultant and wants to start his own speaking tour soon. Because he likes to talk and has a sense of mission. "As a crime scene cleaner, I have been confronted with death thousands of times. Okay, I will indulge in a certain amount of voyeurism. But above all, I want to encourage people to think about life before death. Every person should try to be happier and more content."