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Criminal

A Bucket, a Mop, and a Sledgehammer

Criminal

Vox Media Podcast Network

True Crime, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.738.4K Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2019

⏱️ 22 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

After a crime occurs, or when someone dies, the police aren’t responsible for cleaning up. That’s not their job. The coroner takes the body, the police conduct their investigation, and then everyone leaves. But the blood, and the rubber gloves, and the uneaten food in the refrigerator are all left behind. Sandra Pankhurst didn’t like imagining that. So she decided to clean it up. She became a crime scene cleaner. To learn more about Sandra’s story, you can read The Trauma Cleaner, by Sarah Krasnostein. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Support for this show comes from Krakan.

0:03.0

Krypto is like the financial system, but different.

0:07.0

It doesn't care where you come from, what you look like, your credit score,

0:11.0

or your outrageous food delivery habits.

0:13.7

crypto is finance for everyone everywhere all the time.

0:18.4

Krakhan, see what crypto can be.

0:21.3

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose all the money you invest.

0:25.0

This is a high-risk investment, and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong.

0:30.0

This episode contains descriptions of crime scenes and may not be suitable for everyone.

0:37.0

Please use discretion.

0:40.0

I have this disease to please, as Oprah would say, and I have this disease to please as Oprah would say and I have the need to sort of help people

0:46.4

through their issues or help people with their problems.

0:50.0

And so with the funeral home I was really, really in my element.

0:55.0

I could just sort of help people through, talk them down,

0:58.6

make them feel more at ease after what they've just been through. In 1987, Sandra Pankhurst was working at W.D. Rose and Sun funeral home in Melbourne, Australia,

1:10.0

where she says she pretty much did everything.

1:13.0

She prepared bodies for viewing, helped families plan all the details of the funeral,

1:18.7

and then oversaw the ceremony itself.

1:21.2

She says, it was the perfect job for her because she isn't

1:26.2

afraid of death or dead bodies and she loved the work. It was at the funeral home that she met the man she'd later married.

1:36.0

The joke of it is and as serious as it is.

1:39.0

People used to say to me, how did you meet your husband?

...

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