For most people, the work would be unbearable for even 24 hours — but Donna Nayler did it for six years.
The Australian crime scene cleaner has spoken about the reality of attending some of the nation’s most confronting environments, from advanced decomposition to extreme hoarding homes piled with human waste — and how the job reshaped the way she sees people and their lives.
Donna, who spoke on Mamamia’s True Crime Conversations podcast, entered the industry at 25 after eight years working as a hairdresser. After watching a television program about crime scene cleaning, she felt pulled toward the work and decided to pursue it. At the time, the field was still relatively small in Australia — and the pay reflected that.
“When I started there wasn’t many of us doing it, so we did get paid very handsomely,” she said.
Her schedule was relentless: she was effectively on standby around the clock, ready to fly anywhere in Australia with little warning. Most of the time, the people hiring her were families dealing with sudden and devastating loss.
Across the many scenes she attended, one case has remained more vivid than all the others — the one she says still “haunts” her.
Donna was sent to a house in Ballina, New South Wales, after a woman had been murdered by her male partner the night before. Wearing full protective equipment when she arrived, she encountered what she described as an extraordinarily brutal scene.
“What I saw I will never unsee, and I can still see it right now. I could picture the whole scene and piece everything together, it was a night of fun and drinking that turned violent,” she said.
“She was the same height as me, her head imprint was on the wall as it went along. Her blood was over pretty much everything.”
The destruction ran through the home: the bed frame was broken apart, a head-sized hole had been punched into the skirting board, and blood had spread down the hallway and into multiple rooms.
One part of it, she says, has stayed with her more than anything else.
“I wish she had just made her way around him somehow and got out the front door,” Donna said. “She ended up in the back of the house, so the violence grew, and she was found deceased in her bedroom.”
While she worked to remove the evidence of what happened — and as the victim’s devastated family returned repeatedly to the door — Donna found her attention drawn to the fridge, where happy photos of the couple still sat in plain view.
“She was dead, and he was in custody. Those photos were now just painful memories for their families.”
That wasn’t the only scene that stayed with her. In another case, a husband had stabbed his wife and then fled, later leaving their baby at a local church. Donna said she arrived to find a mattress so saturated with blood that the internal padding had to be taken out before disposal. She also described how the offender remained in the home for hours in an attempt to hide what he’d done, including using laundry powder on the blood.
“He used the Surf washing powder that has a very pungent smell, and I can’t smell that anymore,” she said.
After six years, Donna ultimately stepped away, wanting her own life back after missing weddings and important family moments. She returned to hairdressing, though she’s said she still feels a strong pull toward the work. She later wrote about her time in the industry in a book titled Bloodstains and Ballgowns.
“It’s made me a better person. I’m much more empathetic,” she said.
“You just don’t know how people are living, what they’re going through.”