Cleanup Crew Stars In A&E Reality Show

Sadie Marshall’s team packed up her gear to answer a call to clean up two decomposing bodies, after answering a separate call from the A&E Network to broadcast her ​“Dirty Rotten” work to the nation.

Marshall owns Sadie’s Professional Cleaning Services, which responds to clean up extreme crime scenes and has a history of tackling the most trashed, overrun, uninhabitable homes and making them livable again.

She was in her State Street office Monday morning chatting about her company being featured on an A&E show premiering that night called ​“Dirty Rotten Cleaners,” about tackling trashed houses and other monster messes, when the call came in from New Britain to do the kind of work that landed her the attention.

The reality-style show follows Sadie and her crew as they take dilapidated homes and transform them back to normal. ​“On the show, we’re going to be doing stuff you’ve never seen before,” Marshall said. ​“This is not your average cleaning show. This is totally massive, totally bananas, totally extreme, crazy cleanups.”

She said the property owners are all ​“blown away by our professional restorations. There’s plenty of juicy stuff and great stories to tell.”

The series contains eight episodes in this first season. Marshall said she would return for more filming if it’s picked up for a season two. ​“This is a reality show but it’s not where we’re fighting and arguing. This is a positive show. This depicts me as the superhero that I really am.”

The first episode of the show aired Monday night. Marshall has only seen the trailer so far. Sadie’s crew makes its first appearance on the show around the third episode, which airs​on Aug. 2. Marshall’s children, 8‑year-old Sean Carlis Marshall and 6‑year-old Amina True Marshall, make guest appearances.

Trauma Training

Marshall didn’t expect to be cleaning crime scenes, or necessarily to branch out to Florida, when she opened her business in New Haven in 2018.

At first Marshall focused on standard residential and commercial cleaning. ​“I love to clean. It really soothes me,” she said.

In her first year, calls for hoarding help piled up. ​“I noticed the jobs were getting dirtier and dirtier,” she said.

Marshall decided to get a trauma and crime scene technician license from the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning, Restoration Certification (IICRC) at Aramsco in New Jersey to meet these demands. This certification made Marshall’s business the first and only IICRC Certified Firm for Trauma & Crime Scene Cleanup in Connecticut.

She completed her hands-on training in Orlando, where she cleaned cow blood, brain matter, and bone fragments from mock crime scenes. Marshall said that experience was life-changing: ​“When I put that suit on it just does something to me, it’s like this is what I was born to do. It was just so magical and I knew right there at that moment that this was my calling from God.”

From long-term decomposition to massive blood splatters, Marshall said, she grew comfortable with the tools, chemicals, and techniques needed to turn around any scene.

The first step for intense cleanups is laying out a strategy, Marshall said. She said she emphasizes safety first, and following federal environmental and occupational health guidelines.

In her typical residential cleanups, Marshall said she would clean ​“from the back out.”

But for a crime scene, Marshall said, it’s important to clean ​“the surrounding areas of the crime scene” to avoid cross-contamination.

For hoarding, they start to clear from the ​“front area out” to make sure they have a clear path to get in and out safely while working. Marshall said the hoarding cases are some of the toughest. Even some of her most seemingly fearless workers have broken down crying; ​“people get so overwhelmed and they panic.”

Nightmare On Grace Street

One of her largest hoarding cleanup jobs was at a three-family house on Grace Street in New Haven.

She said the house, or rather ​“the nightmare on Grace Street,” had ​“top to bottom hoarding” with bedbug, roach, and flea infestations.

“It was so bad that if you even pulled your car up and got out two blocks in front of this house,” she said, ​“you could feel the fleas jumping all over you and attacking you.”

The house had no electricity or running water. It was owned by an elderly woman in an assisted living community. The woman was unaware that the property was overrun with addicts and hundreds of cats until code enforcement and animal control inspectors shut it down.

“There was a dark cloud over this house,” Marshall said. Four days after her team stepped inside, ​“we had had all three floors and the basement completely cleaned out.”

Once these properties are cleaned, it’s important to continue monitoring them, Marshall said. She also stressed ​“the importance of getting hoarders help. We need to really honestly treat it like any other mental health disorder.”

She said it’s especially important to keep checking on identified hoarders because of the danger the places pose to firefighters and first responders.

“We don’t just walk away and say, ​‘Hey clean this up’ and leave. They’re going to need continued care and observation. A lot of people’s lives can be lost. It’s not just them that they’re affecting. It’s many others, and also the first responders that are coming to rescue them.”

Marshall has been called to hundreds of hoarding jobs across Connecticut and surrounding states. She also sends her employees to respond anywhere in Florida from their second and newly opened location in Fort Myers.

In addition to hoarding and general crime scene cleanup, Marshall is licensed for biomedical waste transportation, Covid-19 Cleaning and Disinfecting, Fentanyl and Methamphetamine Drug Decontamination, Animal Hoarding, and Radical Bug Infestation Cleanup.

Covid Pivot

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Marshall said, her clients were too afraid to let Sadie’s Pro Cleaning into their homes. Within months, she lost all her residential clients.

That’s when Marshall chose to convert her business fully to Crime Scene Cleaning.

Sadie’s Professional Cleaning Services functions as a 24-hour emergency response call center for crime scene cleanup. They respond to calls from property owners, property managers, or municipalities about decomposing bodies, body fluids, blood, dead animals, car crashes, or bacteria.

She said they always arrive on the scene within an hour or two of the call. She loads either her promotional truck or more discreet unmarked vehicles if requested with supplies to clear it as quickly and meticulously as possible.

“When we come there we have such compassion for the situation they’re going through and we’re able to connect with them and alleviate their problems.” Marshall also offers full remediation to replace carpets, floors, or walls depending on the case.

“They don’t want to look at that and even just think about that. Sometimes they want you to just take the crime scene away.”

Marshall had a ​“rough” childhood and some more rough patches in her teenage years. She grew up in New Jersey, Connecticut, and Seattle, and lived in Florida for a while as well.

Marshall said she had a bit of a ​“fiery spirit” growing up. When she misbehaved, her mother locked her in her room. Marshall said she would stay in her room cleaning it thoroughly for hours.

“Everything that I went through when I was younger, it all really came full circle because it really does take a special type of individual to do this type of work.”

Marshall has worked for various cleaning companies and continued cleaning as a side job since her twenties. ​“Cleaning has always been in my blood,” she said.

She said her own experiences have allowed her to connect with people in tragic situations she encounters in her work.

Marshall said she tries to lead with prayer and positivity: ​“I ask God to help me to help these people so that somehow I can give them some sort of peace.”

When a New Haven family was displaced from a biohazard they cleaned, Sadie’s Professional Cleaning Services helped raise donations for new furniture and essentials. ​“It was so sad to see them at the beginning like that but then it was so nice to see the family go back into their home and to see the kids’ eyes light up.”

For her, no project has ever been too big, she said. ​“I don’t care how crazy, obscene, or absurd your situation looks. If I go in there and you want me to make it look like nothing happened and make it all beautiful, we’ll perform miracles.”

She has a group of lead technicians and a pool of roughly 20 employees she pulls on for different jobs. Marshall lives in Fair Haven and most of her employees are from the New Haven area.

Marshall brought some of her New Haven workers with her to film the show in Florida. Her crew drove trucks down with all their supplies and filmed for a little over a month.

She was originally contacted by a production company in England that found her online and was writing and developing a show about extreme cleaning. They picked a handful of Florida-based businesses to highlight on the show.

Marshall said she knew the chances of the show getting picked up, filming the show, and getting the show to air were slim: ​“For us to be where we are today where our show is premiering tonight at 10 p.m. is so amazing.”

Just after the interview, Marshall got a call about a long-term decomp job (in this case, two bodies decomposing for over a week) in New Britain.

Marshall and two employees, Orane Fraser and James Gorham hopped in their truck outside the office to suit up for the job.

Behind biohazard bins, Marshall, Fraser, and Gorham slipped into yellow and white Tyvek suits, rubber boots, and masks. As Reality TV loomed, reality beckoned.

Watch below for the Dirty Rotten Cleaners promo video: