True Crime: Cleaning a Murder Scene

While crime scene cleaners don’t always clean up murder scenes, homicide is still unfortunately too common, making these jobs crucial to the victims’ families and friends to return the scene to its pre-incident state. We also clean natural deaths, trauma scenes, unattended deaths, suicides, and other biohazards. On the date of July 15, 2008, we responded to something more horrific and something no victim or their friends/family should have to experience. We had cleaned many types of scenes prior to this one, but this one will always stand out as it was our first homicide cleanup at that time.

Hao Cao Le in 2008, charged with stabbing his ex-wife in front of their children 28 times.

On July 15, 2008, NorTex ProClean (then called Critical Incident Response), would clean up the scene left by Hao Cao Le.

NOTE: The following is as described in an article from 2008 of this crime by the Orange County Register, a local paper.

Le and Nhu Hang Tran had been divorced for six years after immigrating together to the United States from Vietnam. They had one child together and Tran had one child from another marriage.

Tran was going to pick up her two children from Le’s Apartment in Westminster, California where he lived with his sister and her two children. When Tran arrived, it is alleged Le went out to the car and argued with her. Hiding a knife, he lured her into the apartment stating she would have to go into the apartment to get her children.

That’s when Le grabbed Tran and stabbed her a total of 28 times in the front and back of her body, as four children aged 8 - 15 years old, watched in horror from a nearby room.

Le then left the knife lodged in her chest as he called 911 and waited in the apartment for them to arrive.

Below are some photos taken by NorTex ProClean prior to the cleanup.

(NOTE: It is standard practice to photograph all contaminated areas prior to, during and after cleaning a scene)

*GRAPHIC IMAGES AHEAD*

The phone used to call 911, covered in blood

Blood seen in the kitchen

Blood on one of the doors in the apartment

Another one of the many blood spots on the walls of the apartment

Blood on the carpet floor

This carpet had to be completely removed, and portions of the wood sub-flooring below had to be decontaminated and removed.

It is very important to us that families don’t have to suffer more than they already have. We want to take away the stress and trauma of cleaning scenes such as this one. With trained professionals on this scene it took a total of 4 hours to complete. Everything is inspected closely and nothing is missed. Homicide is a horrible reality and while we hope you don’t need our services for any reason, we are just a call away in case you ever do.

In closing, thinking back on this scene we know that nothing we do can ever take away the pain or trauma this family has endured, but it’s scenes like this that always remind us of why we do what we do. It’s much more than the safety aspect of cleaning up all biohazard left behind from an incident. Erasing the visual nightmare that these incidents create for those affected can bring some sense of relief to them, which is why we are here - to positively impact those who reach out to us.

You can take a look at how these and other scenes look before and after we arrive here.