GROWING OLD ALONE Cleanup after unnoticed death now a growing industry

By MIZUHO AOKI

Yoshinori Ishimi could hear a high-pitched whine coming from the apartment in Nerima Ward, Tokyo, he was about to enter. When he went inside, he saw black "mini-twister" clouds of flies.

The last tenant had been a 60-year-old divorced man whose body was not found until a month after he had died.

"Every time I encounter such scenes, I hesitate to step inside. But someone has to clean up these flats . . . and be professional about it," said Ishimi of Anshin Net, a cleaning service that is part of R-Cube Co. in Ota Ward, Tokyo.

The Nerima man's case was not unique, and such unnoticed departures are only expected to increase.

According to a report by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, the number of single-person households is expected to rise from 14.46 million in 2005 to 18.24 million in 2030, or nearly 40 percent of all households.

With the growing number of single households in this graying nation, businesses specializing in dealing in what has been dubbed "lonely death" have become a fixture.

Anshin Net is one such example.

Founded in 2004, the company handles about 450 requests a year, about half of them dealing with cleaning out dwellings after the occupant has died.

The requests generally come from close relatives. But when people die alone and their corpses are not discovered for weeks or even months — the requests may also come from landlords, as well as more distant kin, because many people die childless and without a partner, Ishimi said.

"We receive about four to eight requests a month asking us to clean dwellings where the residents were found a week, a month, or, in extreme cases, a year after they passed away," Ishimi said.

Police process solitary deaths by carrying out autopsies and, if relatives can't be traced, municipalities cremate the body and inter the ashes in a shared grave, Ishimi said.

Ishimi and other specialist cleaners come in afterward and make dwellings clean again.

Although no figures are available, with the increasing media coverage about people dying lonely deaths, both the number of people engaged in this business and job requests have surged in the past two or three years, said Atsushi Takaesu, 38, an Okinawan who has run a special cleaning business in Kanagawa Prefecture since 2003.

"I had only about 10 cases a year about seven years ago. But this year, the number is likely to surpass 400. I received about 40 requests this June alone," said Takaesu, who recently published "Jiken Genba Seisonin ga Iku ("Here Comes a Crime Scene Cleaner"), a nonfiction book on his specialty of cleaning housing where people died lonely deaths, including suicides.

Takaesu said he is proud of his job but admits that at times it is heart-wrenching.

Pointing to a picture of a bathtub one-third full of a dark reddish liquid, Takaesu explained: "This is not ramen. This is a dead lady's body fluid and skin. I actually had to step into the bath to clean it."

Apart from the flies, maggots and pupae, crawling, sticking to windows and flying around, there is the hair of the dead, looking like a wig.

Also, bodily fluids and blood soak into tatami mats, and there is the stench of death that many in the business find difficult to totally remove, according to Takaesu.

"It is hard to pick up someone's hair with my own hands, but if you ask me whether I can do it, I can. But the appreciation I get after I clean up those rooms, totally removing the lingering smell of death, is the biggest thing that keeps me going," he said.

Ishimi of Anshin Net said people who die alone often share the same circumstances, and he strongly believes many can avoid this fate by changing their lifestyles.

"Many were men in their 50s or 60s, divorced, and with no job. They had not been in contact with their friends or families and they often were diabetic," Ishimi said, adding that when he goes inside their dwellings he often finds the curtains drawn and piles of empty food boxes from convenience stores, cans or bottles of alcohol, and insulin vials.

"It's sad. And to be honest with you, I ask them (the deceased), 'Why?' Because (in many cases) if they had changed their lifestyle, they could have avoided dying (in the way they did). They shut out the sunlight and fresh air with curtains, and isolated themselves from everyone," Ishimi said.

After seeing so many residences long after the occupant's death, Anshin Net is now shifting its focus on what it calls "welfare cleaning."

About half of the requests the company receives today are from care managers, helpers or sometimes municipalities asking for help cleaning the dwellings of elderly people who live alone and have huge garbage accumulations.

These people call first because they can't enter the elderly person's house unless the waste is removed, or, in some cases, following complaints made to municipalities from neighbors, Ishimi noted.

"In recent years, the number of elderly who live alone buried under a mountain of garbage has surged. Some have dementia and some are physically unable to take out the garbage. It is these people who are the ones most likely to die alone," Ishimi said.

"We want to minimize cases in which elderly people die alone. I believe cleaning their housing will act as a deterrence."

This job is murder

NYPD solved 59% of 2009 slayings
By REUVEN BLAU and BRAD HAMILTON

What are the chances of getting away with murder in New York City?

About 41 percent.

The NYPD solved 59 percent of homicides last year -- down 8 percentage points from the year before, and about 5 points less than the national average in 2008, according to data obtained under a Freedom of Information request.

The "clearance rate" -- cases where arrests are made -- plummeted despite detectives having to investigate a near-record low 471 slayings, police records show.

"All the cases on TV are solved with evidence," said Vernon Geberth, a famed detective and former commander of the Bronx homicide task force. "People start to think we can solve all these crimes."

The data came out during an alarming uptick in murders. There were 139 homicides so far this year as of April 18, a 27 percent jump over the 109 killings in the same period last year.

In 2009, cops solved 75 percent of rapes, 42 percent of robberies, 18 percent of burglaries and 25 percent of grand larcenies -- all higher than the national average the year before. About 54 percent of felony assaults were cleared; the national average in 2008 was 55 percent.

The easiest crime to get away with was car theft -- just 9 percent were solved in the city and only 12 percent nationally. And auto thieves are not slowing down. They swiped 2,869 vehicles in the Big Apple this year, up from 2,852 over the same period in 2009.

The NYPD closely guards its performance figures, unlike crime stats, which cops are required to turn over to the FBI.

For years, the department voluntarily gave the feds its clearance rates, but Police Commissioner Ray Kelly ended the practice in 2002, claiming that computer problems got in the way -- though detectives still get the information, police spokesman Paul Browne said.

"Clearance rates for the NYPD have been consistent over the years, and usually higher than the national average," said Browne, pointing out the department's 67 percent murder clearance rate in 2008 was 3 percentage points higher than the national figure. "I expect the actual clearance rate for 2009 murders will improve as arrests in 2010 for 2009 murders are made and recorded."

Veteran detectives say they're working harder than ever to crack cases but are hampered by dwindling ranks and a bigger workload. They now must handle misdemeanor cases that once went to beat cops.

Investigators say the diminished clearance rates could be a result of them taking longer to solve cases, which are increasingly dependent on high-tech evidence like DNA that takes time to collect and analyze.

Possible Swine Flu Outbreak At NYC Prep School

Department Of Health Officials Testing 75 Students At St. Francis Preparatory School In Queens

NEW YORK (CBS) ―
New York City health officials say that about 75 students at a Queens high school have fallen ill with flu-like symptoms and testing is under way to rule out the strain of swine flu that has killed dozens in Mexico.

The Health Department's Dr. Don Weiss said Friday that a team of agency doctors and investigators were dispatched to the private St. Francis Preparatory School the previous day after students reported fever, sore throat, cough, aches and pains. No one has been hospitalized.

The handful of sick students who remained at the school were tested for a variety of flu strains. If they're found to have a known human strain that would rule out swine flu.

Results could take several days. In the meantime, the school says it's postponing an evening event and sanitizing the building over the weekend.

Mexican authorities said 60 people may have died from a swine flu virus in Mexico, and world health officials worry it could unleash a global flu epidemic.

Mexico City closed schools, museums, libraries and state-run theaters across the metropolis Friday in hopes of containing the outbreak that has sickened more than 900.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said tests show some of the Mexico victims died from the same new strain of swine flu that sickened eight people in Texas and California. It's a frightening new strain that combines genetic material from pigs, birds and humans.

The World Health Organization was looking closely at the 60 deaths - most of them in or near Mexico's capital. It wasn't yet clear what flu they died from, but spokesman Thomas Abraham said "We are very, very concerned."

"We have what appears to be a novel virus and it has spread from human to human," he said. "It's all hands on deck at the moment."

WHO raised its internal alert system Friday, preparing to divert more money and personnel to dealing with the outbreak.

President Felipe Calderon cancelled a trip and met with his Cabinet to coordinate Mexico's response. The government has 500,000 flu vaccines and planned to administer them to health workers, the highest risk group.

There are no vaccines available for the general public in Mexico, and authorities urged people to avoid hospitals unless they had a medical emergency, since hospitals are centers of infection.

Some Mexican residents have started wearing blue surgical masks for extra protection, reports CBS News correspondent Adrienne Bard. The federal health minister has warned people not to go near anyone with a respiratory infection and to avoid kissing - traditional Mexican greeting.