Who Shat On The Floor At My Wedding? And Other Crimes - S3 E16 Phantom Cleaner - Part Two

Episode Date: January 15, 2026

Contact is finally made with the sole witness to this crime - a small leopard gecko who goes by the name Persephone. And against all odds, she leads us directly to our prime suspect. The only person who fits this crime perfectly, with both motive and intent.But when the suspect is finally confronted, a confusing confession sends us spiralling. Reality starts to wobble. And we are left asking ourselves some very serious questions including but not limited to: have we been out-detectived by a gecko?Doggy Bag Part 3 is out on 29th January.Support us on Patreon http://patreon.com/whoshatontheflooratmyweddingFollow us on Instagram @whoshatontheflooratmywedding for case evidence and behind-the-scenesSound design by @juanthummler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previously on Phantom Cleaner. After being out for a while, I came home, and when I walked in, I immediately felt that something was really wrong. Something's off. So I started looking around, and then I noticed that things looked different. Things were clean. I went in my bathroom, and my whole bathroom had been cleaned. And sitting on the toilet paper was this neatly folded rose made out of toilet paper. My son's room had been completely cleaned. from top to bottom, all of his stuffed animals lined up in a row. It's a bit weird.

It was so odd and so unnerving. I don't think I've ever come across somebody doing that. The first thing that goes through my mind is that a serial killer has targeting me. This is some type of sinister step in a larger plan. And then this woman shows up at my door. She's Brazilian, only speaks Portuguese. She's got her phone out trying to use Google Translate to communicate with me, and she's trying to tell me that she and her daughter

were the ones who came to clean the house. It was either later that same day or the next day, another woman comes by a younger woman. She's telling me that she did it. And I was like, oh, you must be the daughter. Your mother was just here. And she was like, no, my mother's in Brazil. Oh, my gosh.

I'm just reading the Daily Mail article now, and you have a pet that was at home. A few pets. Are any of the pet witnesses still alive? Yeah, I do have a gecko that was there. Her name is Persephone. We know an animal psychic, Nate, and this is, to be honest, we're pretty desperate right now, and I feel like that's going to have to do something weird like that.

Hello, I'm Melissa. I am an animal communicator, and I am communicating with Periphany, the gecko today. The overall feeling I get is when you said to Percipany, no, the person was a very strong, yes. The police never found anybody. To this day, I have no idea. Who did it or what's going on? Your case is in dangerous hands. Right, let's be real for a second. We get it. We know this is weird. But we have a real problem with this case. He's looked into every angle of this and he's done all of the investigative work himself,

which is what I found quite frustrating about this case personally. Every angle that we've looked at, he's just one step ahead of us. When it landed on our desk, we saw only two ways forward. Option one. Walk away from Nate, our victim. And call it what everyone else has, including the real police, unsolvable. Option two, find a way to communicate with the only living witness and pry open the truth. Yes, it's highly unconventional, but stick with us. Channel your inner gecko, open your minds.

And put your trust where it belongs today with Persephone. I don't know if I'm emotionally or physically or mentally prepared for what is about to happen. This must be honestly one of the weirdest things we've ever done. It is genuinely the only way forward. Persephone came to us through the Daily Mail. The only living creature who knows the truth unfortunately can't share his secrets is what they say. But it's like, well actually I think she can.

I think you'll find that she might be able to actually. Okay, so something that the Daily Mail has said is a joke. We are taking seriously, that's not a good sign. The first major hurdle is to communicate a date of the 15th of May, 2018, in gecko terms, because the gecko doesn't have a... Calendar. Human calendar. So we've got to communicate a date that was 10 years ago on a specific month.

So it can have in its reptilian brain. Oh, okay, cool. Yeah, I do remember something weird on that date. So that's our first challenge. What we have to do in the next hour is we have to think like a gecko. Think like a gecko. Karen reached out to Nate to ask some very specific questions about Persephone. If we need to think like Persephone, we need to understand her.

A stranger in the room doing things would have registered as a curiosity into her reptile brain. She mults every couple of months and like a typical leopard gecko. Oh, she's a leopard gecko, very exotic. And like a typical leopard gecko eats it. Aates her skin? Ates the she'd skin? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

I know, that's really grim. The gecko eats its skin. Oh, that makes me feel really... He said, she would have had a sense for the time of year by the light coming from the windows. The big milestone would have been the parade of news crews that came stomping through her life shortly after the cleaning. So that's a really important point.

But we're assuming that Igiko knows what a news crew looks like. Just loads of new people with new smells and... ...scority equipment, yeah. Another important thing, he said, is when we moved, she travelled in a plastic terrarium about half the size of her normal tank. I don't know if her tank was cleaned, not that it would have been in need of one on the outside.

The inside was definitely not touched. So basically a good milestone is this happened before you were taken out of your normal tank and put into a small half-size one and put in a scary moving vehicle to go to your new house. That's all we got. But what I can't get my head around is like, does a gecko understand these questions and these points and everything? Does the gecko have memory that's like, God, that was hard when my tank downsized for an hour? Does the gecko, like, is it going to know? Does it have a memory, you know?

like basics. Does the gecko the gecko have memory? Does it have trauma? I feel like I don't know anything about gecko's. I just can't... I almost just can't even deal with this. But I will and I can. Yeah, there is one last thing. Smell. They've got a really acute sense of smell

so they would have absolutely noticed the change in cleaning products. Yeah, I know that. That's the only thing I know about gecko's. And now I know that they eat their own skin. Can we ask the gecko why it does that? Yeah, let's ask that. The moment has arrived. Maybe if I turn my volume down a little bit.

No, it actually sounds great. Let's just leave everything as it is. There's no echo. But there is a gacko. There's... The moment we have all been anticipating with a mix of dread and fascination. I think we're ready to kick off this wonderful Sunday morning

slash afternoon activity. Activity party. I don't know what to call it, really. Yeah, a digital event. The moment that will rewrite this. this case and potentially history. In the call, we have victim Nate, animal communicator Alyssa and the woman of the hour. Persephone.

I'd just like to say to Persephone specifically, I just want to thank you for your appearance in our podcast. I don't know if you listen to podcasts, but if you had access to Spotify, I'm sure you would have clicked play on our podcast many a time. But I just want to say from the bottom of our hearts, we're very grateful. that you, as a witness to this crime, are appearing here today in your tank. You look lovely, by the way.

Very spotty. So, yeah, thank you, Persephone. Hey, Persephone. Thank you for being on this podcast. Alyssa dials in from her turquoise painted lounge, her long wavy hair framing her face, and she's draped in a sweeping purple robe. She looks radiant and calm.

Something funky happened with you. your family and we just want to just have a little chat with you. See what you remember if you remember anything. Nate's camera is angled so we can catch both the tension in his face and the corner of Persephone's cage. Persephone is lurking beneath her ornamental leaf, clearly trying to get out of this task. She thinks she's hidden. I can't actually see where Persephone is. What she doesn't realize is that a large part of her body is exposed. You can see her tail. That's a a little bit embarrassing. And then a small nine-year-old boy tentatively moves into the frame. Nate's son, Seamus. Does Seamus want to be part of this of this session? He'd be happy to

answer a couple of questions if you like. Here, put him on. Oh yeah, bring Seamus on. Yes, here we go. Bring on the sun. Bring in the sun. Hi. Hi, Seamus. How are you? I'm good. Do you know why we're talking to you and your papa? Yeah. You're a psychic that can talk to Persephone. Do you remember Seamus what happened all those years ago, the mystery that we're investigating? I just remember getting out of the car, walking in the house. We both smelled cleaning chemicals, and he told me to stay still because we didn't have a cleaner and I don't touch anything. He called 911 and the police showed up and then the news.

Everything was put away in the bathroom. There were toilet paper roses. They organized all of your toys as well. Is that correct? Yeah. I mean, I was happy they organized them because they were scattered all over the place originally. And they didn't need to clean your room then?

Yeah. What's Persephone's personality like? What she like is a gecko. Sassy. But she bit me when I tried to pick her up before. Today? And then just stared at me. Seamus, do you think we are going to figure out who cleaned your house

by talking to Persephone the gecko? Maybe. Out of 10, one being you have no faith that we're going to work out who who cleaned your room and your house that day and 10 being 100% confidence that with Persephone's help we're going to find out who

did it. Where do you feel with this team that you're looking at right now? What score out of 10 would you give us? It'd like a 6 and a half. I'll go with that, over 5. Thank you for your confidence. Okay, so I guess really what we're trying to figure out is

if she saw anything you know like what what was her experience that day in 2018 she's wow she's quite dry she's a she's a hey Nate she's got a sense of humor that one huh oh yeah she has a lot of personality no doubt she does she's a bit she's she's got a quick funny dry sense of humor so that means she probably would like our podcast if she had listened to it Nate, the thing that I get every time I ask is that it's like an ex-girlfriend.

And so I don't know your situation. I don't know if that's possible. I don't know if she did the cleaning, set something up. I don't know. But somehow like an ex-partner comes up and I see like a thin person. Like someone on the younger side, potentially long straight hair. maybe a brownish color and okay after they heard about the news thing then perhaps this person felt uncomfortable about coming forward like they would get in trouble so the person feels like

their emotional level is somewhere around a late teenager but i do see that their years are older than that well at the time not to dig too deep into my personal life i've been to divorced for about a year when that happened. My ex-wife, who I'm still very friendly with, we have very amicable separation. Does have straight, dark hair. She has been. I don't suspect her. She is younger than me, too. She is a tidy person. I never really had her as a suspect. I don't really see her making a toilet paper rose. That, I think, clears her. I think she's somehow connected to it. She might have set it up.

She might have thought this was like the best, funniest joke, you know, and maybe she hired some people to do this for you and thought that you would love it. I feel your energy of, like, how freaked out you would be to come home and have that in your house. And it's the teenage personality that wouldn't understand that this is like a really shocking thing to do to someone. I asked Perciphany as well, like what she saw. Did she see someone in there that she knew? And she said yes. And that's where I saw the thin person with long hair with a vacuum.

That doesn't mean it was this partner who did the actual work she might have just been involved in it. For Perciphi, it was no big deal. It was just another human coming and going. Not much rattled her cage. Yeah, or terrarium in this case. She's happy with her cage, but she would love like more like a condominium kind of thing where she could go to different places. If you feel like it, it would be nice for her to spend her cage a little bit. Maybe we can tell her that that could only happen if she corrects the case for us.

So that possibility is there. However, we need more than just long, dark hair and skinny. Are you trying to bribe a gicko? Is that what's happening right now? just to be it. Yeah, I think so, yeah. Okay, Nate, what do you think about your ex-wife being the mastermind of this incident? I would say it's not impossible. I would say she certainly would not have done it herself. Part of, you know, the, I mentioned that we have a very amicable relationship and, you know, respecting boundaries as part of that. And I don't think that that's one she would cross

I mean, it's not inconceivable. She could have done something. Talk to someone, hired someone. Nate, can I ask you a question? Did all X have keys to your house? No, but I forgot to lock the door so she wouldn't need them. Well, I was wondering if you, yeah, I was just wondering if you actually did it, if you had a pair of keys in, because you just seemed like someone that wouldn't forget,

that kind of thing. Like, I know you said that. It's, I really am not. but the yeah she wouldn't she wouldn't had keys are you certain you forgot I know you'd know about the alarm but are you certain that the door wasn't locked or was it just because that's how you found up when you came home nobody had keys that's the thing

could you ask Persephone if this is going to be a difficult one to communicate this question could you ask if the thin woman with straight brown hair was using this like Nate's actual Hoover or was it in different Hoover or different equine equipment, as in did she bring her own equipment? Well. Come on, Pasifony.

Come on, mate. What I can try to do is, because she, of course, wasn't paying that much attention, is to, I have to kind of get into her consciousness and see if she can send, like, a screenshot and then try to look at the screenshot. Share screen. To try to find information.

Share screen, Pasifony. Yeah, something like that. So she wasn't. really paying attention, that's concerning. Our key witness was just distracted. Well, look at her now. I mean, you know. Yeah, look at her now. She's engaged now.

Sorry, Stephanie. I appreciate that you're here now. That's what matters. It's got the long stick thing and it looks like the vacuum is purple. I have a purple Dyson. That would have been my vacuum cleaner at the time. Oh, nice choice. Let's say

your ex hired an external cleaner to come in and do this, that person would, unless your ex went with this person to the house and said, this is where all the cleaning quipment is. It's just hard to find where things are. Can you just double check with her that she definitely remembers the Hoover being purple? I am not certain that leopard geckos see in color, by the way. I don't recall off the top of my head the spectrum that leopard geckos can see. Geckos possess trichromatic color vision, meaning they can see three distinct colors,

ultraviolet, blue and green. Alyssa, can you, I've just got two questions, but before I ask him, I just want you to let Persephone know that I'm the lead detective. Okay, well, Perciphany can hear us. So Perciphony, Detective LK is going to ask some questions, and if you don't mind like saying,

yes, no words are showing me pictures, and I can try to answer on your behalf. Did you mention the lead bit? Lead Detective, okay. Thank you. Did you see two people? Yes. Plaining or just one?

Oh, two. Yeah. What was the age of the two people and age and gender? The skinny female whose energy presents as teenager, but is older than that. And then the guy, Dufus. She uses that word a lot, doesn't she? Does she? Yeah.

She called you a do. Before the call. When you said, did he do this himself? I heard, no, he's a doofus. He wouldn't. She's sassy. I like Pesephani. Persephone thinks her owner is a dofuss.

I'll remember that next time buying crickets. So sorry, me. Sorry. Please don't be offended. She's not choosing her words. Well, she's a sassy girl, and she chose the word dufus. But please don't be offended by that. I don't think she's sorry about that.

But, yeah. Did we answer the question of who, the age of the other person? I don't think we did. Trying to look. That's when the dofist thing came up. Yeah, we got distracted by the insult. So sorry, Nate. You probably need a bit a minute to process that.

Using my human self at the picture I'm looking at, it looks like someone who could be like 28 to 32. But this guy's just there to do a job. According to Persephone, it was Sasha. Nate's ex-wife behind the whole thing. And when you start piecing together the detail, it begins to make sense. Who else in Nate's world

would know exactly when he'd be out of the house with his son? The mother of the child, of course. She'd know the schedule down to the minute. And how likely is it that Nate left his door unlocked?

He's meticulous and obsessive about locking up. Sasha could be in possession of a spare key. Nate could have forgotten that he gave her a key years ago. He is, after all, according to Persephone,

a bit of a doofus. Picture this. Sasha orchestrates a helpful little surprise. They have a five-hour window. Sasha lets the cleaner into the house and shows him where the vacuum cleaner is. And then strolls into Persephone's room. Persephone sees her, thin, long-haired, familiar.

And behind her, the male cleaner. Then she gets a message from Nate. He's giving her an update on what he's been up to with their son. They've been at the playground but now they're heading home. The cleaner hasn't completed the clean yet. He's not done the kitchen, but they have to leave. Every odd detail, every unexplained move leads to the same conclusion. All roads point to one person, Sasha. And in a moment of absurd clarity, we suddenly realise a gecko has led us straight to our prime suspect. I just want to know, so a week after this incident happened,

someone came to the front door of Nate's house. I want to know if Persephone heard the same voice that she heard a week earlier cleaning. So she heard maybe the younger guy and the older woman communicating in the room, probably. Did she hear a similar voice a week later at the front door? No. She says no. False confession.

False confessions are quite common in crimes. Did the woman who went to Nate's door and confessed, did they actually clean the house? I hear no. We do need to find someone a guy who's now around 34 to 38 who is a doofus in that area. We can put a wanted poster saying

seeking... Wanted local doofus. Local Dufus. Who likes cleaning, but is pretty, just does things, you know, for the cash, not really for the pleasure and joy of the clean itself. And is efficient and knows how to make origami roses. And knows a female, skinny, older person who has a teenage personality. I think it's pretty clear what the next steps are.

I agree. Thanks, Persephone. Is there anything that Persephone can give us just to help us crack this case and work out who exactly these people are? She just doesn't care. I'm sorry. I'm so... I'm so sorry. She just couldn't really be bothered, you know?

I feel like we need to remind her that this is quite an important thing that was actually quite, like, affected Seamus and Nate quite a lot and is really important to our podcast. Do we need to just remind her that maybe she shouldn't be so nonchalant and sassy right now? It's not that she's sassy. It's just that it was a while ago, so it's like if I asked you what you had for dinner in 2000, and well she'll know she had crickets. But, you know, in 2018, like, so...

I think I had crickets then as well. You also had crickets? Yeah, deep-fro crickets. She's not trying to be unhelpful. She just... Well, it's coming across that way, to be honest. Nate, could I ask you a question you can say no? Of course.

You've got a good relationship with your ex. You don't reckon we could have a little chat with your ex and just say, look, you know, Persephone, and Alyssa have a little thoughts that maybe this was done as a great little joke. You know, I think I'd be willing to ask just for the opportunity to write that question in an email. I do want to stress, though, that I don't see any malintent with her. I don't want her to feel attacked and that someone is like accusing her of doing things. Except that I will be accusing her of doing things.

Exactly, yeah. We can be not good cop at first, and then we'll transition seamlessly into bad cop. Yeah. It might be a bit much for Nate. Let's start with an email, and then it's just sense out how the response is. I think we've got everything we're going to get from Pacephany.

Oh, no, I've got a couple of additional questions, just quick ones. I want to know what Pesphony thinks happened with the crime. Like if Pesophany maybe has a bit of a detective edge, if she wants to weigh in on the old non-crime crime, or does she still not care? Yeah, I'm sorry. She doesn't, but if we could ask her more, like, specific questions. What about, I don't know the exact time that this happened other than it happened during the day. I hear 10, 18 AM. Is that possible?

Possible. Wow, does she wear a watch? God, she is onto it all of a sudden. That ties in with when you said you left, though. You said earlier it was probably around 10. Yeah. Okay, does Persephone think that this is a professional cleaning company? Yes.

And then I just want to know, it's slightly off topic, but I just want to know. why Persephone eats her own skin? Because it's kind of weird, if you think about it. She sheds and then eats it. Isn't that a bit gross? Okay, it's a self-preservation thing and gross to us, but really smart of her. So she doesn't think it's gross.

She doesn't think it's disgusting and creepy. We do. Do she? But then we eat chicken skin and pork rinds and everything else. So who are we to judge her? Is this you talking or is this Persephone talking, Alyssa? That is me. Does she think we're good detectives both of us?

Like, does she think this is a winning formula, this new podcast called When the Cops Say No, We Say Yes? And does she think we're really good at our jobs in crime solving? She thinks that you are an amazingly detective and Karen is an amazing detective and that you're taking on wonderful stories and she would like to have an answer for her father and for Seamus. And yeah, she thinks you two are amazing. Good answer. She just promoted me. Yeah, she just gave Karen a promotion so let her know that that won't be happening

in the immediate future. No further questions. Thank you so much. Nate, you're going to get a weird email from me that's all for you to pass over to Sasha. It was Sasha. And I think hopefully we're getting closer to the truth

and closure for this case and for everyone. Oh, we're definitely getting somewhere. Well, thank you so much. We're going in some direction. Yeah. Okay, I'm leaning around. Hey, Sasha. Hello.

Hello, Sasha. Hello, I'm Sasha. I'm Neitz ex-wife. At the time when this happened, we had been, I think, separated for four or five months, maybe, maybe six months, times a blur. But it was shortly after we had separated and he moved into this different house. We would love in your own words to just describe what the case is. Somebody came in. in and cleaned his house, all of it, very thoroughly, apparently.

And he had not set anything up. It wasn't aware that anything like that would be coming up. He had left, I guess, the house unlocked that day. And just when he came home, smelt cleaning chemicals and looked around and realized that that this had happened, that somebody had come in and just cleaned his house and did a pretty good job for what I understand. left the little gift of the floral toilet paper in the bathroom for them. Do you like cleaning?

Do I like cleaning? No, I do not like cleaning. Would you say that if you do clean, even though you don't like it, that you clean thoroughly and carefully and well? I try to. I try to be very, very thorough and deep, especially when they're children and pets involved. Have you ever done origami? I'm sure at some point in my life I have, yes.

I feel like it's almost a rite of passage when you're growing up to get on those origami books. Do you know how to make an ornamental toilet paper rose? No, I'm not very good at crafts. But Nate is also very artistic, so maybe we should look at him. Could you describe Nate's cleanliness? Like, what was he like to live with in terms of just general... keeping a house clean?

He's not a slob, but cleaning typically fell to me. He worked a lot, so he didn't have a lot of time to do the cleaning. Okay, Sasha. I don't know if you're aware of this, but we've got some information from a witness to this crime. Okay. And that witness is Persephone the Gecko. Persephone the Gecko was able to remember that exact cleaning moment because she lived in the gym and the gym was thoroughly cleaned.

She has identified that there were two cleaners that cleaned the house and one of those cleaners was someone slim with long dark hair. Do you think that sounds like anyone you know? Well, I suppose that sounds like me. But yes, it does sound like me. It does sound like you. How would you describe your hair? My hair?

Box-dyed black. Long and dark. Yes, long and dark. Okay. Why do you think she identified someone that looked suspiciously like you? Well, it could be that she was my geck. and she missed me. She was your gecko?

She was my gecko, yes. Oh, what a plot twist. Oh. So in the divorce, the gecko went to night? It did. He has a longer history of caring for reptiles. I kept one of our geckos that was easier for me to take care of because he ate baby food with vitamins mixed in, whereas Persephone would eat crickets. Another thing that developed on that call is the Animal Communicator definitely picked up that someone actually organised these cleaners to come to Nate's house as a bit of a joke.

And it was with a really good intention and really quite strongly felt it was an ex-partner that arranged that. There's two things here from that call from the psychic and the communicator, which does sadly, Sasha, point quite strongly in your direction. so we just want to know what you have to say to defend your honour. I think if I were to have done it, I would have wanted them to know. I would have done it? So, yeah, I don't think I can claim responsibility for it right now. Why do you think we should believe you? I think I just, I would have.

I would have probably liked to have claimed responsibility. earlier on if I had done it. But maybe you didn't think it would become such a big deal in the media. And then it was getting way too much attention. And that's when you decided to keep quiet. So maybe your initial intention was to do it as like a nice surprise clean. But then later when the world found out about it, you decided you did not want to come forward.

Could that have happened? Could be. I don't know. What do you think? What does Nate think? I think it's what Nate thinks versus what we would like and what we would love as a confession. So I just want to put that out there. You can be honest, though, at the same time. A real confession is what we would ideally like.

So did I do it? I guess I can come clean now. I wanted his house to be clean for our son and just knowing that he... I won't be mean about it Since he didn't have a lot of time to clean It was not around a lot I just wanted to make sure it was clean for our son Totally snowballed

And I think he was having fun with the attention So just let it Let it go on Was that real? No, that wasn't, was that real? I don't even know what's real anymore It wasn't real, was it? I don't even know anymore Okay, well

No, Karen, we accidentally forced this on poor Sasha. When you reach the end of a case like this, there's no clean line between truth and what you want to be true. When your only suspect is also your last hope and you more or less request a confession, you have to ask yourself,

if the confession comes, does it really count? Because here's the thing, dear listeners, Persephone, our silent witness, gave us the only theory that actually makes sense. Her certainty, her sassy attitude, her strange reptilian wisdom, it led us to a place that no human clue ever did. But then again, can we really trust a creature that eats its own skin?

And what's the alternative? The only day Nate forgot to lock his door and arm his alarm, two cleaners, bound for an entirely different house, arrived at precisely the right moment. a coincidence that is so astronomically unlikely, but not impossible. So in the end, this case doesn't hinge on fingerprints or alibis or even logic. It hinges on you, on what you choose to believe in that quiet space between certainty and doubt. Do you believe in chance, in two random cleaners, or do you trust the memory of a gecko?

This case has officially gone lukewarm until further information comes to light. Our greatest glory is not in never failing but in rising every time we fall. Failure is success in progress. Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time a bit more intelligently. Failure is not the opposite of success, it's part of success. Ever tried, ever failed, no matter. Try again, fail again, fail better. Fail, fail, foul, and then succeed. Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour.

crime crime is being committed against you, you may be entitled to pro bono detective services. Report your crime on our website, who's at on the floor at my wedding.com or DM us on Instagram at who shout on the floor at my wedding.