NBR but I need help!!

ok the back story:

Over a year ago we had a mouse in our house. We knew this because it was chewing holes in things and also because our cat was acting like a total paranoid psycho (she could hear it but not see it). It finally met its demise when it somehow found its way into our laundry, which I did not realize until I was shaking out a pair of my husband's shorts and a dead, fluff-dried little rodent landed on my foot. Talk about traumatizing. Anyway, it was an isolated incident and we haven't had any trouble since that time.

Until last week. I was getting some laundry out of the dryer and I smelled what can only be described as the smell of death. Since there wasn't a smell last time, I did not immediately think mouse. Our dryer vents out onto our back deck, so the first thing I did was check and see if something had gotten up underneath our deck and died (this has also happened before... sigh...). Nothing there. So I grab a flashlight and look inside the vent tube. Nothing. Then I start thinking about the mouse, so I have my husband help me pull the dryer out, look behind it, then turn it over and look underneath. Nothing, nothing.

Since the smell is most DEFINITELY coming from the dryer, and cannot be ignored, this leads to us TAKING THE DRYER APART. We pulled off panels, removed belts, and yanked the entire drum out. We looked in every crevice that something could possibly hide in, and came up with NOTHING. Might I add, that stupid thing was a beast to put back together.

Going on a week later, the dryer STILL. SMELLS. This is not a "musty" smell. It's a "rotten corpse" smell. I've tried airing it out, and it'll SEEM better, but as soon as it's shut the smell just builds right back up again in there. I'm reluctant to call a repairman because I can't think of anything they can do that we haven't already done! 

Ok ladies, put on your thinking caps! WHERE IS THIS SMELL COMING FROM??