Mythbusters did an episode where they stuck a dead pig in a car and let it rot to see if they could refurbish the car and sell it without anyone noticing the death stench on it. They eventually gave up. The odor gets everywhere, and some chemicals of odor can permeate plastics and things (diffusion).
However, laptops are small enough that you can run them through a bath.
I'd try the following....
take guinea pig laptop (one old POS you wouldn't mind screwing up)
stick it in the dishwasher (perhaps taken apart some so the mobo can get washed, too)
run as normal with detergent (you should be able to do the heat-dry cycle, because I don't think that will be hot enough to ruin anything... maybe?)
toss it in a cardboard box with some instant rice to help absorb any left over water (keep it there for like a week or so)
if it still smells, then stick it in a large freezer ziplock baggie with some more (clean) instant rice, and put it in the freezer for a week or so
pull it out ... hopefully the extreme cold held kill off some more odor
after you feel it's dried out enough, try booting to make sure it still works.
If all goes well, then the dishwasher did most of the work, and the freezer helped "freshen it up" a bit more. The parts on these things are obviously designed to handle heat (so dishwasher shouldn't be a problem... unless a part gets blasted off and sits on the heating elements). The freezer shouldn't be a problem either, because these things are designed to sit in someone's car on a freezing winter day.
So... good luck!
If the dishwashing seemed to help some, but didn't seem aggressive enough you could perhaps float the laptops in your bathtub with some kind of bio-detergent that's safe on plastics/metals. I would be very worried that any kind of detergent would ruin the monitor, though. Those things seem finicky as to what you can clean them with. Maybe take the monitor off, soak the base laptop/mobo part, then swish it back-n-forth after it's soaked for a day or so. See if any gunk comes out. If yo're lucky maybe the water turns cloudy or nasty, and all the gunk from the lappy has come out.
PS: guess I should note, the dishwasher idea comes from a guy I worked with that would run dirty keyboards through a dishwasher at work to clean them. He'd let them sit for a week afterwards, and they worked like a charm. Were very clean, too. Got all the dust, food and other gunk off them. I always found it funny walking into the break room and seeing him unloading 20 keyboards from the dishwasher.