...Crime scene cleaning business tackles 'the gory side of life'

By Wendall Waters
GateHouse News Service

Ipswich, Mass. — A horrific scene was left behind when a man killed himself and 13 others in Binghamton, N.Y., April 3, and an Ipswich resident and former Marblehead schoolteacher was on standby to go down and help "clean the scene."

For Tim Riley, dealing with the aftermath of such a dreadful crime at the American Civic Center is how he makes his living. In fact, the Washington Street resident was set to head to Binghamton but another company was able to manage the situation without help. It turns out his services weren't needed, but while his work would not be appealing to most, it's a highly specialized field in which he takes pride.

Riley, the owner of Crime and Death Scene Cleaning Inc., said scenes like the one at the Civic Center are health hazards and must be cleaned accordingly.

CADSC is a member of the American Bio-Recovery Association, a nonprofit group of professionals who specialize in biohazard remediation. Another member company, Bio-Recovery Corporation, was in the Binghamton area and was on the scene of last Friday's shooting first to begin the cleanup, Riley said. In fact, he said, the company offered its services for free because of the Civic Association's good work in the community.

"Other companies would have charged them upwards of $50,000," Riley said.

After assessing the aftermath of the killings, Bio-Recovery Corp. called Riley and told him they would be able to manage on their own and take care of it in a matter of hours.

Riley explained there are two kinds of ammunition, one that expands on impact and one that does not. All non-military handguns, such as those used by the Binghamton gunman, use expanding ammunition, which causes more extensive internal damage and is more likely to kill, but does not expel as much tissue from the body.

ABC News anthrax case

Had Riley been called to Binghamton, it would not have been his first job on a high-profile crime case. He worked with Bio-Recovery Corp. years ago.

"We worked together on the anthrax case at ABC News back in 2001," he said.

NBC News, Riley said, had a similar incident around the same time but dealt with it differently.

"ABC News and NBC News," he said, "went through polar opposite routes."

At ABC, Riley said, CADSC and Bio-Recovery Corp. were part of a five-day project that included cleaning and disinfecting the company's three-quarters-of-a-million cubic feet of space. It took 70 people to complete the cleanup, but they preserved pretty much everything in the building, he said.

NBC, on the other hand, had its building gutted and everything thrown out, including employees' personal items, Riley said.

"There was no rapid test in those days," he said.

While waiting for test results on the samples the New York City Board of Health collected, Riley said, he and the other companies involved with the ABC cleanup got to work. The tests came back positive as they were finishing the job. When they were done, more samples were collected and tested and they all came back negative, Riley said.

Biohazard cleanup

Riley's work as a crime scene cleaner is his second career. He had taught high school in Marblehead for many years, but left mid-year in 1998 because of differences with his principal, he said.

In order to support his family while he was a teacher, Riley also worked as an EMT. During 19 years of EMT work nights and weekends, he saw many crime and death scenes.

"I had good exposure to the gory side of life," he said.

When he left teaching, he read a story about a man who was doing biohazard cleanup work. Riley, who has lived in Ipswich for more than 30 years, decided to open his own company specializing in biohazard cleanup. He joined the American Bio-Recovery Association in 1999 and later served as secretary of the organization. He also wrote the curriculum for a training course based on a manual written by one of ABRA's founders.

It was a struggle at the beginning, he said, but since then the business has been solid for him.
These days, Riley said he gets anywhere from three to 10 calls a week from people looking for work.

Biohazard remediation is not general janitorial work, Riley pointed out. Procedures, work clothing and equipment are highly specialized.

"There are 400 diseases carried by blood," Riley said. "We treat every drop of blood as if it carries every disease, because we just don't know."

Many people, he said, think dried blood is not hazardous.

"Dried blood can carry hepatitis C in it for over a year," he said.

Training to deal with biohazards is ongoing, said Riley, who has two full-time and seven part-time employees. Workers are trained when they join the company. They get refresher courses each year and they have to be retrained every time a new technique is developed or a new chemical is discovered.

Individuals and companies like CADSC associated with ABRA have the expertise to handle biohazard remediation. ABRA now has about 525 people certified all over the world and has 72 member companies, Riley said.

Their job, when a tragedy such as the Binghamton shootings strikes, is to bring both knowledge and capabilities to bear in cleaning the scene thoroughly so there is no addition damage to human life or property.

"In this economy," he said, "anybody who does any sort of cleaning thinks they know how to do this, but they don't"

The Ipswich Chronicle