Clean Up Costs Would Be Covered By Offender's Fees

Crime Scene Cleanup Bill Stalled On Hill

BOSTON -- A proposed bill aimed at helping the families of homicide victims move forward after the crime is stalled on Beacon Hill.

The bill, filed by Attorney General Martha Coakley, uses money from offenders' fees to pay to clean up crime scenes so the burden doesn’t fall on the grieving families.

Six years ago, Joanne Presti, 34, was raped and stabbed repeatedly in her apartment. Alyssa, her 12-year-old daughter, had her throat slashed. The woman's parents found their bodies three days later.

Days after the pair were buried, relatives returned to the apartment to collect their belongings and found a gruesome reminder of their loss.

Annette Presti told the Boston Herald that the apartment was covered in fingerprinting dust, the kitchen sink had been ripped out and holes were found in the walls -- but that wasn't the worst part.

"One of my sons called to say, ‘Mom, the couch is still here with Joanne’s blood all over it. Nobody took it away,’" she told the paper. "It was like going through it all over again.”

The addendum to the Victim Compensation Fund would help cover the cost of cleaning up the properties after the investigators have left.

“We don’t think about what families like the Prestis are left to deal with after the police leave. I was the (Middlesex) DA at the time. I was there that night and saw what the Prestis saw,” Coakley told the Herald. “We’re not asking for much here, just the chance to ease a family’s burden.”

Michael Bizanowicz, a Level 3 sex offender, was eventually convicted in the Prestis' deaths.

...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

MBTA kicks cleaning into high gear

By Marie Szaniszlo & Richard Weir | Friday, May 1, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com

Photo by John Wilcox
Within hours of Vice President Joe Biden saying he had warned his family against taking subways, the MBTA announced yesterday it was ramping up cleaning on trains and buses to head off the spread of the potentially deadly swine flu virus.

“The MBTA has directed its cleaning crews to give special attention to places such as seats, hand rails on escalators and grab bars on subway cars and buses,” T General Manager Daniel Grabauskas said in an e-mail.

“People should not hesitate in going about their daily activities while also keeping themselves informed about how to stay healthy and protect themselves at: www.cdc.gov/flu/swine and www.mass.gov/dph,” Grabauskas added.

The announcement followed Biden’s remarks about advice he had given his family to avoid confined spaces such as planes and subways.

Dr. Alfred DeMaria, state epidemiologist, attempted to clarify any misconceptions the vice president’s comments may have caused, telling people: “If you are sick, don’t travel. There are no recommendations for people who are well to restrict their travel or quarantine themselves unless they are in direct contact with somebody with probable or confirmed swine flu. Then we are asking them to quarantine themselves because they could be incubating.”

Of the T’s extra cleaning details, DeMaria said, “The more clean the better.”

“I ride the train every day, and people are constantly coughing into their hands and touching the bar and touching the surfaces,” he said. “People need to know not to do that. People need to know that maybe when they get off the T to use alcohol rubbing gel if they can’t wash their hands right away.”

Rider reaction was mixed yesterday. “I’m scared,” Cassandra Delice, 32, of Malden said yesterday at Downtown Crossing. “I don’t have a car. I have to take the train to get to work.”

But others dismissed Biden’s warning about planes and subways as premature.

“Unless there’s extremely concrete evidence that public transit is dangerous to take, I don’t think he should cause a national spook. It’ll just deter people from going to school,” Mark Shanks of Leominister said on his way home from Newbury College.

“I’m not really worried,” Shanks, 18, added. “I’m pretty careful. I try to keep my distance from people. Nowadays, you have to.”

Sara Braganca, 26, of Jamaica Plain said: “I think it was irresponsible what he said. People shouldn’t stop their lives.”

Cleanup completed at Civic Association

April 5, 2009

Cleanup has been completed at the American Civic Association building in Binghamton, where a gunman killed 13 people and injured four before taking his own life Friday.

The American Bio-Recovery Association, a non-profit international association of crime and trauma scene professionals, said Sunday that the bio-recovery cleaning was complete. The Ipswich, Mass.-based group provided the service at no cost.

Two member companies, Disaster Clean Up of Endwell and the Bio-Recovery Corporation of New York City, donated labor and supplies to remediate the scene with a crew of six technicians.

Bio-Recovery Corporation Aids In Binghamton Crime Scene Cleanup

PRESS RELEASE
April 5th 2009

Bio-Recovery Corporation of New York City and Diaster Scene Cleanup of Endwell, NY responded to the American Civic Association on April 5th 2009 at the request of the American Bio-Recovery Association to aid the American Civic Association and the entire Binghamton community with the cleanup of the crime scene left in the aftermath of Fridays multiple homicide, suicide at their offices located at 131 Front St Binghamton, NY.

At the request of Dale Cillian, President of the non profit American Bio-Recovery Association (ABRA), the two named companies above provided all the labor and equipment to complete this cleanup in one day at no cost to the American Civic Association. "I couldn't have done this without you guys," stated Andrew Baranoski, Executive Director of the non-profit American Civic Association.

The American Bio Recovery Association, an international association of Crime & Trauma Scene Cleanup professionals strives to make these services available to all that require it throughout the United States.