Mop-up Duty: An entrepreneur wants N.O. to pay him to clean crime scenes, but a medical expert sees no need

by Richard A. Webster
Dolan Media Newswires

NEW ORLEANS, LA -- Tommy Boudreaux knelt over a dark stain on the sidewalk in front of a boarded-up house in Treme.

The ash gray splotch looked like a burn mark or a patch of embedded dirt. He took out a clear plastic bottle filled with hydrogen peroxide and pulled the trigger.

"Watch this," he said.

When the liquid hit the pavement, it sizzled and expanded into a frothing mass of white foam.

"This is where she died," Boudreaux said.

He pointed the bottle at a blackened section of soil in a barren flowerbed. Bubbles erupted out of the dirt.

"That's where she bled out."

He repeated the process on a series of streaks running down the porch stairs and again on a muddy clump of grass covered with flies.

"This is all blood," Boudreaux said. "It's been a week since the murders and there's still blood everywhere."

Boudreaux owns Clean Scene Services, a New Orleans-based company that specializes in cleaning and restoring homes after violent crimes. The house at 819 N. Robertson St. where he sprayed hydrogen peroxide to reveal the presence of blood was the scene of a triple homicide March 31.

Alfred Andrews, 78, reportedly killed his 31-year-old girlfriend, Jennifer Muse, her 25-year-old sister, Monica Muse, and her 50-year-old mother, Wanda Wagner Simpson, before shooting himself in the face with a shotgun. Andrews remains in critical condition.

Boudreaux, who charges between $1,700 and $2,700 per crime scene, said he approached Andrews' family after seeing reports of the slaughter on the news. The family, however, does not have homeowner's insurance, and without insurance, which is how the majority of families pay for his services, there is nothing Boudreaux can do for them.

But the city can do something, Boudreaux said. It can hire his company as the official vendor for cleaning public sidewalks at crime scenes.

"I came out here two days after the shooting and there was a small child running through the blood with socks on."

Boudreaux pointed to a purple action figure lying next to one of the bloodstains.

"A child could come by, pick that up and put it in his mouth. It's a public safety hazard and the city needs to take this seriously," he said.

City officials did not return requests for comment.

"People say that my service exploits the crime rate, but that's not what I'm doing," said Boudreaux. "I'm trying to make sure when a crime is committed that at least we're following through with the proper cleanup."

Boudreaux and other crime scene-cleaning companies may not be exploiting the crime rate, but they are exploiting people's fear of disease, said Dr. Julio Figueroa, associate professor of clinical medicine at Louisiana State University School of Medicine.

The only diseases that pose a risk at crime scenes are blood-borne pathogens such as HIV and hepatitis strands B and C, which wouldn't survive outside the body for more than a day or two, Figueroa said. And even then, a person would have to have a fresh cut and be exposed to a substantial amount of the blood to be infected.

"You'd have to have the stars align just perfectly with the right set of conditions in order to have transmission. Even in a hospital where there is a higher risk of exposure, transmissions are uncommon," Figueroa said.

Jimmy "Lucky" Osborne has lived on the second floor of 819 N. Robertson St. for more than 20 years. He was good friends with Andrews and spent a day cleaning the apartment after the shootings.

It was a macabre scene, Osborne said. The floors were buried in an inch of blood, brain matter was splattered on the furniture and pieces of bone, including a section of Andrews' jaw, were scattered throughout the room.

"It took me a whole day to clean the place," Osborne said.

But Boudreaux contends no amount of ammonia and bleach can properly clean such a grisly scene. Without the assistance of professionals, public contamination is inevitable, he said.

While he was cleaning the apartment, Osborne moved some of Andrews' furniture to the sidewalk, including his blood-soaked couch. It was gone when Osborne stepped back outside.

"Somebody took it," Boudreaux said. "Can you believe it? Now that couch is in someone's home."

And that's the problem, said Boudreaux, who worked as a surgical nurse for 10 years before starting his company. The city does not assume responsibility for the clean up of crime scenes, leaving it to members of the community who typically use hoses to wash whatever flowed out of the victim's body off of the streets and into drainage ditches or nearby lawns where children play.

Rags and towels used to soak up blood are thrown into trash bins, exposing the community to disease, Boudreaux said.

But Figueroa isn't buying it. Given the city's budget problems, he said taxpayer money would be better spent elsewhere.

The average person with no medical or biohazard background is capable of cleaning a crime scene as long as they are educated on the risks and take the proper precautions like wearing gloves and protection for their mouth, nose and eyes, Figueroa said.

"Is it absolutely necessary to hire a professional company? Probably not as long as you have the least bit of common sense," he said.

"But as with the person taking a couch full of blood off the sidewalk, you can't always count on people acting in the most sensible way."