Grim business: Firm picks up what death leaves behind

Because it had been scheduled for renovation, no one lived in the downstairs apartment where Clean Scene Services recently started working. Only a single tenant occupied the second floor of the Mid- City house. No one was around when she died in her bed.

The renovation contractor discovered the death a week later. By then, the home had become a health hazard. The property manager called Tommy Boudreaux, founder of Clean Scene Services, the only company in New Orleans that specializes in cleaning and decontaminating death scenes.

As the summer heat gains strength, Boudreaux and his crew of six employees will answer more calls like the one in Mid-City. They make a living by restoring sites of murders, suicides and unattended deaths.

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"People get a little more irrational in the heat," Boudreaux said, adding that his company is about 50% busier during the hot summer months.

Since it opened in 1996, Clean Scene Services has grown from working one job a month to handling about six. Boudreaux said his company generates about $250,000 a year and makes $20,000 to $56,000 a year after operational costs and payroll.

Boudreaux credits the growth to increased public awareness within the New Orleans area.

"In the beginning, we were laughed at by a lot of people," he said. "We were looked at as someone chasing a crime scene and exploiting somebody's misfortune."

Changing that image has been a slow process for the entire industry, said Kent Berg, founder of the American Bio-Recovery Association in Ipswich, Mass. He started the trade organization in 1996 with five members. Now, there are 50 members.

"We're pushing to improve the quality of service ... in this industry," Berg said. "The good ones get into this because they're going out to help people in need. This is no get-rich quick business."

Boudreaux said he's building a good reputation.

"In the past three years, we've really been taken seriously," he said.

"Scene restoration is important to the families of victims of violent crimes. That brings a certain level of comfort to the family," said Capt. Marlon Defillo of the New Orleans Police Department.

Charging between $1,500 and $7,500 per job, Clean Scene Services regularly works with New Orleans hotels, apartment complexes and universities to sanitize death scenes. He wouldn't disclose the names, but Boudreaux said he has contracts with five area hotels.

"It's a fact of life that these things can happen," said Al Groos, president of the Greater New Orleans Hotel/Motel Association. Boudreaux said about 25% of his business comes from contract jobs. Last year alone, the state Office of Public Health recorded 116 suicides in the New Orleans metropolitan area.

When the deaths occur in a home or a private business, the city isn't responsible for cleaning up the scene. Orleans Parish Coroner Dr. Frank Minyard said families often had to clean up after a loved one's violent death before bio-recovery companies evolved.

"That was a problem for years," Minyard said.

Boudreaux said he's been called to a scene where a "well-meaning neighbor or friend of the family will try to help out," where he found a blood-soaked mattress set by the side of the road.

"No garbage man in his right mind would pick that up," he said.

In this line of work, the chores are gruesome and employee risks are high, Berg said. To become a member of the trade organization, recovery companies must buy at least $1 million worth of liability insurance.

Boudreaux's employees suit up in plastic coveralls, gloves and respirators to avoid contracting infections by breathing contaminated air. Unattended deaths are the hardest to clean because human bodies are mostly liquid -- blood, spinal fluid and urine -- and those fluids escape the body when it decomposes. Bio-recovery employees must worry about avoiding salmonella, hepatitis, meningitis and HIV.

Finding new employees can be tough, Boudreaux said. Over the years, at least 20 people have tried to work for Boudreaux, but he said they "ran away screaming."

But if they make it through the first day, they'll probably stay for years. All of Boudreaux's employees have been with him at least three years.

Team members talk about their jobs to make sure they're handling the emotional stress that goes along with cleaning up after a messy death. Boudreaux said he often takes impromptu vacations to the beach to get away from it all.

He works with the families himself. He said he relates intimately with families of the victims because he lost a member of his own family in a sudden, violent death. Dealing with that tragedy helped him understand the stress a family endures after a suicide or murder, he said.

Boudreaux said that when he meets a potential client, he only has a few seconds to decide which emotional state the family member is going through.

"How you handle that is what makes or breaks you in this business," he said.