Business is booming for crime-scene cleaners

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Chicago Tribune:

"It's a hard thing to do," said DuPage County Coroner Dr. Richard A. Jorgensen, who uses Aurora-based Aftermath Services LLC to clean the county morgue. "It's something that's little-understood."

 

Bio-One, Aftermath and other local companies are called to homicides, suicides, unattended deaths and the homes of hoarders. Sometimes, they are asked to clean the interior of cars and trucks where a trauma has occurred. Sometimes they are called to clear a meth lab.

 

"When people ask me what I do, they say, 'wow,' and then they get really interested," said Dan Reynolds, a lieutenant in the New Lenox Fire Protection District who started Chicago Crime Scene Cleanup in 2007 with his wife, Kelly, to supplement his income. "But I don't think they understand what all goes into it. They don't understand the emotional side of it."

 

Potential clients are enduring the worst time of their lives, cleaners say.

 

"Nobody calls me on a good day," Reynolds said. "Trying to understand what they're going through is a big part of it.