Crime scene cleanup ad lifts Handel's Messiah

Who says beautiful music and blood spatter cleanup can't go together. When Chorus North Shore performs Handel's Messiah or Verdi's Requiem, the Boston-area group usually can count on Timothy Riley and his crime scene cleanup business for moral and economic support.
Riley, for example, recently advertised his company's "crime and death scene cleaning" in the playbill of Chorus North Shore's Handel's Messiah performance at two Catholic churches north of Boston.
Next to ads by a local dentist and a prep school, Riley's ad featured specialties that include suicide and body decomposition cleanup and automobile deodorization.
It's a jarring combination, to be sure, but Riley said he has been supporting the chorus group for years.
"My wife is one of the singers," Riley told Reuters in a telephone interview. "I really haven't gotten any business from it. An ad costs me something like 50 or 75 dollars."
Riley said no one has complained to him about having his ads in the back of performance playbills.
"Most of the chorus members I've talked to think it's absolutely hilarious," Riley laughed.
"I try to have a good sense of humor. You can't be completely serious all of the time in this business or you'd go crazy. It's not one of those businesses you think of until you need it."
Riley started CADSC Inc. in 1998 after working 27 years as a science teacher. He said crime scene cleanup accounts for about 6 percent of his business, while about half is what he described as "filthy living or pooh related."
"We deal with hoardings, bird droppings, human droppings," Riley explained. "We average about 20 jobs a month."
He said the work can be painstaking and tedious. A shotgun suicide, for example, can be especially difficult.
"You have to look at every square inch. Things go everywhere," Riley said.