The book documents the work of Aftermath Inc., a company that specializes in cleaning up crime and accident scenes after investigations are complete. It traces the history of the company founded by Tim Reifsteck and Chris Wilson in 1996 to fill a need for professional biohazard cleanup required by the EPA. The author embedded himself with Aftermath technicians on over three dozen jobs to observe their work remediating scenes involving violent deaths, suicides, decomposed bodies, and human fluids. Each chapter describes a different type of challenging cleanup situation handled by Aftermath. The book provides insight for those studying forensic science by exposing readers to the realities of crime scene work through the lens of post-investigation cleanup.

1. Año 3, vol. VI enero-julio 2011/Year 3, vol. VI January-july 2011
www.somecrimnl.es.tl 1
Fecha de recepción: 15/07/2010
Fecha de aceptación: 01/08/2010
AFTERMATH, INC.: CLEANING UP AFTER CSI GOES HOME
SECUELAS, INC.: LIMPIEZA HASTA DESPUÉS QUE CSI REGRESA A CASA
Dr. Edward J. Schauer
College of Juvenile Justice
ejschauer@pvamu.edu
Estados Unidos de América
By Gil Reavill (New York: Gotham books, 2007. pp. 284)
The book, Aftermath, INC.: Cleaning Up after CSI goes Home, defines and explains
the issue of serious crime scene contamination. It also expands upon crime scene
factors which cause abhorrence in the reactions and emotions of the human mind.
Crime scenes resulting from violent deaths, and cleanup following unattended deaths
with human bodies well into decomposition, demand specifically focused and dedicated
expert training and oftentimes specialized equipment. Officially, the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) of the United States Government considers bodily fluids to be
bio-hazardous wastes, in cases of unattended deaths, suicides, and violent deaths.
However, too often the families of the victims (or owners of the crime or accident
locations) had to clean up the scene themselves, or volunteers from among their
neighbors or religious organizations have offered to help.
The author, Gil Reavill has written expansively on the subjects of true crime
and disaster. To prepare himself for writing this book, Reavill volunteered to ride
along with the Aftermath, Inc. (Aftermath) teams and to help these technicians clean
the scenes to which they were called. He worked alongside the Aftermath technicians
for over a year on several dozen Aftermath jobs. Aftermath is one of the first
companies, if not the first, to begin developing the field of “bioremediation”. As EPA
rules on biohazard cleanup were exponentially tightened in the mid-1980s, traditional

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janitorial services or traditional cleaning services were no longer willing to clean up
locations contaminated by human body fluids and/or decomposed human bodies.
The founders of Aftermath, Tim Reifsteck and Chris Wilson, who are lifelong
friends, created and developed their company in 1996 to fill this void and satisfy the
EPA requirements. Their service also offers comfort, respect, and compassion to
families by providing the most professional services they could create and manage. It
thus became their business to clean up crime scenes after the police forensics
specialists (crime scene investigators -- CSI) have completed their investigations at the
crime locations. With the EPA rulings, the need for Aftermath's cleaning services
became desperate in the United States; and the company proved itself willing to clean
any crime scene in the Chicago vicinity, no matter how bloody or contaminated.
In this book, the author traces the history of the men involved in the
development and expansion of the company, explores the history of the company and
its cleaning services, and introduces all of the actors related to the scenes which
Aftermath cleans. Persons introduced are aftermath employees (often coming to the
company as pairs of friends), clients who use their services, police, detectives, and
coroners.
Based upon the writing, the reader may easily conclude that the author, Gill
Reavill is trained as an investigative journalist. This may explain why the author
does not speculate on whether the technicians of Aftermath have developed
philosophies and coping strategies similar to those of the workers in other socially
disapproved occupations (such as honey-dippers/sewage workers, garbage collectors,
and undertakers).
The book is built of twelve well-written and hard hitting chapters; thirteen
chapters if one counts the epilogue, which is a chapter about the collapse of the World
Trade Towers in New York City, entitled, “The Dead House”. Each chapter describes a
particular type of scene in need of remediation clean-up. The first explains complete
dismemberment and bodily disarticulation by repeated shotgun and high-powered rifle
fire. The second chapter tells of a reclusive elderly man who died in his house, but
was not discovered until several summer weeks had passed. His body was totally
decomposed upstairs, yet the Aftermath technicians found spinal fluids on the
concrete floor of the basement downstairs.
Chapter three takes the reader back in time to the summer of 1996 when the
Aftermath founders, Tim and Chris, interrupted their newspaper circulation and sales
business to take on a job cleaning the bedroom of a teenaged boy who had committed
suicide by shooting himself through the head with a center fire rifle. Both of them had
recently graduated from college with business degrees; and in remediation cleaning,
they felt they had found their niche in satisfying a need which was not being
realistically addressed. Both were amazed at how complex that first cleaning job
proved to be; thus they set out determinedly to create a business which would develop
the technological expertise with which to solve the Aftermath problem.
The book, Aftermath, INC.: Cleaning Up after CSI goes Home, is absolutely
fascinating in a forensic sense: That is, it is intriguing once the reader gets beyond the
grossness and distastefulness of the gory and smelly details. This book will provide
insight to guide those college students who wish to study forensic science and even
forensic psychology. When the student can imagine him or herself helping with the
Aftermath cleanups, then he or she will know that they can handle the crime scene or
the scene of unattended death whether to do crime scene investigation or to
decontaminate or remediate the scene.