Nearly 2 years later, crime scene at house shows neglect, even blood

By DEANNA BOYD

FORT WORTH -- It will be two years in August since James Vece shot his wife, Eliana, and 14-year-old stepdaughter, Mailen, then turned the gun on himself inside the family's north Fort Worth home.

Since then, the house in the 4600 block of Birchbend Lane has been neglected, neighbors say, the target of thieves and an eyesore with grass and weeds sometimes reaching 2 feet high before the frustrated neighbors just mow it themselves.

But June 11, a neighbor boy's discovery of a litter of kittens living in the home's garage led to the uncovering of something far more disturbing: blood left behind from the double murder/suicide.

"I have kids over here trying to pick up cats, and you've got a murder scene that has not been cleaned up?" said Katherine Powers, the boy's mother. "What kind of vermin or bugs or bacteria is that going to draw?"

"... I can see them not doing anything with the house if nobody wants to own it, but it hasn't even been cleaned up. That's just wrong."

Efforts are being made to clean up the property after inquiries from the Star-Telegram. But why the bloody reminders of a crime remained after almost two years is a complicated matter. Those involved point to a foreclosure that an attorney calls "invalid," an ongoing probate case and little or no involvement by relatives of the deceased, some of whom live abroad.

"This is a single-family dwelling where there was a horrific crime in it, and it sat vacant and even changed ownership or at least control at least once or twice in the process. I'm sure there was communication disconnect between the various people in control of it," said Brandon Bennett, Fort Worth's code compliance director. "... I can see how something like this fell through the cracks."

Bennett said city workers have made cursory checks of the home's interior since learning of its reported conditions Wednesday. He said that the house, although messy, poses no public health hazards and that no city ordinances appear to been violated.

"The inside of it looks almost like a time capsule, for lack of a better description," Bennett said. "There's still a calendar on the fridge, unopened mail. As part of the investigation, things got gone through. Most certainly it wouldn't be a neat, tidy house like folks would still live in."

*****

The discovery of the scene came to light after Powers' 11-year-old son noticed a litter of kittens living in the home's garage.

"Someone had apparently attempted to pry open the garage door," Powers said. "It was open about 6 or 8 inches, and kittens were coming and going from the garage."

Powers said she called animal control after her son caught one kitten. As the animal control officer was leaving her home, she said, they noticed a man inside the garage. He said he'd been hired by the management company to mow the lawn.

"I'm like, it's already been done by the neighbor," Powers said.

Noticing that the door from the garage to the home had been left open, Powers said, the animal control officer obtained permission from the man to look in the house for other cats. Soon after going in, Powers said, the animal control officer came back out, visibly upset and stating there was no way he'd been able to find any cats inside.

"He said it smelled horrible. There were beds unmade. There's dried blood on the beds and walls. There's dishes on the table. It's like somebody just walked out," Powers said. "I was just horrified." Bennett said the animal control officer denies walking inside the home, saying he had only checked the garage for cats and had been told about the blood from the man there to mow.

*****

Sgt. Pedro Criado, a police spokesman, said cleanup of crime scenes on private property "is the responsibility of the owners and family members."

"They're advised that there is a crime scene, so they're not shocked in any way and that they can clean it up themselves or hire a private company to do so and that those are available," Criado said.

Jim Vece's sister said her family could not have access to the home -- they were not named administrator of the estate because of the circumstances of the crime. She said she was not even allowed to retrieve any of her brother's belongings, including family photographs and videos.

"My mom passed away in '97. My brother had a videotape of her -- the last videotape of her right before she passed away," said the sister, who asked not to be identified. "He had the only copy. I'm assuming it's still there somewhere."

Chris Nester, a former colleague and close friend of Eliana Veces, said he was named administrator of the estate because her relatives live in Argentina. Nester said his hands have been tied because the house was repossessed by the Federal National Mortgage Association, or Fannie Mae, for loan default.

Juan Tijerina, a Fort Worth attorney representing Eliana Vece's family, said that foreclosure, however, is invalid because Fannie Mae was not aware that the homeowners were dead.

"Because of the economy, I guess they assumed it was just another foreclosure," Tijerina said.

Tijerina said he wrote to Fannie Mae, explaining that the foreclosure was not done properly because the mortgage company did not go through probate. He said he has not heard back from the company, or its attorneys, to find out whether the first foreclosure was voided and whether it is going forward with a second foreclosure.

"For the last year or so, we've been asking them to see what needs to be done to hurry up the foreclosure," Tijerina said. "We're concerned about the neighbors. The house looks terrible. They still have blood and stuff in one of the bedrooms."

Attorneys representing the mortgage company did not respond to phone messages Friday.

*****

Powers said Wednesday that no one from the property management company returned to check the house for trapped cats despite being assured by the man that the company would be notified. After her son heard meows coming from the garage, she called the property management company, Ohio-based Safeguard Properties, who told her only that her message would be passed onto the "interested parties."

"The yard is devastating. People know that it's abandoned. It's been broken into several times, and it looks terrible, not to mention the smell, and no one's doing anything about it," Powers said. "I'm obviously concerned about the animals. That's my priority, but if there's now dead animals on top of whatever is left in there, it's going to be a complete health hazard."

Detecting and Preventing Suicide among Teenagers

Melissa Ridenour

According to both the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Center for Disease Control, suicide is the third leading cause of death for youth ages 15 to 24. Teen suicide affects everyone. Family and friends feel a guilty sense that if they had only done something different, the suicide could have been prevented. Therefore, it’s important to understand its causes, how to detect potential suicidal vulnerability, and how to help prevent it.

Causes of Teen Suicide
As teens grow up, they often feel stress, self-doubt, confusion, social and interaction problems with friends, peer pressure, concerns about succeeding, and pressure to meet parental expectations. Some teens suffer from clinical depression as well. Most teenagers experience such feelings to a certain degree at some point in their growing years. Those who are overwhelmed with such feelings and are unable to deal with them are more at risk for suicide.

There are several causes for teenagers to potentially want to take their own lives. Anxiety or depression left untreated can be a contributing factor. Feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and worthlessness can cause teenagers to contemplate ending their lives. Other contributing factors are lack of success in school, bullying at school, violence at home, divorce, death of a loved one, rejection by peers, and the suicide of a friend.

According to the Center for Disease Control, such pressures of life make it too difficult for some teens to cope. As a result, sometimes overwhelmed teens welcome suicide as an escape from the pressure and pain.

Detecting Teen Depression and Potentially Suicidal Teens
According the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, parents should be on the lookout for specific signs in their children that could be indicators for a potential suicide risk. Such indicators include withdrawal from family and friends, as well as a lack of interest in activities the teens formerly enjoyed. Parents should look for any change in eating and sleeping habits or in hygiene and personal appearance.

In addition, parents should watch for personality changes and rebellious or violent behavior. Difficulty concentrating, decline in the quality of school work, and persistent boredom and malaise are possible signs as well. Persistent complaints of stomach aches, headaches and fatigue could be symptoms of emotional problems that can be signs of potential suicidal tendencies.

Equally important signs to watch for include statements from teens that they are bad and that they feel terrible inside. Other verbal hints include such statements as, “I won’t be a problem for you much longer. It’s no use. Nothing matters anyway.” Such statements from teens are clear indicators that they may be at least contemplating suicide.

If teenagers start giving away cherished possessions or throwing away favorite belongings, a way of getting their affairs in order, parents should consider such behavior an indicator of the risk for suicide. In addition, parents should watch for any signs of hallucinations or bizarre or strange thoughts.

Teen Suicide Prevention
According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, if teens threaten to commit suicide, parents should take the threat seriously and immediately seek professional help from a qualified mental health professional. Parents should not hesitate to ask their teens if they have suicidal thoughts. Such a question will not put the idea into children’s heads, but will, instead, assure teens that someone cares and open up an opportunity for discussion about it.

Parents should determine if their teens are suffering from depression and, if so, get medical treatment for the depression. Counseling is a good preventive strategy for depressed or potentially suicidal teens as well. Counseling can provide teens with coping strategies for dealing with their life problems. Frequently, once teens learn how to cope with problems, their suicidal desires dissipate.

It is essential for parents to treat their teens with understanding, compassion and respect. Parents should demonstrate unconditional love, offer emotional support, and make their teens feel important, loved and wanted. Parents should demonstrate to their teens that overcoming their problems and life challenges is possible and that they will help them with such challenges.

Resources
Related information can be found in the articles, “Coping with a Bully: How to Stop Bullying” and “Strategies for Dealing with a Bully Dilemma”. The article, “Dealing with Grief” provides related information about dealing with the death of a loved one.

Dirty work pays for local cleanup crew

BY LESLIE WIMMER

Kalyn Peterson runs her business from an unmarked white truck filled with industrial cleaning supplies and power tools. Her truck often pulls up after ambulances and squad cars leave traumatic scenes, and she spends hours cleaning what would turn many people’s stomachs.

Peterson’s business, Anubis SceneClean Inc., specializes in cleaning up after a suicide, homicide, crime scene, natural death and human or animal decomposition. The company also cleans “gross filth” homes – homes where a resident has compulsive hoarding syndrome – and biohazards in jails and squad cars including blood, spit, vomit and various infections such as staph.

Anubis is “a Greek god that helps people move from life into death, and that’s kind of how I think of the service I provide,” Peterson said.

Peterson first found the need for her business when a family friend’s son committed suicide. It took 10 days for the family to clean up the mess, she said.

“I thought: ‘How awful is that for someone to have to do that with a family member,’” Peterson said.

Peterson is certified in biohazard remediation and operates under federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirements, she said. The health administration training taught her how to clean biohazards off of

all kinds of surfaces and how to protect her employees and clients from sicknesses from biohazard materials. She and her brother are the company’s two full-time employees, and Peterson has a list of people she calls when she needs more help.

Her job is more physical than mental, Peterson said. She considers blood and body fluids to be “just stuff,” she said, and concentrates on making sure family members don’t have to endure cleaning the scenes.

“I’ve always wanted to do something where I look back on my life and I made a difference somewhere, I didn’t just go through the motions,” Peterson said. “And this, I truly believe in it and that’s why the stuff doesn’t bother me, because I’m helping people.”

Jobs can take anywhere from two hours for cleaning small amounts of blood to several days and heavy labor for methamphetamine lab decontamination, gross filth or human decomposition, she said.

“We had a woman who fell in her bathroom and she decomposed for several months before the landlord found her, it left a pretty big mess to clean up,” Peterson said. “That’s when we have to remove tubs, tiles, walls, sheetrock, counters and toilets, just depending on where the fluids go we have to follow that and decontaminate it or the odor will stay and the biohazards will stay.”

Customers often tell her that before they found her business, they thought police cleaned up biohazard scenes, she said. When police leave a scene, they can’t suggest a particular company to families or land owners, but they can give out lists of businesses and phone numbers, she said.

Peterson hopes people will hire a trained clean up company, even if it isn’t hers, so family members don’t have to look at the mess and the biohazards are properly removed.

Texas does not have strict laws covering biohazard clean up or regulations for biohazard clean up companies, Peterson said.

“You can get a pick up and a bottle of bleach and call yourself a crime scene clean up company in Texas,” Peterson said.

The state has no regulations for companies involved in cleaning crime scenes, and there is no regulatory oversight organization, said Emily Palmer, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services. The Health Administration does have rules that pertain to employee safety for the companies, Palmer said.

Kenneth Brown owns KRI Crime Scene Cleanup, based in Dallas, and has been pushing for tighter biohazard clean up laws in Texas because people can get sick from improperly cleaning scenes, he said. Brown will open a Fort Worth location in April.

Both Brown and Peterson have heard of landowners spraying blood off outside surfaces, such as sidewalks, with water hoses, which doesn’t actually clean the area or get rid of diseases or infections in the body fluids.

“Let’s say you hose it off and you get it at the edge of the dirt and concrete, and let’s say your son comes through there skateboarding and happens to slip and fall where this happened and scrape himself, he can catch what was in the body fluids,” Brown said.

When Peterson is at a job, any material with body fluids on it is bagged and placed in a “red box,” which is a cardboard box labeled biohazard with a red plastic lining. Materials can include paper towels, pillows and sheets, sections of carpet or tile. Peterson uses the power tools in her truck to cut contaminated mattresses, furniture and building material apart to fit in the boxes.

When a box is full, an outside company picks up the red boxes and takes them to an incinerator instead of a trash dump.

The cost for cleaning up a biohazard scene can range from $500 to $10,000, depending on the amount of red boxes, equipment used and labor, Peterson said. About 40 percent of insurance companies cover the cost of clean up, she said.

Peterson opened Anubis in August of 2004. She got her first job in December of 2004 cleaning the front lawn of a church where vandals stole trash bags from a dentist’s office and spread bloody gauze around the area.

“Since I started doing this I tell everybody now: Go check on your family members,” Peterson said.

Companies tackle mess a corpse can leave behind

Published on October 1, 2009
Angie's List
by Staci Giordullo

What happens to those who die alone — and no one notices? Welcome to the business of biohazard remediation. Originally limited to crime and trauma scene cleaning, the industry's scope has grown to include decontamination of homes soiled by human waste, tissue and body fluids, and other toxins associated with a decomposing body.


Ronald Gospodarski, owner of Bio-Recovery Corp. in New York City, started his business in 1988 after spending years as a paramedic and realizing no company was offering these types of services.

"No one is prepared for this type of thing," he says. "I come in and solve the problem."

According to Gospodarski, approximately 75 percent of his business is cleaning up after decompositions.

"I get calls from family, police, landlords — a lot of times it's the property manager," he says.

Stacie Salerno of Bradford, Pa., recently hired Gospodarski to clean her brother's apartment after he was stabbed to death, reportedly by a stranger police believe he likely met online. "I never knew this kind of company even existed," Salerno says. "But they took care of everything. You never would know there was a murder in that apartment."

Like many other industries, the prerequisites to be a bio-recovery technician vary greatly by state. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration requires proper training in order to handle blood-borne pathogens. In addition, companies should hold the proper permits for biohazard waste disposal as well as general liability and pollution liability insurance.

What happens to those who die alone? Welcome to the business of biohazard remediation. See examples of biohazard remediation >>Dale Cillian, president of the American Bio-Recovery Association, says the lack of a nationwide standard is unnerving because there are companies that grossly overcharge customers and don't thoroughly clean or properly dispose of the waste.

"Some of these companies will rob people blind," Cillian says. "They're hurting families at the worst time of their lives." Gospodarski, who's certified with the ABRA, agrees and says his average job costs between $1,500 and $3,500. "Customers need to do their due diligence before hiring a company like mine," he says.

Industry experts recommend verifying companies with ABRA — which has 80 members — Angie's List and the BBB.

While a coroner typically removes the body before the biohazard remediation team arrives, there are a number of threats left behind — many of which go unnoticed by the untrained eye.

"We see marks of contamination affected during the removal of the body such as fluid from the body bag touching walls and furniture," says John DiGulio, co-founder of USA Decon in Houston. "Light switches and door handles are usually left unclean."

Hiring a professional to clean up such a mess can lift an emotional burden from grieving family members. "There aren't many jobs in which you can provide unimaginable relief for someone," DiGulio says.

Originally limited to crime and trauma scene cleaning, the scope of biohazard remediation has grown to include the cleanup and decontamination associated with mold, human waste, tissue and body fluids, animal waste and other toxins.

If a body is left undiscovered in a home for any period of time, a bio-recovery technician is needed to remove the unpleasant consequences of that decomposition.

MRSA case identified at Grand Prairie

'Superbug' found in elementary student
by Lauren Traut
April 29, 2009

Grand Prairie staff and District 157-C administration took extra precautions Thursday, April 23, after a confirmed case of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus surfaced in a Grand Prairie student.

The strain of staph bacteria resistant to some antibiotics appeared in a District 157-C school for the second time since January 2008.

The district learned of the confirmed case the evening of Wednesday, April 22.

The affected student was not in school leading up to the diagnosis, Superintendent Dr. Robert Madonia said. There is no indication the student contracted the infection while in school, he added.

MRSA can be transmitted by direct contact with broken skin or direct contact of broken skin with contaminated surfaces. Sharing of personal items such as towels and clothing also increases the risk of MRSA transmission.

Once the student’s family informed the district, a letter was sent out across the district, informing parents and advising them to take necessary precautions, including visiting a doctor if concerned about their child’s condition. If a doctor diagnoses a case of MRSA, the parents are then asked to contact the school.

The letter was also posted on the district’s Web site, at www.fsd157c.org.

Madonia spread the news throughout Grand Prairie and also across the district, while custodians at Grand Prairie made extra sweeps of the school for an extensive, “intense” cleaning.

Simple steps like hand-washing can help reduce chances of spreading the infection, Madonia said.

The district educated parents on the situation as early as possible after receiving the news.

“It’s been our philosophy to be proactive, rather than reactive,” Madonia said.

“We believe in getting the word out, educating people about the incident,” he said. “We don’t want to put it out there to send people into a panic.”

The student is being treated and will return to the school non-contagious.

Tips to reduce risk of contracting MRSA:

Wash hands thoroughly with soap and water or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

Keep cuts and scrapes clean and covered with a bandage until healed.

Avoid sharing personal items.

Disinfect all hard surfaces before and after use.

To reach Lauren, e-mail at l.traut@frankfortstation.com.

Cleanup completed at Civic Association

April 5, 2009

Cleanup has been completed at the American Civic Association building in Binghamton, where a gunman killed 13 people and injured four before taking his own life Friday.

The American Bio-Recovery Association, a non-profit international association of crime and trauma scene professionals, said Sunday that the bio-recovery cleaning was complete. The Ipswich, Mass.-based group provided the service at no cost.

Two member companies, Disaster Clean Up of Endwell and the Bio-Recovery Corporation of New York City, donated labor and supplies to remediate the scene with a crew of six technicians.