The Perfect Murder...can it be done?

[MKSheppard]

The perfect murder...can it be done?
By BoydFish

The quest of mystery writers and hitmen alike for years beyond counting has been for "The Perfect Murder". What is the perfect murder? One where the victim is eliminated, the payoff is achieved without the plotting party getting discovered. To begin with, yes, the perfect murder is possible. It's been done. Countless murders go unsolved around the world. The overwhelming bulk of those do not meet our criteria, as they are simply random killings. While they might be "perfect" in the sense that the killer remains undetected, generally they have no payoff. Also, a murder where you're forced to flee the civilized nations of the world and/or never collect the benefit, doesn't quite qualify as "perfect".

Further to that, having a good knowledge of how people die and post-mortem care around the more civilized parts of the world means that I can say, without a doubt, yes, a person can be killed and the killer goes scott-free. For the purposes of this essay, I'm going to refrain from providing precise technical details (I won't tell you how to avoid fingerprint identification, but will explain it's well documented limitations, despite Hollywood's misconceptions). I'll also say that a pre-condition of any perfect murder is a lack of accomplices, thus spare me any offers/requests for the elimination of your spouse/turtle/significant other.

It's also important to note that while the perfect murder is possible, you need a big dose of luck to pull it off. You also require a high degree of calm and relaxation before, during and after the fact. The emotional shock and trauma of having just killed a person is not a good way to stay relaxed and calm. While many of us have had jobs that coach towards this (Military, Law Enforcement to a degree.), these organizations focus on context and rules of engagement. It's also important to understand that the art of forensic investigation is advancing faster now than ever before. A big thanks for that lays at the feet of OJ's "Dream Team", who have forced US and to a lesser degree, other "Western" nations to develop more effective forensic procedures. This has two sides to it. First, it forces those who commit murder to raise their standards, in the possibility that the forensic unit in their area have capability that they were unaware of. Second, the nature of forensic investigation, which has such a wide variety of disciplines, means that there is no budget that could sustain effective research and practice in all of them. That means that there is a good chance that the forensic "expert" called in has no expertise in evidence collection or admissibility, but is simply just an expert in the field. In very convoluted terms, what I'm saying is that if you try, unless you are very lucky and very good, it's very likely you'll get caught. The amount of planning and effort involved often doesn't deliver the payoff desired. In fact, often the person seeking the benefit or payoff could have achieved the same, if not greater benefit by other, legal, methods. In other words, murder is really inefficient.

The first factor is target selection. Killing certain people triggers certain responses. Whacking the Head of State for a G-8 nation is far more difficult than taking out Rollo the Town Drunk. The local gendarmes will kill you if you try to kill the boss, while Rollo will be fished out of the river with a mutter and a quick shunt off to a junior investigator. As a precondition, we agreed that the motive must provide a payoff. Unless Rollo has a hidden stash of $1000 bills lining his shopping cart, it's hard to imagine a payoff of any type in his death. At a certain point however, the level of inherent security reaches a threshold where killing this person without detection becomes a statistical impossibility. This threshold is actually far lower than one might think, but the area of vulnerability is quite wide. The threshold area is also affected by the ability of the person with murder on their mind. If the murderer is a 110lb weakling, there is a much smaller percentage of the population that they can kill with bare hands. Of course, that same person becomes a much larger threat potential if they have unrestricted access to and training in the use of firearms.

A sub-factor to this, relevant in this day and age, is the need to avoid indiscriminate killing. While it might be effective and easy to drop the bridge that your target drives over everyday, the collateral damage will trigger such a massive investigation that you'd never be able to beat the entire system. In simple terms, killing a relative nobody is not going to trigger a massive police investigation, but killing three unconnected nobodies gets your face posted in post offices. While this an extreme example, even a random bullet taking out an innocent bystander can turn into a local news story, which then becomes an investigative priority. This creates a paradox of sorts, especially in the context of the overall factor, that being if the person is important enough to have a resulting benefit, they are probably important enough to generate a large response. This is not always the case, but it is a factor. Cases where there might be a massive immediate response, but isn't a huge factor, is where you can literally make this person "vanish". If the target has a degree of personal security, but isn't accompanied 24 hours a day by protective staff, this would be where this level of action is required. Is it possible to make a person vanish? In actual technical terms...no. For all practical purposes, yes it can be done. You need genitalia that clang and some deep technical knowledge, however.

The second factor is ability to act independently. This is the area that trips up most people. While most can understand the need to strike alone, they often forget to set up alone, or as close to zero as possible. As I stated earlier, accomplices are instant tickets to a cracked murder case.

A sub-factor to point to is that the independent strike capability must be overwhelming and instant. If you don't deliver a instant kill strike, there is a chance, in varying degrees that you'll simply commit attempted murder. These generally lead to convictions.

The third factor is crime scenes management. That is not a typo. Every "perfect murder" probably has more than one scene. Chances are that you're going to have to manage at least three scenes, more if a clandestine grave is used. For our purposes, we'll define a crime scene as any area where the remains occupy that leave any type of evidence that can link either scenes or culprits With each scene, there is an increase in the chance of a link being provided via Locard's Law(Every person takes something from an area with them and leaves something behind.). As such, you have to figure out how, where and when you're going to strike, transport and dispose of the person.

Once we have a crime scenes management plan in place, the key is ensuring that there is no useable evidence available at the scenes. It would also be useful to take steps to disrupt the linking of scenes. There are several methods to do this. A common mistake that murders make is selecting multiple covering methods of the murder. That leads to questions in the investigator's mind, which leads to answers. Answers lead to evidence, evidence leads to arrests. In other words, pick a method and stick to it. It's not likely that a person leaves a suicide note, torches themselves, ties a noose around their neck, slashes their wrists and eats an entire spray can of bug killer(Of course, there was a scene where exactly that happened and it was a legitimate suicide. Rather, in the space of a couple of days, he did all of these, until the bug spray finally got him.). If your trying to make it look like suicide, don't get overly complex. If your simply eliminating a person, wasting time and effort on crude attempts to indicate suicide simply give starting points to an investigator.

Related to crime scene, but also related to independent striking, is weapon selection. There is no such thing as the perfect murder weapon. They are all various degrees of bad. In terms of disposal and effective rationalization, firearms make absolutely horrible weapons. They are hard to obtain without leaving a trail, tend to draw attention when used, leave great evidence and generally hang around the neck of the user. Intermediate weapons are generally more effective, those items like knives, etc. The key is how unique they are. The problem is that the more common a weapon is, the more skill is needed to use it for a instant fatal strike. It's not hard to kill a man with a dixie cup, but it's a very uncommon skill. If any person over the age of twelve knew how to turn a dixie into a lethal weapon, we'd need licences to own them. As an aside, yes, killing a person with a dixie cup is possible, but it's much simpler just to use your bare hands.

The first scene, or strike scene, is hardest to manage. You need to end the person's life, do so in a manner that won't arouse suspicion and do so quickly. You also have to assume that the victim will not co-operate with your ideas, or might be more able to withstand your assault than you planned. Compared to the next two types of scenes, this one has the tightest time frame. Of course, it's also possible to have a strike, transport and disposal scene all in the same place, but that method is fraught with problems. For that to happen, you run the risk of other people seeing you go off to a deserted area with your victim. How problematic is that? Last year in BC, a man was convicted more than a decade after the murder, despite the fact that the body was never recovered. The bottom line here is that screw up enough at any stage and you'll get caught.

The second scene, or transport scene, can be problematic for several reasons. The first problem isn't one that I have the hardest time relating to. The overwhelming majority of people have zero experience in moving human remains. Large numbers of murderers get caught in the act not of killing the person, but running from it(As a result of poor transport plans.). What is a transport scene? Trunks of cars, wheelbarrows or simply flinging the guy over your shoulder. Essentially, whatever method you use to move the body becomes a scene in it's own right.

If you know how the system works, you could drag a corpse up the front steps of the local police station, up to the front counter, have the corpse pay it's parking tickets, tour the homicide section and leave out the back door. If you're me, you can do all that, but have two cops do all the lifting for you. The biggest problem with cops is that, for the most part, they are not that far removed from the general public in terms of death experience. An interesting statistic on death experience that is little known, but the average Body Removal Tech sees more deaths in a week than the average cop sees in their career. In general terms, the first type of cop that murderers have to avoid are the front line patrol officers. While a good number of these officers are effective in their roles, they are like any other human beings when presented with a socially unbalancing situation. That means that they seek direction. I've never had to without having full colour of authority to do so, but I've never had a problem simply telling an officer at a roadblock "I'm with the Coroner's office.". I've never had my credentials checked or even questioned. One time, at a contracted hit with international connections no less, a patrol officer tried to wave my younger brother into the crime scene. By sheer chance, the hit had happened about a mile from my parent's farm and my brother was on his way home. He was driving my old pick-up, but he looks little like me. He's a long haired hippy comedian(Literally. He's a professional stand-up comic. Travels the world doing so. Now lives in London.). My brother pulled up to the roadblock, the cop took a half look at him, then walked up and started to tell him where the safe zone was and where he could go. Despite having a definite streak of anti-authority in him, my little brother is still a product of a RCMP household and knows that when big brother is working, it's not a joking matter. So he gently told the constable that she was mistaken, but she actually insisted twice that he should go in. I was actually sitting two cars back, wondering what was taking so long.

Getting back to transport, the other cops that are a concern are the actual investigators. Some are good, some are appointed to their position for political reasons. The tough thing, from a perspective committing the perfect murder, is that you have to plan based on having the best investigator on the planet chasing you.

The final phase, or disposal phase, is where the bulk of evidence is generated. As such, if our "perfect murder" is possible, this is where planning and skill become critical. The goal at this stage is first to deny identity of the victim to the investigators, then to deny identity of the killer to the investigators. To most, they would assume that it would be the other way around. This is why most get caught. Until investigators know the identity of the victim, the chances of finding the killer are tiny. Why was this person killed? Who were they last seen with? What type of work did they do? None of these questions could be answered until it's known who the victim is. Even if you left a note at the scene saying "I did it. My number is 555-555-5555. Please call ASAP", until they know who you killed, they cannot even hope to get a conviction.

It's for this reason that several forensic arts are aimed at identification. This allows the investigators to know where to direct questions and how to focus their investigations. By denying physical identification, you deny them a critical step.

Another issue in disposal of remains is "where shall I leave my inconvenient dead body?". A discussion I had a short time ago with a couple of coroners rolled around to this topic. I pointed out that the absolute nightmare disposal scene would be...never you mind. We hashed it back and forth, but all agreed that if somebody dumped a body at this type of location, we'd be f?ked. In fact, we all agreed that if presented with this type of scene, we'd probably try and simply cover the whole thing up. Suffice it to say, there are good places and bad places.

In summary, I stand by my assertion that the perfect murder is possible. It requires some very specific knowledge and planning, but it can be done.

That's a pretty cool essay; I thought it was very interesting. I know you'll never post the perfect body disposal location on the internet, but I am going to guess anyway. If the goal is to prevent identification, then one needs to destroy the body. I would bag the victim up and put him in one of those big dumpsters that is mechanically emptied (so no garbage man noticed how heavy the bag was) in a garbage jurisdiction where trash was incinerated. Any surviving teeth or bone fragments would thus be mixed in with tons of garbage ash.

Good guess...but wrong. Actually, dumpsters are one of the best crime scenes for processing. It's the only one that we can pick up, take to a secure location and process. That, combined with the fact that I firmly believe that every single dumpster is physically checked by hand every day across North America. Who say street people don't serve a purpose? Human bodies, by the way, withstand heat very well, in terms of identification. That's why working in a crematorium is such hot and sweaty work. Of course, one the most surreal moments you'll ever have is warming yourself on a cold winter night, then realizing exactly where that heat is coming from...

Dumping the body into Challanger Deep would be a good way to go.... I dont think any manned craft can get down there anymore and i dont know of any unmaned job that could make it, unless you count a solid block of steel on a rope... A good option would be to dump a body into a salt marsh, lots of things in there that would eat the fleash pretty fast.

Granted, but if you have the resources to mount a transfer of a body out there, you probably don't need to avoid detection by the local constabulary. As for the salt marsh, entomology has gotten a great deal of attention(I spent a semester studying this subject with Canada's leading expert in this area.) in the last few years. Those salty bugs would send all kinds of clues to the investigators. Bugs are the only reliable method of determining time of death after 72 hours(Before that, Algor, Rigor and Livor Mortis are the big ones.). They also biomass and make a fantastic beacon. My old entomology prof is actually currently doing a long term study in the effects of waterbased insects on submerged insects.

We have case in ours now. Are two doctirs married. Lady wife wants to divorce husband she has all money. He not want to be divorced for then will be poor. So he get her to hotel kill her cut up body dump in cess pit. Is most difficult job to make identification for body decay fast chemicals used to prevent cess pit going sour destroy many things. Eventually make ID through DNA with help of FBI. Still is very hard for police to make good case because most evidence is gone. Only good thing so far is guys who search cess pit get special duty bonus in recognition of disgustingness of job.

OK, Here are my guesses. Couldn't think of ten. They just cover the disposal and not the problem of being seen or discovered at one of the places.

1. Cremation at a funeral home
2. Any large animal (pig or cattle) meat processing facility.
3. Sanitary sewer facility aneorobic digester
4. paper mill "black liqour", a strong base, generating vat
5. a large, 200lb + , explosion. A pink mist is what it's been described to me as. Friend was on mine detector duty in VN.
6. hydro plant turbine inlet

Basically any process that would destroy a body totally, bomb or acid/base, grinding process and have lots of chemical activity to minimize organic deposits or where it becomes a needle in a haystack.

Colonel, would you believe that you guys treat your scene team better that we do? I've been in cesspools playing jigsaw puzzles and nobody ever offered us a bonus! Good to hear of somebody, somewhere, recognizing it. You were pretty close on one on that list, but not quite.

Using a crematorium might be feasible, but is fraught with massive problems. Unless you happen to work there, it's sort of hard to arrange. In fact, due to the nature of the funeral home industry, most crematoriums are becoming 24 hour operations servicing several funeral homes in the area.

A 200lb+ explosion, while effective, creates a bigger problem. It draws attention. Also, bomb analysis would make it pretty easy to start tracing it back to you. Remember how fast they caught the guys who truck bombed the WTC? Or the Oklahoma city bomber?

Choices #3&4, while very good at getting rid of flesh, leave bones around. There are entire libraries on forensic anthropology.

I'm not sure about a hydro turbine inlet, but human bodies, especially dead or even people knocked cold are amazingly durable. We've all heard the story of how the drunk at wheel always lives, but the poor family of five gets killed in the same accident. This is due to the extreme relaxation of the body. I've seen guys dragged thru an industrial paper press, shattering every bone in his body, but aside from getting a burst ankle(The first part in), he was otherwise intact.

If it was toronto

Then

1. the subway

As far as i am concerned , the perfect murder means getting away with it, give the cops a credible solution ,and most of the time , it will be accepted.

Acidently pushing someone off the platform as the train came in would be caught on tape , or maybe not , but even with witnesses , a senario could be set up , and have you wailing it was an "accident" yada yada

2. Several areas , including the aquaduct ,that a suicide can be "faked" , you have a complete body , but the evidence points to a suicide.

If you're in Toronto, of course suicide makes sense to the local cops(LOL)!

actually , i am probably not giving metro cops the respect they deserve , they have an eighty five percent rate in aprehending people that commit felonies

Ahem, the Metro Toronto cops haven't arrested a felon in thier entire history.

We're Canadian, thus don't have felonies, we have summary, indictable and dual procedure offences.

I've been in cesspools playing jigsaw puzzles and nobody ever offered us a bonus!

This is advantage of living in society of total corruption. Here is well understood if anybody want anything done out of ordinary is necessary to pay for this. If want bureaucrat to process permit for you fast is necessary to give him present. Otherwise yours goes to join pile with all others waiting for attention. Is fair na? Want something special done must make special reward to those who do.

I've spent a few evening yacking with a forensic pat (WinCo RAARRes) and we came up with a few. But not to cheat some home grown ideas:

1) Fire box of a steam loco. Rather specific as to acess, but if you can, very effective. Especialy if (as is normal on preserved railways) he who stokes the fire emptys the ash. Smell might be the problem. Mummy, that Cho-cho smells funny... This reminds me of the story of the family picnic and the chicken kievs.

2)(My fav) Two elastic cargo nets, some scrap weight and a deep patch of sea. The local harbor spoil ground isn't a bad choice.

3)Abandoned (100 year old +) mine workings, my old home abounded in them. True a potential time bomb, but I'd say the odds were good.

4)Industrial worm farm. The one I used to vist, ran the feed stock through a tree chipper and spread the result over a half a dozen acres of worm lots. This one is based on the very small needles in a very large haystack principal.

5)New housing estate. Chosen carfuly (only go for the high end), most new houses in my city (Melbourne) are built on 8-12" concrete slabs get some body under one of those and you won't be seen them again in your life time.

6)Bone meal plant. Let them gently rejoin the food chain.

7)An industrial dumpster. The factory that I used to work at never had any one go through the rubbish (I know, I was the cleaner). Hoic, crunch and straight to land fill.

Now none of these are paticularly original, but done correctly would work providing you had done your home work. The problem is that if you had acess to these sort of places and were linked to the crime them they wold probably suggest them selves to the investigators.

The ideal would combine heat, mechanical crushing/mastication and a chemical/biological process. I'm thinking paper plant, but I'd think about chipping them in with the original trees.

The problem is that normal people just don't go to places that can eliminate bodys in the course of their daily travels. It all bolis down to the unwriten part of the original essay. Murder takes you out of your way, and comming up with an alibi for being by a country road at 4 in the morning with dirt on your knees and a shovel takes some inspired talking.

The problem with any type of process like heat/mechanical crushing is that the end result is still bits of human, but just lots of little ones. In a story that's close to home, the RCMP/VPD joint task force just arrested a guy in relation to a scene that appears to be pig farm. Pigs eat anything, BTW.

Chemical process is a non-starter. The bottle boys are generally bright guys. If they find x, y and z where they should only expect to find x and y, they can prove that z was a human at the start(I've simplified it a great deal, but you get my drift.).

Another problem is that if you get overfocused on the actual body, you miss key types of evidence, like personal effects. Sure, you got rid of the body, but the parts of the guy's watch grenade the bone meal solution. You'd be amazed at how little things can survive. I've pulled wallets, complete with ID, out of charred remains in car wrecks, with bills not even singed: The position of the body prevented enough O2 from reaching the wallet. No O2, no flame.

As well, burning a body isn't as effective as one would think. You need a lot of heat to destroy bone.

Thanks for your post, Argus

Not that I'd think about it, but you could always hide the body in a creamatoriam in Georgia. Ya know, what's one more? I actually wonder now if there will be bodies that go unidentified or misidentified there for just that reason.

I'd always concidered the cloths and personel effects as another matter entirly. So I ment naked bodys, I know you still have pacemakers, bone pins, bridge work and any other bits of metal you missed floating around; but if your smart enough to find a good disposal method I'm assuming you have the brains to strip the body of all the evidence you can find.

Clothes are easy, if they are in good condition and fairly generic then two or three trips through the washing machine and off to the donation bin.
Cash goes in your pocket, wallet, ID ect in the any number of ways. Rings, watches and keys in the domestic rubbish so straight of to land fill and jewlery into the sea or the foundations of your new pegola. I'm presuming that the murderer is smart enough to count the value of any trinkets against a stay in prision.

Big stuff like cars is a real source of risk. These had best be included in the actual murder plan rather than as part of the disposal process. Personaly I wouldn't even touch them if it could be avoided.

Actualy thinking about it, murder should be timed for Garbage night just to reduce the lag time.

I think I've got a good one here. Bulk concrete.

I don't mean doing a Jimmy Hoffa into the nearest foundation. Rather putting Mr.X into the gravel feed line of the mixing plant. He would be:

a) tumbled with fist sized rocks for about 20m.
b) then take a quick trip through a crusher to be reduced down to about 1cm cubed.
c) mixed with an alkali cement and water.
d) then be tumbled for up to 4 hours in a churing bouncing turck.
e) be encapsulated in up to a dozen different places.

Reassembly would not be easy, nor would they show up in a chemical analysis at the plant, cos' nobody is even looking for any more than the Ph balance of the concrete to ensure they are getting the mix right.

If a bit of Mr. X was found, he could be identified, but are plenty of obsticles to prevent humpty dumpty ever being put back in a form a patholigist could find a cause of death from.

Of couse the usual restrictions apply, poisons that would show in a tox screen that sort of thing; and getting rid of the body is only one part of the problem. But it's a start.

The best way is to keep it simple and everything above board . To keep everything in the open so that although people see a death they do not see a murder . Hence no need to dispose of a body ,the body is disposed of through official channels all the paperwork being in order , no need to rouse suspicions if there is no need to .

In the UK the best bet is an automobile "accident" depending on whether the presiding judge believes if you were careless or reckless , the penalty can be as little as a fine and the loss of your license or at most a couple of years in prison . The art will be manuevering your intended victim into a position where you can kill him or her.

Its going to be hard with someone you are known enemies with . Suspicion will still be roused if your known enemy is killed by you while crossing the street . It'll be easier with someone who's your "friend" and who trusts you . How much do you trust the safety features of your motor car . Some vehicles only have drivers side air bags , in which case you could try and dispatch your victim by crashing at a suitable speed whilst you "momentarily" loose control of vehicle .

Have a CD or something in the rear compartment that you want your passenger to get for you . You will have placed this item so that its impossible for your intended victim to retrieve it whilst wearing his or her seatbelt . Once their seatbelt is removed is the time to loose concentration and crash , maybe you was distracted because you was fiddling with the CD player in preparation for the CD your passenger was fetching .

was in a gun club in the UK about 10 years ago talking about a recent murder in which the solicitor had worked for the defence when the subject of "perfect" murders came up.

The solicitor suggested that one way of killing his wife (and getting away with it) would be as follows:

1) get wife to help back car out of driveway.

2) run her over

3) have a drink and then tell the police that you had had a row with your wife, you had been drinking and when you were leaving she must have tried to stop you by standing behind the car. Then breakdown in tears (acting required!). He reckoned you would get done for the drink driving offence and possibly a suspended sentance for manslaughter.

However I have doubts about the plan myself as it would be a relatively low speed impact and she could always get out of the way! But if you pulled it off it would be fairly low risk and by admitting one crime they might not even consider another. Plus if you had a good motive to kill her eg one of you was having an affair etc it accounts for the row and the drinking,

Tricky.

Here in Connecticut, a smart DA could argue that deliberately going out to drive a car while drunk and backing that car out without checking to see if somebody is behind you constitutes a reckless and depraved indifference to human life - and thats Murder in the Second Degree (Murder-Two). That carries 25 years to life. Even if that doesn't wash, the probable guilty verdict would be Manslaughter in the First Degree (Man-One) and that carries 12 - 25.

Of course, if somebody overheard the "Help me back the car out please", its Murder In The First degree(Murder-One) and either a hot-shot or a new lifetime career as a bad man's girlfriend without possibility of parole. CT is a bit different from NY; we're a bit more generous in the state distribution of lethal chemicals.

Wow, several replies since I last looked in on the Essay section.

In no particular order, the idea of good alibis are more promising than the ideas of hiding/concealing the bodies. The first problem is that putting stuff on top of the body, be it concrete or dirt or whatever, we can see right thru it. Or, at the very least, you can't bury it deep enough to hide it. A local company here in Abbotsford is building and testing a GPR(Ground Penetrating Radar) pod for military and law enforcement that mounts on a small aircraft. Police forces can also access such tools as man portable metal detectors, GPR and portable X-Ray machines. The problem with dumping binky-body into a concrete foundation is that if there ends up being a "void" space where the body was, leading to odd configurations that lead to questions that lead to people shooting X-rays into it.

In terms of alibi solutions, those are REALLY hard to pull off. Unless you have some seriously large clanging trouser trinkets, it's hard to pull those types of stories off. I know cops that have done more time in jail as U/C operators than most career criminals(True story: BC's famed serial killer Clifford Olsen from arrest to trial, never met anybody except cops. The RCMP/VPD took over two floors of the jail. The guy mopping floor, the other "prisoners", the jail guards, everybody was a cop.). If you slip just once, they'll be all over you.

Wasn't there a guy in the US who killed his wife and put the body through a tree shredder?

I think he got done on DNA evidence in the shredder - but the DNA in the shredded material was distributed over a wide area and was well rotted by the time the cops worked it out.

Indeed so, in fact the case happened very close to where I live (and gave rise to the famous legal expression "The Connecticut Divorce). The person in question hired a wood-chipper from the local Home Depot and dumped his wife's body through it. One of the ladies who worked for our company back then was a part-time PI who was involved in the case (the wife's parents had hired her to trace the missing woman; as soon as she couldn't do so, it was handed over to the regular authorities).

The case showed what Boydfish means when he says the forensic people have an arsenal of tools available. Despite the fact the wood chipper had been cleaned and used repeatedly, there was still enough evidence in it to get a conviction. I'm not sure what happened to the perp; he may still be on death row or sitting in the pen. If your interested, I'll look it up.

If you would be so kind Seer.

I like reading about murders - a little vicarious thrill!

Someone I once worked with who worked for NASA told me about someone who was killed by walking into a nitrogen filled room. It was virtually impossible to determine the cause of death.

I got the following from a friend . There is no source for this article.

*** 1994's Most Bizarre Suicide ***

At the 1994 annual awards dinner given by the American Association for Forensic Science, AAFS president Don Harper Mills astounded his audience in San Diego with the legal complications of a bizarre death. Here is the story:

On 23 March 1994, the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. The decedent had jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit suicide (he left a note indicating his despondency). As he fell past the ninth
floor, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast through a window, which killed him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the decedent was aware that a safety net had been erected at the eighth floor level to protect some window washers and that Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide anyway because of this.

Ordinarily, Dr. Mills continued, a person who sets out to commit suicide ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended. That Opus was shot on the way to certain death nine stories below probably would not have changed his mode of death from suicide to
homicide. But the fact that his suicidal intent would not have been successful caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands. The room on the ninth floor whence the shotgun blast emanated was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing and he was
threatening her with the shotgun. He was so upset that, when he pulled the trigger, he completely missed his wife and pellets went through the window striking Opus. When one intends to kill subject A but kills subject B in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject B.

When confronted with this charge, the old man and his wife were both adamant that neither knew that the shotgun was loaded. The old man said it was his long standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her - therefore, the killing of Opus appeared to be an accident. That is, the gun had been accidentally loaded.

The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun approximately six weeks prior to the fatal incident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.

There was an exquisite twist. Further investigation revealed that the son, one Ronald Opus, had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten story building on March 23, only to be killed by a shotgun blast
through a ninth story window.

The medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.

FALSE!

www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/opus.htm

Thanks Perpixx !

I went around telling my friends the story for nearly a year now. Sorry.

(Combined three of my posts in sequence into this)

Told a friend of mine about this, and he said that the perfect murder is one where you are totally unconnected to the victim -- why do you think classical serial killers go for so long before they're caught?

...

Another body disposal scheme according to him was:

Find a newly dug, but not yet filled in grave, sneak in at night (this is assuming you can do so without being caught) dig the grave a little deeper, drop the body in, cover it up with dirt...

Apparently the Mafia used this technique -- and yes, it requires big ones to pull off (you have to do it silently and quickly), but if you do it right, nobody's gonna find the body.

...

One I thought of with some prompting from my friend was:

If your target is a heavy smoker; wait till he goes to bed, then suffocate him with a pillow; then put a lit cigarette onto his bedsheets about where his hand would be; stay around to make sure it's a nice blaze (making sure we use no accelerants) then leave. Of course, this only works best in a place where no significant help for the fire will be around for a hour or two; since it will take that much time for the fire to spread and torch up the evidence, leaving us with a charred stiff.

perfect disposal for a body .. ?

the rotating kiln of a portland cement work ..

those factories are highly automated - i recently visited on that had 3 people per shift - plus the office staff in the day shift ..

I mentioned the revival of this topic to a friend of ours Her current suggestion is 'dump the body outside a police station and let them deal with it.'

In terms of disposal and effective rationalization, firearms make absolutely horrible weapons. They are hard to obtain without leaving a trail, tend to draw attention when used, leave great evidence and generally hang around the neck of the user. Intermediate weapons are generally more effective, those items like knives, etc.

I'd actually say that the firearm, particularly the telescopic sight equipped bolt action rifle is the perfect murder weapon.

Why?

Because it allows you to kill your target from a great distance away, with the minimal level of contamination of the crime scene. If you try to garrote or knife someone; the amount of evidence you leave behind is going to go up astronomically; people are harder to kill than they look.

The ensuing struggle if you don't manage to score a near instant kill or knock them unconscious with the first hit is going to badly contaminate you; you'll get splattered with blood, he might tear off a piece of your clothes, which you might miss in the post scene cleanup.

Your point about firearms leaving a long paper trail is certainly true in a lot of countries; but not so in the US.

If I was a professional hitman, I'd use some of the money I charge for a hit to actually build a disposable rifle, and do it myself. Pick up the various parts from gunshows, etc; and assemble it yourself into a working weapon. Same with a sound suppressor. I'd make one up from a machine shop in my basement.

I then closely figure out a way to eliminate my target. I don't shoot him in the head in broad daylight in a crowded throughfare. Instead, I figure out when he's going on a fishing trip or something, where he will not be noticed missing for a day or two in the woods.

I then plan and set up a hide inside a disposable low profile camo tent to eat sleep and wait for my target in. When I've taken the shot; I simply roll up the tent and go away, and take all the major easy to find contaminants inside the tent.

Then when you're done after having committed a single hit with the weapon, you break it up and dispose of the most incriminating parts. Take a acetylene torch and cut the receiver and barrel into really tiny pieces and dump the parts in at least two junkyards.

The rest of the stuff, like the bedding, scope, etc gets "recycled" back into the spare part pool that's circulating through gun shows.

The tent is washed, cleaned, and then put back into the mass of spare hunting gear floating around the US.

I then do not do a hit for at least 10-15 years (one assumes that you're SMART enough to ask for a fee that allows you to not have to kill people every other month to pay the bills), and take a normal every day job, partly to pay the bills, but also to provide a way to launder my income and not arouse suspicions, such as:

"Hey, that's jim bob up there; he's a quiet type, he always comes and pays his bills on time, but we don't know what he does, in fact, we've never seen him work a day in his life."

This isn't the line of work where you cash in your million dollar fee for a hit and go straight to living on the French Riveria; you've got to credibly have an excuse where your money came from. I'd say that you could only do 2-3 hits in a working lifetime of oh, 30-40 years. It wouldn't be as exciting as oh, the movies or comics, or books make it out to be.

Based on a Facebook post I saw recently:

1. Kill guy.

2. Dump body in trunk of car. Leave murder weapon on passenger seat after wiping it down.

3. Leave car in crappy part of town, door unlocked, keys in ignition.

4. Let car thief explain to the cops why he's driving a car with a body in the trunk and the murder weapon in the vehicle (quite possibly with his prints--and ONLY his prints--on it).

I believe the results of the discussion were that none of these make the perfect murder. They are all imperfect.

The perfect murder is where no one, except the perpetrator, knows that a murder has taken place.

Presumably the person who was murdered knows, too.

Not necessarily; the victim may believe they were dying of natural causes.

[jemhouston]

At least in the US, a number of law enforcement agencies don't have the resources to look at every death. If some is shot to death and robbed, if they can't get you on camera, they may not be able to get you.