Any Murder You Can Walk Away From…

A study in getting away with it, presented by (name redacted for understood reasons).

By Patrick M. Tracy

Cutting up the bodies is the worst part.  Killing a guy?  Hey, that’s straightforward.  There are hundreds of ways, and most of them aren’t that messy.  Even with a simple tool, say a socket wrench or a length of thick curtain rod, you can dispatch a guy with a well-placed hit.  That soft spot at the temple, or right at the base of the skull, for instance.  You swing hard and hit right, it’s a crack, and there’s just a moment of nerve impulse before the long darkness.

Small caliber pistols can work, too.  .22s are really the best for it, since they don’t exit the body.  You can do it with a knife, but I find that you can hurt your wrist if you smack a rib on the way in.  You don’t want to cut their throats, though.  Blood goes everywhere, and there’s that nasty hissing sound of air whistling through their cut larynx.  They don’t go down right away, either.  Sometimes it’s twenty, thirty seconds of them blundering around the room, blowing blood out of their arteries like a human super soaker.  I don’t need that shit.  It gives me the willies.

However you do them in, it’s the dismantling part that I don’t like.  I mean, I guess you could leave them in one piece, just bury them somewhere, or maybe melt them down in an acid bath, but I’ve never had much faith in that.  If you cut them up, part them out, and use multiple dump sites, things usually work themselves out just fine.

Handling a dead body can spook you out at first.  Chill, stiff, heavy things, and you want to deal with them within an hour or two, so the bloating stink doesn’t set in.  If you’re working in a controlled, safe atmosphere, cutting them and letting the blood drain is a great idea.  That way, you can use a power tool of some sort.  I find that a saws-all does the job, but a circular saw or even a chainsaw can do the deed, if that’s what you have on hand.  Really, though, the saws-all is the best, since it doesn’t throw little fleshy pieces all over.  Take the legs down into two, maybe three pieces, arms at the shoulders and elbows, head, and you’re done.  I’ve never seen any upside to cutting into the torso.  Way too messy.  To get rid of the blood, you’ll need powerful industrial cleaners with a high bleach content.  There’s no way to be sure, though, so assume you may have left a bit of blood evidence behind.  Those heavy, yellow dishwashing gloves are the way to go in terms of keeping your prints off of anything.

If you’re doing your work somewhere vulnerable, or sound is an issue, you’ll have to use a sharp knife and a hack saw.  Look for a saw with a good, long throw.  None of the really cheap ones.  They’ll let you down.  Carry extra blades, too.  You can snap one if you put too much torque on the saw, which can happen when you’re tired or in a hurry.  As for the knife, you want it sharp enough to shave, and at least eight inches long.  A good kitchen knife will do fine.  No sense in getting too fancy.  You’ll have to discard the blade when you’re done, anyway.

You cut down the the bone, all the way around the area.  Let the knife do everything it can before you start in with the saw.  Just pull the saw backward in the same spot until you get a nice notch in the bone, and then you can get to gettin’.  There are times, if you’re cutting at the joint, when you can get through the tendons without a lot of sawing.  The knee is good for this, and the elbow.  It’s handy to have a set of bypass loppers for these situations, but you can’t always plan for everything.  Having a knife and a hack saw with you doesn’t arouse that much suspicion, and those are your most basic tools.  Those, and a shovel, of course.  A rounded spade is my personal choice, with a fiberglass handle.

Now, different people have their own methodology for carrying bodies.  I’m all for using a couple big coolers with some dry ice, myself.  I tie up the segments in heavy plastic bags and put ’em right in.  If you don’t have the room for something that bulky, you can always ditch the coolers and just hustle to the dump site.  In the past, I’ve always favored destroying the most identifiable parts.  Those are feet, hands, and head.  A big wood chipper will do the job, but you have to be careful that it’s not your wood chipper.  They can find DNA in there years later, so find a way to get access to one where there’s nothing linking the machine to you.

If that fails, there’s always burning.  Kerosene or diesel makes a good hot fire, and the high heat will often snap the bones.  Whatever’s left, you break down with the back of a shovel and bury deep.  As for the fleshy parts, you can bury them with quicklime, you can put them in the water, or you can feed them to some animal who’ll eat flesh down and make no complaint.  The water can be dangerous.  In the absence of animals who’ll eat the bodies, the evidence of your work might be there a long time.  A deep grave with ten pounds of lye over the top is my fall-back.  That takes privacy and time, though, so your mileage may vary.

Whatever you do, don’t overuse a technique, and don’t saturate a dump site.  That’s how they find you.  Being sloppy and developing patterns that can be predicted.  There’s no substitute for good planning and careful execution (in both senses of the word).  Next time, we’ll talk about two techniques I always use: the healthy delay, and the directional alibi.  Also, we’ll talk about how to handle the authorities when you’re under suspicion.  Until then, may your enemies be among the ranks of the disappeared, and your name remain unknown.