Disposing of the body: a guide for world travellers.

You've killed your victim. You've cleaned up the gore and tidied away the evidence, but there's one last little problem: where to dispose of the body? You're in a strange city and don't know the locale.

Here, as a community service for serial killers on vacation, is a list of suggestions for dumping the body in various world cities.

Paris, France

Paris has a terrific disposal spot! First, place the body in a vat and render it down to bones. Now take the bones and visit the Catacombs of Paris. This is an underground ossuary which has been in use for over two centuries. The place is chock-a-block full of human bones; at least tens of thousands of them, many arranged in interesting patterns, but most simply stacked.

Be careful to place your new additions underneath some of the older existing ones.

New York, United States

Janet Reid, with whom I will be careful to avoid riding the subway, suggests: "You could stuff a body in an unused subway tunnel, cover it in lime, and Bob's your uncle. Your dead uncle, but still."

Sydney, Australia

Feed 'em to the sharks. This requires a boat - easy to come by in Sydney. It should be straightforward to disguise the body inside a sail bag. Sail out of the harbour onto open ocean, wait for sharks. Feed.

This innovative solution has only ever gone wrong once, but when it did, it was in spectacular fashion. In 1935, a recently captured shark at a public aquarium, while a crowd watched, disgorged a human arm, which proved to belong to an underworld identity who, funnily enough, had been missing for some days. Forensics was able to prove it was murder since the arm had been cut off, not torn. No one was ever tried for the crime, though one suspect was conveniently murdered on the day of the inquest.

London, Britain

Preparation is tricky here, but potentially very rewarding. Embalm body, treat with extra preservatives and stiffeners. Coat with wax. Carry to Madame Tussaud's.

Baltimore, United States

Janet likes an idea used in The Wire: If you're in Baltimore, you can just nail gun them into one of the vacant row houses and cover them with lime.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Annablume recommends Amsterdam for convenience factor and the short commute with your victim:

In Amsterdam it's common use to dump bodies into one of the canals. You won't have to walk far, you will find a canal within short distance.

I guess this will work for Venice too.

Aberdeen, Scotland

Bill suggests: Aberdeen's the oil capital of Europe. This means that lots of big pipes from the offshore installations get contaminated by Low Specific Activity scale - which is naturally occurring radioactivity that's sucked up from the reservoirs. They have to be brought ashore and treated in special facilities.

Drag your body (at dead of night, naturally), and stuff it into one of these pipes. No-one will come near it for ages.

The drawback is that your own skin will probably fall off on your way home.

Alternatively, using the same basic principle, you could drive the corpse up north, paint some luminous green spots on it and leave it exposed on the beach near the Dounreay reactor. Again, people will give it a wide berth.

Anywhere

The default solution for when your city doesn't have an obvious disposal spot: read the town's crime report, get a sense of where all the crime takes place, book a hotel far away from there, find a dumpster. Thank you, the very organized Miss Expatria.

Somewhat more difficult for the average mortal, Josephine Damian suggests CSI training should help with this problem. Enrol now.


7 comments:

Trish Khoo said...

1. Buy a baby elephant.
2. If you've already killed the person at this point, cut off their finger, bake it in a cake and send it to the police with a cryptic message. This should buy you some time. Store the body in cold storage for later.
3. Name the elephant something cute like Snorky or Trunkles. Buy it a jacket. Take it for walks along the beach.
4. Kill the elephant. Run it over with your car a few times.
5. Tearfully call up all your friends and invite them to the funeral.
6. Arrange to have the elephant cremated and the ashes scattered at sea. Tell the pet cemetary "It's what Snorky would have wanted".
7. Cut open the elephant, remove some organs and stash the body inside.
8. Stitch up the elephant again and put the jacket on it so as to hide the scar.
9. Have a big funeral with all your friends in attendance, and cremate the elephant.
10. For extra fun, invite along the detective assigned to your case, and serve the same kind of cake you baked in step 2 for the wake.

Trisherino

Josephine Damian said...

You think me and Miss Ex-P would by a dynamic body disposal team? Imagine if my other evil twin, Janet and I teamed up at B'Con?

*diabolical laugh*

My (real life) body dump idea takes place in modern day Key West during Fantasy Fest.

Janet Reid said...

I can't claim credit for the Baltimore row house idea. I lifted that straight off The Wire, David Simon's incredible series on HBO. Season 4 in fact.

Anneke Klein said...

In Amsterdam it's common use to dumb bodies into one of the canals. You won't have to walk far, you will find a canal within short distance.

I guess this will work for Venice too.

Bill Kirton said...

Aberdeen's the oil capital of Europe. This means that lots of big pipes from the offshore installations get contaminated by Low Specific Activity scale - which is naturally occurring radioactivity that's sucked up from the reservoirs. They have to be brought ashore and treated in special facilities.

Drag your body (at dead of night, naturally), and stuff it into one of these pipes. No-one will come near it for ages.

The drawback is that your own skin will probably fall off on your way home.

Alternatively, using the same basic principle, you could drive the corpse up north, paint some luminous green spots on it and leave it exposed on the beach near the Dounreay reactor. Again, people will give it a wide berth.

GOD said...

The ideas are funny but practical.

Still the most hilarious aspect of this post -- a post, mind you, about disposing of a dead body -- is that it is labeled under "fun."

My kind of crowd.

Gary Corby said...

Thanks Dennis. I should point out this post is probably the cause of me getting an unbelievable number of search hits from people looking for ways to dispose of their dead dog.