If you set up a house as "burglar bait", how many could you off before they got wise?

Let’s say you buy a house in a rundown section of town, and fix it up and fill it with neat, desirable valuables & tech toys. Your ulterior motive is that (for whatever reason) you want this to be a “burglar trap”, and you have it set up so that the house appears to be empty, but in reality you are still onsite and can monitor the house, and there are a series of diabolical traps that (if activated) will cost intruders their lives. You then collect and dispose of the bodies off-site.

Ultimately, who’s going two put two and two together and tell on you? What are you going to tell the police? “Umm… my buddy was going to rob this house, but he went in and we never saw him again”.

Do bad guys communicate with each other about jobs they’re going to do? Is there usually someone looking out for the welfare of the criminals who go on jobs? How many burglars would disappear before someone made the connection that criminals go in but they don’t get out?

Dude, you are sick!

But I’m fascinated by the concept. So I am sick!

I have no idea, but I’ll be watching this thread closely. I find stuff like this interesting.

Interesting thought process you’ve got there.

My thoughts are this. You’d probably get away with the first one if he was acting alone. Not because he wouldn’t tell anyone his plan but I don’t think they would get the connection. The word on the street would spread enough that if another thief went missing who had planned to hit the same house, the authorities would be notified by either a “street informer” or an innocent bystander in the neighborhood.

So, yeah…a one, a two…nailed and your house of horror would be shut down.

Now whether a jury of your peers would find you guilty, that is another story and another thread.

Have you been reading this book?
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America"

See here for more info:
http://www.prairieghosts.com/holmes.html
"The building was an imposing structure of three stories and a basement, with false battlements and wooden bay windows that were covered with sheet iron. There were over 60 rooms in the structure and 51 doors that were cut oddly into various walls. Holmes acted as his own architect for the place and he personally supervised the numerous construction crews, all of whom were quickly hired and fired, discharging them with great fury and refusing to pay their wages. …In addition to the eccentric general design, the house was also fitted with trap doors, hidden staircases, secret passages, rooms without windows, chutes that led into the basement and a staircase that opened out over a steep drop to the alley behind the house…Holmes also had an office on the second floor, but most of the rooms were to be used for guests – guests that would never be seen again. Evidence would later be found to show that Holmes used some of the rooms as “asphyxiation chambers”, where his victims were suffocated with gas. Other chambers were lined with iron plates and had blowtorch-like devices fitted into the walls. In the basement, Holmes installed a dissecting table and maintained his own crematory. There was also an acid vat and pits filled with quicklime, where bodies could be conveniently disposed of. "

First, I would rent Home Alone

Then I would rent Home Alone: Lost in New York

Then…I’d have all the ideas I need for my nefarious schemes!

(bolding mine)

Honestly, I think you’re going to wind up knocking off a few homeless people looking for shelter and some high school kids looking for thrills and a place to get drunk. The authorities will be notified after the kids go missing, and you’ll be in all kinds of trouble. Burglars break into houses in order to steal things; they’re not likely to break into an empty house in a poor neighborhood.

Here’s what Unca Cecil wrote about Mr. Holmes.

Do you really think thieves are so networked? (An honest question.) I’ve always assumed that most of the people who might break into my house are drug addicts or young thug types looking for a quick buck, jewelry, guns, something to pawn. Not really “thieves” in the movie sense. (I know there are real professional thieves out there, but I figure they’re not the ones I’m worried about - they wouldn’t be robbing me, and if they did I probably couldn’t keep them out at all. I just worry about discouraging the other type.) Why would an addict who’s about to break my window to steal my computer tell anybody?

I don’t have a cite, but I do know it’s illegal. I recall a case where a guy’s store kept getting broken into, so he rigged up a deadly booby trap. It worked, but he got busted.

However, if you were really good at it (i.e. only kill people that won’t be missed), I’m sure you wouldn’t get busted.

I should have been clearer, not “empty” as in “no one lives there” permanently vacated, but empty as in - it’s a well taken care of house, but there is no car in the driveway, and it appears no one is at home during the day. In other words it should appear as if the person has gone to work, but the house might normally be occupied.

Exactly! Who’s going to know!

What if the burgular has a gun and takes you out?

The house is designed and built so that the burglar will be trapped and terminated without the need for a direct mano a mano confrontation. You will be in a secure area of the house monitoring the intruders progress until the time is right to spring the selected trap.

Oops, I misunderstood. That makes a lot more sense. Assuming that no accomplices get away and the breakers-in don’t mention your address, you could probably take care of quite a few. I think the accomplices would be the tricky part. If someone posts a look-out outside of the house or has his friend waiting in the get-away car, you’re probably busted. (Unless the guy doesn’t report it.)

I think you might get a couple, but word would get out and either the police or friends of the dead burglers would be looking for you. Plus, getting rid of the body may be a bit of a problem, although the real CSI people aren’t as magical as the ones on television, they aren’t too bad.

My question is, how are you going to get into and out of the house? Just because a house looks empty at the time, doesn’t mean that the neighbors don’t know you’re there.

They are if they want to invest the time and resources. But I laffed my ass off when I saw CSI doing an investigation of a homeless dude. :dubious:

So as long as the house was only netting cheap hoods, the investigations would be rather shallow.

Actaully, somewhere this is possibly going on right as we type. If your prey is cheap hoods, druggies, the homeless, etc- and you don’t have enough of a pattern so as it looks like a serial killer- you could claim quite a few before anyone got wise. Eventually however, some dugged out senators son would stumble in, and they’d spend a megabuck finding out what happened, and you’d be caught.

Here in SF, there have been nearly 70 murders this year- most of which appear to be gangbangers and drug dealers preying on each other. So far, the police don’t seem to be doing much. :frowning: The sheer number is finally getting some political action.

Fried Green Tomatoes

This brought to mind Robert Picton. He got away with luring and murdering junkies and prostitutes for possibly decades before the Vancouver authorities were essentially shamed into action. IIRC, a relative or friend of one of his victims posted here on the SDMB tyring to publicize her case before he was eventually caught. Heartbreaking stuff.

What? That’s over 2 million dollars per discovered body. What the hell are they spending that money on?

A slight variation on the OP’s idea is playing out in a subplot on HBO’s The Wire, the fourth of which season just started last Sunday. In it, a couple of drug dealers take their victims into boarded-up abandoned slum houses and kill them, then cover the corpses in lime. After they leave, they replace the plywood panel they took off to get in.

So no one knows for sure that the victim is dead, and the body is in a place where it isn’t likely to be discovered by accident or become an inconvenience to anyone very soon. Over at the thread on The Wire, we’re debating, like the OP, how long they’ll be able to get away with it. I’m guessing quite a while.