Dry ice should work. I’ve used it in a number of forms, and it’s fairly tough. It’d also melt away with no obvious residue.
Another option, is to use a “Prodd”, which is mechanicaly similar to a crossbow, but fires a lead or stone bullet. Substitute a lump of ice, and you’ll get a crushing / penetrating wound, with no blunt object near-by. Better, if the murder takes place in a museum or the home of a collector of exotic weapons, there’d be every excuse for the murder weapon to be there, in plain sight. Prodds are extremely high-energy, and at shorter ranges, should give a lump of ice plenty enough energy to kill.
As for the mechanical properties of ice, y’all haven’t been working cold enough. When I was in the Gulf, my shop used some extraordinarily volitile chemicals, some of which needed to be stored at about -175[sup]o[/sup]f. My supervisor would put a crate of water in the deep freezer in the evening, and come morning we’d have a block of ice with mechanical properties similar to granite to take to the work site. She’d whack it with a short-handled 5 lb hammer (BFH!) to chip-off a few chunks for the water cooler, and despite the fact that she’s the second strongest person I’ve ever met face-to-face, it’d take her a good five minutes to knock loose a section the size of my fist. Really cold ice seems to have some pretty good potential for a murder weapon.
<pffffft-thwap…thud>
That’ll larn you not to mess with someone what played a trombone for ten years…
I concur on the compressed air, actually–all you’d really need is one of the little CO[sub]2[/sub] cylinders used for air guns, released all at once down the tube. I’d say the tube should be no more than 2.5 feet long with a bolt length of 6 inches max. It wouldn’t be hard to make–the trickiest bit would be the trigger mechanism.
Imagine a gut-shot with a big enough lump of super-cold ice, and it might even cool the corpse internally enough to mess up the coroner’s estimation of the time of death.
I gree with T, but discounted it as it seems to be impractical to get AND keep ice that cold. WAG, ‘hits’ would take a while to set up, no?
<hijack, side bar> I read a short story years ago where a woman killed with a hairpin through the heart, left it there til the victim was dead (and stopped bleeding) removed it and wiped away the one drop of blood around the nipple. They missed it during the autopsy. Possible? I now return you to your regularly scheduled post <end hijack, side bar>
If you really want to do the ice thing, why not have the bad guy just crush the victim’s skull with a bloody great block of ice?
Depending on the kind of lock that was used, he could have made a sort of “ice timer” that puts the lock into the locked position as/when it melts. It the killer was really determined to use ice, then he could make a special ice-block that fits over the knob on a deadbolt. He could ingeniously design it so that one side would melt faster than (or break off) the other so that it locks the door automatically. Or something…
The Hong Kong movie Black Cat, a poorly disguised ripoff of La Femme Nikita, features an assassin who at one point kills somebody with an ice projectile. As far as Hong Kong movies go, it’s pretty decent, and it’s got some great action, but stay away from the vastly inferior sequel.
Jeez, I wouldn’t know - but I’m surprised you don’t.
I just had this vision of getting hit with a snowball so hard it could freeze one’s brain. Just struck me as funny. And a little play on words re the ‘Slurpie’ commercials. Sorry if you took it wrong.
The concept as I roughed it out was to have the murderer shoot the victim from a backyard as the victim leaned out a studio apartment window in an old house to talk to the murderer.
I figured about a seven/eight foot shot up. The entry wound would be at a weird angle like a knife powerfully swung upwards. Water from the melted bolt would mix with the blood and would hardly be noticable.
The girlfriend would be the one suspected (she had a key to the apartment and they had something of an arguement earlier-the murder hated to admit it but he did overhear it and he had to tell the police)but she had a good alabi and the door was bolted from the inside. She was dining with the murderer downstairs. All windows are closed securely. The window had been propped open but the victim hit the prop when he was shot.
The murderer figured that either the girlfriend who dumped him for the guy upstairs would be blamed or a burgler caught in the act who went out the window. The girlfriend is still the prime suspect, since the murderer admitted under questioning that he left her in the living room watching the football game on television for a while. The living room has stairs that go upstairs while he went (supposedly) to work on the steak sauce. The murder thought he saw someone running up the alley in back of the house (a black youth?), but wasn’t sure.
If feathers were necessary, the murderer could plant one or two in the girlfriend’s jacket pocket or purse.
I own a 25-lb. pistol crossbow designed to fire short 8-inch aluminum bolts. Through experimentation I found I could load and fire pencils, pens, crayons—basically any kind of rod of that width. They don’t fly very well, of course, but within a range of maybe eight feet they work as good as a regular arrow, though their penetrative power is low. Substituting an icycle might work, if the villian hits a vulnerable spot like the neck, but it seems pretty far-fetched.
Why not use a paintball gun instead? The killer could instead shoot a marble-sized ball of ice at the victim. I have personal knowledge that a regular paintball at normal pressure can break the skin and cause a deep bruise if shot at close range. With the pressure jacked up that iceball would be pretty deadly.
On a related note, its been known for awhile that ice can be strengthened if its mixed with sawdust first. Maybe the killer can brew up a special missile for his victim.
Possibly, but I had hoped that the wound would be clean enough that the police would think “knife” or at least a metal stabbing weapon. A paintball gun would not do that, and the sawdust deep inside the wound would also not let this thought dominate and it definitely would not point at most women.
The dry ice is looking good…but can it be kept in the back porch freezer? Super low temp is looking good too, but the equipment would be a bit hard to get for the average Joe. I would think.
I can have the victim in his gym shorts, I suppose, working out, lifting weights or the like. That will eliminate the obstacle of clothes.
Once again thanks everyone. Usually I just work my weird ideas out on my white board, you people have been a big help.
TVt, I see where you are going with this, but from a lay persons POV, I have a couple of observations of credibility:
If you use feathers, won’t that tend to not incriminate the GF? Where’s the weapon? Why would she need a long range weapon if she was in the apt?
Why not just shoot a pencil or pen, something that might be found in the apt that would be readily available to her? Something that wouldn’t arouse undo suspicion? Something that would point to her?
If you use the dry ice bolt fired from a pistol size crossbow, it might result in freezing of the cells along the wound. You could let the medical examiner find this evidence.
How about this: The victim leans out the window to speak with the murderer. The murderer pushes a button on a tiny remote control. We see a radio-shack truck inch forward and push a block of ice off the ledge. The ice smacks the victim on the head, leaving a fatal headwound. The poor victim slumps inside and is non-responsive. The murderer walks forward, opens a bag, and presses the button again. The truck falls into the bag and the murderer walks off. Damn, I’m good…I should apply for your job!
The ideas about ice or dry ice projectiles have a problem. If a piece of ice is lodged in the body long enough to melt, it may cause cause frostbite which could be detected during an autopsy. Ultra cold ice or dry ice would exacerbate the problem. Using a block of ice to deliver a crushing blow avoids this because the ice is only in contact with the victim briefly. There is also no need to stabilize the ice weapon withs fins or feathers in my plan.
Or the frozen blood of the person you want to frame for this murder. Then the forensic team will find blood matching the framed person and it will be part of the evidence that wrongly convicts her. Then the only problem becomes orchestrating a wound on her that explains the blood.
