As always, these questions begin with a little game of “How would you commit the perfect murder?” My husband’s (way too convoluted) method involves a freezer, but I know he’s wrong about his estimate of how long it would take to freeze a human body solid. So…
Assume that we’re dealing with a 180 pound human adult. My big freezer is set to remain at 0 Farenheit - it varies a degree or two in each direction. It’s 19.7 cubic feet. (That’s an 82 kilogram person, -18 degrees Celsius, and .558 cubic meters, for you metric-minded folks. I can at least do that much math!) Assuming that the body was placed into the freezer very soon after the death (heck, maybe the person was still only mostly dead when he went in!), how long until he’s frozen solid?
Not sure on the times (the same as any other big slab of meat, most likely) but it’s the same method used by Richard “Iceman” Kuklinski, to confuse the coroner as to the time of death, although he used an industrial freezer.
I’d go with a large kiln instead of the freezer. They commonly go up to 2000F, which is plenty for cremation, and you could keep some pottery on hand to explain away your hobby. I’m betting you could cremate a body faster than freezing it solid at home. Plus the freezer only leaves you with *frozen *evidence. I’d watch that Mythbusters.
Yeah, well the freezing time is only the first hole I could punch in his plan for the “perfect” crime. He has some weird idea that a human body would freeze solid in an hour or so. Hell, the beef roast I bought last week didn’t freeze solid that fast!
Well, I have seen one cite that suggests that it would take 3 days for a sheep carcass to freeze at -15[sup]o[/sup] in the pre-blast freezer days - I would guess a body in an empty chest freezer would be pretty similar. If you could pack it round with frozen food it would be quicker, but not to hours.
Damn, we just got rid of the empty chest freezer from our garage - I could have tested the theory.
With water. 86 liters of water. What do you people think I am?
Your husband’s cunning plan is already working. While you’re asking this, and googling meat packing info, he’s out at the pub being a loudmouth and establishing an alibi.
Later this week when your Brother/neighbor/friend or whoever shows up dead in a hotel walk-in, guess who’s taking the fall? Muwahahahaaa!!!
But, they caught him from DNA inside undigested teeth. Just required hiring a bunch of archaeology students to sift through huge mounds of pig manure…
I agree with the OP. Off the top of my head, it could take a day or two for a body to freeze all the way through. For the experimenters, use jello instead. It eliminates the convection which could distort results…
1/4 lb. hamburger patties don’t freeze solid in an hour, and I run my upright freezer at sub-zero temperatures. Also, who in the world has a big enough freezer at home? If you’re transporting the body to a commercial freezer, chances of detection go up quite a bit.
I think it was an old episode of Quincy, where somebody tried this method.
The process of freezing CHANGES the cell structure. So even if you let your evidence thaw, it will be apparent that the corpse was frozen at one point. Plus a body stuffed into a freezer will freeze at a different rate than one sitting outside in Permafrost, Minnesota, in the dead (ha ha) of winter. The innards will take MUCH longer to freeze, so there will be different decomp rates throughout the body.
In the* Quincy* episode, the perpetrator also had thawed and refrozen veggies which were considered evidence.
Forensic pathology is a pretty damned exacting science.
~VOW
Hey, I didn’t say it was my “perfect plan!” (And there are a few steps beyond the freezer in Tony’s. Like I said, it’s pretty convoluted.)
As for tracing DNA through leftover teeth, not everyone who needs killing is blessed with lots of those… And who’s gonna go looking for gator scat* to find evidence?
I have to think residential freezers are pretty common. I have one in the garage so that I can buy up produce and meats when they are on sale and then keep them for the good weather. It’s the size of a normal refrigerator, but is only a freezer. You could easily put a person in there if you took out the shelves.
(studying upright freezer) That could work if the shelves and contents came out, but it would take a lot of muscle to stuff someone in there and keep them there long enough to get the door shut.
