In theory, there are procedures for agencies in different jurisdictions working together in a joint investigation. In reality, multiple jurisdictions are an obstacle that slows everything down and creates inefficiency - which, as the subject of the investigation, you would support. Also, unlike TV, most investigators are handling several cases simultaneously and new ones are always coming in. It works in your favor if your crime gets pushed down the priority list because of the extra complications.
I’d murder myself and make it look like a suicide.
I agree that a body is a problem. You’re better off if there’s no body. But transporting the victim’s body is a huge mistake. You absolutely cannot transport the victim’s body without leaving forensic evidence. Every step you take to try to get rid of evidence creates more evidence.
Not involving third parties is obvious. You might as well just walk down to the station and confess and save yourself some hassle. Organized crime murders are the exception, but even there you want to keep your circle of witnesses as small as possible.
The “don’t have a motive” is the biggest problem. Obviously, it’s pretty easy to get away with killing a random person for sport. That’s why there’s no sport in it. There’s no point in musing about how to get away with killing a random person, because it’s so damn easy. Therefore, this conversation should focus on getting away with murdering someone that you actually have a motive to murder. This is how 97.3% of cases that are cleared get solved–figure out who had a motive to kill the victim, then build a case against the suspect. Of course, most murder cases don’t really involve much investigation at all. The murderer is either obvious, or impossible to determine. The classic murder mystery setup is extremely rare.
I actually have the converse problem with the ‘random person’ motiveless killing. Everyone’s only imagining the physical obstacles to this–but it’s the psychological obstacles that are most daunting. Seriously–imagine yourself there at the final moment. You’ve gotten yourself alone with the homeless person or streetwalker with no witnesses, the gun is in your hand, you aim at their head, and, as you look into their terrified eyes, you slowly squeeze the trigger …
In your imagination, did you actually pull the trigger and kill them? Then you’re suffering from excessive imagination, because virtually nobody can actually do this. The rare few who can have serious mental problems which go beyond a total lack of empathy. You say you could get away with this because you’d only do it once–serial killers eventually get caught because they went to that well once to often? If you could really do this, you couldn’t just do it once–as well say that you’ll shoot them with a gun in your bare hand but not leave fingerprints on the gun or powder residue on your hand, it just doesn’t work this way. That’s why the behavioral analysts at the FBI are helpful at catching serial killers; they have collected a lot of information about the other brain fuckups that tend to be linked with the ability to kill random strangers without remorse. If you want to imagine yourself being in that mental state, for consistency you should go the whole way.
Someone’s been reading Roald Dahl…
Well, that’s also the reason that real life people who kill their spouses, or their spouse’s boyfriend, or their boss, or their parents typically don’t get away with it. If you’re the kind of emotionally and intellectually stunted person who thinks the only way to deal with a slut wife or abusive boss is to kill them, then you’re probably not mentally capable of plotting the perfect murder. Instead, you get mad, resort to violence, and then find yourself with literal blood on your hands.
So yes, “motiveless” killers really do have a motive, the motive is that they’re mental cases who have a compulsion to kill people for no reason. There are plenty of sociopaths in the world, but most of them never kill anyone, because although they’d happily murder people if there was something in it for them, it turns out there almost never is. A sociopath who really doesn’t give a shit about other people also doesn’t care enough about people to kill them.
So anybody who wants to commit the perfect murder is almost by defintion to screwed up to commit the perfect murder. The exception would be organized crime murders, which in real life are rarely solved. Organized criminals have the needed combination of not giving a shit about other human beings, and having non-personal motives to kill, and usually only have motives to kill other criminals.
Here’s my question.
Assuming that you want to kill someone that is known to you - i.e you have a motive.
Is it a “better” strategy to
a) Establish a reason to be close to them around the time of the killing, but do the actual killing in a way not tracked to you
b) Try to do the killing in such a way that there is NO evidence linking you to the crime.
For example - you drive to their house, and on the way pick up your favourite dish from the diner round the corner - then later if your car is “seen in the area” you have an excuse. Or do you try to get to the house totally unseen and undetected?
If you are going to kill them using a gun, do you go down to the shooting range earlier in the day and loose off a few rounds so that you’ve got an “excuse” to have GSR on your hands.
Do you do the murder the day after you have a dinner party at their house - so that any stray hairs or footprints are explained?
[quote=“Shodan, post:12, topic:602590”]
[list][li]Go to Wisconsin and buy a handgun. My family lives there, so it is normal for me to go there and stay for 48 hours[/li]
[li]Wait a year.[/li]
[li]Drive to New York City.[/li]
[li]Dress in non-descript clothing. Jeans, dark hoodie with no logo, plain sneakers.[/li]
[li]Ride the subway after midnight until I spot one or two young, black males who at least appear to be gangstas. Whether they really are or not, I don’t care. [/li][/QUOTE]
WTF? Was nobody else gonna mention this?
I think he’s citing/parodying a real-life example of someone who has gotten away with murder. Goetz, maybe?
I’m torn here…totally undetected is ideal, but as others have mentioned, working at being invisible creates its own evidence. I would imagine the “hiding in plain sight” method you mention has merit as much of our legal system is based on what is “reasonable”. If you were a guest in the house it is not unreasonable that they might find a few of your hairs or finger prints on various bits of the house. The magic question then becomes, contradictory account of where visitors were or were not. If nobody was ever upstairs, how did your prints end up on the bedpost 8 feet from where the body was found..
I’m going to go with shoot totally invisible with a plausible explaination for being in the area. if your prints are not on file, finding one just makes you an anonymous fingerprint or dna sample. Once the case has gone cold, a few years later, having your print come up is less of a deal because you were never interviewed at the time, you could claim to have been at the dinner party a few nights prior but good luck chasing down all those party guests 5 years later to try and confirm.
I think the best way to do this would be to do it overseas.
First, you want to get your victim overseas for a long period of time- perhaps for a one year assignment. A short vacation would be too suspicious as you would be the only person in the country who has ties to the person (unless you can get them into a country they have family in, which could be interesting.) You want to make sure this country has a shaky legal system, poor legal harmonization with the US, and low police capacity.
You also want to choose a country with high crime rates, and a medium amount of of foreigners. You want there to be few enough foreigners that it’s plausible that the victim was targeted for street crime, but not so few foreigners that you are all too memorable. For safety’s sake, you might also want some porous borders with a country that also doesn’t work well with the US legal system (and it’d be even better if these two countries don’t work with each other.)
Make sure you are very, very safe when you research this. Use cash to buy a used ipod touch, research via public wi-fi (with gloves on) and leave in a situation where it will get stolen and resold (on a table at a crowded bar, etc.)
Once there, you start slowly start spreading rumors. These can include all kinds of things, from the victim’s alleged huge jewelry collection, rumored affairs with high ranking people in the host government, etc. These rumors will start providing motives for all kinds of people. Heck, you might even be able to start enough rumors to get them killed without you having to do much of anything- make it known they have a stash of cash under their mattress, and take a conspicuous daily walk, leaving your compound door open, at the same time every day so that people know when the victim is home alone. Or get really nasty- start rumors that they are committing heinous sexual acts that the local community will find outrageous, or that they are dabbling in the occult. Soon they will have plenty of people that are believably out for blood.
Then commit the act. Contrive to get yourself in a remote area- maybe on a multi-day trek or something- and then set it up as a crime scene. Ideally, it’d be weaponless- something like “He went off to use the restroom, and I followed up a few minutes later only to find someone had pushed him off this cliff!”
You, of course, are devastated and return to the US to mourn. After a few weeks, you move on with your life and continue to live in another exotic legally-unreachable destination. After some years, you can probably return to the US and as long as you keep your head down and stay in a different state than the family, you should be good to go. There may be places where you are followed by shadowy rumors, so just stay away from those and enjoy your new life in a new city.
Go out drinking with your victim on a Saturday night. Get him/her pretty soused, offer to drive him home.
Instead, knock him/her on the head with something, then take him to the country and tie him/her up behind a road sign.
Someone else will shoot him/her for you, because no one can resist shooting holes in a sign out in the country, and the bullets will go through the holes and into your victim.
(If you really don’t want to leave it to chance, shoot him/her yourself, but use a throw-down, and dispose of it elsewhere on the way home.)
When the police come to see you on account of you were the last person seen with the drunken idiot, tell them you took him/her home and he/she didn’t have his key, so you left him/her on the front steps and you went home to bed yourself. Stick to that story. Don’t elaborate.
If they are really gangstas, then maybe the murder will be blamed on gang activity. If they aren’t, then maybe the murder will be blamed on mistaken gang activity. I’m hoping for the cops to look at false leads here.
Regards,
Shodan
If we’re talking about random motiveless murder, an inner city black man is going to get a lot less police attention than a pretty white girl.
It’s easy to get away with murdering a total stranger. How are the cops going to find you, out all the other billions of people in the world who didn’t know the guy? What’s hard is getting away with murder when you’d be a suspect. In that case, I say you need to disguise the murder as something else. Ricin would be ideal in many situations, and someone with a background in chemistry might even be able to make some himself. If the victim is older than, say, 45, then the ME probably won’t bother to look beyond the obvious heart attack. If your victim is a known drug user, then you could mix pretty much any poison into whatever drug they use, and the cops will assume that they got some bad coke or heroin or whatever.
Good catch. Whoever put that video together probably didn’t want people to notice that, so thanks for pointing in out. (I still think nine minutes is a pretty remarkable response time, though. Note to any future perps: this method only works if you remember to GTFO!)
If the party you want to off is female, take her on a vacation in Aruba.
Arrange a nice snorkeling trip…and report her missing a few days later.
Arrange a search party…and develop the ability to cry.
Then leave the island.
Heck, it worked for Joran Van Der Sloot.
Fatal mistake!!!
They will find the gun very quickly…in just…20 minutes.
First catch a couple of rattlesnakes, or other local venomous snakes. Tell no one, and milk them for venom over a few weeks. This is dangerous but if you follow proper technique it is actually fairly simple, with little chance for error. Release the snakes and get rid of their enclosures and equipment which you got off craigslist for cash. Store your venom properly to ensure it does not degrade. Take your victim camping, get them shitty drunk, (be sure to have a few yourself in case the police decide to test you for some reason) and inject them while they sleep. Two wounds, about an inch apart will do nicely. Hands, ankles, or the lower limbs are common bite sites. Ditch the hypodermic. Call 911 when they stop twitching or you cannot find a pulse. Follow the directions of the EMT’s while you are on the phone with them. It’s just a shame that they couldn’t get there in time…