Hello says the Mystery Writer, waves a bloody shovel merrily about how are all you fine folks today?
Let’s say you murdered somebody and you didn’t want to bury them in the backyard with all the others, letting her get all smelly and rotten and stuff. So you made a nice bed of ice and packed her inside the new chest freezer you bought on sale at Lowes. Then you sealed up the room, so no one would find your treasure and made your exits and entrances through the dumbwaiter.
How much would your power bill go up with having this secret freezer constantly running? Could a household member or servant discover your secret via the mysteriously high electric bill?
Every major appliance comes with an energy efficiency sticker on it with its estimated annual cost to run.
The first one I pulled off of Lowes’ website says a 15 cf chest freezer cost $36 per year to run. So I doubt someone would notice a $3 per month increase on their electricity bill.
Your typical chest freezer isn’t going to draw much more power than a typical refrigerator, so we’re talking maybe $10 to $15 per month on your electric bill. There’s a bit of variability based on how easily heat transfers out of the room where the freezer is and how warm or cold that room is in general and what the cost of electricity is in your area and stuff like that, but $10 to $15 is probably in the right ballpark for most folks.
Hunters pack deer meet in freezers and use it all year round, and they don’t complain much about their electricity bills.
C’mon man how are you supposed to make love to the body if it’s frozen? Your dick will get freezer burn!
If it’s a plot device it would probably be better if the freezer tripped the circuit breaker or something and stopped running and the killer thought they were gold but the body started decomposing and the smell went up the dumb waiter although I wonder if the aroma would escape the freezer.
Ah ha, we were just chest freezer shopping and, at least for our particular $/kWH and such, the one we bought costs us about an extra $30 a year in electricity. It’s a pretty big one; we’ve got meat from half a bull elk in it. Although part of our decision to buy a new one instead of just grabbing one off Craigslist was that new chest freezers are way more efficient than the old ones. Maybe the twist could be that the 20 year old freezer breaks and when the murderer replaces it with a new one, the servants notice the power bill has become much lower!
Or maybe the poor blokes allowance has been cut so he has to buy an old replacement freezer from Craigslist, that makes it higher. Either way, the replacement idea makes the most sense.
There was a short story years ago where the murderer fed the murder weapon–a leg of mutton, or some such–to the investigating cops. Serve your frozen corpse to company (an arm and a leg at a time) until all gone (Here’s where the BBQ experts jump in with tips).
Ooh! That’s a possibility, if he is so poor he can’t afford a new freezer, right away, and its the middle of the summer. He may just plan a surprise barbecue for all his friends. Poor friends!
“Lamb to the Slaughter”. By Roald Dahl, of all people, who had a penchant for the sick before he started all that stuff about giant peaches. Also, serving them roasted would be a little to obvious, I think - it’d be better to prepare them in a way that doesn’t preserve the form. I’m thinking a nice chili, Scott Tenorman style.
ETA: Ninja’d, I see! On the Dahl, that is. Being the second in a thread to suggest human chili would make me a little nervous . . .
If you’re going to keep a body frozen economically, do not do what this guy did - keep the freezer in a stolen Ryder truck in your driveway for three years, powered by an extension cord from the house.
They’ve done that in an episode of Sons of Anarchy and an episode of Criminal Minds too. Reminds me of a joke that was going around after the Waco incident:
Q. Have you heard that Jeffrey Dahmer escaped from prison?
A. He was last seen headed for Waco with a bottle of BBQ sauce.
at a time) until all gone (Here’s where the BBQ experts jump in with tips).