Are any of those pools in the Zone of Death?
One of my jokes with my distillery clients is that they have all of the materials they will every need to get rid of a body. Large vessel, check. Unlimited amounts of anhydrous caustic soda and hydrochloric acid, check. Drains designed to handle large amounts of organic matter, check.
My only real question is how well the anhydrous HCl will dissolve the bones.
With the desert issue. I’ve been down a lot of dirt roads in California, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada and it wouldn’t take much to drop behind a hill and disappear. I used to pull off the highway and sleep when I did long distance drives. It didn’t more than about 5 minutes before I couldn’t see headlights and I could sleep for several hours.
Trouble is in Yellowstone several thousand tourists will go by in that 24 hours.
BFArizona here. Nobody investigates what the Turkey Buzzards are circling. Nobody really pays attention to what anyone is doing until they making smells or messes where its impossible to not pay attention.
Dropping someone down an unused mine shaft really won’t work well because they are being investigated (sometimes) before being blocked off. Plus, the body won’t rot fast enough to avoid being mummified.
When I finally get tired of hub’s shit*, it wouldn’t be hard to hide his corpse for the next 30 years.
*he puts the toilet paper roll on backwards AND he leaves the seat up in my water closet.
Supposedly, organized crime in the Chicago area has occasionally utilized the blast furnaces at the Gary Steel Works (I forget what name they currently operate under, owners keep changing) for body disposal. Which would be quite effective at obliterating a body. With modern steel making and its emphasis on chemical recipes, though, you might wind up ruining a batch of steel by doing it. Or maybe not. I don’t actually have much knowledge of how all that is supposed to work.
Just ask Gram Parsons about that.
The point of tossing a body in a hot pool is to make the evidence disappear. If you’re committing your murder inside the Zone of Death, then in theory you wouldn’t need to worry about getting rid of the evidence.
A common mistake made by rookie murderers in West Virginia is to plan on digging a hole to bury a fresh corpse, only to find the soil too rocky (and in winter, too frozen). The murderers of Skylar Neese encountered this in 2012, as (apparently) did the perpetrator of the 1970 “Coed murders”. In both cases, the bodies were hastily covered with branches and leaves.
When I was working bombing ranges in the Great Salt Lake mudflats (specifically, think between SLC & Wendover, NV, and South of I-80), there would occasionally be human bones found–normally well aged and bleached by the sun. Authorities would be called, and determinations made. Sometimes it was determined to be a lost Mormon/California settler; sometimes it was determined to be Native American remains, which were repatriated to a nearby tribe.
I often go to “a site” well to the west of Las Vegas where, for security reasons, the public is not allowed to enter, where similar conditions exist. I suspect there are similar sets of remains yet undiscovered.
In both cases, any nefarious/criminal/wayward wanderers would be quickly spotted and apprehended. Not so much for the long-lost left-behinds of past generations’ travelers.
Tripler
I mean, really. . . who wants to go roaming around live bombing ranges?
We used to joke about dumping bodies in the aqueduct. ‘[big innocent smile] Say, Johnny… I want to show you something at the aqueduct.’
The desert is a fascinating place. Vast stretches of harsh, open land. And scorching sun — you can just leave the body out in the open in the desert. No burying needed. That hot sun will fry most of it, we’re over 50% water, remember. In the Marines I trained in the desert a lot. Mojave, Sonoran, Chihuahuan. The southwest USA has a lot of open nothingness.
In the 1980s I remember reading the investigation report of one Marine from a sister unit who died when we were out there. He had basically been left behind as a road guard for a night tactical convoy move. He was fried in the hot sun in less than a day.
All deaths are tragedies, but when a death occurs during training it can also be criminal negligence.
See TLDR note at the end.
I read the investigation report as a young Marine and I carry its lessons to today. So that his death, while tragic, is not meaningless. It was almost 40 years ago and I remember many details from the chilling report.
In the desert, distances are deceivingly far. Those mountains that look about 10 miles away? They’re 75 miles. And at night it is worse. The lights of a compound 10 miles away can look like they’re only half a mile. You could be walking for hours when you think you should’ve been there in 30 minutes.
In a night tactical convoy there are no headlights. Only blackout lights were used by the trucks. No flashlights for the road guards, they only had those small chem light glow sticks. Blackout lights are like driving with a lit candle as your only light. Sufficient at 3-5 MPH, if you’re careful. It’s amazing what you can see at night when there’s no moon. Those blackout lights and chemlights are sufficient, until you have a convoy kicking up a lot of dust and sand…
The road guards are posted roughly a quarter to maybe a mile apart. They help to mark the route. Useful when driving with only blackout lights. And they’re at the corners of the route. This Marine was at a corner. The trucks (hummvees and 5-tons) were spaced 100-200 yards apart when moving. When there’s no wind, that kicked-up dust can linger in the air a long time. The convoy knew they had to make a sharp turn near where that marine was posted.
A contributing factor was, (one of many contributing factors for this tragedy to occur), was that the latter part of the convoy turned too soon. They turned short and cut off that young Marine Once one truck makes that mistake, in those conditions it’s easy for the rest of the convoy to follow suit. That’s just how it is with convoy ops. Or was, back then. When you’re driving in a convoy you follow the vehicle ahead of you. And you hope that vehicle isn’t lost.
The last truck in the convoy, the chase vehicle, picked up the road guards. They missed that corner Marine because they, too missed Jones’ corner. That truck did not have an ordered list of the road guards: e.g., (Schuster), then (Occhipinti), then (Grundy), then (Page), then (Jones) at the corner, then (Lopez), then (Schultz), etc… All they knew was that they had to ‘pick up the road guards’. Not even how many Marines there were. Another contributing factor.
When the convoy arrived at their next pos it was late at night and they all broke down. Without a check that each platoon had all their Marines. Another contributing factor. They all went to sleep.
In the desert, distances are deceivingly far. Those mountains that look about 10 miles away? They’re 75 miles. And at night it is worse. The lights of a compound 10 miles away can look like they’re only half a mile. You could be walking for hours.
That Marine they left behind, it is unsure and only surmised because nobody ever talked to him after he was dropped off, but he stayed at his post until morning. Because he was told to stay put and the chase vehicle would get him. He did as he was ordered. There is no reason or evidence to show otherwise.
When the sun rose, at the unit there was no formation or other accounting of people. Another contributing factor. If there had been, they likely would have discovered they were missing one man. And he was still alive at that time. (Jones)’s life could’ve still been saved.
After several hours of their ops that day, some started sensing that Jonesy was missing. Hey have you seen Jonesy?, they’d ask. Jones’ platoon sergeant and section chief didn’t have a clue. When his friends remembered that Jones was a road guard, they escalated their concern.
Finally there was a full formation. And a complete count. Confirmed — 1 unaccounted for. It was late in the afternoon and all hell broke loose. They searched and searched for him.
But it was already too late. PFC Jones was already dead.
Jones had stayed at his post all night. By the road, and at his corner. Jones likely thought, I am a Marine and I am going to stand my post until properly relieved. In the morning he fully realized he’d been left behind, so he started walking towards where the convoy had been headed. He did not have a map, and he did not have the coordinates to the next pos. Another contributing factor.
Jones walked for many hours. He was young, and he was strong. He walked many miles. But as the sun got higher he became more parched. His two canteens, a total of a half gallon of water, did not last long. At exactly what point did the young Jones realize, hey this is becoming a true survival situation? I could be seriously screwed? Why wasn’t I picked up? That denouement brought a chill to me as I continued reading.
PFC Jones had not received basic desert survival training. Another contributing factor. Had he been trained he would have learned to not move during the heat of the day, but to move at night. He would have learned that he could have dug a hole and gotten in it and covered himself with dirt and sand during the midday heat, and this would have kept him cooler and preserved his bodily fluids.
But, no. Jones kept moving. He was a Marine and we Marines are indestructible. Right? In his growing delirium Jones started taking his clothes off. He dropped his cartridge belt with two empty canteens because they were now useless. He dropped his helmet. As dehydration set in and the sun fried his brain, Jones stripped down and left all of his uniform behind. Like an arrow they pointed to his final resting place.
By the time they found him, the following day, Jones was basically a naked, shriveled wet spot in the ground. He had died within 18 hours of being dropped off, and 18 hours before his remains were found. There was very little evidence of critters scavenging his remains.
The piece of gear nearest Jones’ body was his rifle. As he stripped down, in his delirium Jones remained a Marine to the very end. You never, ever leave your rifle. Your rifle is your life.
==> TLDR note. PFC (Jones) was left behind because of poor troop accounting procedures. Poor immediate management, and poor convoy operations. The fault lays on the heads of many people, including the Company Commander.
Jones only had a half gallon of water and he died of exposure within 18 hours.
PFC Jones was with the 23rd Marine Regiment. I was with the 14th. The 14th Marines provides artillery fire support for the 23rd Marines. I learned a lot from the Jones tragedy. And now, today, I want to find him, where he’s buried, where he lies. I want to pay my respects.
So yeah, you don’t need to bury the body out in the desert. In just a few days there will only be the white, sun-bleached bones of the skeleton left.
Who monitors buzzards that carefully?
The zone of death is just outside the caldera, based on the maps I have seen. The pools are, from what I can tell, mostly inside it, though there is some hydrothermal action going on way up north at Mammoth Hot Springs.
In theory, I suppose, one could drop the body in the zone of death, let the forest scavengers work on it for a while, then, around chrismastime (when almost nobody goes into the park), take a snowmobile in, pick up the remnants and take them in to be fully consumed at the nearest pool. Of course, the ride to the nearest pool is going to be quite brutal, as it is profoundly non-flat terrain.
That mistake is distressingly common. How often have I read about someone being discovered in a hastily dug shallow grave. Compare that to the number of bodies found in properly dug graves. It’s a hundred to one difference. Pro tip, dig the grave right, you’ll be glad you did.
It’ll take more than days to turn into just bones. On the mountain behind Grandpa’s farm in southeast Oregon there was a dead horse. Every year when we went to visit we would climb the mountain and pass “Grandpa’s horse”. Even three-four years later there was still scraps of dried skin clinging to the ribs.
But yeah there are miles and miles of empty space where you will not be noticed. People go out to shoot, camp, ride atvs or just get out of town. So nobody would think you suspicious just for being out there.
When I’d see buzzards in the desert, my thought was always ‘Gee, something died. OK, back to digging this hole what I was doing.’’
Thing about the desert is that the novice sees vast emptiness. We took the Amboy turn off from old 66 down to hwy 62 (twentynine palms road) and headed east, past the shoe fence and the distances post. It is a very deserty area, but most of it is far from desolate when you look. Apart from one alkali lake bed and some mountains, there is sage and scrub everywhere, as far as you can see. American deserts are anything but desolate, and anywhere a thing can eke out its existence, it will.
In fact, you could probably go a couple hundred feet from the highway, lay out the body (or stake the live torture victim) and the scrub would give you complete cover. There are desert areas that have full exposure from the nearest road – bonneville salt flats, some dry lake bed, Phoenix – but they are in the minority.
Yeah. I have observed numerous carcass transformations in full sun etc., and to suggest that it’s just a few days from a dripping wet, tightly stuffed skin sack to white bones is way, way off. Like 100 x.
There are springs, too. We camped at Corn Springs (?) one time. I’d fallen asleep and startled awake as we came into the springs. I was momentarily terrified by giant creatures looming at us in the truck headlights. It was just the palm trees at the springs.