If the police become aware of you, do not tell them anything. Lawyer up ASAP with the best lawyer you can afford. Remember, anything you say can and will be used against you. Never admit guilt, even if the evidence is damning. However, be calm and polite. Hostility and aggression pisses them off.
Don’t buy your murder supplies all from one place and pay for it with a credit card. I don’t know how many people have been caught when their (video recorded) purchases were nicely itemised on a receipt with the perp’s name and last four digits of his credit card number on it.
Loved that story/movie.
If you live in a corrupt system, have connections within the judicial and political system you can use to avoid consequences. Of course you have to be a pretty high end criminal for that to work, but it does work well. Even better, if you are powerful enough you just write and rewrite the rules to whatever suits you. Not moral, but that is how the real world works. Ask Saddam Hussein about his rape rooms.
Don’t ever talk to the police. Get a lawyer and ensure all communication goes through your attorney.
Don’t talk to anyone about it ever. Not family members, not therapists, nobody.
Use chemicals that can cause a heart attack or some other form of natural death but that do not show up on a standard autopsy (how to get those chemicals though is not easy, or what they even are). I think this is one of the preferred way national security agencies get rid of overseas critics. Of course, you can’t prove that but that is the point.
Don’t attack someone deemed ‘valuable’ to society. Don’t attack young, attractive white women who are in the peak of their fertility years. Attack homeless middle aged non-white men since that will be put on the back burner. Don’t do anything sexual, too close to a wealthy suburb, extremely deviant, excessively violent etc as that gives the crime more publicity.
Destroy all the clothes and weapons you had at the time of the crime.
Study books on forensics science (but how to get ahold of the books w/o that eventually being found out, I don’t know) so you know what clues not to leave behind.
There was a mob hitman called the iceman because he would kill people, keep them in a freezer then a year or two later dump the bodies. This totally screwed up police forensics and police information about the time and motivation of the crime. But he didn’t let them thaw long enough.
All theoretical of course.
My rule before reading the OP was “TELL NO ONE”. I went through a few years of watching way too many true crime shows, which evolved into reading a whole lot of true crime books. That led me to speculate about how many people might be murdering people and not getting caught. Probably a staggering number.
If your goal was to commit a crime and get away with it I think you should focus on a crime that doesn’t seem to benefit you in anyway. Seems like police like to find a motive.
On my mom shared after watching a show I’m sorry to say I missed - she actually said this to my husband: “If you stab Gwen to death in your bed DON’T call Dial-A-Mattress BEFORE you call 911”
- Be white.
- Be rich.
- Have connections.
(Me? Cynical? Whatever gave you that idea?)
I was watching a cop TV reality series (maybe the first 48, I don’t remember). A black guy got murdered. The cops were debating should they release details of the murder to the public to get more attention? They decided not because the cops said the victim was not someone deemed ‘of value’ to society, so people really wouldn’t care.
Young, attractive, white and female
Those get the news attention. Its not cynical when it is true.
FWIW, the FBI determined that it was Khaled Sheikh Mohammed who beheaded Daniel Pearl due to something called ‘vascular technology’.
They took the video of the beheading and matched the veins on the killers hands with the veins of KSM’s hands and found they matched. I’m sure they have tons of other forensic tools the public don’t know about. But someone getting video of your hands may be all it takes nowadays.
Don’t take a mobile phone with you while committing a crime. Even the most phone-reliant people forget them now and then.
If you hired someone to commit a crime for you and want a good alibi, but not too obvious, just do something like use an ATM. It’s an ordinary thing to do - doesn’t stink of a planned alibi - and there are cameras. Other things like mobile phone usage and entering train or tube stations using a registered swipe card would also be good, if they’re something you’d usually do.
Hah! That’s what I came in to say. That story ]url=Lamb to the Slaughter--Roald Dahl (1916-1990)]Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahlwas actually on a list of short stories to use in a particular scheme of work when I was teaching secondary school English.
The other thing I was going to say has already been said too - lawyer up immediately. Perhaps do so in a nice, apologetic way - “I’m too upset to talk right now. Can you call my lawyer please?” And once your lawyer’s there, shut up when he tells you to.
Read the Evil Overlord rules. Not all of them will be relevant, but those that aren’t will be entertaining.
It always amazes me that so many killers are caught when they talk about it. Gangsta wants street cred? ‘I killed this bitch!’ Someone in jail wants to establish him/herself as a baddass? ‘I killed this guy.’ (It’s an especially brilliant idea telling a prisoner in jail about crimes you’ve committed but haven’t been suspected of yet!) Threaten someone to keep her quiet? Gee, where can she get protection?
Say, how about this one? Don’t ‘help’ the police. I saw a show about a murder near where I used to live, where the killer (a security guard) said that he’d heard shots and then gave a rundown on which one was fatal, bullet trajectory, etc. Come on. If you’re working as a night security guard in a parking lot, you’re probably not educated in forensic analysis.
Of course there’s always Don’t provide details. ‘Look, there’s no way I shot that person!’ ‘Who said she’d been shot?’
One from last night’s Werner Herzog documentary: Stick to the plan. Seven prisoners broke out of prison. They rob a store. The plan is, ‘If I say “go”, you drop everything and come immediately.’ When one of the guys reported that police had been summoned, the leader called everyone out. They didn’t stick to the plan, kept grabbing stuff, and took four minutes to come out. By that time a cop was rolling up with more on the way. Shootout, dead cop, wounded escapees. When they were caught they were all sentenced to snuffing. If they’d followed the plan they would have gotten away (that time).
Keep accomplices to a minimum, preferably none.
And if you have to have accomplices, it might be a good idea to knock them off after they’ve served their purpose (as long as you’re murdering people, might as well eliminate any potential loose lips).
Don’t tattoo the crime scene on your chest seem pretty obvious to me, but evidently not to everyone.
http://policelink.monster.com/news/articles/153460-murderer-tattoos-crime-on-his-chest-gets-busted
Don’t stand across from the crime scene for a few hours smoking cigarettes and leave butts with your DNA in a neat circle on an oft-cleaned street.
ESPECIALLY don’t go buy your cigarettes at the bodega down the street from the scene on your way to standing around. That bodega cashier has a memory like a trap.
One or the other of us mentioned that one too, not long ago. Definitely gets a number on the list!
Stay away from the meddling kids, at all costs.
It may be amusing, but I understand that it’s quite common with male criminals. Males tend to be almost compulsive showoffs when it comes to “tough guy” behavior, a trait that turns on them when the behavior in question is best kept secret. Women are generally much more closemouthed when it comes to crimes. And crimelike activities; I understand that much of the intelligence community goes out of its way to recruit women these days because they don’t do things like get drunk and spill national secrets to some prostitute to impress her.
Which brings up my rule; avoid spectacle. Commit your crimes in as low key a manner as you can manage, with the fewest deaths, the least amount of media coverage possible. Be as boring and non-violent as possible.
If you’ve got something illegal (or evidence of a crime) in your car, motorcycle saddlebags, etc., and the cop who stops you for going 68 in a 55 zone asks you if he can search your car/saddlebags/etc., don’t say ‘yes.’ If they don’t have a warrant, don’t let 'em search.
I was on a grand jury about a dozen years back, and a few instances of this helped reinforce my opinion that most crooks are dumb as shit. They’d have dope, or the weapon they just used in a crime, or whatever, in their vehicle, they’d give the OK to the cop to search, and - big surprise! - the cop would find the dope, the weapon, or whatever.
What were they thinking?? (‘Were they thinking?’ is probably more on target.)
Select your victim such that there is no obvious benefit to you in their death.
What I really want to know, however, is how to get away with offing someone whose death is of benefit to me.
Another tip: dispose of the body so that it cannot be found. How hard is that? So many killers seem to be just lazy.
And it’s good to have some kind of alibi, although obviously you can’t actually be in two places at the same time.
This one happened to someone I knew slightly in college: “If you get drunk enough to burn down an empty building after looting it, try not to get drunk enough later to boast about doing it”