Why can't you just dispose of evidence in the bin

[someladdersandsnakes]

I'm reading a thriller and the character done a murder and has destroyed her clothes by burning them. I feel like that would draw attention though. It wasn't the sort of crime that would be discovered immediately and the character wouldn't be suspected immediately either so I would have thought just putting them in the bin would be a good option really but nobody ever does that. Why not? Like surely once the rubbish van has come, and everything from the bins has been combined and smooshed down, there's no way any evidence would be recovered? Who's gonna dig through all that?

The timing of this thread is suspicious. If there was proactive preventative policing, the AIs would be busily correlating posts on here with contributions on Xmas annoying relatives threads

Nah. Bodily fluids would be toxic wate, to be taken to the only recycling site who can deal with it, on the far side of the city, and charged for, with a charging mechanism geared to hospital volumes,

Leave out in one of those charity bag collections? I saw/read a whodunnit in which the offending garment was sent to charity. The murderer was identified.

Maybe it's the same lasldy who was complaining about her husband buying her a periscope for Christmas.

Instructions to shoot someone? How detailed do they need to be. 'Point gun, pull trigger"

List:

Don't forget the silencer
Retrieve spent cartridges/bullets
Ajax and cleanup stuff for spatter
Wear old clothes (black, see spatter)
Trainers in two sizes bigger to fool the rozzers
Naice ham

How much are you charging for this service?

Very much agree that the key thing is to stick to your routine.

So if you always carry a backpack rather than a handbag, you might be able to fit more in (inside a binbag, so nothing touches your actual bag) and then get rid somewhere out of sight at a distance from your home. Possibly at your workplace, or public bin (ideally somewhere that you have good excuse to be, but do not go frequently, so investigators won't get there until stuff is long gone).

Burying stuff might be an option if you can do so either unobserved or in a way that no-one would clock as peculiar - maybe a community garden (establish your pattern of volunteering well in advance) as there wouldn't be a stand-out interruption to growth patterns (as noted in an earlier post) because it's all higgeldy-piggeldy anyhow. Especially good for natural fibres that will break down over time

Since discovering this thread, I've gone down a horrible rabbit hole. I've been reading about the Elaine O'Hara murder and found a series of three episodes on ITVX about the case, which I binge watched while eating cheese and biscuits. I have had a horrible night's sleep (cheese and murder equally to blame). So interesting but absolutely terrifying.

No, no, no - you need ricin. Quick puncture wound (on the busy tube? Drawing pin on office chair?) and no body or clothes to have to dispose of. Just make sure you cover your tracks in obtaining it, and the victim will conveniently expire in their own time, far away from you. Massive bonus being that the authorities will imagine it was a bungled Russian plot and utterly fail to investigate or try and get a prosecution. Job done!

But definitely don't Google about how to obtain your poison or anything to do with destroying evidence etc.

Plot twist: the bin was 3cm too far from the boundary line so it wasn't collected. Police finds a half burnt jumper and bloodied knife in the bin on Tuesday.

The new thriller The Day After Bin Day coming soon.

Dump body in the woods, ring the police and report that you've "found" a body while walking your dog. Sorted.

A taxi driver in Dublin told me that story once! Bloody hell.

You would clearly be researching a crime novel, like Harriet Vane in Strong Poison, who goes around London buying arsenic (and unfortunately is tried for the murder by poison of her ghastly lover, and only saved from execution by Peter Wimsey having fallen for her as she stood in the dock.)

I always think why couldn't you put it in a public bin like in the park or on a random street. How could they track that? Unless someone saw you doing it but you could do it with lots of little bags in different bins, I'm thinking in like a city type area.

You could do- BUT the UK has more CCTV cameras than anywhere in the world, so that along with number plate recognition for cars means if you were spotted at those same locations (and had a motive so the police knew to watch you) it would look very suspicious if it was found and you just coincidentally happened to be in all those locations at some point. I imagine that the closer your connection to the person, the harder it is to get away with it.
Wasn't there a book called strangers on a train about two people who got chatting on a train and agreed to each murder the other person's victim?- to me, that seems a good idea as there would be no obvious connection between them (presuming no texts messages etc) and the victims were strangers to them so the police wouldn't have a clue who to suspect. Not sure how the book ended but if you had no connection whatsoever to the victim I imagine it would be much harder to investigate

Bit off topic, but assuming if your reading this you enjoy thrillers; I read Louise Doughty's A Bird in Winter over the break - can thoroughly recommend.

What was this program called please?

If you're in a city, you are very likely going to be on CCTV, and even if they don't catch the very moment something goes in to a bin, they'll see the amount you are carrying reduce.

So yes, using a public bin (especially if you are not close to your home - say in a different London borough that might be only a few streets away but will have completely separate waste management contracts) is good. But you need an obvious, conspicuous reason to be putting stuff in a bin - or be carrying "guilty" items in a way that means it doesn't show that you're carrying less. Trawling round several bins is really unlikely to be part of anyone's routine behaviour

It's the "out of character" bit that will raise the most red flags.

So if you want to jettison something by leaving it in a gym changing room, join the gym months ahead of time and actually go regularly

Yes, it was Suzanne Pilley who was murdered in Edinburgh and they never found her body but good police work secured a conviction for the horrible man who did it. Among other things they timed the drive up to the forests where her dumped her body to prove it was achievable in the time. I think about her quite often, it was so very sad. RIP.

Edited to correct spelling of Suzanne's surname.

I don’t know about all the CCTV cameras that are supposedly all around us. I can’t see any in my suburban part of the big city I live in, but I know there’s plenty in the city centre.

There was an episode of Law and Order once where the murderer donated the cashmere sweater he was wearing at the time of the murder to charity, and when the detectives turned up at the charity, the woman running the charity shop was actually wearing the sweater herself.

Wasn't there a book called strangers on a train about two people who got chatting on a train and agreed to each murder the other person's victim?- to me, that seems a good idea as there would be no obvious connection between them (presuming no texts messages etc) and the victims were strangers to them so the police wouldn't have a clue who to suspect. Not sure how the book ended but if you had no connection whatsoever to the victim I imagine it would be much harder to investigate

One of the characters becomes obsessive about the other and that's when things unravel. It's a rookie error getting someone involved in a murder, in any way.

Don't ask how I know but I have been reliably informed that the best way to dispose of a body is to feed it to pigs. I always thought it would be fun to have a murdered caught out via not realising the victim had a pacemaker.

I live in a massive block of flats with a huge communal bin store in the basement, and the building only has CCTV in the lobby, not in the hallways, lifts, or the bin store. I wonder why more murder writers don't use that as a mode of disposal for evidence.

Ah! right- thought it seemed a bit too easy lol