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 suburban issue isn't cctv, it's Ring type doorbells and car cameras which are everywhere and the police can ask to see. My neighbour has a motion sensor camera at his front door etc.

It is extremely difficult to get away with killing someone nowadays. Not that I'm making plans.... 😁

I saw an episode of 24 Hours a police custody where they convicted a man based on the evidence of a Ring doorbell.
They could place him walking past and then hear him talking to the girl he then attacked.

The suburban issue isn't cctv, it's Ring type doorbells and car cameras which are everywhere and the police can ask to see. My neighbour has a motion sensor camera at his front door etc.

Yep- plus shops/businesses and residential homes all have cctv now too. My H has a business on a suburban road and he has CCTV because he has expensive equipment in it. The police popped round last year and asked to see his footage as there was a punch up on that road late at night and they wanted it as evidence. Every business in that road (its a mix of houses and businesses) has CCTV.

Police officers and detectives dig through the rubbish dump all the time, it's part of their job.

I was reading a book by a female mortician and former crematorium worker, and apparently in Britain it's illegal for crematorium workers to open the coffin. In the US, they open the coffin and check everything before it goes into the oven as standard.

This is apparently a problem for British crematorium workers as they can't check the corpse for a pacemaker scar, and pacemakers explode in ovens.

But convenient if you're a funeral director wanting to dispose of an extra body.

I imagine at some point a consensus will be reached on this thread and in a year or two we can expect a Netflix series on « The Mumsnet Murders » where means and methods are identical but victims are geographically dispersed and with wildly different motives and opportunities.

Police officers and detectives dig through the rubbish dump all the time, it's part of their job.

And when they find the evidence in bins my first thought is always 'how stupid' at the fact they've left it too easy to find

Whereas when something really really serious happens and they're looking for a body - the last place they look is a bin!! Like my friend who went missing and was later found in an inquiry to have been taken to landfill in the back of a bin lorry and never seen from again. I guess it's just luck if you use it the day bins are due to be collected

If I remember correctly, strangers on a train ended with one of them bottling out of the arrangement, resulting in an unhappy ending 😁

A slight crossover I think with the "any issues with having a ring doorbell" thread.

@howdoesyourgardengrowinmay I might read it now in full- sounds intriguing!

I love this thread, so educational! I always thought water destroyed all evidence over time, so the sea would be my choice for disposal. But there is an argument for saying nothing, doing nothing, just carrying on and hoping no one notices.

Google Leigh Anne Sabine.

Strangers on a Train was an excellent Hitchcock film. The actor Robert Walker who played the murderer who went through with it was oddly charismatic, but died tragically soon afterwards in real life. An unusual and disturbing film for myriad reasons- highly recommended.

I'm reading Death in Holy Orders by chance... not PD James's best, but not as bad as Death Comes To Pemberley. She had odd views about child abuse, didn't she?

I've read the leg of lamb one in a short story, I think by Roald Dahl? (his ones for adults, I know his kids stories are also dark but not that bad!)
Wife hits husband over head with frozen leg of lamb then serves it to the police when they come to investigate the break in/murder!

Yes, it's Roald Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter".

Elsewhere on MN today

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/food_and_recipes/4972957-defrosting-whole-leg-of-lamb

Pillow works just as well as a murder weapon. Just saying.... 😁

And another one - my confirmation bias is really getting the better of me

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/food_and_recipes/4972909-roast-lamb-help

(Be careful with a pillow as it might leave fibres up the victim’s nose)

Yes, but if they aren't finding the body then it doesn't matter. 😉 No body, no murder weapon.

I think the key is to have the victim not be noticed as missing/dead for a decent while. So you need to sort a scenario for them being absent and not reported missing. In the meantime you can get rid of the body/evidence and have a decent period of time for it to destroyed.

You might need to get in the habit of going drives at night dressed in black and make sure you have an older car that isn't signed up to one of those trackers.

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

A Murder of Quality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Murder_of_Quality

Feel like I'm really outing myself as a very suspect person... I promise I am on the side of good! So the other way to get away with murder is to kill someone who was expected to die anyway. So in another homicide in which I was involved, she was in her mid 80s, her son (aged 57) was recently divorced and had moved back in with his Mum. He slowly starved her (36 kg when she died ) and created plausible reasons in the last two months of her life for the neighbours as to why they couldn't see her. His downfall was impatience. Had he waited, he would have starved her to death within 3 weeks but he was impatient and smothered her with a pillow. Even here, he very nearly got away with it. It was the mortuary who raised suspicions... the GP had already signed it off as natural causes because the son had laid the groundwork.

Very similar to that recent case with the young man who befriended elderly people and moved in with them. He had relationships with them and got them to change their wills in his favour. Then he slowly poisoned them. As they were older no one really questioned it.

There was an excellent drama made about it just this year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0fvlpwp

And the other way is a staged suicide. These are common enough that there is now a list of 'red flags' for police officers to check when they attend an apparent suicide:

The victim was in good health but has died prematurely or unexpectedly
One partner wanted to end the relationship
There was a prior history of domestic abuse
Prior history of domestic abuse includes strangulation / choking / suffocation
Victim dies at home or other place where the couple have been living
Body was found by current or previous partner
Partner was the last person to see the victim alive
Partner has control of crime scene before police arrive
Body has been moved / crime scene changed in some way

Day out at yellowstone national park. Someone fell in a pond there and the police said they couldn't recover the body next day because it had already "mostly dissolved."

It's a long way to go for a murder, but maybe an anniversary trip with your "loved one" and then... oops 😬

LOL or take them away for an anniversary trip/holiday (send lots of lovey dovey texts prior to it and gush to friends and family how much you adore them for a few months prior etc). Then, go up a remote mountain side, take some selfies near the edge, then push them off. Job done. "They were trying to take a selfie officer and just slipped"- you have evidence on your phone of selfies and noone around to see it. No way that can be proven as murder as people slip/trip/fall all the time. You never wanted them dead- everyone knows you adored them! Death by misadventure- all the ends nicely tied up

The “let’s murder each other’s victim” was also the plot line in a series of Unforgotten, I think.

@mangochops A man recently murdered his wife at Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh in that way, pushing her and then claiming she’d slipped when he accidentally bumped into her 😟She lived long enough to tell the first responders that he’d pushed her.