Dan Among Den

1. I know how to dispose of a body so that a) it is likely to never be found, and b) if it isn’t found for at least three weeks, the body would not be identifiable by fingerprints, dental/X-ray records, or DNA testing. But that’s somewhat academic, and the best planned murders don’t leave you to deal with the body anyway.
2. I also know how to dispose of a car with virtually no trace, though you can’t have the body in it when you do so. This is generally useful when the cover story for your murder is that the victim moved off, i.e. got fed up and went for the long drive never to be heard from again, current whereabouts unknown.
3. Some of the best murders don’t look like murders at all, but appear to be simple accidents. See the movie “A Shock to the System” for a flavor of this. My personal favorite, however, is so tricky that I haven’t managed to pull it off yet. It involves a specially prepared and worn-out tire (and three others to match its appearance), a small explosive charge, a rainy night, and a windy road along the side of a steep hill like 2222 in west Austin. Sure, it sounds like a lot of trouble, but I know a couple of people who are worth it. Unfortunately, they don’t live in the Austin area.
4. Cannibalism is over-rated, especially in relation to casual murder. Either you have to share, which raises questions, or you have a lot of leftovers. That’s not exactly what you want in your freezer when the search warrant comes. Kuru is less of a risk than you’d think, provided your victims are not cannibals themselves, but it’s best to avoid the brain on general principle anyway. Mostly, though, human meat is tough and stringy. The parts you would think of as special delicacies are generally either too fatty or too chewy. Young-adult thighs and buttocks are really the only cuts worthwhile, and their owners are the ones most likely to successfully fight off an attack.
5. I tend to give pretty good advice for things I have no reason for knowing. For example, killing someone close to you, say a coworker, neighbor, or family member, is always very tricky, because your connection makes you an immediate suspect, someone to be ruled out if nothing else. Then you get into fabricating an alibi, and it just gets messy from there. Instead, you need to remove yourself from the pool of suspects from the start by making it clear the murderer was an unrelated party, so you make your victim one in a string of serial murders. This can be a little tricky, so let me walk you through the important elements.
   • You’ll need some other victims – three at minimum. However many you choose, your victim should be near the end, but not the last. In general, you want to have enough to establish a pattern, but not so many that details become public knowledge. After all, you don’t want your victim to be suspected as a copy-cat, but recognized as the genuine article. You can’t do yours too early in the sequence or they police won’t recognize it as the pattern – plus, you’ll be on their radar, which makes it difficult to do the follow-up killing(s). You don’t want your victim to be the last either, because the police will have to wonder why the killer stopped with your victim. Timing is also important, since serial killers accelerate their work. A good pattern is: first cover victim, wait three months, second cover victim, wait two months, your primary victim, wait one month, and then your final cover victim.
   • Pick your extra victims randomly to some extent, but don’t do them in the heat of the moment. They need to have some common element with your main victim, e.g. overweight men, blonde women, etc. Do your research. Make sure you have a predictable opportunity to do the deed. Find the time and place where you can work on them without interruption. Be sure to complete all the research for your follow-up victim(s) before you kill your primary victim, since you won’t have the time to do it afterwards while you’re under police scrutiny. Also, this only works if your main victim and cover victims are all local. Coincidental travel dates will raise suspicion.
   • Plan the details of your killing style meticulously. Choose the killing weapon ahead of time. Do something to the body during or afterwards. Ritualistic dismemberment will always be an eye-catcher for the police. Learn your anatomy since you’ll want to be sure you do the same thing to particular organs on each of your victims. Don’t improvise anything. After all, you’re trying to establish a warped mind-set here. Consistent depravity will get their profilers headed in a direction far from your own identity. Also, there will be some details in the papers, but only you will be able to duplicate the minutia that doesn’t get released to the press.
   • Be clean. This is a good idea in just about all murders, but especially in this case. While crime labs aren’t really as good or fast as CSI would lead you to believe, you need to be careful. Select special working clothes for this that are used only for this. Clean yourself meticulously before and afterwards. Use tarps. Wear gloves and a shower cap. This is not Sunday-morning clean. This is clean-room clean.
   • If possible, leave someone else’s DNA or tell-tale signs at the scene. I won’t give too many details here because this one is something of a trade secret. If your victims are female, think about a sperm bank. Failing that, a collection of dead skin cells shoved under fingernails is a good misdirection. The key here, of course, is to use the same DNA at each scene, and make sure it’s not from someone who can be traced back to you. Another trick is to use bite marks from another person. A good dental casting would do, but a real (and refrigerated, thank you very much) human jaw works even better, providing more consistent angles as well as trace DNA. (Note: a separate preparatory murder might be in order here for supplies – remember the victim that just got fed up and drove off?)

Of course, it’s fun to always joke about this kind of thing. It often makes for good, dark humor, and if you’re a writer (as I am), you can use that knowledge in your writing thus making it clear that’s why you know these things. People occasionally get freaked out by your dark imagination, but they laugh it off with a comfortable air. “After all, he’s a nice guy and basically harmless.” Now, you might think this is all meant to scare you, to make you all question just how mentally stable I really am, but then I know you’ll see through that as the lame joke that it is. After all, I’m a nice guy and basically harmless. But if any of you really are freaked out by this, I have the following advice:

• Subcutaneous RFID chips are hard to find if you don’t have the details.


• Always make sure people know where are you going.


• Check your tires.


• Exercise and a low-carb diet ruins the meat.


• Don’t be too predictable in your routines.


• An apology for what you did last February just might save your life.

Anyway, you'll find some other psychopaths wallowing in their blood lust here.