Everyone thinks they know how to commit the perfect murder. If that were really true, there would be a whole lot more dead people. Lots more.
There might also be less murderers behind bars, but I suspect that most of them were not concerned with the finer points of murder, they simply wanted someone dead (more on this will be forthcoming).
We should probably also discuss what is meant by “perfect”—and no, even though you self-identify as a dummie by reading this blog, I assume you have a practical sense of the word. The difficulty is, in which way do you want your murder to be perfect: I don’t want to get caught, or I want person X dead.
Most people naively believe that perfect means not getting caught. However, they also expect to be able to kill person X. As we will see in a later posting, passion, that desire to kill a specific person, makes things considerably easier for the officers of the law.
Killing a random person is one of the best ways not to get caught.
But if your notion of perfect revolves around the target, then the perfect crime is not connected to the punishment stage, but to the successful execution of the act itself. So if this is your desired end, then don’t confuse it with the former “perfect murder.”
If, however, you are a perfectionist, then I don’t quite see why you are reading “The Perfect Murder: For Dummies.” I am currently working on “The Perfect Murder: Genius Edition,” but in order to access it, you will have to prove a genius level I.Q. (160 or better).
Compelled as I am to comment as a Criminologist, I'm first obliged to place requests for expanding the metacommentary to: epistolary novels (yes, yes, like Clarissa.), grocery lists, top ten list, cheeky yet ultimately unconvincing contrarian piece in The Atlantic....
ReplyDeleteAnyway ...Many people nowadays seem to think that random murder is increasing due to tv-inspired forensic skill. Actually, as your blog suggests, remediation is perhaps necessary. This idea -- of increased random murder -- seems to have inspired (and that is not too strong a word) many an otherwise smart criminology undergrad to convince themselves that murder adepts are now amok across the land. There's no evidence of this (and plenty to the contrary) but it is intriguing to me how intriguing it is for them. It is actually a misreading of certain trends apparent in federal statistics. The number of cases in which the victim-offender relationship is "unknown" has indeed increased over the last two decades. There are, however, more mundane explanations, and murder rates themselves have declined remarkably.