Illegal disposal of bodies in the water
Encyclopedia
Illegal disposal of bodies in the water happens for various reasons, including the main difference between a burial at sea
Burial at sea
Burial at sea describes the procedure of disposing of human remains in the ocean, normally from a ship or boat. It is regularly performed by navies, but also can be done by private citizens in many countries.-By religion:...

 and a burial
Burial
Burial is the act of placing a person or object into the ground. This is accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing an object in it, and covering it over.-History:...

 on land: the difficulty in recovering the body. Sometimes this difference is desired to dispose of bodies outside of the law.

Disposal of evidence

There may be a number of reasons for this kind of crime. One common reason for this behavior is to dispose of the evidence. The body may be the victim of a homicide, as for example murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...

 or manslaughter. In some cases, the victim may even be still alive and drown
Drowning
Drowning is death from asphyxia due to suffocation caused by water entering the lungs and preventing the absorption of oxygen leading to cerebral hypoxia....

 during the process. A live victim is usually restrained to reduce the likelihood of the victim freeing themselves or fighting back, and the body is often weighted to ensure the sinking of the body. The mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...

 is infamous for disposing of victims in oceans or lakes with their feet cast in a concrete block. Other variants tie concrete blocks or other heavy objects to the victim. The Chicago-style method involves wrapping heavy chains around the victim. In Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

, barrels filled with a human body and concrete are occasionally found in the canals. It is difficult to determine if murder victims buried in a swamp
Swamp
A swamp is a wetland with some flooding of large areas of land by shallow bodies of water. A swamp generally has a large number of hammocks, or dry-land protrusions, covered by aquatic vegetation, or vegetation that tolerates periodical inundation. The two main types of swamp are "true" or swamp...

 are buried in water or in earth. Often, the body is also cut up to reduce the likelihood of reappearing.

In other cases, the victim may have died from an accident, and another involved party tries to destroy evidence of the accident. There are also cases where a stillborn
Stillbirth
A stillbirth occurs when a fetus has died in the uterus. The Australian definition specifies that fetal death is termed a stillbirth after 20 weeks gestation or the fetus weighs more than . Once the fetus has died the mother still has contractions and remains undelivered. The term is often used in...

 infant
Infant
A newborn or baby is the very young offspring of a human or other mammal. A newborn is an infant who is within hours, days, or up to a few weeks from birth. In medical contexts, newborn or neonate refers to an infant in the first 28 days after birth...

 is buried to dispose of evidence of infidelity
Infidelity
In many intimate relationships in many cultures there is usually an express or implied expectation of exclusivity, especially in sexual matters. Infidelity most commonly refers to a breach of the expectation of sexual exclusivity.Infidelity can occur in relation to physical intimacy and/or...

, or problems with fertility
Fertility
Fertility is the natural capability of producing offsprings. As a measure, "fertility rate" is the number of children born per couple, person or population. Fertility differs from fecundity, which is defined as the potential for reproduction...

, or the shame associated with unwed parenthood in many cultures.

Problems

While a corpse properly buried at sea is unlikely to reappear, many criminals are unable to ensure the permanent disposals of a body, and evidence of the body may reappear. This is rarely as spectacular as the freshly caught shark in the Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

 Coogee Aquarium that vomited up a surgically separated human arm, leading to a murder investigation
The Shark Arm case
The Shark Arm case refers to a series of incidents that began in Sydney, Australia on 25 April 1935 when a human arm was regurgitated by a captive 3.5-metre tiger shark. The tiger shark had been caught 3 kilometres from the beach suburb of Coogee in mid-April and transferred to the Coogee Aquarium...

. The victim was determined to be James Smith, but the three murder suspects were acquitted.

Many criminals dispose of bodies in a river, hoping that the body is carried away. However, this method will most likely lead to a quick detection of the body, because the body gets entangled at the side of the river, or stopped at a dam
Dam
A dam is a barrier that impounds water or underground streams. Dams generally serve the primary purpose of retaining water, while other structures such as floodgates or levees are used to manage or prevent water flow into specific land regions. Hydropower and pumped-storage hydroelectricity are...

, or is simply seen floating by others. A disposal in large lakes or oceans is more likely to hide the body, but a decomposing body can develop a strong positive buoyancy
Buoyancy
In physics, buoyancy is a force exerted by a fluid that opposes an object's weight. In a column of fluid, pressure increases with depth as a result of the weight of the overlying fluid. Thus a column of fluid, or an object submerged in the fluid, experiences greater pressure at the bottom of the...

 due to the decomposing gases being trapped underneath the skin. This may bring the body up to the surface, or at least increase the movement across the ocean floor due to wave actions. Many bodies have washed up at the shore. Bodies have also been discovered in the nets or lines of fishermen
Fisherman
A fisherman or fisher is someone who captures fish and other animals from a body of water, or gathers shellfish. Worldwide, there are about 38 million commercial and subsistence fishermen and fish farmers. The term can also be applied to recreational fishermen and may be used to describe both men...

, and occasionally, bodies are also discovered by divers
Scuba diving
Scuba diving is a form of underwater diving in which a diver uses a scuba set to breathe underwater....

.

Very cold water with little oxygen may even preserve bodies, allowing for an easier identification, as for example Margaret Hogg
Margaret Hogg
Margaret Hogg was a manslaughter victim whose body was preserved in Wast Water lake for eight years.Married to Peter Hogg, she worked as an airline stewardess for Air Europe, where her husband was a pilot. Peter was 19 years senior to Margaret. Margaret had a three-year affair with banker Graham...

, the Wasdale Lady in the Lake in Wast Water
Wast Water
Wast Water or Wastwater is a lake located in Wasdale, a valley in the western part of the Lake District National Park, England. The lake is approximately 4.6 kilometres long and 600 metres wide. It is the deepest lake in England at 79 metres , and is owned by the National Trust...

 lake in the Wasdale
Wasdale
Wasdale is a valley and civil parish in the western part of the Lake District National Park in Cumbria, England. The River Irt flows through the valley to its estuary at Ravenglass. A large part of the main valley floor is occupied by Wastwater, the deepest lake in England...

 area (see National Trust Properties in England). She was found after 8 years, with her body preserved like wax.

Cases

  • Gary Ridgway
    Gary Ridgway
    Gary Leon Ridgway is an American serial killer known as the Green River Killer. He murdered numerous women in Washington during the 1980s and 1990s, earning his nickname when the first five victims were found in the Green River. He strangled them, usually with his arm but sometimes using ligatures...

     (born 1949), the Green River Killer, disposed most of his bodies in or near the Green River
    Green River (Washington)
    The Green River is a long river in the state of Washington in the United States, arising on the western slopes of the Cascade Mountains south of I-90....

  • In the Shark Arm Case
    The Shark Arm case
    The Shark Arm case refers to a series of incidents that began in Sydney, Australia on 25 April 1935 when a human arm was regurgitated by a captive 3.5-metre tiger shark. The tiger shark had been caught 3 kilometres from the beach suburb of Coogee in mid-April and transferred to the Coogee Aquarium...

     James Smith's murder was discovered when a shark
    Shark
    Sharks are a type of fish with a full cartilaginous skeleton and a highly streamlined body. The earliest known sharks date from more than 420 million years ago....

     in the Sydney
    Sydney
    Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

     Coogee Aquarium vomited up his severed arm in 1935
  • Anne Marie Fahey, scheduling secretary for then Delaware Governor Thomas Carper, was killed by prominent Delaware attorney Thomas Capano and was dumped, inside of a large "Igloo
    Igloo
    An igloo or snowhouse is a type of shelter built of snow, originally built by the Inuit....

    " cooler, into the Atlantic Ocean
    Atlantic Ocean
    The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

     off the New Jersey
    New Jersey
    New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

     coast with the help of his brother, Jerry. Only the cooler was recovered and was buried by the Fahey family after the Capano case.
  • Emmett Till
    Emmett Till
    Emmett Louis "Bobo" Till was an African-American boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. Till was from Chicago, Illinois visiting his relatives in the Mississippi Delta region when he spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the married...

    , his body dumped in the Tallahatchie River
    Tallahatchie River
    The Tallahatchie River flows from Tippah County, Mississippi to Leflore County, Mississippi, where it joins the Yalobusha River to form the Yazoo River.-History:Tallahatchie is a Choctaw name meaning "rock of waters"....

     in Mississippi
    Mississippi
    Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...

     in 1955
  • Margaret Hogg
    Margaret Hogg
    Margaret Hogg was a manslaughter victim whose body was preserved in Wast Water lake for eight years.Married to Peter Hogg, she worked as an airline stewardess for Air Europe, where her husband was a pilot. Peter was 19 years senior to Margaret. Margaret had a three-year affair with banker Graham...

    , the Wasdale Lady in the Lake, murdered 1976, and found 1984
  • Laci Peterson
    Laci Peterson
    Laci Denise Peterson was an American woman who was the subject of a highly discussed murder case after she went missing while seven and a half months pregnant with her first child. Peterson was reportedly last seen alive on December 24, 2002...

    , the wife of Scott Peterson
    Scott Peterson
    Scott Lee Peterson , an American, was convicted of murdering his wife, Laci Peterson, and their unborn child in Modesto, California, in 2002. Peterson's arrest and subsequent trial dominated the American news media until 2005, when he was sentenced to death by lethal injection...

    , murdered 2002 and found on the shore of the San Francisco Bay
    San Francisco Bay
    San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...

    .
  • Shinjiro Matsumoto, Japan
    Japan
    Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

    ese businessman, his wife Chika and two children, murdered by Chinese
    China
    Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

     students in 2002 and dumped into Hakata Bay
    Hakata Bay
    Hakata Bay is a bay in the northwestern part of Fukuoka city, on the Japanese island of Kyūshū. It faces the Tsushima Strait, and features beaches and a port, though parts of the bay have been reclaimed in the expansion of the city of Fukuoka...

     in Fukuoka
    Fukuoka
    Fukuoka most often refers to the capital city of Fukuoka Prefecture.It can also refer to:-Locations:* Fukuoka, Gifu, a town in Gifu Prefecture, Japan* Fukuoka, Toyama, a town in Toyama Prefecture, Japan...

    .
  • Quang Lu a Thornhill, Ontario
    Thornhill, Ontario
    Thornhill is a community in the Greater Toronto Area of Southern Ontario, Canada, located on the northern border of the city of Toronto. Once a municipal village, Thornhill is now a community and postal designation geographically split into two municipalities along Yonge Street, the city of...

     loan shark
    Loan shark
    A loan shark is a person or body that offers unsecured loans at illegally high interest rates to individuals, often enforcing repayment by blackmail or threats of violence....

     was found entombed in a rusty steel barrel full of concrete in Lake Ontario
    Lake Ontario
    Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded on the north and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south by the American state of New York. Ontario, Canada's most populous province, was named for the lake. In the Wyandot language, ontarío means...

    after police received an anonymous tip.
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