Is it possible to commit the perfect murder?
I’m not challenging you, I’m just pondering here. How easy is it to commit the perfect murder? Every time I see the news about someone getting convicted for a murder, I wonder why they thought they wouldn’t get caught. I’m talking about those well-planned murders here. It is generally said that it is impossible to commit a perfect murder – the one where the killer leaves no evidences or witnesses. That’s why I wonder why they commit all these murders. How can they be so confident that they have committed the perfect murder and they cannot be caught?
Or may be, the perfect murder is possible, after all? Even the much-hailed LAPD has a murder case that is unresolved for 70 years! I don’t know what percentage of murders actually get solved. May be we can call all those unsolved murders as perfect ones. But then, just because the case is not closed may not mean that the case is unresolved. A case moy not be closed for various reasons, of which unable to solve the murder could be one. A murder is still a very unsophisticated crime. It is in most cases, a man to man thing. Whereas, forensic science has gone leaps and bounds over the last few decades. Man still kills man for the same reasons, using the same weapons, in the same locations, but the ways and means to solve the murder through forensic methods are ’state-of-the science’.
‘Dial M for Murder’ is one of my most favourite films. It is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best ever. The movie is all about a man’s attempt to commit a perfect murder. He hires a stranger so a motive cannot be established. The job is to kill his wife. The scene where the husband talks to convince the paid-killer that his plan would work, is one of the best scenes I’ve seen in movies. As you’d expect, it fails because the protagonist is after all, a human. Despite weaving a well-explained fool-proof master plan, few things don’t go as planned which results in the assassin getting killed by accident. In further investigation, which is also excellently explained, the intelligent police officer solves the crime. The screenplay sets a benchmark for mystery/thriller movies. As with any Hitchcock movie, you gotta observe very well or watch it a few times to fully appreciate Hitchcock’s genius.
Why can’t be there a perfect murder? Quite difficult. There are always some clues which are there to see. One, there would be a motive. For every murder, you might zero in on to the ones who could have a motive. Two, it’s nearly impossible for the murderer to leave no evidences or witnesses behind. Forensic experts are way too sophisticated to keep scratching their heads. With an half-an-inch hair, they can probably tell you what you had for dinner last night. Three, it’s hard to fool all the people all the time. Humans are humans. No matter what, even the coldest of hearts will beat faster when lie, when they sense that they are being closed in.
The only way to commit a perfect murder would be like this. Someone from say, Delhi goes to say Kanpur. And this guy picks up some random person at home, murders him and returns to Delhi like nothing happened and continues to live his life. There is no motive here. Unless he has left any glaring clues, it’s hard to trace this guy back to Delhi because there is no reason, there is no motive. If you wonder why someone has to do this, believe me, there are all types of people in this world. Some psychopaths kill people for no reason. Those can be caught only in action. It’s hard to investigate their crime because even the evidences are of little help as there would no motive that can trace back to them. In another Hitchcock classic ‘Strangers on a Train’, two strangers meet in a train and develop a conversation. One man offers to kill the other man’s wife, while the other guy offers to kill this man’s brother. By trading murders, they can commit ‘motiveless’ murders, while they can have a perfect alibi.
Remember, there is only so much the law enforcement can handle. At any given point of time they may not be able to efficiently work on more than a certain number of cases. The resources, human and technical, will be limited to a certain extent. There’s going to be prioritisation there too. If it’s between the murder of a 20-year old BPO employee or a 80-year old street dweller, you know which catches the eye of the media and hence the demands the time of the police.
So, I’d conclude that perfect murders are always possible. It’s just that they don’t get caught. If they get caught, that wasn’t a perfect one. Easy to conclude, isn’t it?
Vijayyy…
Why all of a sudden crime in the blog…!!! I know you are soft in nature that too vegetarian
) Which incident triggered you for murder and that too ‘perfect murder’ 
) to discuss. I like to give you what you want or are you looking for another stranger through this blog like in ‘Strangers on a Train’ and your conclusion scares me more who might be that victim.??? haaa….
)
Ok Ok… Isn’t the plan why raj is in london.? (virtually) haaa…
Aha! Looks like I need to put a disclaimer somewhere!
“I’m not responsible for any acts of crime that may be committed by the visitors of this blog either individually by collusion, with or without using the blog as a medium to establish contact or communicate.”
How is that?
Anil – You didn’t answer the curious question – is perfect murder a possibility?
By the way, this topic was inspired by the news on the conviction of Pandher/Koli in the Nithari murder case.
Hi,
In India many a times murder cases are closed not based on evidence but on how connected you are (not to the murdered person!!). So there are various possibilities that an innocent , un-related person may be implicated in a case. So what I am trying to say is that not all murderers get caught but the case may get closed!!
Woody Allen once wrote: “Why does man kill? He kills for food. Not only for food, frequently there must be some beverage.”
Seriously, I’ve also thought about the Delhi scenario you’ve mentioned in the context of committing unsolvable murder. The problem is, people have relatively more sensible things to do and that’s why such murders don’t happen.
And we know of only those cases the police (of any country) reports as unsolved. Surely there must be a lot more unsolved murders?
I’m given to believe that there might be far more perfect murders that have been committed in proportion to the ones that have actually been discovered. After all, the most perfect murder is really where you don’t know that a murder’s been committed at all, where it just looks like any other death.
Thanks for coming by my blog and leaving a comment. You have an extremely well-designed blog yourself!
“Motive” can be an angelic word for a diabolical murder . . .However we all know & realize that there are a few cold blooded incidents committed by pychopaths . . .
Let’s s discuss, what takes a civilian to execute a murder.
I would call it “necessity” . . .For me necesstiy is a stage which cannot be compromised at all. So does for all living beings, men, women, animals, etc . . .
We are all living in a framework of necessity. To do things, need to know, need to eat, need to posses, need to breathe, need to see, need to feel, need to experience ;
This “need” has become an inevitable cliche in livng beings life. Say for a tiger/lion, survival is an instinct. For men/women , living is an instinct, & to achive this LAU(life as usual) we go to extreme conditions in certain circumstances. We also become, a victim of situtions & act as if we cannot think.
This is what I call the curse of evolution. 1000 years back ,human beings rarely used their rationale/logical mind. They were habituated to use only their emotional mind.
We know the results. . . .I conclude my opinion by mentioning ” A perfect murderer cannot use his/her rational/logical mind to execute a murder”
A perfect murder is not possible.
A perfect Murder – That’s something I’m waiting to device. When I commit one, I’ll have to make it two. Cos, your post tells me how interested you are in knowing how. So if I’m telling you, then I must kill you too. he he…
A murder is perfect till you are caught. Just because you are not caught does not mean the murder was perfect. It could have been that the police was inept. So the fact that a murderer goes about doing his/her job without getting caught can only be established after the event. One cannot predict. That alone deters many murders. Besides, there cannot be a motiveless murder. You may not be involved, like the two strangers on the train, but the motive did exist; like it exists for contract killers. Psychopaths do not commit single murder. They leave a trail. Normal human beings have one more problem – their conscience. The only murders that may go undetected are those that are incidental. But in those case it will be called homicide rather than murder.
The main hurdle, perhaps, to committing an undetected killing (I’ll refrain from saying ‘perfect murder’, since it may require too many qualifications as to what ‘perfect’ and ‘murder’ mean) is I think the desire for the act to be… experienced.
Look at it this way – it’s a killing if you stab a person X number of times and watch him/her bleed to death. It’s a killing if you behead another person. It’s a killing if you shoot a person. It’s also a killing if you nonchalantly poison the water supply of someone or some place.
If, say, while observing due diligence to not leave any clues, you poison a product and leave it on a supermarket shelf, or anywhere, for that matter, or give it to a beggar on the street asking for food, you’ve probably killed someone – only that you don’t get to watch it happen, and apart from the case of the beggar (where the probability of ingestion is higher), it’s also a bit like Schrodinger’s Cat where you don’t quite know if the product is actually eaten/whatever or not. But it could happen. The problem is needing to feel it, perhaps.
Then again, say you have an old person in your family – a mother or grandfather, maybe, who’s some 85 years old, ailing and bedridden, and lost most faculties. Wouldn’t suffocating that person with a pillow be sufficient?
You are the descendant, and that person is old – the chances of investigating the death of such an individual is minimal. The chances of suspicion of foul play can also be minimised, by doing away with things like bickering over wills etc. that may raise eyebrows.
It could happen.
Oh, and supposedly there are lawyers in and around Chennai (at least… possibly elsewhere too, but this I’ve heard) who offer legal advice on how to commit murder and get away with it.
I think a perfect murder is very much possible. I believe Agatha Christie could have done a perfect murder not by hiring someone to kill but doing the murder herself. Those kind of intelligent murderers are hard to find where the police and investigating agents are left dumbfounded by the motive behind it and hence unable to trace the culprits.
If ever there is a perfect murder we won’t know we will know only of a unfourtunate death has occured