The men sit quietly in the dim room, anxious for news. A messenger delivers a package simply wrapped in brown paper and twine. They watch as it is opened, revealing a dead fish. “It means Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes,” Clemenza says ominously.
This well-known scene from the movie The Godfather is a common example of how organized crime syndicates would dispose of corpses.
Throwing bodies into the ocean or burying them in remote areas are often the preferred means of destroying the evidence. However, it was widely thought that the mafia could also chemically dissolve bodies to protect themselves from any possible evidence later.
Recently, researchers at the University of Palermo conducted several experiments to show that it is impossible to use acid to completely liquefy a corpse.
Testimony from Sicilian Mafia informants indicated that bodies would be placed in tubs of sulfuric acid for 15 to 20 minutes, after which they would dissolve into a liquid state. Forensic scientists have used partial pig carcasses, which are often used as substitutes for human bodies, to test such testimony.
They found that after 15 to 20 minutes in concentrated sulfuric acid, the pig carcass was indeed unrecognizable, but still solid for the most part.
The study began when investigators discovered a Sicilian Mafia hideout brimming with barrels of potent sulfuric acid. In the area, the room was known as “the chamber of death.” It was believed that the acid was used to perform “white shotgun crimes,” or “lupara bianca” as they are known in Italy.
Essentially, white shotgun crimes are murders where the body is never discovered; it is known that someone has been killed, but there is no body to be found.
Using the testimony from the mafia informants, researchers tested acid of a similar concentration only to find that bodies would not completely disintegrate, contrary to what they had been told.
While the Sicilian Mafia is world-renowned for infamous murders and crimes that infiltrated even the highest political offices, the University of Palermo investigators joked that their perception of time is not particularly accurate.
However, in comparison to lesser crime syndicates, the Italians are much better at making sure that the bodies are relatively unrecognizable. Atlanta medical examiner Michael Heninger told Wired Science that some criminals end up doing more to preserve a body rather than destroy it.
Forensic analysts are not fully sure how this new information will help future investigations. As long as there is organized crime, there will be mysteriously missing bodies. The creative ways in which corpses are disposed of remain numerous and of course, exaggerated by the various mafia movies produced by Hollywood.
