Bruce McCormack, Tokyo
Notes and Anecdotes: Natsukashii
(Victoria, B.C.: Trafford Publishing, 2000), 112.
Thursday, May 12, 2016
Thursday, May 5, 2016
Cement Shoes
New York Times
3 May 2016
By ASHLEY SOUTHALL
When the body of the man with the tattoo of the Virgin
Mary spread across his back was found on the shore in Brooklyn, his face was
wrapped in duct tape and his feet were encased in concrete, the police said.
“This individual was wrapped in black plastic bags and
his arms were tied behind him,” Robert K. Boyce, the chief of detectives for
the New York Police Department, said at a news conference in Queens on Tuesday.
“His feet were submerged in poured concrete, obviously a homicide.” […]
The Daily Beast
4 May 2016
A Brooklyn street gang member got a mob flick sendoff.
Michael Daly
Cement overshoes have long figured in Mafia mythology,
but until this week no cop in New York—or seemingly anywhere else in
America—had seen them actually used to ensure a victim sleeps with the fishes.
[…]
VICE
4 May 2016
By Tess Owen
[…] As legend has it, giving a murder victim
"cement shoes" has long been a favored body disposal method of mafia
hitmen, and it's the origin of the phrase "sleeping with the fishes,"
which was made famous by The Godfather.
The heavy concrete is supposed to make a body sink to the bottom of a river or
the ocean, but — for reasons that remain unclear — it might not have worked in
this case.
The fact that the body washed ashore has fueled
speculation that the murder was the work of amateurs imitating something from
the movies rather than professional assassins, and some have even suggested
that the remains never sank at all, perhaps due to air bubbles in the concrete.
The NYPD spokesperson said the body probably did sink "due to a
combination of factors" — which he couldn't elaborate on — and the body
washed up partly "due to tidal flow."
Organized crime experts disagree on the credibility of
the "cement shoes" myth. […]
Friday, April 22, 2016
Crematory Stories
The author once worked at an Oakland, California,
crematory, disguised by her as Westwind.
Caitlin Doughty, Smoke
Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory (New York: W. W.
Norton, 2014), 170-1.
People had wild theories about what we did with the
bodies. Elderly women would call the crematory, their voices shaky and slightly
confused.
“Westwind Cremation and Burial, this is Caitlin,” I
would answer.
“Hello, dear, I’m Estelle,” said one woman. “You are
going to cremate me when I die. I have the paperwork with your company and it’s
all paid for. But I saw a thing on the news this morning about you all burning
the bodies together dear, is that right?”
“No, ma’am, everyone is cremated on their own here,” I
said firmly.
“They said you put a pile of bodies on a bonfire and
there is a big pile of ashes afterwards and you just scoop from that pile,”
Estelle said.
“Ma’am, I’m not sure who ‘they’ are.”
“The news people,” she said.
“Well, I promise they aren’t talking about us here at
Westwind. Everyone gets their own serial number and is cremated alone,” I
assured her.
She sighed. “Well, OK dear. I’ve lived so long and I’m
just real afraid about dying and being left in a pile of bodies.”
Estelle wasn’t alone in her fears. One woman called to
ask if bodies were kept hanging on meat hooks in the refrigerator like sides of
beef. An enraged gentleman informed me we shouldn’t be charging for a sea
scattering because all that meant was “dumpin’ the ashes in the toilet with a
packet of salt and flushing.”
It broke my heart to hear them, even the ones who were
screaming at me. Holy crap, you’ve been thinking
that? I thought. You think you’re going to die and be hung on a meat hook
before being thrown into a bonfire of corpses and flushed down the toilet?
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