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30th January 2015, 04:48 AM | #161 |
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I think I picked that up from the appeal judgment I linked before. Maybe I mis-read it
He took a taxi to his mother's house in West Pilton and she ran him to his own house, where he picked up his car and returned to Thistle Street. IML had basement car parking there, which was accessed from the lane behind Thistle Street. The appellant paid a number of visits to the basement garage in the course of the day. Again, in due course, the jury would be asked to infer that, after killing the deceased, the appellant had placed her body in a recessed area of the basement and later collected the body and put it in his car at some point before going home that evening. Para 21 says: The next day (Wednesday, 5 May), the appellant said that he had taken the Vectra into work, but there had been no spaces, so he had parked on Thistle Street. He had spoken to the staff about the Lochgilphead school project as he had intended to go there that afternoon to inspect the football pitches. So I think I have this wrong. On the 4th, he was able to get into the car park and transfer her body. On the 5th he parked in Thistle Street before going to the unpronounceable place. |
30th January 2015, 04:56 AM | #162 |
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That intrigues me too. It's miraculous that he got the body into his car and away from Thistle Street unobserved. It speaks to someone who can plan well and effectively, from a standing start, in circumstances of extreme and sudden stress. And then he had all evening and all night to figure out what to do next. There were better ways of handling the trip to Argyll, but he almost seems to have been driving round in a flat panic. Maybe he simply went to pieces overnight. |
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30th January 2015, 05:00 AM | #163 |
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There was some evidence about when he made the booking for the car park space, but I don't see how relevant that is if the trip home to get the minutes was unplanned anyway. Only those with the strange speech impediment known as "being English or American" have the slightest difficulty pronouncing "Lochgilphead". |
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30th January 2015, 05:05 AM | #164 |
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A lot of these arrangements are old stable blocks, which would be accessed from mews entrances in a rear mews lane. It's still the middle of bloody Edinburgh, in the middle of a working day, in the middle of the New Town. I wouldn't bet anything on being able to spit there without being seen. |
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30th January 2015, 05:11 AM | #165 |
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30th January 2015, 05:23 AM | #166 |
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30th January 2015, 05:28 AM | #167 |
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Even they should be able to spot that the town is at the end or 'head' of a body of water called Loch Gilp, which would give them a pointer.
It could have been worse, he might have gone to Milngavie or Strathaven On the subject of Gilroy's criminal genius or lack of it, I lean to the view that he was just extremely lucky, I think the vast quantities of air freshener is down to things like the reporting of the McCann case making us all think cadaver dogs have almost supernatural powers. His refusal to explain what he did on the journey to Lochgilphead is I think by far his best option if he was disposing of a body. As soon as he starts to lie he runs the risk of the Police finding evidence to contradict him. On the other hand if he's completely innocent, and has a simple explanation it's a fairly dumb move. |
30th January 2015, 05:33 AM | #168 |
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Yes. The Monday was the early May Bank Holiday. Suzanne spent that night with Mark in his flat, and early in the Tuesday morning he took her back to her own flat so she was able to begin her day in her usual manner, from her own home. (I suspect she needed to come home to change into her work clothes, fresh underwear and so on, if she hadn't originally intended to spend the night with loverboy.) So everything that happened after that might as well have been on the basis of her having spent the night at home as usual. She took her normal route into work and so on. She just didn't show up for work. Nobody was terribly concerned about this on the Tuesday as far as I can tell. It was really when she didn't show up on the Wednesday that people got worried and the police were informed. (I could be wrong, it's possible the police were informed on the Tuesday, but late-ish in the day.) Gilroy was seen looking sweaty and agitated on the Tuesday morning, long before anyone was concerned about Suzanne. He also did the whole "I have to go home and get these minutes and I'll just bring my car back with me" thing on the Tuesday, before there were any real concerns. (And he had been sending her large numbers of texts, which he stopped doing, almost as if he knew she wasn't going to be reading them.) He got the body into the car on Tuesday, or so it is believed. Presumably the body stayed in the car all night, and was still in the car when he showed up for work on the Wednesday. Then he announced he was off to Lochgilphead, and pretended the meeting had been arranged some time in advance, except nobody else was aware of any such arrangements. I'm wondering now why he didn't shoot off somewhere on Tuesday night and dispose of the body. There isn't much darkness at that time of year, but there is some. Maybe he thought his car would be bound to be traced and how would he explain that, whereas he could explain a daytime trip the next day with the school visit excuse. |
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30th January 2015, 05:39 AM | #169 |
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30th January 2015, 05:40 AM | #170 |
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You'd think, wouldn't you? (What about Kilncadzow or Ravenstruther?) To be honest, I only just figured out about Inveraray and Glen Aray on page 2 of this thread.... That's where we come to the question someone asked earlier. Is the jury allowed to infer anything from his refusal to explain what he was actually doing, if he wasn't disposing of the body? I think it would take superhuman powers of denial to fail to make such an inference. |
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30th January 2015, 05:44 AM | #171 |
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I agree. But the jury is allowed to take note of the fact that the defence offers nothing to counter the inferences suggested by the prosecution. It's not possible for the defence to submit:
the prosecution says he took too long to get to and from that place with the funny name but he could have done anything in that time - gone for a walk, swum in a loch, had a snooze [etc] because there is no answer to the fact that if he had, he could have said so. There may not be much more than a fag paper to differentiate the two things but they are different. |
30th January 2015, 05:52 AM | #172 |
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Given that he had all night, I wonder if a better bet wouldn't have been to sneak out somewhere wild but nearby, and make as quick a job as possible after dark? Then he could have maintained a normal façade from then on. Mind you, that has its problems too, like driving off the road in the darkness (he could have used early dawn though), and the Pentlands (probably the best near bet) being very popular with walkers. |
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30th January 2015, 06:14 AM | #173 |
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That's what the killer of Joanne Yeates did. His was another unpremeditated murder, committed in the evening in her home. That same night, he drove the body across a river on one of only two possible bridges and tried to heave it over a wall but found he lacked the strength to do so so he left by the side of the road where it got covered in snow and remained unnoticed for several days until it was spotted, if memory serves, by a couple with a dog.
I think it's better to live in the States. There you have entire deserts to dump bodies in and every square inch is not yet covered with security cameras. |
30th January 2015, 06:35 AM | #174 |
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OK, having thought about it, and with the benefit of some local knowledge, I'd have figured out some way to weight the body and lose it in water. There are umpteen reservoirs in the Pentlands with roads leading up to them. The West Water reservoir is a cracker because it's some way past the last habitation, and yet you could drive there very quietly on a decent road. Do it just as dawn is breaking and there's barely any chance you'd be seen or heard.
The tricky bit would be to get the body trussed up well enough with some heavy weights so that it wouldn't bob to the surface. There are plenty weights to hand of course; these hills are covered in boulders. But if you could do that, possibly adding the boulders right there at the edge of the water, you could probably drop her in without needing any sort of boat. Reservoirs have steeper banks than most lochs. You could do the whole thing door to door in less than three hours. If nobody knew where or when to look for your car, and you left your mobile phone AT HOME, you'd have a high chance of getting away with it. On the other hand, I know my way around up there. Gilroy would have had to figure it out from a map which he probably didn't even have. |
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30th January 2015, 06:38 AM | #175 |
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30th January 2015, 06:43 AM | #176 |
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The Joanna Yates thing happened in very tame country. Even if he'd heaved the body over the wall, it would have been found soon. Maybe covering it in brushwood in a wood would delay things significantly, depending on the diligence of any search. There's a lot of seriously not-tame country within quite a short distance of Edinburgh. They got him because he announced he was going to Lochgilphead, and actually did it, so when they became suspicious they were able to track the journey. If he'd snuck out for a few hours in the middle of the night and gone who-knows-where, the chances of them knowing which cameras to look at and when would be slim. |
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30th January 2015, 06:44 AM | #177 |
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I'm thinking he had to have been able to carry her, or he couldn't have done what he did. Use boulders for the weights and attach them just at the point where you're able to tip the body into the water. No I couldn't do it, but he was obviously a lot stronger than I am. |
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30th January 2015, 07:25 AM | #178 |
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I would also think that while adding stones/boulders at the water line would make things easier, actually doing so effectively is probably another matter, particularly in low light. I can think of a few ways of doing it, but they would require far more preparation time than Gilroy could probably afford, even if he actually thought of them.
As others have said, a land-side concealment seems far more likely, especially in a location already known to him, especially if it was a two-stage process. In a less than calm state of mind, how many people would be able to return to the same place they'd only just visited for the first time a few hours previously? If this riddle is ever solved, it won't be in the slightest bit suprising if it turns out to be somewhere that Gilroy had a previous connection with. |
30th January 2015, 07:36 AM | #179 |
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That's what I think too.
And dumping her at the water line is no good. She has to sink, ideally to the greatest depth possible. Rolfe's idea of tossing her from a bridge is all very well but heaving her and her weights over a wall (most bridges have them) would be very difficult for just one guy. |
30th January 2015, 07:55 AM | #180 |
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I had a specific spot in mind. The road is above the shore of the reservoir with no barrier and a steep slope down to the water. The side of the reservoir seems to slope very steeply. Of course it could be that a body wouldn't go as deep as I imagine it would from that spot.
Someone else mentioned the Pass of Brander, where the road skirting Loch Awe under Cruachan is actually on stilts because the slope is so steep. You could lose anything in there, but the road is busy and there is a safety barrier. It's close to where Gilroy actually went, but you simply couldn't do it in the daylight. Leaving murderous speculation aside, I think it's a sure thing that Suzanne Pilley was concealed on land. I also think it's somewhere he knew about, because the detour to get to the Rest and Be Thankful doesn't make sense in any other context. You could certainly go that way to Lochgilphead, even though it wouldn't be my first choice of route from Edinburgh. However the CCTV evidence says he took the obvious route, which doesn't go there, and then doubled back to Glen Croe. That indicates that he had somewhere specific in mind, maybe somewhere he only thought about once he'd passed Tyndrum. (And if he'd only kept his phone switched off, nobody would have had any idea he'd been near there.) |
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30th January 2015, 08:05 AM | #181 |
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In a murder case currently being tried in Dublin the killer dumped a couple of mobile phones, the victim's keys and other material into a reservoir but was undone by the following dry summer when the level became unusually low.
Assemble on site. The wrapped corpse (with a few punctures to allow gas to escape) and a few hollow concrete block, plus some rope. |
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30th January 2015, 08:08 AM | #182 |
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OK, how about putting her into the foundations of a building? There must be one going up somewhere in Edinburgh. Columbo cracked a case like that where an architect hid a body somewhere. He tricked him by applying for a permit to dig up some newly-poured foundations, finding nothing. That night the architect had the brain wave of putting the body into the new hole knowing nobody would look there twice. Trouble was, Columbo was waiting. I'm serious. You cannot beat Columbo.
Maybe there's a way to trick Gilroy. |
30th January 2015, 09:01 AM | #183 |
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30th January 2015, 09:03 AM | #184 |
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Not like that though. She'll only be found by chance now, or if he tells. I just hope that when he finally realises his life will get a lot pleasanter if he tells all, he still remembers the spot. If it's somewhere he deliberately headed for, rather than being a random spot he came upon, there's a good chance he will. |
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30th January 2015, 03:23 PM | #185 |
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Huh. This explains a lot. What he did, then, was to fetch his car and park it in the garage. Then he waited until everyone went home before loading the body in the trunk. He didn't have to carry the body outside the garage, but he had to be mindful of CCTV cameras and stay out of their range.
Interesting to compare this with the Annie Le murder. She was a medical student killed by a service worker, in a building that was PETA-proofed on account of animal research. The killer could not possibly remove her from the building, so he stuffed her into a utility shaft. Eventually the investigators nosed her as they went up the stairs, so to speak. |
30th January 2015, 03:57 PM | #186 |
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It's interesting to look at the really competent killers who operate in the field as opposed to their own homes... Ted Bundy, Dennis Rader, Russell Williams. They take great risk at the crime scene, but they manage the risk skillfully, and they get by with a lot. They always seem to do (or overlook) something after the fact that any idiot would realize would get them caught. Russell Williams wore his murder boots to a police interview, very convenient for the police who were examining shoe prints from his crime scene.
I live in western Washington state, not too unlike Scotland, with lots of people but also lots of remote, hilly terrain and wooded cover. I could not strangle someone in an office building in a city and get the body out. But, with an evening to compose myself and plan ahead, I could drive somewhere and dispose of a body such that it probably would not be found, without damaging my car or taking too much time. My phone would be off for the duration. I would not blag bags or other accessories. |
30th January 2015, 04:06 PM | #187 |
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Charlie - what got you interested in this stuff? You seem to know a lot of cases.
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30th January 2015, 06:12 PM | #188 |
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I started reading true crime books back in the 1980s, the same way many people read pulp fiction. At first I consumed this material purely as lurid entertainment. An interesting story, with 16 pages of shocking photos! could be had for the price of lunch at a street vendor.
Over time I began to learn from all this reading. I could see patterns in criminal behavior. I also became aware of cases where the cops got it wrong. My interest became more refined and systematic. Now, when I encounter a case like this, I compare it with other crimes and other police investigations. |
30th January 2015, 08:00 PM | #189 |
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How cold is the water in the summer?
I think I could dispose of a body in water, but only if I had the right materials and tackle, and only because I know the pitfalls that are not obvious at the time. You need at least 100kg/200+ pounds of rock or cement to keep a body from floating up if the water is a temperature you could swim in. You need twice that to keep it really anchored, so it can't be carried ashore by currents or storms. And you need mesh or netting, because decaying bodies have a way of working themselves free of bindings. If I was on the mainland, I would drive into the foothills and find a place to bury my body about 100 yards off the road and away from any walking trail. I would dig down about a foot and mound the dirt over the body before covering it with limbs and brush. That's what Hans Reiser did. But he allowed his victim to bleed all over his car seat, so he had to remove it, and it did him in. I would not want to dispose of the body in pitch dark, because that makes it hard to evaluate how easy it will be to see in the daytime. First light would be better. There's an element of chance in my method, but the odds are vastly in favor of the killer. Holly Bobo's bones were found by a guy who was out looking for ginseng, a year after the area had been scoured by dozens of searchers and dogs, and she was simply dumped, not buried. That is typical. Gilroy would have been better off risking discovery of the body than calling attention to himself with an expedition in which he took too long between waypoints and then wrecked his car. |
31st January 2015, 01:52 AM | #190 |
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31st January 2015, 01:54 AM | #191 |
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31st January 2015, 02:24 AM | #192 |
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But you gotta do it right. I mean, you gotta have the hole already dug before you show up with a package in the trunk. Otherwise, you're talking about a half-hour to forty-five minutes worth of digging. And who knows who's gonna come along in that time? Pretty soon, you gotta dig a few more holes. You could be there all night. |
31st January 2015, 03:16 AM | #193 |
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All you have to do is read a lot of cheap paperbacks, and watch shows like CBS 48 Hours. You'll end up slogging through some really bad material, but you'll get enough good material to learn quite a bit.
My knowledge is far from systematic, but I have read about enough cases at this point to see definite patterns and points of comparison. I can start my assessment of a crime by asking myself what probably happened, as opposed to who did it. That often helps me get my bearings and see beyond the suspect-centric coverage of the news media. I don't fall for this kind of crap: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...x-rituals.html I don't care if the guy is a modern-day druid and five-star weirdo. This kind of crime does not happen on my planet. But, the jury thought otherwise, and I don't doubt your compensation fund paid the complaining witnesses... |
31st January 2015, 03:23 AM | #194 |
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31st January 2015, 04:02 AM | #195 |
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For reasons unknown, I cannot see the Daily Mail anymore in my normal browser. I agree about the usefulness of the smell test. The allegation against Shrien Dewani failed it, which is why I wanted to see the clinching evidence that would overcome my doubts. Like those incriminating texts we heard so much about - but only in the newspapers rather than the trial itself.
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31st January 2015, 04:06 AM | #196 |
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You have. The Mafia fixed that by inventing concrete wellingtons. Another good way of getting away with murder is to be part of a criminal gang based on centuries of traditional loyalty and solidarity. Although that's also a good way of being murdered. Swings and roundabouts.
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31st January 2015, 04:30 AM | #197 |
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31st January 2015, 04:36 AM | #198 |
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31st January 2015, 05:21 AM | #199 |
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Yes, the Dewani case is a perfect example. What most likely happened? Someone who follows crime stories will know it is common for a cab driver to set up foreign tourists by taking them to a place where they are robbed by his accomplices. Every fact we have is consistent with that. Meanwhile, the media coverage was on Dewani, the furtive little man with dirty secrets, and so the public was judging him instead of evaluating the crime itself.
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31st January 2015, 05:34 AM | #200 |
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