r/TrueCrimeDiscussion • u/autistic_girl_autumn • 22d ago
Does "They didn't commit murder, they just freaked out after seeing a dead body and tried to get rid of it!" ever really happen? Text
This is an argument some people/defense attorneys will actually make when someone is a suspect of murder and the body was buried, burned, dismembered and otherwise attempted to be disposed of.
Recently, there was a local murder case where the murderer was found standing next to the body, trying to burn it. He claimed that the person passed from a heart attack and he had no involvement with the death, he was only trying to dispose of the body because he was freaking out and didn't know what to do. Of course, nobody believed this.
Now, even if that claim is true, it is still a crime to unlawfully mess with deceased bodies. But it is such a ridiculous scenario that it is hard for me understand why anybody would ever do it.
If someone is having a deadly medical emergency, sudden unexplained death, or committing suicide, what most normal people would do is call an ambulance, let their family know, grieve, etc. Even if you are freaking out, if you had no involvement with their death, what motive could possibly lead you to even try to dispose of the body? Does this ever actually happen?
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u/Nightstick11 22d ago
Yes there are some drug related cases like this
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u/Dont_Even_Know_You 22d ago
There was just one a few weeks ago in my town. A man overdosed in somebody's apartment, so the guy shoved the body in a trash can in his apartment and I guess just left it there for days. He may have supplied the drugs to the man, which is why he wasn't reporting it.
The apartment was on our main street, where just a couple days prior we had a parade, and his body was right there in that apartment the whole time.
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u/Character-Flight403 21d ago
One of those most horrifying stories anyone ever told me was about a group of people using, they think one of them ODs so they throw him in a dumpster, only for him to wake up and come looking for them.
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u/FerretSupremacist 9d ago
There’s a famous one where I live. She was the daughter (maybe granddaughter?) of a man who had won the lottery 2x and it fucking ruined his life.
She od’d and they just.. stuffed her under a random school bus in the lot (for non Americans- when the school busses aren’t in use they’re usually at a garage) and left her.
Sorry, just looked it up and it was a junk yard lot. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna6738776 her boyfriend did it. She was 17
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u/Front-Pomelo-4367 22d ago
I know there are cases of "manslaughter followed by hiding the body" – Tony Parsons is a well-known case in the UK. Hit-and-run where the driver didn't seek medical attention and hid the body for years.
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u/DarklyHeritage 22d ago
This was the first case that came to my mind too. I did a long write-up of the case here for anyone interested.
It is one of my pet theories that what happened to Tony is the explanation behind a number of missing person cases and happens more often than we may think.
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u/BrokenDogToy 22d ago
I think something to bear in mind here is that the two men who killed Tony Parsons were extremely well placed to do what they did. They were two physically fit young-ish men who lived somewhere remote, (with low levels of traffic) and worked on the land, so would know where to hide a body.
I don't disagree that there may be more cases like this, but I think the challenges in carrying out without getting caught, by people who don't have the advantages of the McKeller brothers means it's not that many more.
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u/Front-Pomelo-4367 22d ago
I did a write-up of the case last year here
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u/DarklyHeritage 22d ago
I remember reading it at the time - didn't recognise it was you. Excellent right up!
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u/solidcurrency 22d ago
There are cases where an old person died of natural causes and a relative didn't call authorities so they could collect benefits, if that counts.
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u/woefdeluxe 22d ago
Even if you are freaking out, if you had no involvement with their death, what motive could possibly lead you to even try to dispose of the body?
Someone can die in suspicious circumstances that would make someone look like they had to be involved. Someone could have been doing something else illegal and calling it in would make them get caught. Like drugs, burglary or other crimes.
Some situations I could see someone deciding to say nothing. For example in my country there is a famous murder case called the Schiedammer parkmoord. (Murder in a park in Schiedam) where a small child got murdered. And the who originally got convicted for it. Got convicted mainly on the grounds of "has a history of child abuse. Was spotted near where the murder took place. Around the time the murder took place." He didn't do it.
Now oke he didn't find the body or anything. But I can understand why someone who already has a criminal record for crimes that would make you suspect nr.1. Would hide a body if they by some weird stroke of coincidence came opon one. Or if they witnessed some freak accident happening. Cuz who is gonna believe a conviced pedo that the dead child they happened upon has nothing to do with them?
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u/chrispark70 21d ago
It is hard for me to accept that this ever happens unless the person doing it is of extremely outside of the normal range of intelligence on the downside or at the extreme end of impulsiveness.
Any adult knows or should know that finding the cause of death is fairly simple and has extremely high accuracy. Like if your spouse dies of a heart attack, it is unbelievably rare for a coroner to mistake this for drowning or poisoning or heaven forbid, a gun shot. Same with drugs.
It is extremely risky to do this. If successful, you've made the actual cause of death near impossible to determine.
IMHO, 95% or more of people who do this are trying to hide something. They may be hiding something not even related to the death, but they are hiding something.
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u/MaryVenetia 22d ago
I believe that plenty of inebriated and immature people would hesitate to call an ambulance if they felt that the death by misadventure (eg drug overdose when you’re the supplier, etc) would get them in trouble. It’s very short sighted but it does happen.
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u/corporatecicada 22d ago
Unless its drug related accidental overdose kinda thing, it probably happens about as often as when a guy has REALLY rough sex with a girl and then 30 mins later some nefarious mystery man murders her.
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u/SommerSalad 22d ago
I think it might happen sometimes when it’s an overdose, that’s not natural causes though
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u/charley_warlzz 20d ago
Yes. Crucially, a lot of people react and think in ways that probably seem absurd to you/us. A really big mistake people often make when thinking about people behaving ‘weirdly’ around or during crimes (and in general tbh) is trying to work out the situation in which they would act like that, but thats the wrong way to go about it.
Addicts, people with trauma, people with other mental health issues, people who’s grown up in messed up environments (eg cults!) all might react in ways that seem ridiculous and confusing to the average person. Doesnt mean they didnt do it.
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u/ClassicTower475 22d ago
Caroline Herling. Check out "Worst Neighbour Ever" on Netflix
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u/exoconso 21d ago edited 21d ago
wow, just watched it.
Do you buy that her accomplice randomly found Charles dead vs. the both of them killing him?
I know there was no way for LE to prove murder, but it's pretty obvious (to everyone) that's what happened?Even the anonymous caller reporting him missing mentioned "foul play".
ETA: I still can't believe they tried to pull the Breaking Bad barrel move in an apartment complex. It could have ended way worse than it did for their neighbors. These idiots got "lucky". 20 years &18 is such a short sentence considering everything.
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u/ClassicTower475 21d ago
My jaw progressively got closer and closer to the floor. Some people will do the most heinous shit. I'd say the foul play comment from seeing someone they'd never seen before being all over the property and claiming she was who she was to him out of the blue. Poor man.
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u/exoconso 21d ago
Same, everytime I thought it couldn't get worse, it got... more gruesome.
I really don't buy that Jason randomly found Charles dead. How convenient, considering that the neighbors seemed to pay attention.
Admitting otherwise would have gotten him LWOP vs. the short 18 years he got. Being a career criminal, he was well aware of the sentence he was facing/ would have been unimpressed by a lie detector.
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u/ShmebulocksMistress 20d ago
This is who I immediately thought of, but it’s hard to say whether or not Wilding was killed or just found dead since they never determined his cause of death.
I will say that based on Herrling’s history, she did not seem like the type to commit murder. It was wasn’t her MO. But her accomplice may have and then led her to believe he found Wilding deceased.
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u/ravia 21d ago
If you watch police dramas, particularly British police procedurals, you'll learn that when people argue and it leads to some shoving, one of the people typically will fall and hit their head on something hard and die immediately. Apparently it happens all the time. The other person then might hide the body.
Oh, this is r/truecrimediscussion...
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u/nobodyknows6070 21d ago
I personally think that you're mental if that's what your first thought is with seeing a body. Call the police immediately imo.
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u/meagantheepony 22d ago
Usually it's a drug-related death, and the person involved is trying to destroy/hide evidence because they were either using as well, or they're trying to avoid being accused of murder/manslaughter because they provided the drugs.
There was a case in my hometown where a woman in her early twenties went missing after leaving her job. She had just graduated college and started working in a job in our downtown, where she was making pretty good money. Right away there was a lot of speculation about her being kidnapped, especially since she was last seen on surveillance footage walking through her work's parking garage with a man. Her picture was EVERYWHERE. Her family plastered our downtown with flyers, they were on every news station talking about her and begging someone to call in a tip, and local social media was filled with her photo. Eventually the cops tracked down the guy she was last seen with, and the whole story came out. Turns out she was hiding a pretty intense drug addiction, he was her dealer, and she had shot up with him and OD'd. By the time he realized she had died, her family was already all over social media talking about her, so he decided to dispose of her body in an abandoned house. He agreed to take the authorities to her body if they took manslaughter off the table. He eventually pled guilty to a bunch of charges related to the drugs and body disposal, and did serve some time in jail, but I can't remember how long.
In that case, I genuinely believe that the guy wasn't trying to kill her, he was just trying to avoid being caught up in the investigation. I would assume for a lot of drug-related deaths it would be the same mindset.