MYSTERIOUS MURDER WEAPONS

What do green paint, electric guitars, and sweatpants all have in common?

Murder.

Every seasoned mystery reader knows that anything can be used as a murder weapon. If you’ve read The Hunt For Jack Reacher Series you also know that I’ve spent a lot of time researching real life crimes to keep my readers on the edge of their seats.

In my latest thriller, Black Jack, Reacher once again finds himself in the spotlight. The green paint bathtub killer had Reacher Running Blind back in the day. The New York FBI team says Reacher was the serial killer then and is still the serial killer. Agents Kim Otto and Carlos Gaspar aren’t convinced. Are you?

Murderers vary in personality type, intent and of course the method that they choose to kill. According to a study by Radford University, the weapon a serial killer uses might be predicted by IQ. The higher the IQ, the more complex the murder method becomes. Not all killers premeditate though. Some act in the spur of the moment, utilizing whatever object is at hand to commit a crime of passion.

In Black Jack, the serial killer uses green paint to cover his victims. As FBI agents Otto and Gaspar can attest, even the seemingly least threatening household items can become a dangerous tool when in the wrong hands.

Photo courtesy of DailyMail.co.uk

While it comes as no surprise that many common kitchen items have been used as murder weapons, you might be shocked to learn that a dessert spoon, pickle jar, and spatula have all been used to commit the heinous deed.

The most stupefying kitchen killer case may be from 1988, when a man reportedly died from being hit on the head with a loaf of pumpernickel bread.

It’s not just the kitchen implements you need to fear. Every room in your home could be filled with potential threats. A floor lamp, electric guitar, and sweatpants have all been used by killers.

Photo courtesy of DailyMail.co.uk

Don’t dare to think you’ll be safer outside though. An umbrella with a built-in mercury tip was used to stab an unsuspecting man as he walked down a street in Hannover, Germany. The mercury injection caused the victim to go into a lifelong coma.

In perhaps one of the strangest cases of all, a homeless woman from Lousiana used her own prosthetic leg to murder her boyfriend in 2011. In order to commit the crime, she had to remove her prosthetic leg and balance on her one good leg while she bludgeoned him.

Luckily there are real life heroes like the agents in my fiction, Otto and Gaspar, who stop at nothing to put these infamous killers behinds bars and bring their victims justice.

If you enjoy reading about realistic crimes and how clever investigators try to solve them you might enjoy my latest thriller, Black Jack. Learn more about it HERE.

Meanwhile —

Caffeinate and Carry On!

Diane Capri

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One Response to MYSTERIOUS MURDER WEAPONS

  1. Bill Wright July 13, 2018 at 6:55 am #

    Good morning,, Diane—
    I just can NOT leave this one alone…not in the least. MAYBE–never mind–

    “Shibumi” by Rod Whitaker, under the pen name Trevanian–Nicholaï Hel, the protagonist, supposedly trained in an obscure martial art that focused on using common objects for killing. There is some thought that the character JOHN WICK has some basis on the later exploits of Hel–especially the “killing three men with a pencil”.

    If one travels with a laptop computer and a couple of common business accessories, these are the potential weapons:
    -the power brick of the laptop can be swung around like a mace
    -the thin cord on the power brick can be used as a garrote
    -a common CD broken in half makes a slashing weapon
    -break the half CD again and one has a stabbing weapon.
    -a friend of mine sharpens one long edge of an ATM card as a slashing weapon
    -yes, a sharpened wooden pencil is deadly, so is an unsharpened one
    -a regular belt-buckle can be swung with enough force to be incapacitating
    -several models of certain fountain pens (fine nib) are very nice stabbing weapons

    Even Ian Fleming had some fun–in one of the early Bond novels an attempt to off a jockey was made using the hot mud for a mud pack in a health spa to suffocate him…

    Ah, ingenuity…

    Be well–I gotta go refill my coffee cup.

    Bill

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