Cement shoes,concrete shoes, orChicago overcoat[1] is a method of murder or body disposal, usually associated with criminals such as theMafia organgs. It involves weighing down the victim, who may be dead or alive, withconcrete and throwing them into water in the hope the body will never be found. In the US, the term has become atongue-in-cheek euphemism for a threat of death by criminals. While a commontrope in fiction, only one real-life case has ever been authenticated.
Cement shoes involve first binding, incapacitating or killing the victim and then placing each foot into a bucket or box, which is then filled with wetconcrete (a mixture of cement powder, rock, water and sand), or even simply cement powder and water. Typically in films and novels, the victim is still alive as they watch the concrete harden, heightening thetorture and drama.[2][3] After the concrete sets, the victim is thrown into a body of water such as a river, lake or the ocean.
Despite being a theme inHollywood movies likeLady in Cement and books likeE. L. Doctorow'sBilly Bathgate, whether such a cumbersome and time-consuming method of execution was practical remained in question.[2] Cement takes many hours or even days to fully harden and, until 2016, there was never a documented case—although crime historianThomas Reppetto said there have probably been real-life examples that have never been found.[4]
In May 2016, the first and only documented case of "cement shoes" was reported. The body of Brooklyn gang member Peter Martinez, aged 28, better known on the streets as Petey Crack, washed up near Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn. His head was wrapped in duct tape, the immediate cause of his death. His feet and shins were encased in concrete set inside a 5 US gallons (19 L) bucket. His body floated to the shore due to air in the concrete because it was not given enough time to dry before being thrown into the ocean.[5][6][7]
Concrete has been used as a weight to dispose of a body. In 1941, the body ofPhiladelphiaracketeer Johnnie Goodman was found by a crab fisherman in a New Jersey creek, weighed down with an 18-kilogram (40-pound) block of concrete.[2] On August 24, 1964, the body ofErnest Rupolo, aged 52, a trigger man who informed onVito Genovese in 1944, was found inJamaica Bay, New York, with concrete blocks tied to his legs.[8] It is also speculated thatbootleggerRocco Perri was murdered by being fitted with cement shoes and thrown intoHamilton Harbour in 1944.[9]
The French Army used cement shoes on Algerians who were murdered on so-called "death flights" during theAlgerian War. The victims were called "crevettes Bigeard [fr]" 'Bigeard shrimp' after GeneralMarcel Bigeard, who ordered the procedure. Bigeard put his victims' feet in a basin, poured quick-setting cement in and threw the person into the sea from the top of a helicopter, saidPaul Teitgen, secretary general of the French police in Algiers in 1957, and notable opponent of torture during the war.[10]
AFar Side cartoon parodied the practice, depicting a fish given "Styrofoam shoes" in order to "sleep with the humans", a reference to how drowned people are referred to as "sleeping with the fishes".[11]
"There's a lot of urban legend to this — cement shoes, concrete shoes, concrete gloves, whatever you want to call it — but it all has some sort of truth to it," said Reppetto, [...] "It started somewhere real and took off."
