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. […]