research question ..


Aerojet

Aerojet

Active Member
MY wife writes, and now has 8 books in print. She asked me while working on the next one ---

How hard is it to open / re close a box car door. She has an idea for a murder mystery to put Mr. Body into a box car, now empty I guess, on a siding and the railroad takes it away. Time passes and the car is finally opened when they need to ship something in it. Then the cops find this badly decomposed body - now the question is where did it come from? How could they trace the car in the past?

The aerojet
 
The railroad probably has manifest for each train showing which cars are in it. The car owner might be able to tell you when it was loaded , and emptied .
Some things to keep in mind , cars may be sealed https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=gmo+box+car+seals&_sacat=0,
but a better and more diabolical solution for disposal might be to chuck em in one of these https://www.railwayage.com/mechanical/freight-cars/for-up-1000-or-more-new-reefers/ whole or in parts. They wont stink quite as bad and attract unwanted attention.
 
Its not that hard, they are not "locked" per se.

Alternatives : Put the body into a grain covered hopper in the winter, economic downturn idles the car until the next fall. The problem with that is getting the body to the top of the car. Option would be conflict on a bridge and the body falls onto the car.

This is not a fictional situation. Undocumented persons hid in a covered hopper coming out of the Mexican border, the cars were sidelined, the people in the car were unable to get out and the bodies were discovered much later. In a macabre twist, the car was run by special train to the state capitol and spotted on a siding near the state forensics lab to help the state police identify the persons. The crews were informed of the "cargo" and were given the option to decline the call, but none did and the train was run special to the state capitol.

It wasn't uncommon on the Southern border to have boxcars with undocumented people in them get trapped in the car, in one case they were given a pick so they could hack their way through the wooden floor of the car, but they were overcome with heat and all but one died before they could open a hole in the floor.

As far as the car movements, the railroad keeps decades of data on the car billing, a decade or so of general car movements and, if its in the modern era years of AEI data. If you gave this problem to me when I was working for the railroad, I could have given you a AEI history going back years of every time and place the car had gone by an AEI reader in a matter of minutes. That would give me train movement data, matching that the train movement data I could tell you were every train the car was on stopped and started and how long it was there, checking crew records I could tell you who the crews were on each train. That level of detail is more difficult, it might take the afternoon to pull it together.
 
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Aerojet said:
MY wife writes, and now has 8 books in print. She asked me while working on the next one ---

How hard is it to open / re close a box car door. She has an idea for a murder mystery to put Mr. Body into a box car, now empty I guess, on a siding and the railroad takes it away. Time passes and the car is finally opened when they need to ship something in it. Then the cops find this badly decomposed body - now the question is where did it come from? How could they trace the car in the past?

The aerojet
Click to expand...
The perp could steal a 55 gallon steel drum from a different city, place the body in the drum, fill the drum with lime, and put the drum in the boxcar. Ideally, the car would be stored somewhere during a downturn. After the car is returned to service, and opened at another location, the drum is found, with almost no identifiable human remains.
Not that I've given this much thought, or anything...
 
Thanks for the replies - I will forward them to her -- it seems the Amos & Sara Darcy detective agency of Juneau Alaska will have a case in Idaho Falls --- keep ya posted. (They are on vacation with Amos's relatives. Sara is a Klungut, a native Alaskan. - They used to be the chief of police and the lead detective in Juneau until they married and Amos had to resign the force for marrying a "native" ...... ) Just some backstory.
 
bnsf971 said:
The perp could steal a 55 gallon steel drum from a different city, place the body in the drum, fill the drum with lime, and put the drum in the boxcar. Ideally, the car would be stored somewhere during a downturn. After the car is returned to service, and opened at another location, the drum is found, with almost no identifiable human remains.
Not that I've given this much thought, or anything...
Click to expand...

Yikes Terry you thought that up pretty dang quick!
So.... how’s it going my bestest good buddy?
I'm just going to go into the kitchen for... umm... a drink of water, yeah that’s it.
And maybe I’ll take that wood block full of shiny sharp knives and... umm... bury them in the back yard before I install that security system.
And buy a bigger dog.
And get a few more deadbolts...
You wait right there and... umm... I’ll be right back.
Yeah, that’s it!
 
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