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COPYRIGHT 2003 Las Vegas Review-Journal
BYLINE: J.M. KALIL, REVIEW-JOURNAL
As they plot to escape justice, killers face a fundamental problem.
Few surmount the challenge.
And those who fail usually have a lifetime behind bars to consider where they went wrong.
What to do with the body?
"There's really no good answer because, despite what you see on TV or in the movies, a body is by no means easy to get rid of without getting caught," said Dr. Murray Marks, a forensic scientist at the "Body Farm," the University of Tennessee's human decomposition study facility.
Generally, the body represents the most incriminating piece of evidence, holding crucial clues that can help police determine how and when a person died, and even at whose hand.
As a result, killers go to great lengths to destroy or conceal it.
But in Las Vegas, these attempts have repeatedly failed.
Bodies are burned, but critical evidence survives the flames.
Corpses are forcibly sunk to the depths of Lake Mead but float to the surface within days.
Bodies are buried in desolate stretches of desert, but hikers time and again stumble upon the shallow graves.
Multiple times in the past 14 months, victims have been hacked into pieces, sealed in suitcases and thrown in trash bins. But in each case, a curious passer-by invariably opened the luggage before it was hauled to the landfill.
One local killer whose girlfriend's body never has been found was sentenced last...
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