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July 15, 2011

Strange But True!

Q. “We put the people in acid. In 15-20 minutes they were no more. They became a liquid.” Was this Mafia informant just exaggerating or revealing a sinister m.o.?

A. In “lupara bianca” or “white shotgun” murders, the subject is known to be dead but a body is never found, says Rachel Ehrenberg in Science News magazine. Contrary to claims from within the Sicilian Mafia, sulfuric acid will not dissolve a corpse in minutes, a new study finds. Experiments conducted on pig carcasses, a common stand-in for human bodies, showed it takes days to melt flesh in the acid, though the process can be speeded up by adding water, which dissolves muscle and cartilage within 12 hours and turns bone to dust within two days. True enough, this will render a corpse completely unrecognizable but won't completely destroy it, at least not in minutes, said Massimo Grillo of the University of Palermo in Italy.


 
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