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Cement shoes, concrete shoes, or Chicago overcoatEd Cray, "Ethnic and Place Names as Derisive Adjectives", Western Folklore 21:1:27–34 (January 1962), p. 27-34 is a method of murder or body disposal, usually associated with criminals such as the Mafia or crime gang. It involves weighing down the victim, who may be dead or alive, with concrete and throwing them into water in the hope the body will never be found. In the US, the term has become a tongue-in-cheek euphemism for a threat of death by criminals. It is a common trope in fiction.
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 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.
Concrete has been used as a weight to dispose of a body. In 1941, the body of Philadelphia racketeer Johnnie Goodman was found by a crab fisherman in a New Jersey creek, weighed down with an block of concrete. On August 24, 1964, the body of Ernest Rupolo, aged 52, a trigger man who informed on Vito Genovese in 1944, was found in Jamaica Bay, New York, with concrete blocks tied to his legs. It is also speculated that Rum-running Rocco Perri was murdered by being fitted with cement shoes and thrown into Hamilton Harbour in 1944.
The French Army used cement shoes on Algerians who were murdered on so-called "death flights" during the Algerian War. The victims were called "" 'Bigeard shrimp' after General Marcel 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, said Paul Teitgen, secretary general of the French police in Algiers in 1957, and notable opponent of torture during the war.
Parodies
A Far Side cartoon parodied the practice, depicting a fish given "Styrofoam shoes" in order to "sleep with the humans". It is a reference to "sleep with the fishes", a phrase that first appears in Homer's Iliad (21), in which Achilles threatens (and kills) Lycaon, who will 'sleep with the fishes'.
See also
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