So, you fancy breaking the sixth commandment, eh? You do of course know that this is wrong beyond all the fundamentals of wrongness, and you're going to burn in Hell for all eternity for it, right?

As long we understand each other on this one.

The art of the clean kill is one of those mental exercises that occasionally runs through my mind. No reason, I'm just a little fucked up like that. I regard it as a logic problem more than anything. I have never wanted to actually try out any of my ideas, and nor can I ever envisage a situation where I might want / need to. Of course, if I was any decent kind of killer, I'd be able to look you in the eye and swear that hand on heart without blinking. And so we come to our first rule:

1) If you can't lie, this course of action is not for you. Or, to be more specific, if you can't lie infallibly, this course of action is not for you. If you can lie infallibly it suggests that you have an antisocial personality disorder, but I'm not your psychiatrist, and this is not the time. Back to getting away with murder. The aftermath of someone's death, no matter how peaceful or non-violent, always involves someone (be it the GP who confirms the death or the policeman who wants to know why you're hiding a knife behind your back) asking questions about the deceased's last known movements. If you look even vaguely shifty when answering these questions, you are going to trip an alarm in the head of the person who's gathering this information. I can't stress this enough: If you can't tell a decent lie to save your life, you are not going to get away with murder. The art of the convincing lie is something that can be learnt, given time, but even then, some people just can't lie. Just do yourself (and them) a favour and try and work things out with your intended victim amicably.

Okay, so we've established the fundamental basic of being able to get away with this. The next thing you have to do is consider is your reasons for wanting to perpetrate such an extreme solution for your problems. Thinking about it, that's an interesting question, why are you doing this?

2) A clear motive does not make it easy to cover your tracks. If someone you know who's wronged you recently dies unexpectedly, the police will have a few questions to ask you about your whereabouts at the time of their death. Don't hold it against them; they're just doing their job. What you have to hope is that they're not doing their job well. You want to be able to tell a couple of convincing lies and send them on their way without too much fuss. Speaking broadly, there are three situations in which a murder is committed:

• Crime of passion, i.e., not pre-meditated. This is the hardest type of murder to get away with because you have had no control over the circumstances leading to the murder and the method of murder, and you also haven't a clear post-killing clean-up plan. The chances are that you're going to get got for this. Your best hope is that you are charged with manslaughter rather than murder – but even then you're still going to be doing some time. However, the fact that you're reading this suggests premeditation, so we can ignore this particular crime-type from this point forward.
• Serial killing, i.e., multiple murders committed for no other reason other than you just felt like it. Serial killing is its own special art, beyond the realms of the vast majority of us (thank-God), and if you're good enough to be termed a 'serial killer', then you certainly don't need to be taking inexpert lessons from me on how to get away with murder.
• Premeditated murder for personal gain. Now, this is the standard, everyday murder that Dame Agatha Christie used to enjoy writing about. Personal gain is a catchall description to represent the fact that that these murders are committed for your benefit, be it financial, romantic or revenge. Because they lack the impersonality of serial killings, premeditated murders will most of the time be linked back to you. Your job, therefore, is to make sure that there is no evidence that it was you what dun it. So examine your motive. If someone dies of a gunshot wound to the head two days after they ran over and killed your wife, it doesn't matter if the gun can't be traced back to you, or that you weren't witnessed doing the deed. The police will be breathing down your neck, because they know it was you, and all they have to do is lean on you hard enough till either you or your alibi breaks. So do this right. Keep a clear head. Bide your time. Murder in haste, repent at leisure. You want the motive to be cold. You want it to be hidden. When you eventually do the deed, you want people to think it couldn't possibly have been you. So, your best friend runs off with your wife: tell them you forgive them; you wouldn't want to stand in the way of true love; have them over for dinner a few times as a couple; send them Christmas cards. And then, 10yrs down the line, you'll either have forgiven them, in which case it doesn't matter, or the trail will be cold enough that the police will be willing to believe the story they died at the hands of masked assailants who shot them while they slept so that they could ransack their house in peace.

So, all we've really covered so far is the basics of how not to get caught. It is of course possible to get away with murder without the two points that I've mentioned so far, but that's a big risk you're taking if you do. You're embarking on an endeavour that is not only morally reprehensible, it is also potentially fatal in certain countries. This isn't a write-up about how to commit murder; it's a write-up about how to get away with it.

3) Plan, research, plan, refine, plan, re-assess and plan. And then double-check all the plans. And then do a little more planning. Okay, so two things that you need to decide: how you're going to do it and how you're going to make it look like it wasn't you who did it. I'll look at each separately. However, if you're the impatient sort that can't be doing with having to read all this, the take home message is 'keep it simple'. The fewer steps a plan has, the less things there are that can go wrong. Although could I tactfully point out that if you're the impatient sort that can't doing with having to read all this, there's a small chance you're going to really fuck this up.

• The how. So, how are you going to do the deed? While you might take pleasure in the idea of smacking someone who's done you wrong several thousand times over the head with a hammer, the police will also have the pleasure of finding your clothes stained with the victim's blood. You want it to be clean. You want it to be simple. You want it to leave as few traces back to you as possible. Most of all, you want it to be effective. There should be no witnesses (sometimes easier said than done), and there should be as little as possible clean-up required after the fact.
• The alibi. Naturally, the level of alibi needed has to be appropriate to the method of execution that you have chosen. If you're going to just remove the safety mechanism from the water heater so that deadly carbon monoxide leaks out into the house, killing you wife and her lover, all you need is a simple alibi (and to have replaced the safety mechanism before the police get there so that it doesn't appear to have been tampered with). Something along the lines of: "I knew there was something wrong with the boiler. I called British Gas, but they said they wouldn't be able to send someone round till after the weekend. Where was I? Oh it was the Rugby Club tour this weekend. The lads all went up to Blackpool. I come back today to find this... *break down into tears*." If you're feeling like a slightly more personal and direct kill, it naturally gets a little more complicated. If you want to shoot someone dead, I strongly recommend that your alibi is that you were on the other side of the World attending a conference. You then need to have at least two forms of valid fake identification in order to get yourself back into the country, kill the mark, and then get back to the other side of the World again in order to receive the phone call from the police advising you of your business associate's recent demise as a result of a mugging gone wrong.

My personal counsel is to stage an accident or suicide. Accidents are easily explained away, the police won't necessarily be looking for someone to pin it on, and, most importantly, accidents happen everyday. And suicides... well, if the history's right (and with the right manipulation on your part, it can be) and the scene's unremarkable, they're not going to pry too hard. It's not uncommon for someone to be walking down the stairs and to trip and fall (although I wouldn't recommend this method as it's not guaranteed fatal). It's not unknown for inexpert mushroom pickers to come home from a walk in the woods with a handful of deadly fungi to put in their salad for dinner. People fall asleep whilst smoking and burn the house down all the time. The situation where someone feels unable to cope with life and chooses to hang themselves occurs with alarming frequency.

Small word to the wise: If you are going to fake a suicide, do NOT fake a suicide note. The absence of a suicide note is not uncommon at all – in fact, only one in four genuine suicides leave a note. By faking a note in an attempt to authenticate the 'suicide', you are actually just providing a link back to yourself. Remember – the simpler the better, and the smaller the chance of revealing yourself. Plan, research, plan, refine, plan, re-assess and plan.

4) Don't give yourself away. This is something that you have to remember from conception through to execution and beyond. It can be so easy to give yourself away, especially if you've concocted a complicated and intricate web that has all manner of ways for you to trip over yourself. For instance, don't be seen to be buying the 6ft length of rope that is later found around your brother's neck from a local store where they'll remember your face. A sudden interest in marksmanship will raise suspicions against the background of the recent gun slaying of your ex-boyfriend. Taking out a life insurance policy on your husband before he meets with an unfortunate accident at work on the building site is going to result in a few direct, pertinent questions about your affair with the on-site foreman. Which leads me onto another important point: Don't get someone else to do the job for you. If you're reading this, you're not the sort of person who can afford a professional hit man (otherwise you already would have), and trust me when I say that you don't want to be hiring the unprofessional ones. Also, I can't help but think that if you're going to be enough of a jerk to end someone's life prematurely, you should also do them the courtesy of being able to look them in the eyes before you do so. And whatever you do, never *ever* tell anyone that you did it. Not even as a deathbed confession. Or, if you do need to cleanse your soul on your deathbed, make sure you are actually dying first. Quite a few have been caught out by that one...

Right, this last little beauty is possibly the most essential thing to remember and consider at all points of planning that 'perfect elimination' in this modern day.

5) Brush up on your forensics knowledge. Even if it's something as simple as watching all the seasons of CSI, make sure you have a basic working knowledge of the ways to incriminate yourself without even knowing you've incriminated yourself. We're all aware of fingerprints, but also be aware of blood splatter, gunshot residue, DNA samples, things that can be found at autopsy to indicate foul-play, efficient (and non-efficient) disposal of evidence, and the normal psychology of the recently bereaved (for emulation purposes, natch). That's not an exhaustive list by the way, just some things to get you started on. The authorities, for some reason, don't like people getting away with murder, so they keep refining their techniques in order to catch you. They will also quite happily hold on to a piece of evidence for 20yrs and then have another look at it using up-to-date technology. The best thing to do is not arouse their suspicions in the first place.

So. All you need to know to plan the perfect murder. I really hope that no one takes this seriously... or if they do, that they don't point this write-up out to the authorities. The last thing I need right now is an accessory to murder charge slapped on me. My "Hit Men For All Occasion's" venture really wouldn't benefit from that kind of publicity.

Aha! I'm glad to see that I've got people's thoughts going on this one:

• IWhoSawTheFace says re: Perhaps you should also wait until the police force is overwhelmed with other emergencies, like hurricanes, etc. Just a sugg. I haven't devoted nearly the same amount of thought to this as you obviously have. Erm.


• liveforever says re: Consider taking advantage of the terrorist scare. Blow up your target along with a couple dozen other people, and the tracing of a motive back to you becomes less likely. And the police don't look very hard, when they have obvious suspects like terrorists.


• Kit says re: Also, avoid being found to be a member of a site with articles like "How to get away with murder" and "How to disappear completely and never be found". :D


• Apollyon says : I had a long conversation with some criminals about how I would dispose of a body. My solution is to bury the guy you kill under a dog. There are two different ways to detect if somthing has been buried: 1) the sonar things they use in TimeTeam 2) sniffer dogs. The dog goes mental and starts barking; the handler digs down to the dog and goes 'Aww, the little dog thinks he's peoples' and they move on. For ultra-sick, kill the guy's own dog. Yep I'm a dangerous guy to know!

Miss P. replies: Dude! Burying them under their own dog is a bad idea. This is a writeup on how to kill and get away with it; not on how to take an innocent human life and get PETA all over your arse at the same time. If you put it under their dog, they're going to recognise the (noted to be missing) dog and assume the master can't be far away. You're so gonna be busted if you try killing someone anytime soon!