Can Pigs Really Make A Body Disappear? Forensics Test Age-Old Theory

There is a long-standing theory that the best way to dispose of a body is to feed it to pigs, and forensic expert Dr Penny McCardle decided to put it to the test.

Dr Penny McCardle worked as a forensic anthropologist and archaeologist on a cold case in Walgett, New South Wales. Detectives couldn’t locate a body.

“The accused had mentioned to a few people that the best way to get rid of a body was to feed it to the pigs,” McCardle said.

The accused was involved in a pig farm, and McCardle realised no research had ever tested the theory.

McCardle walks through the case on this episode of Crime Insiders:

Crime Insiders Forensics Host Kathryn Fox said, “In so many TV shows and films, you’ve had mobsters disposing of bodies in pig pens,”

“People allegedly going back to the 1700s, 1800s, allegedly feeding bodies to their pig to disguise murders and get away with it. And yet we didn’t know if that’s folklore or fact.”

Dr McCardle proposed an experiment to the New South Wales Police to test whether pigs could digest a human body.

“We ran the experiment, fed them a range of, the kangaroo slurry that the pigs would have been fed. As well as human teeth that were donated by people from a dentist as the analogue for humans, because we couldn’t use humans to feed to the pigs, obviously.”

“The results were really surprising.”

“Yes, pigs do leave human remains,” but not in the way you’d expect. McCardle explains why on this episode of Crime Insiders.

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