Perfect crime is a colloquial term used in law and fiction (principally crime fiction) to characterize crimes that are undetected, unattributed to a perpetrator, or else unsolved as a kind of technical achievement on the part of the perpetrator.
In certain contexts, the concept of perfect crime is limited to just undetected crimes; if an event is ever identified as a crime, some investigators say it cannot be called 'perfect'.[1]
A perfect crime should be distinguished from one that has merely not been solved yet or where everyday chance or procedural matters frustrate a conviction. There is an element that the crime is (or appears likely to be) unable to be solved.
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As used by some criminologists and others who study criminal investigations (including mystery writers), a perfect crime goes unsolved not because of incompetence in the investigation, but because of the cleverness and skill of the criminal.[2] I.e., the defining factor is the primary causative influence of the criminal's ability to avoid investigation and reprisal, and not so much the ability of the investigating authority to perform its duties.
Would-be perfect crimes are a popular subject in crime fiction and movies. They include Rope, Double Indemnity, Strangers on a Train, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Witness for the Prosecution, and Dial M for Murder.
A murder committed by somebody who had never before met the victim, has no criminal record, steals nothing, and tells no one might be a perfect crime. According to criminologists and scientists, this casual definition of perfect crime exists. Another possibility is that a crime might be committed in an area of high public traffic, where DNA from a wide variety of people is present, making the sifting of evidence akin to 'finding a needle in a haystack'.[3]
An intentional killing in which the death is never identified as murder is an example of one of the more rigorous definitions of perfect crime.[1] Other criminologists narrow the range to only those crimes that are not detected at all.[4] By definition, it can never be known if such perfect crimes exist.[4][5] Many "close calls" have been observed, however—enough to make investigators aware of the possibility of a perfect crime.[4]
Some crimes such as the Black Dahlia murder, the Zodiac murders of the late 1960s, the Tylenol scare of 1982, the Cleveland Torso Murderer, the 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey, and the Diane Suzuki case of 1985 are referred to as perfect, but the possibility always remains that a culprit will ultimately be identified. Airplane hijacking along with a parachute escape, such as in the case of D. B. Cooper, may also qualify as a perfect crime.
In March 2009, a jewel theft was described as being close to a perfect crime, in that despite having DNA evidence the police were unable to bring the case to court since the DNA belonged to one of a pair of identical twins, and faced with denials by both, it could not be proven which of the two was the criminal.[6]
On October 27, 2009, David Swain was convicted of killing his wife Shelley Tyre while on a scuba-diving outing in 1999 in Tortola, British Virgin Islands. Prosecutors called this a near-perfect crime motivated by Swain's desire to pursue another woman. No eyewitnesses or DNA evidence linked Swain to the murder. The prosecution's case rested largely on experts who testified they believed Swain wrestled Tyre from behind at a depth of 80 feet, tore off her scuba mask, and shut off her air supply while they swam near a shipwreck. Tyre's mask was damaged, the mouthpiece of her snorkel was missing, and her fin was found embedded in a sandbar — all signs of a struggle, prosecution witnesses said. Authorities initially classified the death as an accident. However, Tyre's parents doubted their daughter, an experienced diver, had accidentally drowned, and they long suspected that her husband had killed her. They were awarded $3.5 million in a civil jury trial, but Swain filed for bankruptcy and has not paid the sum. On November 10, 2009, Swain was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder.[7]