NEW YORK — Authorities are searching for the killer of a man whose body washed ashore in New York City wrapped in plastic garbage bags and wearing "cement shoes."
The body of 28-year-old Peter Martinez was identified through his tattoos and a fingerprint. Officials say he might have been asphyxiated but further study is needed to confirm a cause of death.
Police records show his feet were set in a plastic bucket filled with concrete that weighed more than 50 pounds. His body was found Tuesday.
The theatrical method of weighing down a body has been chronicled in books like E. L. Doctorow's Billy Bathgate and in crime novels as a threat by mobsters bent on torturing their victims.
They've been dubbed cement shoes, though they're technically concrete.