A body that was weighed down with “cement shoes” and washed ashore in New York on Monday has been identified as Peter Martinez, a member of the G Stone Crips crew affiliated with Bobby Shmurda, sources told DNA Info.
Police found the body of the 28-year-old man on Manhattan Beach, on the southern tip of Brooklyn, when a student from nearby Kingsborough Community College discovered it and called 911 on May 2. Martinez, who had been missing since February, was found wrapped in plastic with duct tape around his head and his arms tied behind his back. His feet were encased in a bucket filled with concrete, although whoever poured it let too much air in, causing it to rise to the water’s surface, officials said.
“His feet were submerged in poured concrete. Obviously a homicide,” NYPD Chief Robert Boyce said in a press conference on May 3.
Bobby Shmurda, who is in jail awaiting trial after his December 2014 arrest on drug and weapons charges, has also been tied to the GS9 crew. His trial is scheduled to begin May 11.
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Despite the popularity of concrete shoes in the public’s consciousness from crime fiction, the method may actually be unprecedented in the U.S. “I’ve actually never seen cement overshoes before,” a police source told The Daily Beast.
Speaking with the New York Times, crime writer Mike Dash said he’d never heard of it happening in reality either. “It’s just one of those stories that goes around. I think you’ve got a first there, by the sounds of things.”
In a 2008 article researching the history of the practice, Cecil Adams concluded: “Either custom concretewear is 100 percent effective, and the victim invariably vanishes forever from the ken of man, or the whole thing’s a myth.”
Not anymore.
