We all know how Howard Webb covers up for his team of clueless referees, but how does he dispose of a dead body when s#!* really goes down?
Howard is well-versed in the subject of putting stuff under the carpet and forgetting how things happened, but how does Howard fair when it comes to disposing of a dead stripper who may have been found in Anthony Taylor’s basement?
Tree Seasons caught up with the PGMOL’s Chief Refereeing Officer whilst holidaying on another one of Manchester City’s Abu Dhabi United Group-funded breaks in Dubai.
“They call me The Wolf,” jokes Howard. “Whenever a referee f#@%s up, I’m always there to bail them out when they accidentally shoot some hooker’s brains out.”
“I refereed 296 Premier League matches and 36 Champions League games but nothing prepares you for having to remove a dead prostitute from the axel of a car and disposing of the body without a trace. You can’t unsee s#!/ like that,” remarked the former English referee from Rotherham.
“Like when one of my referees has to find a reason to send a Nottingham Forest player off for no reason or disallow a perfectly good Chris Wood goal, one has to think on their feet and come up with plausible explanations.”
Errors killers make when they dispose of a dead body.
“Of course, my Police background helps. I rubbed shoulders with forensics experts and they taught me a lot about decomposition and the failures killers make when they don’t dispose of a dead body properly.”
“What many murderers fail to do is cover up the obvious stuff. The sort of thing I’m talking about here is not burning your clothes and those of the victim. Also, the ashes must be dumped in a remote location; far away from the fire. Another schoolboy error is the old acid bath murder. As Dennis Nilsen discovered, it doesn’t work. You can’t flush remains down a drain without the water authorities and the neighbours smelling something – literally.”
“For one-off murders, you can use a trick we used in the winter of ’85. In a remote Leicestershire field, 70 miles from the murder, we dug a deep hole in the frozen ground, placed the body at the very bottom and covered it with soil. We then shot a cow in a nearby field, and dragged it over the grave before filling it in.”
“One thing I quickly learned in the force,” continued Howard, sipping on a Pina Colada through a stripped straw, “once they uncover a dead animal, they don’t assume that there is a human corpse beneath it. They don’t look for anything else. They just contact the farmer and get him to incinerate the beast.”
Howard tapped his nose and winked. He was so knowledgeable on the subject of how to dispose of a dead body, and we could’ve chatted for ages about his exploits with the mafia and drug cartels.
He continued to tell me how he used to dine with Margaret Thatcher and General Pinochet, and how Myra Hindley taught him how to play the bagpipes.
How Howard would dispose of a dead body?
Eventually, he delved into more detail about how he would dispose of a dead body.
“I know a pig farmer who occasionally helps me out. You need at least sixteen pigs for a quick job. Sixteen pigs can get through 200 lbs of flesh in under eight minutes. Per pig, that’s two pounds of uncooked flesh a minute.”
“Of course, remove all of the teeth first and shave the head of the victim. You don’t want the farmer finding evidence in the pig filth.”
I asked Howard about transportation methods and the logistics of moving a dead body away from the scene. Again, he was very specific and worryingly enthusiastic.
Cutting the body into six pieces.
“Dumping bodies at sea is ideal but, if you find yourself landlocked, you need another out. If you can get a boat, weigh the parts down in dog cages, again, at separate locations. Use GPS to strategically plot the area so you don’t double-drop.”
“As far as getting the body to a pig farm, an ocean, or other remote location, the first thing to do is cut the body up into six sections. You can use a bath or secure location, but you have to clean and then clean again. If you get body fluids on the plastered wall, it’s imperative that the walls are re-plastered. The DNA will stay in there like an alien face hugger on a host.”
” Clean grout, tiles and concrete with hydrogen chloride – often known as muriatic acid – just ask your local chemist for details.”
Clean and clean again.
“Once you have your six sections, put them in plastic bags and seal them tight. Once the job is done, clean out the car or van, and clean it again. Use a power hose for carpets and power tools such as chainsaws and heavy-duty bolt cutters for cutting through flesh and bone. Never use rent a woodchipper. The rental store will keep receipt details and DNA gets trapped in the mechanism. It’s impossible to clean those things. Me and Bill Oddie found that out a few years ago, in Memphis.”
Howard picked up his cocktail, reclined on his sun lounger, smiled with heavy contentment beneath his polished Ray-Bans, and quickly moved from the subject of how to dispose of a dead body by absorbing Persian Gulf rays for the next forty-five minutes.
It was a pleasure meeting with Howard Webb and discussing how to dispose of a dead body, and we hope to catch up with him once he returns from a cleaning job in Albania.
