Cement shoes is a slang term adopted by the American Mafia crime world for a method of execution that involves weighting down a victim and throwing him or her into the water to drown. It has become adopted in the US as a humorous term representing any exotic threat from criminals. This gives rise to the term of someone who "sleeps with the fishes", a euphemism for the deceased. Mainly used by the notorious Gambino crime family in the prohibition era.
Cement shoes traditionally involve binding or incapacitating the victim and placing each foot into the two spaces of a cinderblock, which is then filled with wet cement. Sometimes a plain bucket or box is used. When the cement hardens, the victim is thrown into a river, lake or the ocean. It is unclear how often such a cumbersome and time-consuming method of execution was actually used, outside of Hollywood movies.
A similar term is cement overcoat.
The Swedish term is Ståplats i Nybroviken (Standing Place at Nybroviken Bay); a murdered corpse was found in 1966 at Nybroviken Bay, Stockholm in standing position.
Famous quotes containing the words cement and/or shoes:
“It is fair to assume that when women in the past have achieved even a second or third place in the ranks of genius they have shown far more native ability than men have needed to reach the same eminence. Not excused from the more general duties that constitute the cement of society, most women of talent have had but one hand free with which to work out their ideal conceptions.”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)
“Light she was and like a fairy,
And her shoes were number nine;”
—Percy Montross, U.S. poet. Oh, My Darling Clementine (attributed to Montross)