Police hunt killer of man who washed ashore in ‘cement shoes’

The victim washed ashore in Brooklyn, his body wrapped in plastic garbage bags, his head and hands covered in duct tape and his feet submerged in concrete – fitted with a pair of fabled “cement shoes.”

Authorities on Thursday searched for suspects in the death of Peter Martinez, who was identified through his tattoos and a fingerprint.

Officials say he might have been asphyxiated, but further study is needed to determine a cause of death and how long he was in the water.

Meanwhile, his feet were set in a plastic bucket filled with concrete that weighed more than 50 pounds, according to police records.

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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 as they stood, alive, while the heavy substance dried. People call them cement shoes, though they’re technically concrete, which is cement powder mixed with water and sand or gravel.

But it’s not clear that was ever how it was actually done, and until now, there hadn’t been any recent examples of the gruesome technique employed.