History Main / DeadMansChest

** A dismembered body is placed in a wicker hamper and left in a railway station in "Echoes of the Dead".

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* ''Series/{{Castle}}'':

** In ''Investigations'', our 'chest' is a ridiculously garish suitcase.

* At the beginning of ''VideoGame/PoliceQuest: Open Season'', you find the corpse of a 6-year old boy in a dumpster. Near the end of the game, there's a refrigerator with a severed head in it.

** In ''Film/{{Frenzy}}'', the killer hides a body in a sack that he dumps in the back of a lorry full of sacks of potatoes. He then realises that his tie pin is still clutched in the dead woman's hand and has to retrieve it from the back of the moving lorry. And the movie ends with the tie-strangling rapist dragging an empty trunk up the steps to dispose of his latest victim, where he meets the police inspector, who dryly observes: "Mr. Rusk, you're not wearing your tie".

'''A Administrivia/{{No Recent Examples|please}} rule applies to RealLife examples of this trope'''. Real life examples shouldn't be added until '''150 years''' after the death.

!!'''As a DeathTrope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.'''

[[folder:Real Life]]
* The "Unicorn Killer", Ira Einhorn, Philadelphian and co-founder of Earth Day killed his then-girlfriend Holly Maddux and stuffed her body in a trunk in his apartment. Einhorn was arrested for the murder, but denied it, saying that the FBI and CIA framed him because of his hippy political views. Defended by attorney Arlen Spector and set free on bond raised by the heir to Seagrams wine family, Einhorn skipped bail and fled, eventually settling in France. He changed his name, but was tried ''in absentia'' and found guilty. Einhorn was arrested but fought his extradition back to America for over 20 years before he was returned to Philadelphia, where he was found guilty and then sent to prison for life.
* The Brighton trunk murders.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Curley Jeffrey Curley]]'s murderers stuffed his body in a storage bin and dumped it in the Charles River.
* This was thought to have happened to the victim in the "Shark Arm Murder Case", but they NeverFoundTheBody other than the arm that the shark disgorged.
* In September 1999, a man cleaning out his garage found a barrel that was too heavy for him or the sanitation department to lift. When he opened it, inside was the mummified body of a young woman. She was eventually identified as [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Reyna_Marroquin Reyna Angelica Marroquin]], an immigrant from El Salvador who had disappeared in 1969. The home's first owner, Howard Elkins, had been Ms. Marroquin's boss and lover and killed her when she called his wife and blabbed about their affair and her pregnancy. He'd stuffed her body into the barrel, intending to dump it in the ocean, only to find that it was too heavy for him to lift, leading him to stash it in the crawlspace of the house, where it remained for 30 years.
* In August 1991, a group of road workers near Henry Hudson Parkway, Manhattan went to investigate a stench that was coming from deep inside the woods beside the road. They discovered that the smell was coming from a small blue picnic cooler. Upon investigating its contents, they discovered the skeletal remains of a small child (who was later identified as Anjelica Castillo). When detectives arrested the girl's cousin, Conrado Juárez, twenty-two years later, they were horrified to discover the ease of how the girl could've possibly fit in the small, cramped-up cooler: Juarez and his sister Balvina Juarez-Ramirez had frequently starved little Anjelica by tying her to a table, denying her food or water, resulting in her becoming so emaciated that she was small enough to fit in the cooler.
* Although her body was never found, police learned that this was Anne Marie Fahey's fate after her ex-lover Thomas Capano's brother confessed to helping him dispose of her--Capano had stuffed her body into an ice chest, then had his brother take him out to sea, where he promptly dumped it overboard.
* In July 1994, a woman in Prescott, Arizona called the police to report a suspicious Ryder truck in her neighbor's driveway. When police arrived to inspect the truck, they found a freezer with the body of a young woman inside. The body was identified as Denise Huber, who disappeared while on her way home from a concert three years earlier. It turned out that the man who parked the truck in his driveway, John Famalaro, had murdered Denise and kept her body as a trophy for the past three years.
* In September 2005, landfill workers in Lubbock, Texas found the body of a young woman in a suitcase, identified as Summer Baldwin, who had gone missing two days earlier. By tracing the UPC number of the suitcase, police were able to determine the store where it had been purchased and identified the buyer via surveillance footage as Rosendo Rodriguez. It was determined that Rodriguez had severely beaten Baldwin, but she was still alive when placed in the suitcase and died of suffocation from being crammed into a tiny space. Rodriguez was eventually linked to the murder of Joanna Rogers, whose body was also found in a suitcase in the same landfill in October 2006, two and a half-years after she went missing from her home.
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* In ''Film/TheKillingKind'', Thelma and Terry stuff Lori's body into a trash can to sneak it out of the house. Because rigor mortis has set in, Terry is forces break her arm so she will fit.

* ''Series/TheBoys''. After killing Translucent, the Boys shovel up [[LudicrousGibs what remains of him]], including his indestructible skin, put it in a zinc case that Homelander's X-Ray vision can't see through, and dump it into the bay. They know the Supes will find it eventually so this is just meant to buy time; when the Supes do recover the case, they find the words [[BringIt COMING FOR YOU]] spray-painted on the inside of the lid.

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[[quoteright:348:[[Film/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dead_mans_chest1.jpg]]]]

* In ''[[Literature/AuntDimity Aunt Dimity's Good Deed]]'', Gerald Willis produces a box containing the remains of Sybella Markham Willis and explains the story of how the Willis family came to be on both sides of the Atlantic. Willis Sr. promises to arrange for the remains to be buried with her husband in the Willis' family plot in Boston.

* In the Tabitha King/Michael [=McDowell=] PosthumousCollaboration ''Candles Burning,'' part of the humor/horror is that a human body ''won't'' fit into a footlocker without some...rearranging.

** In "The Tell-Tale Heart", the body is dismembered and hidden under the floorboards. There's no ''actual'' clue that would give the location away to the police, who are about to leave on peaceful terms when the narrator begins to hallucinate that he can hear the corpse's heart beating....
** And "The Black Cat", wherein a murder is given away by his own pride and a karmic pet he buried with his wife.

** ** In "With Baited Breath", the body of the third VictimOfTheWeek is found stuffed into a chest freezer.

* From ''VideoGame/HitmanBloodMoney'' onwards, you are able to stuff bodies into a handy container, which will ensure that it isn't discovered 'til well after you've vacated the premises. After all, leaving bodies just lying around is asking for trouble, and unless somebody actually sees you do it, it'll never come back to bite you. From ''VideoGame/HitmanAbsolution'' onward, you are able to take disguises from hidden bodies.

* An important technique in ''VideoGame/HitmanBloodMoney''... leaving bodies just lying around is asking for trouble, and unless somebody actually sees you do it, stuffing it into a handy container will ensure that it isn't discovered 'till well after you've vacated the premises.
** Later games in the series (''VideoGame/HitmanAbsolution'' and ''[[VideoGame/Hitman2016 Hitman]]'') also include strategically-placed containers for the player to stash bodies in. ''VideoGame/Hitman2'' is planned to contain fewer such areas, increasing the difficulty of concealing bodies.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame'': Quasimodo hides the wounded and unconscious Phoebus under the table when Frollo comes to visit unexpectedly.

* In ''Film/GingerSnaps'', the protagonist sisters hide the body of a girl who, while wasn't murdered, slipped in their kitchen and died of severe blunt trauma to the head. They stuff it in the fridge (though it's not an example of StuffedIntoTheFridge).

Note that the chest in the song "Fifteen men on a dead man's chest" was probably the equivalent of his footlocker. If the hiding place is someplace a lot odder than a footlocker, that's BodyInABreadbox. For other ways to conceal a body inside something, see CarpetRolledCorpse and CrammingTheCoffin.

* In July 1994, a woman in Prescott, Arizona called the police to report a stolen Ryder truck. When police arrived to inspect the truck, they found a freezer with the body of a young woman inside. The body was identified as Denise Huber, who dispeared while on her way home from a concert three years earlier. It turned out that the man who owned the freezer, John Famalaro, had murdered Denise and kept her body as a trophy for the past three years.

Note that the chest in the song "Fifteen men on a dead man's chest" was probably the equivalent of his footlocker.

Not to be confused with the real, original Dead Man's Chest, which was the name of one of the Virgin Islands. Nor is it to be confused with [[Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanDeadMansChest the Pirates of the Caribbean film]]. If the hiding place is someplace a lot odder than a footlocker, that's BodyInABreadbox. For other ways to conceal a body inside something, see CarpetRolledCorpse and CrammingTheCoffin.

* ''DeathInParadise'': In "Switcharoo", the police find the body of a missing witness hidden in the chest freezer of his house.

This trope comes in two versions: dramatic and comedic. In the dramatic version, the person hiding the body (usually the killer but not always) will suddenly realise that a body part or piece of clothing is protruding from the chest just as someone (detective, loved one of the deceased, etc.) is poking around and have to desperately conceal the fact. Then, there is still the matter of moving the body later. In the comedic version, expect the box with the body to go missing, get mixed up with an identical-looking box, or have all kinds of people wanting to open the chest for all kinds of innocent reasons. HilarityEnsues.