Is there such thing?

I’m a sucker for crime and detective shows. I enjoy all three CSI TV series: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: New York and CSI: Miami. Heck, I even like watching Numbers even if I totally loath solving math problems. There’s just something “satisfying” about watching shows where detectives almost always solve the crime.

This made me wonder. Does it happen when somebody not only gets away with murder, but no one is actually aware it even happened? Is there such a thing as a perfect crime?

It says on Wikipedia that there is:

“A murder committed by somebody who had never before met the victim, has no criminal record, steals nothing and tells no one might be a perfect crime. According to criminalists and scientists, perfect crimes do exist. Similarly, criminals are able to keep their identity concealed by performing their crimes where the population is great, such as a public places, where there is a great range of DNA available, therefore creating the impression of ‘finding a needle in a haystack’”

(Source: Wikipedia)

Scary thought, isn’t it? Especially if you’re living here in the Philippines, where crime investigators’ technology isn’t so high-tech and it’s highly possible to pay off somebody to get away unscathed.

But when you’re dealing with “crimes” that don’t really merit criminal charges—you know, petty misdeeds—it’s more than possible to slip up once in a while. People usually make the mistake of telling others about it (sometimes even a group of people), banking on the hope that they won’t say anything about the misdeed. I don’t really know why… Probably to appease themselves, or maybe even brag about it? Either way, the truth seems to always find a way out.

I’ve already met a lot of people who think they can get away with these “little crimes”—getting your signature forged in a legal document or having a business partner screw you. You’d get really pissed when those things are done to you, but I’ve always believed that life has a way of turning things around. And it does. Poetic justice, as it’s called.

It might be possible to commit the perfect crime. And sometimes, you even get lucky when somebody seemingly forgets about your misdeed altogether. Or so you think.

But justice, in some form or another, does have a way of putting you on the spot for what you’ve done. Time will come when you’ll be begging for help from somebody you’ve stabbed in the back, a person more cunning than you can possibly render you broke and never pay you back, or all the friends you’ve screwed over can be enjoying their times together without you, having fun as though you never existed, while you’re all alone with no one else but people who think they can make good use of you.

Some might call that karma. Maybe it is. Either way, justice was “served.”

There might be perfect crimes. Lucky for us, there’s also poetic justice.