Episode 14: Before Breaking Bad

"Sometimes fiction is stranger than truth. And sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction—and occasionally, one overtakes the other."

Welcome back to another gripping episode of the Kohroner Chronicles, where we peel back the layers of darkness hiding in autopsy rooms and crime scenes. I’m Dr. Roland Kohr, forensic pathologist, and today we’re revisiting a case that eerily foreshadowed a scene made infamous in Breaking Bad, years before Vince Gilligan ever dreamed it up.

Breaking Bad—Before Breaking Bad

Most fans of Breaking Bad will recall the first-season scene where bodies are dissolved in acid. But right here in Vigo County, Indiana, we faced a real-life version of that gruesome tableau long before Hollywood got wind of it.

It started, as so many tragedies do, with a drug deal gone south. One co-conspirator shot the other and was left with a harrowing dilemma: how do you dispose of a body? His answer: acid.

Hydrochloric acid isn’t exactly a household item. Yet in this rural part of Indiana, small oil wells pepper the landscape, and acid drums aren’t unheard of at those sites. Though we never traced the exact origin of the acid used, that theory remains our leading contender.

A Barstool Confession

This case might have slithered under the radar if not for an informant eavesdropping in a local tavern. One evening, while nursing a drink, the informant overheard a stranger boasting about killing someone, and dissolving the remains in a barrel of acid. We still don’t understand why killers blurt out their crimes to strangers in bars, but fortune favored us that night.

The informant relayed the confession to detectives, complete with a suspect’s name. A task force formed: Vigo County Sheriff’s deputies joined Terre Haute PD, and the hunt was on.

The Arrest:

That evening, law enforcement cordoned off a residential block. As police cruisers sealed alleys, another unexpected player arrived.When a taxi cab arrived at the scene, a plan was improvised to replace the cabbie with a Sheriff’s Deputy.  Once the suspect got in the cab, a sudden change took place, with the suspect being shot.  Assuming that the shooting victim would not survive, the Coroner was called to the scene

The Scene: A Barrel in a Hole

It wasn’t until the following afternoon that warrants were obtained, and police went to the location reportedly harboring our murder victim.  Partially concealed with blankets was a 55 gallon barrel, set into a hole which had been cut into the floor.  After uncovering it, we were able to verify a person was indeed in the barrel.  While trying to determine our next steps, a Volunteer Fire Chief from the township stepped up with an important warning.

“And look at that—see that hole cut into the floor? The barrel’s recessed about a foot down. I’ve cleaned up meth labs before where they booby-trapped barrels. If you pull it straight out, there might be a grenade or tripwire underneath.”

His warnings gave us pause. Our priority shifted: before touching that drum, we needed to know it was safe, and figure out how to move a 55-gallon barrel holding hundreds of pounds of acid and human remains.

Testing for Booby Traps and Lightening the Load

One deputy proposed rocking the barrel violently to see if a booby trap would detonate. We rigged a stout 100‑foot rope around it, fed it through the window to a large sturdy   oak 30 feet away, and two burly deputies heaved on the rope in alternating pulls. After two minutes of vigorous rocking, and zero explosions, we felt confident it was trap‑free.

That still left the weight problem.  The 55-gallon barrel contained a body, plus enough liquid to fill it to the brim.  So we were dealing with roughly 400 pounds.  No way we could lift it as is. Here’s where our  Coroner’s deputy came through. He worked as a sale’s rep for a janitorial supply company and had a contact who sold acid‑resistant plastic hand pumps. He also arranged for a flatbed truck with a hydraulic liftgate.

Within the hour, the truck and pump arrived. We slotted two empty barrels on the liftgate, then spent the next 45 minutes pumping as much acid as we could into them. As the mass-lightened drum became manageable, officers gently lifted it from its recess and rolled it out on a two‑wheeled dolly.

Dealing with Hazardous Waste

With three barrels, one containing the body, two with acid, we faced the next hurdle: where to dump corrosive, toxic fluid? Again, our Fire Chief spoke up.   “Doctor, if that barrel’s full of acid, you can’t just tip it on the ground—the EPA will come down on us for groundwater contamination. You’ve got to contain it.”  Our deputy Coroner  had another lead: a chemicals company on the south side that offloads railroad tank cars. Their yard included a reinforced containment pond—shallow, large enough for trucks, and designed for industrial spills. We had permission to use it.

Shortly before 11 p.m., our convoy arrived. Under floodlights, we drained the three drums of brown turbid fluid into the retaining pond. Only then did we get our first clear look at the body in its acid bath: torn denim overalls, a lone sneaker, and large swaths of dissolved skin . Some areas, where the skin pressed tightly against the barrel’s interior, were oddly well-preserved.

The Autopsy: Odors and Oddities

The next morning in the morgue, an unmistakable sour odor greeted us—stronger even than lemon juice, a telltale sign of concentrated acid at work. We rinsed the remains under running water for half an hour before transferring them to a body bag. In the operating room cold table, parts of the corpse were hauntingly normal, pockets of skin, clothing fibers, even an intact plastic driver’s license—while the face, head, and upper torso had been reduced to ragged tissue.

X-rays revealed brain trauma consistent with a gunshot and tiny lead fragments around the skull. Interestingly, two thick surgical wires clung to the mandible on either side, remnants of childhood jaw surgery.

Identifying the Victim

Fingerprinting was impossible. Dental records seemed out, most teeth had been leached away by the acid. But those double wires were a revelation. We contacted the victim’s family—he’d been tentatively identified by license and confession, and they provided his childhood dentist’s name. Sure enough, records described a severe underbite corrected by mandibular osteotomy and wiring. The wiring pattern matched perfectly. Case closed: we had a positive ID.

Toxicology Twist

Our toxicologist’s report came back with a sky-high blood alcohol level, contradicting witness statements that the victim had just come off a shift sober. The sample was drawn from a vessel near the stomach, where a single beer could diffuse alcohol through the gastric wall and artificially elevate readings. Mystery solved.

From Crime Scene to Chemistry Classroom

After trial, I couldn’t shake the question: was hydrochloric acid really the best solvent? What about sulfuric, nitric, or even hydrofluoric acid? The literature was silent, and I lacked resources for experiments, until a bright student  who had been job shadowing me at Indiana State University asked for a project.

We procured pig’s feet, complete with skin, muscle, and bone, as human analogs. In the university’s biosafety hood, she placed feet into separate beakers of hydrochloric, sulfuric, nitric acids, and sodium hydroxide. We monitored mass loss every six hours, plotting dissolution curves. By 24 hours, hydrochloric acid had virtually dissolved its sample, while some tissues still remained in the other beakers, confirming the suspect’s crude choice was, in fact, the most effective widely available option.

Truth, Fiction, and the Thin Line Between

Acid. A barrel in a hole. A volunteer fire chief’s warning about EPA rules and booby traps. A cab disguise. A single shot through a cab window. Sour‑smelling remains. Surgical wires. A clever student experiment. Years before AMC’s scripts, Vigo County lived the nightmare in vivid detail.

Every body tells a story. And sometimes, the most harrowing tales begin long before the credits roll.