The Ghostly Killer (and Last Week's Solution)

Last week's solution: 

(1) The murderer was Henry Alfonso aka Burt Camfurt.

(2) The method was poisoning by absorption through the skin.

(3) Alfonso did it to prevent Stork from showing photos of him and

his lover Greta on nationwide television.

Explanation:

Upon arriving at work this morning and reading today’s script, knowing how many criminals had been spotted and captured as a result of this show and fearing the same fate, Henry Alfonso, now known as Burt Camfurt, rummaged through the flora around the Hollywood Reservoir and discovered some monkshood growing amid the underbrush. He was quite familiar with it, both from the term paper he’d written in college — ‘The Healing and Poisonous Qualities of Common North American Plants’ — and because it was the same poison, native to the Rockies of New Mexico as well as Southern California, that he had used to murder his wife. He ground the leaves up into a syrup with the mortar and pestle he always kept in his makeup bag and stirred the syrup into the liquid adhesive he used for Ronald Stork’s toupee. It made the glue less sticky so that it didn’t hold the toupee on as well, leading Stork to ask for a second application. But monkshood is quickly absorbed through the skin and it did the trick before Stork completed his report on Alfonso’s earlier crime.

When Alfonso killed his wife and ran off with his teenage lover Greta Phillips three years before, both being even more in love with everything theatrical than with each other, they quickly made their way to Hollywood, where they changed their names to Burt Camfurt and Patti Landers, changed their looks, using Henry’s talent for makeup, and got jobs working on television shows. Henry used his theatrical expertise to become a makeup artist, and after a few one-shot jobs on small-time productions, landed the on-going slot on “Unresolved Murders.” When the opportunity arose, he got young Patti (nee: Greta Phillips) hired on as the show’s set-side caterer.

By the time the police connected up the TV star’s murder with the story he was reading when it happened, Henry and Greta, aka Burt and Patti, had disappeared again. They’re rumored to be acting in a Shakespearean company touring the New Zealand provinces.

The Ghostly Killer

It began as a harmless escapade — four teenagers sneaking into a deserted old house. All they were looking for was a final night of adventure before one of them went off to college. What they found instead was death, a haunting, inexplicable murder that rivaled anything they’d ever seen at the movies.

The trespassing teens were Lilly Kincaid, her younger sister, Anne, and their boyfriends, Mark and Larry. On a sultry August night, a week before Lilly was to fly off to Princeton, the four of them finally did what they’d always talked about, breaking into the eerie Alway mansion at midnight to search for ghosts.

Lilly’s boyfriend, Mark, had been in the lead, using his flashlight to illuminate the cobweb-filled crannies. Despite promises to the contrary, the boys were having their fun, scaring the girls at every opportunity. They had finished exploring the first floor and were halfway down a second floor corridor when Larry turned around and saw that Lilly was no longer behind him.

“Lilly? Where are you?” Their whispers grew louder as they began to backtrack along the corridor. “Stop fooling around.” Lilly was hardly the type to wander off. “Lilly?” And then they heard it. Several muffled shouts followed by a piercing scream. Lilly’s scream.

When Anne and the boys stepped into the dusty bedroom, they saw the 18-year-old girl stretched out on the bed frame. A hunting knife was protruding from her chest, the black handlegrip facing her shoes. At first it seemed like some perverse joke, Lilly getting even with the boys. Anne nudged her sister, telling her to cut out the dramatics. “Lilly?” Anne gazed down at her own hands, now suddenly covered with blood. “She’s… She’s dead.”

Mark was just stepping forward to check her pulse when Anne gasped. “Oh, my God. Did you see?” She pointed out into the hallway. “A man with a knife.”

Instinctively, the boys gave chase, inadvertently leaving the surviving sister alone. No more than 30 seconds later, as they pursued clouds of cobwebs through the downstairs rooms, a second scream brought them up short. “Anne!” Mark and Larry instantly reversed their tracks.

“You left me alone!” Anne screamed as they ran back in. “Let’s get out of here.” The boys agreed. Whoever had done this was still close by, wielding that second knife. They ran, Anne sandwiched between her protectors, and didn’t stop until they’d reached the safety of the police station.

When Ben Alway, owner of abandoned mansion, was told of the murder, he seemed as shocked as everyone else. “How awful! I teach at the high school, so I knew Lilly. A real golden girl. Pretty, smart, sweet. Her folks never went to college, and they’d been saving for years just so one of their kids could go to a good school. Last year Lilly took my class in college board preparation. Anne took the class this year. I guess she’ll be applying to Princeton now. Have you talked to Billy?”

“Who?” The officer took out his notepad.

“Billy Willis. He’s this homeless drunk who’s been squatting in the old mansion for years. I kick him out and lock up the place, but he always finds some way in. The girl must have surprised old Billy.”

The officer wrote hurriedly. “When did you last see Mr. Willis?”

“I caught him in the house this afternoon. He was all strung out and desperate for a drink. He’s got a crazy, violent streak, especially when he needs booze.”

Within the hour, they discovered the middle-aged alcoholic passed out in the park. Two empty pints of bourbon were on the ground beside him and his hand was gripped around a third. Through his alcoholic stupor, Billy denied the murder. “I ain’t been in that place for days. That Alway guy is crazy. Last time, he took a shotgun and put it right up to my head. Said he’d blow my brains out if I ever came back.”

The clerk at Kline’s All-Nite Liquor had been the last person to see Billy that night. “He came in about 11 p.m. Bought three pints of Retchers Bourbon and paid for them in loose change. Billy panhandles on Oak Street. Sometimes he makes enough to splurge on cheap bourbon. ”

Although Anne Kincaid was unable to identify Billy Willis in a line- up, he remains the police’s prime suspect. Do they have enough evidence to make an arrest? You decide.

Whodunit?

Billy Willis

Anne Kincaid

The clerk

How was the crime performed?

What one piece of evidence “fingered” the killer?

Clues:

CRIME SCENE REPORT

“It was a single, fatal blow, delivered in a downward thrust of the knife, the handlegrip turned up in the fingers for a better grasp. We have yet to determine ownership of the weapon.

“The murder scene was dusted and six fingerprints belonging to Mr. Willis were found. Although the room was thoroughly blood-splattered, none of these prints contained any trace of blood. No prints at all were found on the weapon.”

FORENSIC BLOOD REPORT

“Our initial blood samples produced only one type of blood, a type matching the decedent’s. A later sample taken from the shirt, however, revealed a secondary blood source. According to the tests, this was animal blood, most probably cat or dog. We have no idea how cat or dog blood could have gotten to the scene of the crime. Police error or lab error cannot be ruled out.”

THE SECOND KNIFE

A hunting knife identical in make to the murder weapon was discovered lodged in the branches of a tree not far from the murder room window. The majority of the knife’s 6-inch blade had been broken off, leaving only a 3/4 inch shaft of steel. No trace of the blade was found. This second knife had been wiped clean of prints, but a microscopic examination revealed traces of blood on the broken shaft. A lab analysis reveals this as animal blood, probably from a cat or dog.

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