Documentary: A laser pointer, how to solve the case? The story of the world's strange cases
This is a near-perfect closed room murder case, a man died mysteriously in a confined space, and the investigation revealed that the case had all the elements of an unsolved case. The murder weapon could not be found, and it was not clear what the motive for the murder was, and how exactly he committed the crime.
* It seems to have fallen from the sky, and after killing someone, he teleported away from the scene of the crime. But in the end, relying on a laser pointer, a flaw was found. It turns out that this is not a perfect secret room. What's going on here?
Bizarre homicide.
The case took place in a city called Beaumont in southern Texas, USA. In September 2010, the local **received a call to the police**. The informant was an employee of a hotel who claimed that a man had died in a hotel room.
* immediately rushed to the scene of the crime, only to see the deceased lying on the ground, still wearing a pajamas, ** no obvious wounds were found on him.
So at first, I thought about it, could the deceased have a heart disease or something like that, and suddenly died of illness? This speculation is not unfounded, because judging by the position of the deceased falling to the ground, it is very much like falling out of bed. So it's likely that he accidentally fell to the ground while he was struggling in pain.
To find out whether the deceased had this kind of disease, you must first find out the identity of the deceased, ** asked the informant, and learned a strange thing.
It turned out that not long ago, Susie, the wife of the deceased, called the front desk of the hotel ** and asked: "Is my husband Greg staying in your hotel?" ”
After receiving an affirmative reply from the front desk, Susie said anxiously: "I suspect that something has happened to my husband, please go and take a look." ”
It was precisely because of Susie's words that the reporter would go to room 348 where the deceased lived to check the situation, and he knocked on the door and no one responded, so he opened the door with the key, and then found the body of the deceased, so he immediately called the police.
* Wondering, how did Greg's wife know that something had happened to her husband? Telepathy? When they contacted Susie, they realized that the deceased Greg owned an oil field leasing company near the hotel, and he would drive here every week to meet customers, and he stayed in this hotel during business trips.
And every time Greg goes on a business trip, he will call Susie in the morning to report that he is safe, but Susie did not receive his ** in the morning, and he did not answer when he called ** to him, so Susie had a hunch that Greg might have had an accident, so he immediately called the front desk of the hotel where he lived to ask about the situation.
* It was also learned from Susie that the deceased was in very good health, which overturned their initial suspicions. So ** immediately sent Greg for an autopsy, and soon the news came from the medical examiner.
They found a minor abrasion on the deceased's face, along with a visible scar on the inner thigh. The forensic examiner followed the autopsy of the wounds and found that the deceased's body organs were fragmented, and the forensic doctor judged that a bullet had passed through the deceased's thigh and entered his body, causing his death.
It can be seen that the deceased did not die accidentally, and there is a high probability that it was deliberately deceived**. The time of death of the deceased was roughly between 8 and 10 o'clock the night before.
So ** began to carefully investigate the crime scene, hoping to get some clues from it.
They found that there were no traces of a fight at the scene of the crime, which meant that the case was not supposed to be a burglary.
Subsequently, a cigarette case was found on the deceased's bed, as well as an ashtray with several cigarette butts. And directly opposite the bed is a TV set, which is ** "Iron Man". According to these clues, the moment before the deceased died, it was very likely that he was lying in bed, but this is strange.
If ** was on the scene, how could he be so comfortable? Unless ** is his acquaintance, he can let his guard down. According to this situation, I think of a possibility, could it be** a prostitute found by the deceased, because the act of opening a hotel to find a prostitute can be said to be common, and if it is a woman, it makes sense that the deceased's vigilance is not heavy.
According to this speculation, the reason for killing Greg is obvious. It is likely that in the process of contact with Greg, she found out that Greg was very rich, so she came up with the idea of killing people and taking money.
But later, ** found Greg's wallet at the scene, he had a lot of cash in his wallet, if ** really killed people for money, there was no reason not to take the money in the wallet away.
And an important question was overlooked earlier, which is where did the gun come from? The wife of the deceased said that Greg did not have a pistol, so the pistol should have been brought by **. How could a prostitute carry a pistol with her?
So the possibility of a prostitute killing someone was ruled out.
Soon, someone gave ** an important clue. The man, the manager of the hotel, claimed that there had been an unexpected accident on the night of the crime.
So he asked, "What do you mean by accident?" ”
The hotel manager said: "It was 7 o'clock on the night of the incident, and the hotel front desk received a complaint from a guest in room 249, who said that the room suddenly had a power outage. The front desk reported the situation to me, and I sent a maintenance worker to check it out. ”
With the hotel manager's narration, ** learned that the cause of the power outage in room 249 was actually related to the deceased Greg. It turned out that Greg had put popcorn in the microwave that night, which caused a short circuit in the hotel circuit, and power went out in his own room, room 349 next door to him, and the two rooms downstairs.
The maintenance worker first took care of the problems in the other three rooms, and finally went to Greg's room, and waited until about half past eight, and the maintenance worker left Greg's room. This overlaps with the time of the deceased's death, so it is suspected that the maintenance worker had a conflict with Greg during the repair process, and killed him in a fit of rage.
* An investigation was quickly launched. It is added here that the murder weapon was not found at the scene of the crime before, which means that the gun was taken away after the crime. However, in the follow-up investigation, the murder weapon was not found from the maintenance worker, and there was no other evidence to prove that the maintenance worker killed Greg, and there was no conflict between the two on the night of the crime. So the suspicion of the maintenance worker was also ruled out.
At this point, the investigation of the case has reached an impasse, and ** can only revisit the scene of the crime to see if he can find some details that he has overlooked.
This review, an extremely important suspicion surfaced, and it can be said that its appearance made ** even more confused.
Confined dead space.
* The second investigation found that the doors and windows at the scene of the crime were locked. The most important point is that the doors and windows in the room can only be locked from the inside, which means that the crime scene is a secret room. So how did you escape with the murder weapon after killing someone?
Will he teleport? Obviously this is not possible.
If there is no way to solve this question, then the investigation of the case cannot proceed. So they can only go against their own thinking, they think, will ** not stay at the scene of the murder, but carry out the murder plan outside the room? But ** didn't find any mechanism at the scene that could support ** the idea of killing people remotely, even if ** was killed outside the door, so what was the point of him going to great lengths to kill Greg?
Do you have a grudge against him? But ** investigated Greg's social circle and found that he was honest and never made enemies with others. ** also set his suspicious eyes on his wife, and according to **'s in-depth investigation, it was learned from the neighbors around the couple that the relationship between the two was quite good, and it seemed that there had never been a conflict. The wife also did not buy any accident insurance for Greg, and also ruled out the possibility that she caused an accident insurance fraud.
At this time, some police officers wondered if the death of the deceased was related to the power outage accident. Although they had ruled out the suspicion of a maintenance worker, in addition to the deceased, guests in the other three rooms were also implicated. Could it be that the power outage caused some damage to one of them that led to him killing Greg in a fit of rage?
So ** took the lead in investigating the first guest in room 249 who complained to the front desk. It was a man in his 30s who had a rather short temper. But ** learned that he was watching TV at the moment before the power outage, so the impact of the power outage on him was that he couldn't watch the TV, and it was obvious that he didn't need to kill people for this little thing. Moreover, ** did not find a pistol in his room.
And the guests in room 248, which also had a power outage, were already asleep when the power went out. It was only later that the maintenance worker came to the door and he found out about the power outage, so he had no reason to kill.
Excluding the guests in these two rooms, only room 349 next door to the deceased remains. ** It was discovered that there was not just one person living in this room, but three people. They were Tim, Lens and Trent, all of whom worked in the neighborhood.
*When asked about their whereabouts on the night of the crime, the trio said that they had been playing in a bar near the hotel that night and had not returned until around 12 p.m. The staff at the bar confirmed that what the three of them said was the truth. Just as ** was about to rule out the suspicion of the three of them, one of them gave this testimony: "After we returned from drinking, we passed by the door of room 348 and heard a loud noise inside, as if it was a gunshot. ”
He seemed to be "hinting" that he might have just happened to bump into the moment when the gun was fired. But ** found a flaw, because the time of death of the deceased was between 8 o'clock and 10 o'clock, how could it be possible to hear gunshots at 12 o'clock?
It is clear that the person who gave this testimony was lying, so why did he do it?
Immediately afterwards, ** found out that although they did stay at the bar downstairs until twelve o'clock before returning, they went to the bar at about 9 o'clock in the evening, and before 9 o'clock, they were still in room 349, and the maintenance worker also said that he had been to room 349 at 8 o'clock, and saw the three of them drinking while muttering some strange things.
*Ask the maintenance worker, what do you mean by strange words?
The repairman replied that they looked like they were drunk, and one of the tall men muttered, "I'll show you later," and the other said, "Is that the one you got the other day?" Although I don't know what they are referring to, I saw one of them make an eight-point gesture, as if pointing to a "pistol".
* Immediately asked the three people in room 349 if they had any pistols on them, but the three denied it, claiming that they were just drunk and talking nonsense. Seeing their resolute attitude, it was difficult to continue questioning, because there was no definite evidence that Greg's death was related to the three of them, but ** did not dispel suspicions about the three of them.
Because these three people are the closest to the scene, and they also have the best chance of carrying out the murder plan. So ** began to think, if the three of them killed the dead from outside the room, where was the bullet most likely to come in?
Ridiculous ending.
At this time, a police officer suddenly had a flash of inspiration, and he thought about whether it was possible to shoot in room 349, and then the bullet went through the wall and hit Greg who was lying on the bed? **After observation, it was found that there is really such a possibility. Because the walls of this hotel are not very thick, bullets can penetrate the walls and fly to the other side.
But ** carefully investigated several walls, and found no traces of bullets on the walls. Did they guess wrong again? This is not the case? The unwilling ** investigates the wall again, and this time they finally find the clue. It turned out that on the wall facing the deceased, there was a mark that had been repaired.
* With a touch of their hands, a small hole appeared in front of their eyes, and it turned out that someone had squeezed toothpaste into the hole and tried to fool them around. Presumably, it was from this position that the bullet was fired and Greg was killed on the other side. Then ** is obviously one of the three people who live in room 349.
* immediately interrogated the three men, expecting that they would admit to their crimes, but they quibbled: "When we moved in, we saw this hole in the wall, and we were afraid that this hole was deliberately made by the other side for **, so we plugged him with toothpaste." ”
* Although they knew that they were talking nonsense with their eyes open, they did need to come up with evidence to prove that the hole was left by the bullet when it was passed through, so one ** thought of a solution, he took out the laser pointer and aimed it at the hole, and then pressed the switch, and the trajectory of the laser pointer passed through and happened to land directly below the bed opposite.
In other words, the ballistic trajectory was simulated with a laser pointer, and it was confirmed that after the bullet passed through the hole, it would hit the deceased's thigh.
Immediately afterwards, ** used words to scare the three of them, saying that if they confessed now, maybe they could be dealt with lightly.
As soon as the three of them heard this, the defense line completely collapsed, and two of them immediately stood up and pointed out that it was Lance who shot and killed Greg. Ask, what did you kill Greg for, because you had a vendetta against him?
As a result, the testimony of the three people surprised ** and at the same time made him a little crying and laughing.
It turned out that all of this was actually caused by wine. I still remember that the maintenance worker said that when he entered room 349, he saw the three of them drunk, and bragged there, and soon after the maintenance worker left, Lens took out a pistol and boasted to the other two that he had just bought it, and the two were also very excited when they saw it, saying that they wanted to see how powerful the gun was.
So Lens got up and fired a shot at the wall, but he didn't expect the gun to be so powerful that it not only passed through the wall, but also hit the unlucky guy on the opposite side. They heard a scream from next door and then stopped moving, and realized that they had caused a big disaster, so they immediately discussed countermeasures, first plugging the hole, and then after unifying the caliber, they ran to the bar downstairs to try to make an alibi.
It's a pity that their clumsy camouflage tricks can only fall apart in front of the careful **. Lance, who shot at the end, was sued in court as the first person responsible. Although he killed Greg, the court ultimately found that the incident was accidental, so he sentenced Lance to only ten years in prison. The other two were exonerated as "tainted witnesses".
This result must be unacceptable to the victim's family, and the punishment is too light. But there was nothing they could do. It can only be said that when you drink, don't put any dangerous items around.