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THE CASE OF THE MISSING MALTESE

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ghost



Joined: 06 Nov 2005
Posts: 2828
Location: MIA
THE CASE OF THE MISSING MALTESE

Hi all! i wrote this story for a project at work, and need some help please? any feedback (this is silly/unsolveable/great etc) will be very much appreciated. i will post the solution in a pm to all who leave a possible solution, with motivation, as a reply here.

thanks

regards
ghost



THE CASE OF THE MISSING MALTESE

E-mail from Marina to a friend, Joey Davids - 23 May, 2006

Dear Joey

Just a quick note to say hello and do some catching up…hope you are doing well!

You remember my boss, Logan Manicera, I think you met at my 30th birthday party last year? The young(ish) guy with the bald head and blue eyes? He transferred to CSI a few months ago, and I went with! This new job is such a change from calming down little old ladies who get lost in the streets of this big city…

We have had a few interesting cases already, and remembering your love for detective stories, I thought I would share this one with you… but I am not going to tell you who did it! Grin, work it out for yourself…I will be sending you some clues every now and again, just to keep you biting your nails in frustration, like Logan and I were doing at some stage during the case.

I’ll just quickly fill you in on the background:

The famous actress (sorry, but I am not allowed to use her real name, let’s call her Simone Richards) had a little dog, a toy Maltese poodle, called Coco. Simone and her husband were staying at a local hotel, from where the dog got kidnapped from their room while they were at dinner with friends. The actress got hysterical in the lobby, when they went past reception to pick up messages before returning to their room. The kidnappers had left her a ransom note for R5 million, delivered to the hotel reception by hand, addressed to Mrs. Stanton. The ransom had to be paid by the end of the week, which was three days away.

The actress has a friend in the police, and they arrived – in disguise, because the note said “no police” – after she called him (guess who the “friend” was? None other than my boss…) The husband (we’ll just call him Julian Stanton) is stinking rich apparently, but very stingy (or so Logan said). And Julian hated the dog (also inside info from Logan, but he says everyone knows it…) He is British, and has such a plummy British accent, a very nice voice actually.

To be fair, I will give you the background on the other character involved in the case too – the husband’s brother, Adrian (very handsome, my opinion, with long black hair). He has no particular job and seems to live off Julian’s handouts and who knows what else…

Simone had received a few threats by e-mail the week before, from a person who apparently holds a grudge against her for “robbing” the Oscar for Best Actress from another actress last year…She showed us the print-outs and they were scary! “I will get you back, you slimy ****, just you wait!!!!” That’s a quote from one of the less violent ones… I’ll spare you the details.

So the first thing we did when we got there, was to have interviews with everybody… here’s the transcript of the interview… your first clue! Oh, and I will attach a pic of the ransom note too…

Interview with Simone Richards and Julian Stanton in Suite 315, Royal Hotel, Metropolis at 11.35 p.m., 17 March, 2006. Present: CSI Capt. Logan Manicera, CSI investigator Marina Conegal, Simone Richards (complainant), Julian Stanton (co-complainant)

Captain Manicera: “Good evening, Mrs. Stanton.”

Ms. Richards: “I am not Mrs. Stanton, Captain, I am Ms. Richards…. I kept my maiden name, which is also my screen name, I thought you knew this!” (visibly upset)

Captain Manicera: “Sorry, Ms. Richards, could you tell me about your movements during the course of today please? We have to establish a timeframe for the kidnapping.”

Ms. Richards: “Well, Julian and I went out this morning early… Coco was with us, we went for lunch after some shopping…the restaurant kicked up a fuss because of her, I remember, and we decided that Coco would have to stay behind this evening. We met Peter and Louise at the restaurant downstairs. Just before we ordered dessert, Julian excused himself, saying that he needed to make a phone call…”

Julian Stanton: “That was just a business call, nothing important, really…”

Captain Manicera: “Thank you, Mr. Stanton, we will get back to that later. Please continue, Ms. Richards.”

Ms. Richards: “Oh, please call me Simone, Logan, after all, we do know each other. Umm… well, Julian came back and we finished our dinner, said goodbye to Peter and Louise in the lobby and stopped at the reception desk to pick up messages. The guy behind the counter gave me an envelope, and I opened it there while waiting for Julian to get the keys to our suite. Then I read what the note said… and… and… (starts crying)


We managed to get a description (and lots of photographs!) of the dog, and found out that little Coco had also been wearing his red leather collar… studded with guess what? Real diamonds! Simone didn’t think that the collar was very important though, she was just carrying on about “poor little Coco, pining for her…” Logan and I just looked at each other… was it about the dog, or were the kidnappers after the diamonds on the collar?

OK Joey, that’s all for today, gotta run, have fun!

M

Marina Conegal
CSI Investigator
Dept. of Police, Metropolis




E-mail from Marina to Joey Davids - 27 May, 2006


Dear Joey

Back again! Now where was I…? Oh yes, I sent you the interview transcript… Well, Logan and I got busy with sweeping the hotel suite after that (that’s CSI jargon for picking up every single hair, looking under the beds, the couch, dusting for fingerprints, that sort of thing) and let me tell you, we don’t use a fine tooth comb to go over a room, we use a microscope!)

For your next clue, I will tell you what we found…

 Fingerprints on the bathroom tap
 Several long black hairs found in the hand basin of the hotel bathroom
 Casino chip under the bed
 Fingerprints on casino chip
 2-Euro coin under the couch
 Dog hairs everywhere!

The room had been vacuumed and cleaned that morning, and the only time the couple had been in there since, was when they dropped the dog off before going to dinner. They did not enter the bedroom or the bathroom, as they were late for their before-dinner drinks. The fingerprints found on the bathroom tap didn’t belong to either of them, and it wasn’t those of the chambermaid who had cleaned the room either. The brother, Adrian, was missing (for the moment) so we couldn’t compare his fingerprints… but more about that shady character later.

We hadn’t been able to do DNA testing on the long black hairs found in the bathroom either at that point… but Adrian had long, black hair, Julian said, when we asked him for a description of his brother. By this time, we were seriously trying to find him for questioning.

Several clues didn’t add up though. The husband and the actress were at dinner together, but Julian excused himself to make that telephone call. He was away for 15 minutes, enough time to get to the room, unlock it and get the dog to the lift…. Or let someone in. We obviously checked the phone records, and discovered that the call only lasted three minutes. When we questioned Julian about it, he said that his client wasn’t there, so he only left a voice message. Then he went to the bathroom…. Or so he said.

A casino chip from a local casino was found under the bed, but neither Simone nor her husband admitted to gambling. Did he have gambling debts? His finances, according to his bank statements, are in a very healthy state. Was he lying? Was she lying? But she seemed heart-broken about the dog… look at the interview transcript again. The fingerprint we found on the casino chip did not match either of their fingerprints either.

We thought Julian must be in on the deal, but how to prove it? He had ample motive and opportunity, everybody knew that he hates the dog. Fingerprints won’t really help, because there was no sign of forced entry to the room. Among the clues uncovered we found a 2 Euro coin under the couch... but the couple had last been to Europe before the Euro was introduced, so the coin didn’t belong to either of them. Does this mean that the kidnappers were from Europe? Or visited there recently? Or did Julian perhaps place it there to mislead us?

So, there you go… do you have any suspects yet?

Talk to you soon again!

M

Marina Conegal
CSI Investigator
Dept. of Police, Metropolis



E-mail from Marina to Joey Davids - 29 May, 2006


Dear Joey

Hope this quick note finds you well. Ready for the next clue yet?

Let me tell you what we discovered about the ransom note… and the e-mail Simone received the day after the kidnapping (or should I rather call it “dog-napping”?)… Some very interesting facts came to light there.

First of all, why was the ransom note addressed to Mrs. Stanton? Everybody knows her as Ms. Simone Richards, and very few people know her husband’s surname… they usually call him Mr. Richards, much to his disgust and annoyance. There were no fingerprints on the note, which read… “We have your dog. Pay R5 million by Friday”, and the note was made up by pasting letters cut from magazines onto a blank sheet of paper. Or so the kidnappers thought… clever me thought of testing the paper, and we found the Royal Hotel’s emblem as a watermark on the paper, hidden by the letters pasted on it.

We had an interview with the receptionist, who was back on duty the Thursday after having had a day off. He told us that the guy who delivered the note was bearded, wearing a sort of a cap. He couldn’t tell if it was long, though… but he did remember that the guy spoke with a British accent. He couldn’t tell us exactly when the note was delivered either… but we managed to establish that it must have been after Julian made the phone call, as he asked for any messages at the reception desk before returning to the restaurant table, and there were no messages then.

We still hadn’t found Adrian…

The kidnapping took place on the Tuesday, and by Wednesday evening, Simone had received an e-mail from the kidnappers. It included a picture of the dog, Coco, wearing his red leather collar studded with diamonds, sitting on a newspaper that carried the day’s headlines (you remember that big hoo-hah about the big fire in town?). So on the Wednesday at least, the dog was still alive and well.

Simone was frantic by that stage. Logan actually got cross with her, because she was phoning him all the time, wanting to know if we had found out anything yet.

We obviously ran an IP-address look-up on the e-mail… some people don’t realise how much evidence can be found that way… and sure enough, the e-mail was sent from the same IP-address as Simone’s! But the IP-address traced back to the hotel’s incoming lines… We still didn’t have enough proof to take Julian into custody…

Have to get going now, will be back with more clues for you soon!

M

Marina Conegal
CSI Investigator
Dept. of Police, Metropolis





E-mail from Marina to Joey Davids – 3 June, 2006

Dear Joey

I imagine you are pulling your hair out by now….

Speaking of hair… We found Adrian on the Thursday. When we questioned him, he said that he had been in England for a quick visit the past week, and only got in that morning… but he seemed to have mislaid his passport, so couldn’t give us anything to prove that he had been away. He also said that he had been staying with friends in London, who by now (very conveniently) were off on a month’s camping holiday in the Hebrides. Contacting the Customs department didn’t help his case either, as there was no record of him leaving the country…

We got some samples of his hair… Logan pretended to brush his coat for him when he left! The DNA sampling test proved the hair found in the hotel bathroom did indeed belong to him… so we pulled him back in for questioning. Adrian maintained, however, that the hair could easily have come off a jacket he had left there before leaving for London. Yeah, right, and managed to stay there on the washbasin through several cleaning sessions? We didn’t quite believe that. But Simone confirmed that the jacket was there… and she had been wearing it on occasion, yes… she couldn’t recall exactly when though. The man also kept sneezing! He had mumbled something in his beard about catching a cold in London, but other than red eyes and a runny nose, he seemed quite healthy to me! Oh, I forgot to mention that he was wearing a beard… about 2 days old though…

He stuck to his story, claiming innocence, so we had to let him go since we couldn’t prove that he had been in town at the time… and the dog was nowhere to be found. We turned the hotel upside down, because nobody had seen anybody carrying a dog (or something big enough to keep a dog in) out of the hotel… no barking had been heard by the other guests on that floor either.

Sorry, that’s all I have time for today…

I will try and send you more clues by the end of the week… do you still need them?

Bye for now!

M

Marina Conegal
CSI Investigator
Dept. of Police, Metropolis


E-mail from Marina to Joey Davids – 5 June, 2006


Dear Joey

Ok, so what have you got so far?

We could place Adrian in the hotel room (albeit a bit circumstantial) through the DNA testing of the hair found in the bathroom. He was still sneezing…Hayfever from dog hairs perhaps? He could have shaven off his beard after delivering the ransom note to the hotel, which would explain his slight beard when he “returned” from London.

Julian had the motive, and the opportunity to open the hotel room door for Adrian to get at the dog. The fact that the note was addressed to “Mrs. Stanton” perhaps pointed to him as well, given that he disliked the fact that he was always referred to as “Mr. Richards”. A subtle Freudian slip maybe? But why would he kidnap the dog and send a ransom note? He would have had to pay the ransom anyway, because although Simone is a famous actress, she doesn’t seem to have much money of her own…

And what about the Euro coin found under the couch? We got no useful fingerprints from that. The only fingerprints clear enough to use were found on the bathroom tap… but that didn’t match Adrian’s fingerprints either. Was there a third person involved, or were we barking up the wrong tree suspecting Julian and Adrian? And was it someone completely unknown? That would mean we would have to start from scratch…

We were puzzled… most of the clues pointed to Julian and Adrian, working together, but we couldn’t prove it… well not conclusively enough to stand up in court. We grilled both of them until Julian threatened to sue the CSI department for harassment… but they wouldn’t budge from their stories.

In the meantime, Simone was hounding us for answers. Had we found her dog yet? Why weren’t we able to catch the kidnappers? What clues did we have so far? The ransom was due to be paid the next day, and the kidnappers had sent another e-mail giving a Swiss bank account number to transfer the money into. We all know the Swiss banking system, you won’t get anything out of them, so that wasn’t any help either. But the e-mail trace ended up with the same IP-address… the hotel.

We went back to the beginning. The receptionist fellow had resigned, and we traced him to the local casino… yes, the same one the casino chip found under the bed came from… Logan always says: “There is no such thing as coincidence.” So we took him in for questioning… and his fingerprints matched the ones found in the bathroom… grilling him, he tried to tell us that he had been asked by Mr. Stanton to fetch something from the hotel suite… but couldn’t quite remember what exactly…

We also took apart Simone’s laptop computer. Hidden on the C-drive (thinking it had been erased, no doubt) we found some very interesting e-mail exchanges between Simone and… Adrian.

So, Joey, what do you think? Who kidnapped the missing Maltese?

Julian and Adrian?
Adrian and the receptionist?
Julian, Adrian and the receptionist?
Adrian and Simone?
Simone and the receptionist?
Simone, Adrian and the receptionist?

Keep in mind that a crime is always solved by looking at three things: motive, opportunity and means. There has to be a reason for the crime being committed (even if it is psychological). The guilty person must have had the opportunity to commit the crime; innocence is often dependent on having a water-proof alibi. And the means… how was it done?

Looking forward to hearing from you again.

M

Marina Conegal
CSI Investigator
Dept. of Police, Metropolis


Last edited by ghost on Sat Jun 24, 2006 10:29 pm; edited 1 time in total

Post Thu Jun 15, 2006 4:10 am 
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DarkChyldesKiss
Site Admin


Joined: 29 Mar 2005
Posts: 3381
Location: Inner Sanctum


ghost!

Shiny! Waiting for the next email!!!!!

Jan
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(All works are copyrighted and protected.
DO NOT copy my writing without Permission!)

Post Sat Jun 24, 2006 8:45 pm 
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ghost



Joined: 06 Nov 2005
Posts: 2828
Location: MIA


lol, thanks dark!

but this is the whole story... to get the solution, you have to pm me with your guess....

grin

regards
ghost

Post Sat Jun 24, 2006 9:26 pm 
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DarkChyldesKiss
Site Admin


Joined: 29 Mar 2005
Posts: 3381
Location: Inner Sanctum


ghost

LOL I will!
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(©2001-2011+-...... darkchyldeskiss aka wyldemere )
(All works are copyrighted and protected.
DO NOT copy my writing without Permission!)

Post Sat Jun 24, 2006 10:09 pm 
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lemons



Joined: 12 Feb 2006
Posts: 964
Location: here ... with her <3


anxiously waits for the answer ...... he he

Hmm, I liked ... no, loved this Ghost!!!!!

Got more?!?!?! he he Razz

mello yello
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Post Sat Jun 24, 2006 10:42 pm 
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