Murder Mystery Solved!
Berkebile pens mascot demise, wins IPOD

Murder in North Manchester:

Detective Lamsberg Uncovers the Bizarre Story of Sami Spartan
by Tiffany Berkebile

My name is Detective Lamsberg. I’ve investigated the Sami Spartan case thoroughly and it involves far more than just a murder. The root of the story is covered up by more layers of lies and secrecy than dirty clothes on the floor of a dorm room. It involves a biased beekeeper, a pretentious president, a notorious nurse, and several other equally grim characters.

Who is the real culprit here? Is it Sami, who seems so innocently struck down in the prime of cheering? Or was she the real culprit all along? She lived her daily life in disguise and died in a veil of mystery, with a tangible veil located mysteriously nearby. Here is the real story of Sami’s death: why it happened, who was at fault, and who helped along the way.

Many people aren’t aware that Special Agent Gamsby lives a short drive away in Carmel, Ind. He’s been familiar with campus much farther back than Sami’s murder. Detective Gamsby can often be found strolling lazily around campus on Sunday afternoons. He seems to love the campus so it makes sense that he should be helping in Sami’s case; however, he has a dark desire that very few people know about. Detective Gamsby is part Golden Retriever and in fact can’t restrain himself from the hunt. He loves killing and retrieving small creatures. Squirrels are just the animal to whet that appetite. He spends his time on campus stalking the helpless, catching the innocent off guard and hauling them away to his personal hoard.

Many people have never seen this side of Detective Gamsby… President Jo Switzer is one of those few. Everyone on campus knows there is a hefty fine for killing or chasing squirrels, which is where the president and her notorious power come in. Luckily for Gamsby, she’s the top dog (pun intended) on this campus. And her right paw is Gamsby because he’s practically eating out of her hand in gratitude. When he needs a favor, she covers up his hundreds of squirrel burial grounds, and Gamsby throws her a bone on some of her less-than-savory jobs.

Now we’ve set the scene for murder, but have no motives or plans of action. Now it’s Sami’s cue to enter…

Sami was always known for her brown-nosing lovability. One man’s treasure is another man’s trash in this case, though, because she made her fair share of enemies. Sami was always out for a deal, which was how she became captain of the cheerleading squad in the first place. I mean, let’s face it: her head didn’t exactly make her a miracle of modern aerodynamics. But Sami knew the right things to say, the people to say them to, and was always in the right place at the right time.

The day before her murder, Sami had been surfing the Internet for a few hours when she started to get excited. She went to the library and copied pages out of a book of rare trees. Then, growing even more excited, she set out for the edge of Manchester College’s property. She returned that night, jubilant, and woke up the next morning with a smile on her face. She left again, but this time she took an ax.

When Sami arrived at the edge of MC property, Professor Sweeten was just returning from a walk. She stopped to say hello, they chatted for a bit and Sami kept walking. Now things start to get complicated: Sami never returned from her expedition to the woods and somehow a jacket and a veil found their ways to the scene of her death. We know now that the ax was hers, but did someone force it from her grasp and wield it in the use of her own demise? Was she brought down by a weapon that she unknowingly supplied?

That’s a good theory, but if you were thinking that, you’re completely wrong. That’s why I’m the detective, though, and not you.

So: According to the papers found in Sami’s pocket, she was entering the woods to find a rare type of tree. A tree with roots that could provide a very lucrative sale if shown to the right buyers. She knew this tree existed because she had seen its leaves in Professor Sweeten’s office during many meetings with him about her Biology class. What she didn’t know was that the tree was an illegal presence brought into the United States without governmental knowledge. Unfortunately for Sami, Sweeten was deathly aware of this fact.

Sami set out, ax in hand, to cut down a sample of the tree. Instead what she found (or what found her) was 1. Sweeten back from a walk, and 2. Tara Vogel.

Tara enters this tail because she had a soft spot for a waggy tail and Gamsby had the waggiest tail on this side of the pound. Vogel would do anything for Gamsby, so when she was told to kill Sami, she hesitated but agreed. While Vogel waited for Sweeten to round a bend in the trees and for Sami to get a little closer, she had murder and soft, sweet fur on her mind at the same time.

When Sami passed, Vogel jumped out and injected her with a high dosage of lethal poison. She then pocketed her hypodermic needle, looked around, and strolled casually off.

From his hiding spot nearby, Sweeten looked on unnoticed. He could rest assured that his rare trees were safe from meddling. Long before Sami, he had realized their worth and was running a Black Market business from his office. Sweeten returned tranquilly to his bee hive on the roof of the Science Center, never realizing that snagged on a branch near Sami was his spare beekeeping veil…

I’ve told you most of the gruesome details of this tragic tale, but the plot really thickens now, like a chemistry experiment gone wrong.

After Sami’s death, she laid in the grass for a few hours until Doug Shoemaker, head of the cheerleading squad, wandered onto the scene. He saw Sami and unearthed felt some of the always-present animosity the two shared for each other. He mused on all the times she’d undermined his authority. No matter how many times he told her to stay on the bottom of the cheerleading pyramid, she always climbed to the top anyway.
“It’s ridiculous and wrong!” he thought to himself. “Someone should stop her arrogance. Someone NEEDS to stop her or she’ll run loose and demean us all!!!!!”

Shoemaker let his anger grow from within like a cheerleader mixed with a pit bull. He was all foam, energy, and mindless action. He ripped his jacket off and smothered the sleeping Sami with all of his might, never noticing the ax lying at her side. In fact, Shoemaker didn’t notice a lot of things: Sami’s cold skin, motionless chest, or lack of pulse, just to name a few of the obvious.

After he’d smothered Sami for several minutes, Shoemaker got up and realized what he’d done. He stumbled backward, dropped his jacket, and ran with all of his might. Strangely enough, the crime he blamed himself for had in fact already been completed by someone else long before he got there. That’s what you call a cruel sense of irony. Or you can just call it oversight on Shoemaker’s part.

The pieces of this puzzle are almost together now, but what are they forming? They’re forming cheese, my friends, cheese. A big piece of stinky, moldy cheese stuffed in the back of someone’s refrigerator for five months. The only piece missing is still the initial motive: WHY DID GAMSBY WANT SAMI DEAD???

I mentioned Gamsby’s trouble with squirrels earlier and that he liked to hoard them in mass graves on campus. I did not, however, mention where those graves were. Are you catching on now? Gamsby had a felt for awhile that Sami was up to something. When she went out to the woods near his dead squirrel stashes two days in a row, he got scared. Really scared. The truth is, Sami probably did know about his little rodent problem, but she hadn’t made a move so she most likely didn’t know how to turn a profit on the knowledge yet. But Gamsby wasn’t one to let sleeping dogs lie, so he schemed with President Switzer for awhile. They devised a plan involving Tara Vogel and the rest is history.

Unfortunately, the end of Sami’s story is no less confusing than its beginning. We are left with: a murder, an attempted murder (of a corpse), a conniving president, a detective with dirty motives and an eyewitness with murder on his own mind. These are the facts as I, Detective Lamsberg, know them.

I am going to personally arrest every one of the suspects, accomplices, and attempted murderers to make sure they’re taken care of. First, though, I’m cutting down that rare tree of Sweeten’s myself, because everyone can use a little spare cash for the hard times. I guess that old saying is true, then: When you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas. Well, I’ve got them now and all I can do is start scratching.