To the honorable Chief
Ms Megan Hoddinott
On the 12th of August, 1973, we received a call from a woman named Mrs Queenie Volupides. She called us to report her husband, Mr Arthur Volupides’ possible death. We arrived at around 2 a.m.
When we arrived at the scene, Mrs Volupides was standing next to her husband’s body. We entered her house and proceeded with the investigation. We saw Mr Volupides lying on his back on the floor, his feet on the stairs, facing up, and his head was on the carpet, facing up as well. The next thing we noticed was that the banister is on his left side going down the stairs, and he is holding his glass in his left hand as well. The glass wasn’t broken. At the time, we noticed that there were no emergency respondents present. The carpets and the ornaments by the staircase have not been disturbed. And last, we thought there was someone that was-and is still-cooking when we were in the house.
We had a short interrogation with Mrs Volupides. She admitted that she had an argument with her husband, and ran out to the country club, where a party was going on. She left shortly before one in the morning, and invited a few friends to follow her home and have one more drink. They got to the Volupides house about ten minutes after Mrs Volupides, where she greeted them and said, “Something terrible happened. Arthur slipped and fell on the stairs. He was coming down for another drink-he still had the glass in his hand-and I think he’s dead. Oh, my God-what shall I do?” We came with Mrs Volupides to the hospital to have the victim autopsied. The autopsy conducted later concluded that Arthur died from a wound on the head and confirmed that he’d been drunk.
We later investigated the evidences and compared them with Mrs Volupides’ testimony. First of all, Mrs Volupides said that her husband fell on the way down to get another drink, and he still had the glass in his hand. However, the glass wasn’t broken. As a rule, when people fall downstairs usually they will let go objects they’re holding and it will be broken, especially some kind of glasswares. The glass was in Mr Volupides’ left hand where the banister is also in Mr Volupides’ left side going down. We found this odd because usually, people hold the banister while going down the stairs. Next, the position of Mr Volupides’ body was peculiar. Mrs Volupides said that his husband slipped and fell down the stairs. We found this odd, because people usually fall face first, but Mr Volupides’ face was facing up. We also found it odd that someone’s cooking during that hour, because usually people cook at reasonable time, such as for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. We also noticed how there were no emergency respondents present. Usually, when people noticed someone unconscious, they would immediately call for an ambulance. The last thing that seemed odd was that the carpet on the stairs and the items on the wall remained undisturbed. When people slip downstairs, the staples holding the carpet will be detached due to the force given by feet as they try to stop falling. The same rule applies to the items on the wall. Some of the objects should have fallen or changed in position because people usually try to stop themselves from falling by seizing the nearest object, in this case, ornaments on the wall, such as the lamps, mirrors, and candle stands.
With evidences unsupporting Mrs Volupides’ testimony, we concluded that she was lying. We recommend further and deeper interrogation session with Mrs Volupides, informing her that her claims are controversial towards our evidence. Therefore, we need to taker her into custody on suspicion of manslaughter. This is what we think might have happened based on the evidences: Mrs Volupides had a fight with her husband while they were planning to go out together, because her husband got drunk. Mr Volupides tried to hurt her due to his angry, drunk state, so she hit her husband with a frying pan in defense. Then, she went to the club because she felt guilty. There, she thought of ways to cover for her crime. After coming up with a plan, she went home to initiate the plan. She set it up to look like he fell, and used the frying pan to cook to get rid of traces of blood. Then, she called her friends so that she would have some people who support her alibi.
.jpg)
