<<Back to Materials <<Back to Assignments

"The musician está muerto."

(Materials originally created by  Marc Furigay.)

 

   Click on the thumbnail to see the full-size picture.
 

Anton Karazai had amassed a great fortune in his 80 years as a world-famous pianist, performing for presidents and parliaments, kings and queens, and all the greatest cities' concert halls and children's hospitals.  Anyone who watched Mr. Karazai perform understood immediately that he love his music above and beyond anything else.  Music--playing the piano--was his life.

 
Yesterday evening, however, Mr. Karazai's only son and sole heir phoned the police and reported that his father had hung himself from the chandelier in the piano room at his estate.  When the police arrived, they took several pictures of the scene.  One of those pictures appears on the next page (click link above).
 
The coroner's report confirmed that Mr. Karazai died from asphyxiation, as indicated by the single, thing, skin-breaking line around his neck which had leaked only a small amount of blood across the Adam's apple.
 
Since it is too small to read from the picture, here is Mr. Karazai's last journal entry in its entirety:
 

Have been sad for weeks now.  Even piano fails to cheer me.  Yesterday I actually kicked it--my piano!  But then again, my 90 year old legs could hardly hurt a little bird.

Only my son remains.  My only son and the sole heir to all that I have earned and collected over this incredible, lonely life.  I wonder if he knows what he will be getting when I die?  Perhaps.  But perhaps not, since we do not talk much ever since he chose to hate me for missing so many baseball games because of all my "important concerts" so many years ago.  Oh well.  None of us are perfect.

 
You are the head detective on this case.  Do you close this case as a sad suicide, or do you think something is just a little out of tune?  Argue your case.