[DeathStone0000]

A guy was found dead in his own room in a hotel. The Police noted that they found the body lying on the floor, holding a gun on the right hand, holding a tape recorder on the left hand and with a bullet hole in the temple. A detective came and inspected the body, he took the tape recorder and pressed the Play button. It started with a bit of mumbling sounds, then they heard a voice:

"If somebody is listening to this, then that means I am dead. I had no choice but to take my life. I-I can't take this anymore, I just can't." [gunshot] ---

Silence followed the gunshot and then it stopped.

A Policeman walked towards the door and spoke. "Then that's it. This case is closed."

The detective disagreed and said: "Wait, this is a murder."

WHY WOULD THIS BE A MURDER?

[Guest]

If you shoot yourself you would drop the tape recorder

[Guest]

Somebody rewound the tape

Edited July 31, 2011 by Gihan

[Guest]

Obviously a murder case because someone stopped the tape. If not the tape will still be recording.

[DeathStone0000]

....the answer I'm looking for came from jovinjw....

...was it too easy?

[Guest]

Its soo easy..

We can easily find out the answer..

Edited July 31, 2011 by chetu

[Guest]

What if the stop button of the tape recorder had accidentally pressed by his left hand while falling due to the momentum of his falling hand..????????

[Guest]

....the answer I'm looking for came from jovinjw.... ...was it too easy?

Thanks. Actually I have been following this forum anonymously and recently I decided to create an account to answer qns.

[Guest]

this is obviously murder.

Even if he had managed to press the stop button at the time of his death, he couldn't have pressed the rewind button to ensure the policeman could simply press the play button.

The murderer pressed the stop button, rewound the tape to the start of the message and pressed stop once more.

simples.

[dark_magician_92]

then the recorder wont have stopped recording.

[fabpig]

Now it's been a while since I've owned a tape recorder, but I've had at least one model that auto-rewound when it reached the end of the tape, and STOPped when it returned to the beginning.....

Edited August 1, 2011 by fabpig

[Guest]

This is obvious a murder....it says silence after a gunshot when the recorder is played....if it would have been suicide..at least we could have heard the gun or body falling onto the ground.

[fabpig]

This is obvious a murder....it says silence after a gunshot when the recorder is played....if it would have been suicide..at least we could have heard the gun or body falling onto the ground.

So when he was shot by someone else the body stayed upright....

[Guest]

He didn't have to rewind the tape.

[Guest]

The murderer rewound the tape because he wanted to make sure it worked

[Guest]

ya . the rewind button should be the imp thing ..

Edited August 2, 2011 by ashwindua

[fabpig]

A lot of tape recorders automatically rewind when they get to the end of the tape, so manual rewinding does not have to have taken place. If it's only a short tape that's in the recorder (for example the type on which you record your "...please leave your message after the tone"), then it's quite possible that end of tape has been reached after just a few seconds of silence. The OP states that there was a gunshot followed by silence, then it stops.

Before asserting that "This is murder!", I'd ask a couple of questions: 1) Does this tape recorder auto-rewind? 2) What is the duration of the tape?

Also, some recorders are sound-activated and stop after a few seconds of silence. If the tape is of length such that 2) above is > than the duration of the message, check that there is nothing on the tape after the "silence followed by stop". It could be that some other noise has activated the tape to the end (maid using vacuum cleaner in the corridor outside??).

[Guest]

Gun was in the right hand; entry wound on the left

[Guest]

Pretty easy

[bhramarraj]

This was a murder as the body was found lying on the floor and the tape recorder was in his left hand , the gun in the right hand. But when a person starts falling his hands automatically move in search of support, if he is conscious at that moment. Also even if he is not conscious, while falling on the floor, how the things could remain in his hands.

The murderer forced the person to speak the words, with the tape recorder ON, and as soon as the statement finished shot him dead. Then he planted the tape recorder and gun in his hands.

[Guest]

The most logical reason is as others have said about the recorder being rewound. But lets consider...

The survival rate of a gunshot wound to the head is about 5%, and 3% of those who do survive carry lasting neurological deficiencies, such as loss of memory loss or motor skills. So that leaves a 2% chance that the man survived his own suicide attempt with enough mental faculties to rewind his own tape before he finally succumbed to his wound.

There is also the outside possibility that he had pre-tested the gun, and if he was so precautionary he may well have pre-recorded his own suicide which also contained the sound of the previous gunshot.

There is also a possibility that the voice on the recorder did not belong to the dead man, but perhaps someone he knew... somebody dear to him. In that case the man may have played the tape over to himself numerous times becomming more and more distressed. Before he played it one more time he may have shot himself.

Then theres the outlandish possibility that the man found a tape recorder, and before he could find out what was on it, he accidentally stumbled and shot himself in the head, creating a ludicrous coincidence that the tape actually contained a suicide note even though it was not his.

Then of course, it could be that aliens did it.

[bhramarraj]

The detective played the tape recorder and heard some murmuring sounds, the statement and then the sound of gun shot, followed by silence. But the body was found lying on floor. The person could have not committed suicide lying on floor and the recorder might have recorded the sound of body when it fell on the floor. Absence of this sound on the tape itself indicates not only that the recording was done by the murderer, but also that the recording was done only up to the firing of gun shot, then the tape was stopped..... obviously a dead person can not press stop button and even if he was alive to get a chance to stop the tape before falling, then question arises why a dying person will bother to press stop button of tape recorder....???? So this was clear murder.