Golden Age Mysteries and, well, reality

[PatienceKiller]

A murder with a five ton wrecking ball would be nothing short of awesome, most creative weapon in history perhaps.

"Now you see, Hadley, the room is perfectly sealed..."

*Crash through the wall*
Locked room, my ass!

[patrick_o]

I don't mind sharing that that made me laugh out loud right in the middle of a biology class in the computer lab, where we were supposed to be working on a lab (which I've just about finished anyway)...

[Samskara]

Originally Posted by LastCenturyDetective

I'm not sure if there's any truth to this, but this is what I got in the mail a few weeks ago:

It's apparently from a book entitled Mysteries of the Unexplained.

My theory: a practical joke of sorts. The wrecking ball was lowered into a hole and buried by employees of the company. Why? Maybe their boss was an ass, and they decided to have a little fun at his expense.

If Wikipedia is to be believed, a 5 ton wrecking ball is at the high end of the size range. If seems safe to say that you couldn't manage a ball that size without both heavy equipment and the knowledge of how to use that type of equipment. While digging a hole and burying the ball would fit the description and can't be ruled out, it might still leave evidence of recent digging around the construction site, and if noticed, would implicate the workers on that job.

Alternately, another crew on a job elsewhere in town might have found that their 1 ton wrecking ball simply wasn't up to the job. They came over with a suitable truck, lowered the 5 ton ball into the back of the truck, drove back to their own site, and switched the wrecking balls. This would reduce the amount of time and activity at the site from which the ball disappeared, and the missing ball would be rather like the purloined letter -- invisible in plain site.

The large size of the ball implies a large building, possibly an office building or warehouse, which in turn indicates a business district -- largely deserted at night, so that if the operation were performed efficiently, nobody would notice.

Meanwhile, the original 1 ton wrecking ball would be dumped into the White River. It's relatively small and compact, and, if the police did check, there would be only one wrecking ball at the work site -- exactly what they would expect to find. Wrecking balls look pretty much alike, so that identification would be impossible based on a description.

[LastCenturyDetective]

Samskara, your solution is probably correct, but I like to think that that construction site resembled an Edmund Crispin or Michael Innes novel that night – with disgruntled employees moving around a 5 ton wrecking ball.

Originally Posted by PatienceKiller

"Now you see, Hadley, the room is perfectly sealed..."

*Crash through the wall*
Locked room, my ass!

Please, don't make me laugh while I'm drinking something!

[PatienceKiller]

Hmm, I don't know, I have heard of a few instances where construction employees have delayed work, blaming it on lack of equipment, and none, where they attempted complicated grand larceny in order to speed it up.

[patrick_o]

Finished The Burning of Evelyn Foster today. Severe police incompetence left an unsolved mystery and allowed a killer to walk free. It's rather shocking.