The Mystery of the Heisted O Henry Bars

Transcription

1 The Mystery of the Heisted O Henry Bars The Crime It seemed like a great idea. Since the O Henry bar had been named after baseball great Hank Aaron, why not raise money for the sports department by selling O Henry bars to students during Verdant Valley High School s big baseball rally? Coach Lefty Longwood had been offered a good deal on 100 cases of the confection from the school s candy delivery man. He paid for the product with money from the athletic department s Bat and Ball Account and took delivery behind the gym. Unfortunately while he was trying to find a few strong students to carry the boxes inside, the candy disappeared. The Question Who stole the O Henry bars? Directions: 1. Read the reported information gathered by the police on the following pages. 2. Verify all the FACTUAL information in the police reports by searching the internet. 3. Determine who is guilty of stealing the O Henry bars.it s the person who lied to the police several times in the following reports!!! 4. Complete the Detective Report WS

2 The Suspects Suspect 1 Lou Gehrig Pulaski Lou Gehrig Pulaski, Verdant Valley High school s band director claims to have been born in LaCrescent, MN, which is east of Austin, 30 years after Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day was held in Yankee Stadium. That s how I got my name, he told us. My father was there that day. He was only 6 years old, but he never forgot how Lou got up to speak to the crowd. This powerhouse of a ball player, this man who had been part of a NY Yankees lineup so formidable it was called Murderer s Row, was dying of a horrible disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. He would be dead before his 38 th birthday. But you know what he said? He said, I consider myself the luckiest man on Earth. According to dad, there wasn t a dry eye in the stadium that day. The man had class. Unlike Coach Lefty, he confided, The coach is always looking to make a few quick bucks or cut corners in some way. He doesn t know the meaning of the word integrity. When I saw those candy boxes stacked up behind the gym I knew he had been up to one of his schemes and I thought it would be great if someone taught him a lesson. But I wasn t the one who did it. I grew up with The Iron Horse as my role model. I don t lie or steal. Lou Gehrig Pulaski s Alibi: I was in the band room tuning the tubas. Suspect 2 Delilah Deli Counter Delilah " Deli " Counter, Verdant Valley High School's dietitian, claims to have been born in Clovis, New Mexico, northeast of Alamogordo, the year One Fine Day won the Caldecott Medal. "I don't mind all this silliness about the baseball season," she told us as she swept through the school's cafeteria like the doyenne of dinner tables. "As a matter of fact, I knew Catfish Hunter personally. My grandparents lived near his family farm in Hertford, North Carolina, and Catfish himself showed me the hole in the barn door through which he pitched balls to practice his accuracy. He was a very nice man. I was very sad to hear that he died a few years back of that same awful disease that killed Lou Gehrig. I prepared a culinary homage to him the day of the rally-verdant Valley Catfish Surprise. "No, it's not the baseball rallies or any of the other sports-related hoopla that steams my pudding," Deli Counter rattled on. "It's the idea of selling candy bars to students in the name of athletics and good health! What on earth does Coach Lefty have between his ears? When I saw those boxes behind the gym I thought, `Someone ought to get rid of all those empty calories before students put them into their per-fectly lovely bodies.

3 "But I didn't do it!" Deli Counter added, shaking a stainless steel industrial-size up spatula in our direction. "If you even suggest that possibility I will turn you into next week's Verdant Valley Mystery Meat Surprise. Delilah "Deli" Counter's Alibi: "I was in the cafeteria perfecting my recipe for Succotash Surprise." Suspect 3 Peter Pilferton Peter Pilferton, delivery driver for School Office Supply Company, Inc., claims to have been born in Dothan, Alabama, south of Auburn, the year that Joseph Jefferson Jackson was banned from playing professional baseball. "This delivery gig is just a temporary job," Peter Pilferton told us. "Until I can get enough money together to make a demo record. Then I'll make it big. I make a little extra money on the side, picking up a few things here, selling them to a few people there. Like the principal, who buys my reconditioned copy machine ink cartridges to save a few bucks on his office supply costs and the ladies in the office who are always interested in jewelry. I got a good deal on the O'Henry bars because they'd been sitting in a warehouse for a few years and were a bit on the stale side, but who's going to notice something like that, right? So Coach Lefty, he wants them at the price I quote him, everybody's happy? Peter Pilferton's Alibi: "I was in the office chatting with the ladies about this baseball ballyhoo. No disrespect to Hank Aaron, but I'm a Babe Ruth man myself. He learned to play ball at St. Dominick's School for Boys in New York City, which is my alma mater, then he went on to become the King of Home Run Hitters. I cried like a baby the day that man died. Interestingly, he died of the same horrible disease that killed Lou Gehrig." "Anyway, when I went back to my truck I was surprised to see the cartons of candy bars sitting all by their lonesome outside the gym door. Where I grew up, a guy who turned his back on his stuff didn't get his stuff back, if you know what I mean." Suspect 4 Bartholomew Batty Brown Bartholomew "Batty" Brown, assistant athletic coach at Verdant Valley High School, claims to have been born in Sedona, Arizona, which is south of Flagstaff, the year that Jackie Robinson died. "Looks bad for the coach, doesn't it?" Batty Brown said with undisguised glee. "He does an unauthorized transfer of funds from an athletic account to buy old candy bars for an unsanctioned fundraiser, and now everything's gone. Poof! That's not going to look good to the school committee. Maybe they'll fire him this time." "I was against this candy sale from the start. I was against using Hank Aaron to make money off the kids. Jackie Robinson was the first African American to play in the major leagues, but Hank. Aaron was one of the first African American baseball players to move into a major league front office, into the business and recruitment end of the game. That was a significant accomplishment, too. That's the kind of thing

4 I'm always thinking about," Batty Brown continued. "How to get ahead, career-wise, and how to help others get ahead. That's why I would be a much better coach for these kids than Longwood is." Bartholomew "Batty" Brown's Alibi: "I was hiding in the last place the coach - would ever go-the school library. I knew he was looking for someone to move all of those cartons, and I didn't feel like' being his toady for the day. Did anybody see me? I don't know. Everyone was getting ready for the baseball rally, so the place was empty. Even the librarian was gone."

5 Detective s Report Title of the Mystery: Suspect 1: Innocent Suspect 2: Innocent Suspect 3: Innocent Suspect 4: Innocent What crime was committed? How was the crime committed? Why was the crime committed? If something was stolen, where is it? What 3-4 clues allowed you to solve this case?

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