By Candace Allen
Members of the Brundizzi family, along with some of their friends, were ruthlessly murdered on Friday night at a speakeasy set up in the library of Don Donato “Baby Face” Brundizzi’s home. Guests were invited for a night of drinking and gambling, but before they could enjoy themselves, the Brundizzis’ $1 million private yacht containing a shipment of hooch was stolen.
Yet again, the ladies of Kappa Delta chose a mind-boggling mystery for their dinner guests to solve last Friday. For the past six years, the sorority has hosted an event called a Murder Mystery Dinner. Dinner guests interact with each other and the actors as they attempt to figure out who has committed the crime by asking the suspects questions and eavesdropping on conversations.
“What it is is that we have a team of actors that perform major scenes,” explained Kelli Williams, event chair and member of Kappa Delta. The actors came together at the beginning of the performance to set up the scenario, and at the end were called back onstage by an undercover detective, who declared that she knew who committed the crime. This is when the audience was challenged to come to their own conclusions.
Kappa Delta has been preparing for the event since December. The play is usually performed two nights before a smaller audience, but this year’s event lasted one night and had a larger audience. Williams said that 224 tickets and 400 wristbands were sold for the event. All proceeds went to Prevent Child Abuse America.
Now for the backstory: the primary suspects in the crime include Don Donato “Baby Face” Brundizzi; the Godfather, Waldo “The Sneak” Brundizzi; Donato’s brother “Crusher” Joe Genelli who, according to tradition, should have been the Don; Don Brundizzi’s bodyguard; and Rita “The Rose” Scallopini, niece of Don Brundizzi.
Also suspected are “Dapper Dan” Johnson, a dissatisfied accountant; Jimmy “The Gyp” Johnson, Dapper’s greedy twin brother; and Fifi LaTrick, the Don’s girlfriend.
It’s clear that Waldo has the most evidence mounted against him because he was next in line to become the Don. But there’s also the accountant, who, restless and longing for better circumstances, was observed being overly dramatic during the time of the murder. Because Jimmy “The Gyp” has an insatiable hunger for money, he also would have had a motive for stealing the yacht for illegal liquor and is possibly capable of committing murder.
So when at last the undercover cop revealed herself on stage, the evidence had been presented in full, and it was up to the audience to guess at the conclusion for themselves.
“There’s a detective sheet and you write down who you think the killer is and what you think their motive is,” Williams said. Each audience member filled out one of these during the intermission.
But, Williams explained, the show couldn’t just end with simple finger-pointing: it had to go out with a bang. When all returned to the stage, the undercover cop was murdered and a whirlwind of action soon revealed the murderer.
Audience members who guessed the identity of the murderer on their detective sheets received gift certificates, all of which had been donated for the event.
So who killed who? Waldo stabbed Dapper Dan, and in turn Don Donato poisoned his brother Waldo to protect the family name. This left only the Don himself and his niece Rita. Just when all seemed well, Rita murdered her uncle, proving to be the brains behind the fiasco.
