RICHLAND UNPLUGGED - FLUSHING AWAY CRIME AT YMCA HEARING
The Free Press June 5, 2003
Move over, Brinks Armored Car Heist. Make way, Unabomber. You’re history, Watergate. There’s a REAL CRIME to be solved, right here in Richland Township. Our Crime of the Century. That’s Crime, with a capital C that rhymes with P that stands for Planning Commission. So, just the facts, ma’am....
It was a dark and stormy night. The time: 9:00pm Thursday, May 22, 2003. The place: Richland Township Building, California Road. Monthly meeting of the Township Planning Commission. Item 5 on the “Developers” portion of the agenda: land development approval for the new YMCA on Station Road. Hardly the setting for mayhem, but these are troubled times. When people are pushed to the limit, there is no telling what evil lurks in the minds of men. (The Shadow knows, heh heh!).
The YMCA hearing was actually rather brief. No one showed up to oppose the facility except the two families that have filed suit to stop it, and their attorney. But when the dust had settled, there was a shocking discovery....someone had trashed the one restroom in the township building!!!! Toilet paper everywhere. Huge wads of it, flushed like giant stoppers, clogging up the system like bad lawsuits in a county court. The first act of vandalism in the history of the hall. The Toilet Paper Terrorist had struck!
And cleanup was anything but elementary, my dear Watson. It took a call to the township Road Crew to unplug the porcelain throne. The restroom had been cleaned prior to the meeting, so, in the finest tradition of great detective novels, the perpetrator had to have been someone at the meeting that night. Mr. Plum?? Colonel Mustard?? Call for Clouseau. Round up the usual suspects, and let’s check the evidence...
This guy was good. Real good. No witnesses. Tapes from security cameras? Nope, none installed. Curses, foiled again. Fingerprints? Too many to mention, but it ruled out the one-armed man. And who wants to dust the toilet bowl anyway? Ditto DNA testing on the seat. Residual particle analysis and holographic imaging were inconclusive. Calls to America’s Most Wanted have yet to be returned. If only Stu Woods was here to lead the investigation...
Isn’t the primary suspect always the guy who called 911 in the first place? Correction please, number one son. Roger Cross, the man who reported the crime, is a Planning Commission member, administrator of a home for the aged, and an ordained minister. Not likely bad to the bone, although he does ride a motorcycle. Let’s put him on the “B” list.
PC member Todd Koch, a descendant of the original Quaker settlers in this area, was sick that night. Informants said that this was the first meeting he had ever missed. Suspicious coincidence, but also “B” list material.
How about PC member Pat Keller, who is also a township supervisor? There’s motive: for decades the Keller family has been feuding with the Kohler family, the makers of the toilet in question, over the correct spelling of the name. And opportunity: she has had many years to plan the crime, having been a supervisor since 1997. Nah, she’s a preservationist, and wouldn’t waste the paper.
Ditto Craig Staats, the chairman of the township Preservation Board. Andrew Maseloff is on the Police Liaison Board, and a chemical engineer who specializes in lubricants pressed from nutshells. (What’s with that??) He also looks like Andre Agassi, but without the bad temper. Probably not our man. Mike Merkelt is an auto mechanic. Mr. Goodwrench with a smile. Left-handed, so he couldn’t have done it. I get to lots of detective movies.
Final PC suspect, and we had to look closely at this one - Tim Arnold. Executive Director of the Township Water Authority. A man with detailed knowledge of water-using devices, who certainly had the specialized skills necessary to disable one of his own babies. His brother owns a nursery, so he had a motive for using up all that toilet paper...more paper used means more trees cut down which means more trees planted which means more trees sold by his brother! Draw your own conclusions here, fellow sleuths.
Of course, there were more than 30 other people at the meeting that night, for varying amounts of time. Their alibis: most were attorneys and developers. This might get them lynched elsewhere, but pardoned here. So maybe it was one of the few members of the public who stayed through the evening. Maybe someone who was upset with the Planning Commission, or the township. Maybe someone who had previously been in trouble with the law for vandalism in the township. I don’t have to be named Hercule or Sherlock to know who in that room fit the description, but without the DNA test or holographic imaging, a suspect is just a suspect. Bottom line: after paying the bill to “Free John”, the Toilet Paper Terrorist is still on the loose!
There’s an art to stuffing a turkey. Some politicians have perfected the science of stuffing the ballot box. Santa stuffs stockings, and sometimes “stuff” even happens. But stuffing a poor defenseless commode, right in the heart of our sacred township building, just a few feet away from our police station? Lock your bathroom doors, citizens of Richland. There may be a serial stuffer in our midst.