Word: culprit
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Viewers from eight to 80 have little trouble recognizing the unwavering formulas of these arthritic whodunits: murder discovered, suspects questioned, red herrings introduced, culprit finally tripped up and exposed. Not every show is as hokey and mechanical as Burke's Law, which routinely ends with a scene in which Burke gathers all the suspects and eliminates them one by one until he fingers the guilty party. The better shows at least try to bring their criminology into the '90s: the key to the solution of Cosby's first mystery -- Who is murdering a corporation's top executives? -- was the redial...
...culprit as victim began with the Twinkie defense, which freed the killer of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk; too much sugar made him do it. More recently Damian Williams, videotaped beating trucker Reginald Denny during the Los Angeles riots, was found not guilty because he got caught up in the moment. Lorena Bobbitt convinced a Virginia jury that being physically and sexually abused by her husband, forced to have sex when she didn't want to and failing to "have orgasm," drove her to cut off his penis. She only has to see a psychiatrist...
...hard Trekkie pinballers breathed a sigh of relief and returned to their habit. Alas, their joy was premature; the technician was no Jordi. The first ball launched came to a dead stop, as if stopped by the Enterprise's own ample shields. But a closer inspection revealed the true culprit-the technician, ersatz hero, had left his miniature screwdriver under the glass...
Surprisingly, the hazards of thrust faults were largely overlooked until 1983, when a fierce temblor hit the small central California town of Coalinga. The culprit turned out to be a deeply buried fault (four to 10 miles down) that no one had known about. Its only sign on the surface had been a fold, or buckling, in the earth's crust. Many scientists had thought such folds were harmless, formed by an imperceptibly gradual lifting of the ground. But when Ross Stein, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, and geologist Robert Yeats of Oregon State University examined the seismic...
Resident Mary E. Baker '95 said she believes the "comedian" is a Jordan resident but hopes the culprit will leave. "I assume it's someone who's here because it has happened twice," Baker said. "I wouldn't want him living here...