Anything bad that happens at Disney World easily makes it to the national news within minutes.
Murder is always sure to lead on the six o’clock news.  So, a murder happening at the most Magical Place on Earth was big talk around every water cooler in America the day after the headlines hit.  Add in both the suspect and victims were minor Disney celebrities and the tabloids went nuts.
She was a former Mouseketeer, from 82 to 83, married to the star of two Disney movies, from the Seventies.  They had divorced once but it did not take and they were working on their tenth year of wedded turbulence.  Saying theirs was a hostile relationship would be an understatement. The Jets and the Sharks got along better, in fact the marriage had ended similarly to what had happened to Riff and Bernardo.  She was still alive him not so much.  She was the first and only suspect.

Her lawyers wanted to pay me a lot of money, to look over the official version and see if I could poke some holes in it.  The defense team waved a bunch of money at me and thought I would jump. Typically, I would be a fool to say no. But this was a high-profile case and a lot of eyes were on it and I did not like being near the spotlight.  I avoided public attention like a redhaired freckled face tourist avoids the Florida sun.  But the paycheck was right; big, huge, and enormous.  So, I agreed and signed non-disclosure contracts with addendums and clauses.

The law firm wanted me to read the files first but I waved them off. I wanted to go to the scene of the crime and view it with my own peepers before I started slogging through other people’s impressions.

Now it is said ‘no one dies at Walt Disney World’ and this is technically true.  No one is officially dead until a Sawbones says, ‘that man is dead.’  But for all the adults in the room we know that is just not true.  People are dead no matter where a doc says those four little words.  But hey who am I to disagree with a technicality.

I arrived at the Polynesian Resort lobby to meet my minder, Jerry Waters.  Jerry was the lead investigator for the D.A.s office, a decent guy but he was a company man, and he never let you forget it. I was going to be the metaphorical enemy for this interaction.  We made small talk but I avoided questions about the case until I could see the scene.

We had walked around the outside of the Moorea Longhouse and I saw that Disney had not been asleep at the switch.  Surrounding the end of the exterior of the Longhouse was a tasteful but blocking barrier of moveable shrubs in wheeled planters.

I know all about Disney but I don’t know how they maintained this army of silent green and brown sentinels.  Was there a lone person out there responsible for keeping them trimmed and watered, who turned them occasionally so that they had a nice uniformity of growth.  Inquiring minds wanted to know.

We approached a Disney Security Host sitting in a golf cart, underneath a big umbrella trying hard to look alert while watching the slowing growing botany barrier.  I wondered if he had a watering can; you know to help maintain its lush greenness.

Jerry showed his ID and the bored Security Host dutifully checked his clipboard and had both of us sign in. Jerry produced a Disney card key, that we would use from the interior hallway.  It was the last room on the end facing the water and Jerry told me that Disney had emptied all the rooms beside, across and above it so no one could look into the patio area of the crime scene.

Jerry handed me a pair of gloves which I put on, not bothering to remind him that I was already under strict instructions to touch nothing.  It was pointless anyways the Crime Scene Investigators had already been through the place, photographing, videoing, collecting, printing, and inventorying everything in the room.

I saw that all the sheets and such were missing from the bed and a large section of the carpet had been cut out as well.  No doubt being examined under a microscope at the Orange County Crime Lab.

I asked Jerry to tell me the D.A.’s theory of the crime. I stressed theory to remind him I was working for the opposing counsel.

Jerry looked at me with aloofness as if he had all the answers and I was going to come up empty.  I was under no illusion that I could disprove the prosecutors , but I do like to come up with my own answers.  I am hardheaded that way.  So, I simply listened intently to the facts and set aside his attitude.

“The victim. (He said the name but I for the sake of avoiding sensationalism I will not use it here.)  He had come back from the autograph signing at the Contemporary.

“Alone?”

“From all reports, no evidence of anyone else in the room except his wife, the killer.”

“Alleged killer.”  I said, just to continue our verbal jousting.

Jerry sighed.  “The accused, came back two hours later, drunk as a skunk, she had to be escorted back by her assistant.  The deceased was sitting on the patio and the married couple continued their low-level argument from earlier in the evening and the assistant departed. An hour later their argument escalated and she stabbed him with the steak knife that was on the room service tray.   She then cleaned the blood off her hands with the bloody towels and wash cloths from the shower.  She then took off to Disney Springs where she drank until she was cut off from further intoxicating beverages by the staff, then she came back here and called the cops putting on a big boo hoo show for the cops.”

“How did you get the timeline?”

“Well, the door was activated by the deceased’s card key at six p.m., then he ordered room service, a steak which came with the murder weapon.” He paused for dramatic effect. “The statement of the assistant, and then her getting cut off at Raglan Road down at Springs, then her call to 911 from the room. Not to mention temperature of the corpse and rigor mortis.”

“Motive?”  I asked hoping the widow did not have one.

“She found him making out with a blonde fangirl in the Green Room earlier today, which was probably revenge for her affair last year with the pool boy.”

“Ouch.” I said. “Clichésish, but good motive.” And I thought, something the jury would just eat up if this went to trial.

I looked around the room visualizing his account.  Her coming back to the room entering from the patio, him following.  Them arguing about his infidelity, him throwing hers up in her face. Her getting mad, grabbing a knife off the tray on the table and stabbing him, then her cleaning up, and going back out while her husband was bleeding out on the now bloodstained mattress. “So, she stabs him, cleans up, and leaves with him bleeding out on the bed?”

“Have you met her?”

I shook my head. “I have not had the pleasure.”

“Cold.  A real ice queen.”

“Elsa, eh?”

I got a blank look from Jerry.

I shook my head. “Philistine.”  I said quietly.

“What did you say?”

“I said ‘Canteen’ as in enough blood to fill a canteen.” I said, motioning towards the stained mattress.

Categories: A Miles Mitchell Story

Tags: alcohol, defense attorney, Disney Contempary, Disney Polynesian, district attorney, Miles Mitchell, MMM, murder, mystery, polynesian, The Miles Mitchell Mysteries, the turnaround case