Mystery: Trashed

In his socks, a pair of blue jeans and a white t-shirt, he rides the elevator alone down from the fourth floor to the lobby. The doors whisper open; the lobby is empty, the security desk manned by fellow students long closed. He walks to a stairwell door, heads down to the basement.

The basement’s labyrinthine corridors are lit by fluorescents. During the day, the area is typically overrun by maintenance workers. But many students in Wolfe are familiar with it via the exterior double doors of the compactor room, which residents often prop open with a brick, to avoid the main entrance and security. John reaches for the knob:

He flips on the lights. There’s a hanging fluorescent fixture; two naked light bulbs jut from a wall. The room is 20 feet by 20 feet, with a high ceiling and a stained concrete floor. The chute is its centerpiece, rising through the ceiling like a chimney, its terminus behind a 36-inch-by-28-inch unlocked door. Inside it, an electric eye activates when falling trash breaks its plane, initiating the moving ram on the left. The ram, just 29 inches tall, sweeps slowly across the bottom of the chute, with the power of 2,000 pounds, compacting the trash into a container to the right.

John eyes the container, a pink cloud of old chewing gum stuck to it. It’s six feet across, 40 inches wide, and five feet tall, though because it’s on wheels, it’s elevated a foot higher. The smell is overwhelmingly sour. There are two possibilities. In the first, he opens the door to the compactor, wrenches his body up, and climbs in, either head-first or feet-first. The motion breaks the eye, setting off the compactor, trapping him.

Or: The container’s steel lid is comprised of two large, exceedingly heavy sides. John climbs up onto the ledge to get a better reach. He struggles, pushing one side of the lid up, either holding it open above him as he climbs inside the container or letting it rest on the brick wall behind it, at an angle precariously close to 90 degrees.

Disaster strikes. Once he’s inside, the lid slams down on his head, rendering him unconscious, or even dead.

Eventually, an unsuspecting student sends a load of trash tumbling down the chute, activating the compactor. John’s body is crushed.

But why? For what?

Whatever he was after, Vidocq members theorized, it had to have been important enough to lead him down to the basement in the middle of the night. The necklace — the one authorities found in the trash container after it had been emptied. It may or may not have had some special resonance with Jessie. Members wondered: Could John have thrown it out in a fit of pique? Could it have been the object he so desperately wanted back?