Serial Homicide Unit

Tonight we played Serial Homicide Unit by Kat Miller and Michael S. Miller in which we create a group of potential victims of a serial killer and then participate as the investigation team trying to solve the serial homicides. We chose as the unifying theme of our killers murders to be he only attacked side characters from pop culture. Our characters included John Deegan, retired bassist from Queen who wanted the bands albums to keep selling; Jolyssa, YouTube make-up influencer who desired nothing so much as her parents’ approval; Sarcastic Flannel Dude from every teen sitcom who wanted to get a good price when selling his haunted Chevy; Charles from Brooklyn Nine Nine who wanted to cook a proper vegan meal that his cat Brunhilde would love; and Billy Mays, Oxyclean spokesperson who wanted his singing career to take off.

In the first round, Jolyssa went home to visit her parents only to discover that they had become Mennonites and dragged her off to service with them after making her wash off her face. Deegan got a call from his manager Phil Collins about a pending suit by Aerosmith against Queen for plagiarism, but Deegan turned it around when he asked Phil to play up the controversy to drive sales rather than pull the albums and let sales fall. When Flannel Dude met with his first prospective buyer, the ghost crashed the car during the road test. Charles took Brunhilde to the vet after she stopped eating or sleeping. Although the doctor at first thought she might have been replaced by a robot, the examination showed her to be in perfect health and promised to promote Charles’ cooking vlog. And Billy fails to get a meeting with anyone in the music industry but still manages to get Phil Collins to listen to his R&B demo tape.

Although he had previous victims, we jump straight to the investigation meeting after our killer murders Billy Mays. We learn that Billy’s body was found in an aquatic-themed strip/fetish club called Aquatica and that he had purchased tainted cocaine and been killed by a particularly bloodthirsty killer. There were frayed ropes and drag marks on the floor leading to his body in a position known as the hunched eagle, arms splayed, face squashed on the floor with buttocks raised in the air. Mays was a regular at the club who was well-known by staff and whose habits would have been easy to track. The psychic claims the club staff knows much more than they’re telling and that the hunched eagle is a secret sign of solidarity among the clients of Phil Collins. The mermaid tail discovered at the scene belonged to Mays rather than being a rental. And apparently Mays had had an altercation with another patron over possession of a particular club implement about a month prior to his death. Based on the totality of the clues, it is clear that the killer and the victim were acquainted.

In the second round of scenes, we see Flannel Dude overcome the limitation of there being too many haunted Chevys listed on Craigslist by getting the ghost Benjamin to argue with his prospective buyer, who wanted to recreate the experience of driving with his deceased wife. Charles must come to terms with Brunhilde’s desire to chase down and eat flies and bugs at the dog park rather than the vegan meals he’d prepared for her. We also learn that Billy May had helped Charles with his costume and provided him with GARLIC, a new cocaine based concoction, to include in his dishes for Brunhilde. Jolyssa overcomes the contamination of the nation’s make-up supply with rat poison by doing a special video expressing profound sympathy with the 17 victims while done up to appear to not be wearing make-up. And Deegan learns that kids are no longer listening to rock bands but streaming ASMR tracks of natural music instead.

Jolyssa is the killer’s next victim, found dead at a Mennonite seminary in an unnaturally clean kitchen upstate. The crime scene was covered in makeup remover and her skin contained traces of GARLIC. There were only vegetables in her digestive tract, and the food in her stomach was barely digested so likely the last thing she did was eat some vegetables. There were small cat paw tracks upstairs from the crime scene and the bug population had fallen at the seminary recently. The body was also left in the hunched eagle position and the cause of death was a GARLIC overdose. There were a number of aquatic-themed ASMR videos saved on Jolyssa’s computer.

These clues led the Unit to a successful indictment of Brunhilde the cat.