This Course Is Murder : School Sleuths Use Elementary Deductions to Learn ‘Who Killed Mr. Felix?’

It’s a murder dying to be solved: There’s an outline of a dead body on the patio of a luxurious beach house. Somewhere around it are a couple of fingerprints, as well as a few thread fragments and strands of hair. And four people have a motive to kill the extremely rich victim.

It’s up to the most resourceful and up-to-date medical examiner in the room to solve the murder. But it won’t be Quincy in this case.

Instead, a slew of pint-size medical examiners from the Ocean View School District are ready to martial their classroom science and chemistry to settle the case of “Who Killed Mr. Felix?”

The students have just an hour to find the clues, analyze them at 14 makeshift laboratory stations and draw their conclusions, Sherlock Holmes style.

“Mr. Felix is no longer with us, and it’s up to you to find out who killed him,” visiting science coordinator Kevin Beals told the sixth- and seventh-graders from Spring View and Harbour View elementary schools who assembled Tuesday at the beach house (in truth, the auditorium of Spring View).

The premise of the science lesson is elementary: Youngsters have to check fingerprints, analyze threads and dismiss the red herrings that pop up at the scene of the crime. They don’t have the help of Mr. Felix’s body. That was stolen as soon as it got to the morgue. But the students do have their classroom science skills to put to good use.

Beals, who works for an educational foundation at UC Berkeley, created the learning game with the assistance of real forensic specialists as part of an educational program to stimulate children’s interest in science. The traveling program encourages youngsters to use their natural curiosity to solve mysteries. As a bonus, the student sleuths learn the latest crime techniques.

For example, scientists have found that gas emitted from Crazy Glue can lift fingerprints from certain surfaces, and the young sleuths were using the device to lift fingerprints from a glass.

As murders go, this one was a curious incident: Mr. Felix was a rich fellow who was extremely disliked. He was remodeling his beach house over the weekend with the help of four friends, all of whom are named in his will.

After Felix is killed, his best friends are the prime suspects.

They are: Vera Cruise, a chemist who likes brown M & Ms and white wool sweaters; Alfredo Fettuccine, a computer programmer who carries a brown felt pen in his pocket; Kendra Goode, an artist who has white powder stuck on her sneaker; and Gene Poule, a car mechanic, who is always followed by his faithful dog, Sasha.

All have a fondness for strong cologne and prefer sneakers and sandals to shoes.

According to the scenario, it is Alfredo who finds Felix sprawled on the floor of his patio. The two had chugged down some Cokes before Alfredo went to the restroom. When he returned, Felix was dead. At the scene of the crime are footprints, empty Coke cans, strands of hair and other pieces of evidence.

After a brief introduction to the murder scene, the game was on.

“It was Gene, the auto mechanic, definitely,” surmised Brianna Bowden, 12, who inspected the murder scene with her crime-solving partner, Lori Seely, also 12. They pointed to paw prints near the body’s outline.

“You see, Gene has a dog and you know he must have been around if the dog’s prints are here,” explained Brianna, who admits that she watches reruns of Alfred Hitchcock.

“Right,” interjected Lori, who is partial to “Father Dowling Mysteries.” “We also found sandal prints. Gene wore sandals.”

It was Gene, definitely. But wait. What about the seemingly blank piece of paper that turned out to have a note written in invisible ink? It also was found near Felix’s body.

And how to explain the fingerprints found on the Coke cans? Don’t they point to another suspect?

“It was Kendra, the artist, definitely,” declared students Cory Calcagno and Omar Qureshi, both 11.

“There’s paint and a brush near the body. Kendra’s an artist. It’s got to be her,” Cory said.

“Wrong,” countered Lori after 30 more minutes of sleuthing.

“It’s a conspiracy,” whispered Lori in her best Oliver Stone impersonation. “Two of them plotted together to kill the guy.”

So what do their teachers think?

“We have no idea,” said George Fotinakes and John Keiter, who will help piece the murder and its perpetrator together in their upcoming science lessons. “It’s a great mystery.”

Beals is the only one who knows who the killer really is. And he won’t tell anybody--even when he or she begs.

“Why take away all the fun?” Beals said. “They’ll never know everything in a crime. That’s part of the challenge of science.”