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Glass Scattered Outside (illustration)
FILE No.86Unsolved

Glass Scattered Outside

Difficulty ★☆☆about 3 minLocked RoomGlassStaging
The window is broken and the glass lies outside. It looks like a break-in, but something is off.

Case Record

One night, the master of a holiday villa was stabbed to death. The window of the room is smashed. Most of the glass lies outside, in the garden. There are only a few fragments on the floor inside the room.

His wife says, "A burglar must have broken the window, got in, stabbed my husband and run away." However, the window latch was still locked from the inside, with no sign of tampering.

Your question

What can be deduced from the scene?

Case Files

Evidence

Diagram

Glass and latchItemObservationGlass shardsMostly outside, a few insideWindow latchLocked from the insideWife's accountA burglar broke inGlass broken from outside would fall inside.
Diagram

Timeline

  1. The master of the villa is killed.

Hints

If you get stuck, open the hints one at a time, in order.

Open hint 1

Which way does glass fall when broken from outside?

Open hint 2

Where is most of the glass here?

Open hint 3

What was the state of the latch?

Solve It

Your question

What can be deduced from the scene?

Choose the answer closest to the truth.

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The Truth

Someone inside broke the window from within to make it look like a break-in from outside

The answer is: someone inside broke the window from within to make it look like a break-in from outside.

When a window is struck from outside, most of the glass typically falls inside the room. Here, most of the glass is in the garden, so the window was most likely broken from the inside. In addition, the latch was locked from the inside. A burglar from outside would have had to unlock it to enter.

It is very likely the burglary was staged.

Away from the blowBroken from outside: shards fall inside the roomAt this scene most shards are outsideSo it was broken from inside: a staged burglary
Diagram of the solution

Key Points

  • Where the broken glass lies can show which side of the window was struck
  • Where the shards lie shows where it was broken from
  • Combine this with the state of the latch

Why people get fooled

We link "broken window" straight to "someone broke in from outside."

Similar tricks

  • The shard-position type
  • The suspect-a-staged-scene type

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