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[intro music]
CR: Hello and welcome to yet another episode of Untowed Mysteries! I’m your host, Carthie Romeo…
RV: And I’m also your host, Route Vanni. I’m so excited for today’s episode, it brings me back to our college years!
CR: I know! I’ve been DYING to get to this one… Ok, maybe putting it like that does make me sound like a psychopath…
RV: Not that there’s anything new there…
CR: But! I feel like it’s justified, because today’s case took place in our great alma mater, Radiator Springs University! [the first few notes of the RSU anthem play]
RV: And not only did it take place in RSU, we were actually students there at the time. Sophomores, to be exact. Man, time sure does fly… I was studying Engine-eering, you were studying Politicar Science…
CR: And 5 years later we’re hosting a True Crime podcast because the job market is a nightmare! [sad horn music plays for a couple of seconds]
RV: Anyway, I bet you, listener, are starting to put two plus two together, trying to figure out the subject of today’s episode, since we’re taking a literal eternity just to get there. Or you follow us on Beeper and already figured it out based on the clues we posted last Monday. If that’s you, give yourself a pat on the booth, because…
CR: We’re talking about the RSU Dorm War of 2021! This one’s actually going to be a two-parter, because there’s just so much to cover. And a lot of this stuff is news to us, since it completely surrounds the rivalry between RSU’s two dorms, Austin Martin Luther King Jr. and Caretha Franklin.
RV: For context, Carthie and I were sharing an apartment in town with a couple other students, we weren’t in the university’s residencies and so were pretty unaware of all the dorm business.
CR: Although you didn’t have to live in the residencies to join a dorm. The RSU dorms worked like flatirenities more than anything. I guess living on campus just made it easier to be recruited.
RV: Well, in any case the dorms were considered to be a vital part of the RSU experience, and although you wouldn’t be judged if you never managed to be picked up by one of them, being part of a dorm opened a huge door in terms of social life, events, and more! And you got the chance to take part in one of RSU’s most cherished – and now most infamous – tradition: the rivalry between AMLK and CF. Of course, before the Dorm War, it was all good fun: just a few pranks here and there, maybe some vandalism if someone got too feisty, but never violence.
CR: Until 2021.
RV: Until 2021. But what happened in 2021? Why did an ultimately harmless bit of fun escalate into forging assignments to get people expelled for plagiarism, messing with the grading system to get students kicked out for low grades, and, at its most extreme, murder?
CR: Well, to start, the expulsions and the murders were actually unrelated. Contrary to some preconceptions people still have about the event, it wasn’t the dorms who were going around killing students, though it was ultimately discovered that a couple of the deaths couldn’t be attributed to the perpetrator of the rest of the murders. Ultimately, those deaths are still an unsolved mystery, though there are some theories. As for the escalation, it was revealed at the end of the War, through a public statement by one of the professors of the university who ended up having a breakdown and resigning over the whole mess, that the presidents of both dormitories were caught having sex on the front lawn.
[Ooooh sound effect]
RV: This led to both presidents being placed on academic probation and having to sign an NDA, so they couldn’t talk about this with their dorm members. However, the members of the dorms were very angry that their presidents got placed on academic probation and each dorm started blaming the other, leading to the Dorm War. Each dorm raced to recruit as many unwitting students as possible, as well as gather information on who was part of their rival dorm to kick them out whichever way they could. Ultimately, the War started right at the beginning of the semester and lasted thirteen days. That being said, why didn’t the presidents put a stop to this when it started going too far?
CR: I dunno, glory? I know some people join dorms because it’s a tradition in their families, so it’s possible they thought that eliminating the other dorm would make their carents proud or something.
RV: Maybe. That’s why I refused to join when I got scouted by CF on our first week of classes, too much petty politics.
CR: Ok, continuing, let’s talk about the first victim of the War, incidentally one of the victims who wasn’t killed by the serial killer, though said killer still had an unwitting part on this victim’s demise. Bruter was the daughter of Peter Parkedcar and Brum and was a freshman in the Entomotorology major – in fact, most if not all of the victims were freshmen. She was also the half-sister of the president of the Caretha Franklin dorm, Krum, which is interesting. Now, I know what you must be thinking, the daughter of a famous vigilante being the first victim of the Dorm War? Well, from what has been gathered from testimonials, Bruter was your typical girl-next-door with an interest in arachnids, not a single bad bolt in her body though she did like to follow people around and see who they visited. Her carents are RSU alumni, so I can imagine she was pretty excited to join their old dorm, Caretha Franklin, along with her half-sister. Unfortunately, this would not last.
RV: On just the third day of classes, Bruter was found dead hanging from a flagpole. There were seemingly no clues as to who had done this, though later investigations revealed that Bruter was murdered in the forest that surrounds the RSU campus. Witnesses claimed that Bruter had gone on a date the evening before with Forgetmobile, another student. Seems like an open-and-shut case, right? That’s probably what the investigators thought, especially when they saw the opportunity to place Forgetmobile under custody when they were expelled the next day for plagiarism – though that was later revealed to be sabotage by the CF dorm. However, things turned out to not be as simple.
CR: Forgetmobile is the child of Ford Anglia and Gadgetmobile. At the time, they were a freshman in the Forestry major, despite their interest in everything technology related. They were, and continue to be, a quiet car who keeps to themself, so it is not known what they’ve done since their time at RSU, and we ask our listeners to not try to find out and to respect their privacy. From what was gathered from testimonies, it seems Bruter and Forgetmobile were smitten the moment they spoke with each other, and those who caught glimpses of their date swear that the couple seemed as happy as could be. In fact, many of those witnesses protested when Forgetmobile was taken in as a suspect for the murder. And Forgetmobile’s reaction to the murder seemed to correlate with this seemingly fairytale romance: they had been inconsolable from the moment the body was discovered, though some did claim that they acted strangely on their way to the AMLK dorm after the date, and they didn’t even react to being expelled for plagiarism despite the controversy surrounding these expulsions even at the time. Of course, as we know, people who commit crimes of passion often exhibit intense emotions of grief, either because they truly feel it or as an attempt to decrease suspicion, so the investigators kept Forgetmobile in custody until they could get a confession. However, this wasn’t the confession anyone expected.
RV: As we all know, we all have a special ability, whether it is to scramble someone’s speech, follow someone without being detected, or even block one such ability. Some may even be able to evade death or revive someone, though these abilities can only be used once in a lifetime. All of this to say that Forgetmobile has the ability to silence people, and that night they had planned to use that ability on Bruter, although reluctantly, as part of the Dorm War. However, Forgetmobile had already been the targeted by another student, at the time unaffiliated as far as the Dorm Wars were concerned, who themself had the ability to temporarily switch the abilities of two cars. Unbeknownst to both Forgetmobile and this student, who really just seemed to be experimenting with their power, the person who switched powers with Forgetmobile turned out to be… the murderer!
[Gasp sound effect]
CR: Now that’s some rotten luck. So Forgetmobile uses what they think is their power, thinking they’ll just silence their date, and, before they know it, they’ve committed a murder. I mean, we’ve seen similar cases before, where a car with a swapping ability teams up with another car to pin a crime on someone else, fortunately we’ve become better at identifying these cases and bring the true criminals to justice. But… but these were just kids being kids, they didn’t know there was a murderer on the loose in their own college campus. Hell, it was our college campus at the time, it just gives me the chills. The authorities should have been more present the moment this murder happened.
RV: I feel ya, Carthie. Fortunately, Forgetmobile’s charges were lifted just in time to attend Bruter’s memorial, and the media hasn’t managed to get ahold of them since. Rumors have it that Bruter’s parents might have helped with that. Again, we ask our listeners to not go on investigations of their own, we don’t want a repeat of last time.
CR: Right. I think this calls for a break. When we come back, we’ll be talking about the first true victim of the RSU murderer, the red tape that prevented the authorities from investigating this tragedy properly, and rumors that the missing prophet of Renaultville might have been in RSU as all of this happened. Please stay tuned for our sponsors!
[intro music plays, followed by a Rust-eze ad]