Who killed Dr Bateman? Murder at the Monument mystery

Children and their parents sat in the large Olive Schreiner hall. There was a loud buzz as everyone was chatting and laughing. We were anxiously waiting for Dr Sarah Bateman to start her speech.

Things started to quieten down as a man walked slowly to the podium. He announced that Dr Bateman would not talk tonight – she had been murdered. Murder at the Monument happened at Scifest Africa.

The event was well attended with a variety of age groups participating in the investigation involving several scientists from across the world playing characters (the crowd favourite being Ronald Crump).

They each took turns to eulogise Dr Bateman. Each of these eulogies never failed to get a laugh out of the audience, especially when there was references to real-world events – fulfilling director Anton Krueger’s aim to have fun thinking – such as frequent reference to nuclear deals.

Sudden gasps ended the eulogies. It was revealed that Dr Bateman’s killer was actually someone in the lecture hall. Luckily her computer had been hacked and all her emails, bank details and other crucial information (and some worthless information to confuse the sleuths) were available for anyone to read.

The audience jumped into action. Getting into groups the children (with some adults) had pages of documents to search through to find any information that could point out who the killer was.

The room was electric with all the discussions under way. Once the most important pieces of information were found, the groups went around to all the suspects to fill in the blanks in their knowledge.

Having now gathered a respectable amount of information, the groups had to decide who had committed the crime.

Some blamed Crump, others blamed a Russian named Aljosa. In the end, only one group got the correct answer.

It turned out Crump had paid Aljosa to poison Dr Bateman with some Polonium 210.

Cheers erupted from the winning group when the murderer was revealed.

The successful sleuths received Scifest shirts and French bologna.

With the mystery solved, the group rode out of the Monument victorious.