The Body in Room 348: How Greg Fleniken’s Impossible Hotel Death Was Finally Solved

When 55-year-old Greg Fleniken was found dead inside Room 348 of the MCM Eleganté Hotel in Beaumont, Texas, almost nothing at the scene suggested murder. There was no obvious gunshot wound, no sign of a struggle, no robbery and no intruder waiting to be discovered.

Yet Greg had suffered devastating internal injuries.

The explanation was extraordinary: a 9mm bullet had been fired in the neighboring Room 349, passed through the hotel wall and struck Fleniken while he was relaxing in his own room. The entry wound was so difficult to recognize that the shooting initially escaped notice during the autopsy. Months later, private investigator Ken Brennan and Beaumont detective Scott Apple reconstructed the bullet's path and exposed what had happened next door.

The case became famous after journalist Mark Bowden chronicled it in Vanity Fair under the title “The Body in Room 348.” More than a decade later, it continues to fascinate true-crime audiences because almost every early clue seemed to point investigators in the wrong direction.

And in 2026, interest in the case resurfaced again after Casefile True Crime released a new episode examining Greg Fleniken's death and the investigation that solved it.

The Body in Room 348: Case at a Glance

• Victim: Gregory “Greg” Fleniken
• Age: 55
• Location: MCM Eleganté Hotel, Beaumont, Texas
• Room: 348
• Date of incident: September 15, 2010
• Body discovered: September 16, 2010
• Initial suspicion: Natural death
• Autopsy finding: Severe internal trauma; death ultimately treated as homicide
• Actual cause: Gunshot fired through the wall from neighboring Room 349
• Shooter: Lance Mueller
• Key investigator: Private investigator Ken Brennan, working with Beaumont Police Detective Scott Apple
• Criminal outcome: Mueller pleaded no contest to manslaughter and received a 10-year prison sentence in 2012.

The basic facts sound straightforward when summarized afterward.

At the time, however, investigators had no obvious way to connect a dead man with no recognizable gunshot wound to a firearm discharged in a completely different hotel room.

Who Was Greg Fleniken?

Greg Fleniken was a Louisiana resident who regularly traveled to Beaumont for work.

He worked in the oil-and-gas land business and was vice president of OGM Land Company. His job required him to spend much of the workweek in Beaumont before returning home to Lafayette, Louisiana.

The MCM Eleganté was therefore not an unfamiliar stop.

Fleniken had developed a routine around life on the road. According to Mark Bowden's detailed Vanity Fair account, he typically spent evenings quietly in his hotel room rather than going out. On September 15, 2010, he was doing exactly that—relaxing in Room 348, smoking, eating candy and watching Iron Man 2.

Nothing about the evening should have been remarkable.

What was happening on the other side of his wall changed everything.

Greg Fleniken's Last Night in Room 348

On Wednesday, September 15, Fleniken returned to the hotel after work.

His evening was ordinary enough that investigators would later have to analyze tiny details simply to establish when something had gone wrong.

Shortly after 7 p.m., he exchanged an email with his wife, Susie.

At another point that evening, an electrical problem occurred after a circuit was overloaded. The resulting interruption affected Fleniken's room as well as nearby rooms. Hotel maintenance restored the power, and records helped investigators establish that Fleniken was still alive at that stage of the night.

He then apparently returned to his movie.

But Susie did not receive the telephone call she normally expected from her husband.

At first, there was no obvious reason to panic.

By the following morning, that changed.

Greg Fleniken Fails to Arrive at Work

Greg was dependable.

When he failed to appear at work on September 16 and could not be reached, his colleagues became concerned.

His truck was still at the hotel.

Coworkers eventually went to the MCM Eleganté and gained access to Room 348 with the help of hotel staff.

Inside, they found Greg lying face down on the floor.

He was dead.

The television had been left on. His possessions had not been taken, and cash remained in the room. Nothing appeared to have been ransacked.

There were no obvious signs that anyone had fought with him.

There was also no clearly visible gunshot wound.

At first glance, the scene looked less like a homicide than the sudden death of a man alone in a hotel room. ABC News later reported that police initially considered the possibility that Fleniken had simply died from natural causes.

Then came the autopsy.

The Autopsy Turned a Natural Death Into a Mystery

The examination of Greg Fleniken's body revealed injuries that did not fit the peaceful hotel room where he had been found.

His internal injuries were severe.

Among the findings reported in subsequent coverage were broken ribs and damage to major organs, including his liver and heart. There was also an unusual wound involving the scrotum.

The injuries appeared consistent with enormous physical force.

Yet his exterior did not show the type of bruising investigators would normally expect after a violent beating.

That created the central mystery of Room 348.

How could someone suffer catastrophic injuries inside an apparently undisturbed hotel room without showing obvious evidence of the attack that caused them?

The case was now being treated as a homicide.

But investigators still did not know how Fleniken had been killed.

Why Police Initially Considered a Beating

The internal trauma made investigators consider whether Fleniken had been assaulted.

Perhaps he had encountered someone in the hallway.

Perhaps there had been an argument.

Perhaps someone had attacked him and he had somehow returned to his hotel room.

The unusual wound on his body also generated additional theories.

Detective Scott Apple investigated people who had been in or around the hotel. One early avenue involved a maintenance employee, but that line of inquiry did not produce the answer.

Another possibility involved guests next door.

Room 349 was occupied by electricians working in the area.

They had been drinking and were known to have been loud.

Could an argument over the earlier electrical outage have led to an altercation?

It was plausible enough to investigate.

But there was still a major problem.

Room 348 did not look like a place where someone had been violently beaten.

The Cigarette Became an Important Clue

One of the strangest details in the room was the cigarette found with Fleniken's body.

Greg normally smoked with his right hand.

Yet after his death, a burned-down cigarette was found in his left hand.

Months later, that small discrepancy caught the attention of private investigator Ken Brennan.

Brennan reasoned that Greg might have transferred the cigarette to his left hand while getting up and reaching toward the door with his dominant right hand.

That detail mattered because it suggested Fleniken had been sitting peacefully immediately before whatever killed him happened.

It also weakened the theory that he had been savagely beaten elsewhere and somehow returned to his room afterward.

A cigarette would eventually become one piece in a much larger reconstruction.

Why Was Room 348 So Warm?

Another detail bothered Susie Fleniken.

Her husband liked his hotel room cold.

He routinely used the air conditioning heavily.

But when his body was discovered, Room 348 was unusually warm.

To most people, that might have seemed meaningless.

To Brennan, it offered a possible timeline.

The room's power had been interrupted earlier that evening. Hotel maintenance had restored it while Greg was still alive, but Brennan theorized that the air conditioner had not been restarted.

If Greg normally disliked a warm room, why had he not turned it back on?

One possibility was chillingly simple:

He died before the room became warm enough for him to notice.

Hotel records therefore helped narrow the period during which Fleniken was likely killed.

Susie Fleniken Refused to Let the Case Die

Months passed without a satisfying explanation.

For Greg's widow, uncertainty became its own form of torment.

Susie Fleniken eventually contacted Ken Brennan, a Florida private investigator and former law-enforcement officer whose previous investigative work had been featured by Vanity Fair.

Brennan was a former Long Island police officer and DEA special agent who had moved into private investigation.

Rather than competing with Beaumont police, Brennan began working alongside Detective Scott Apple.

That collaboration would prove decisive.

The evidence had already been collected.

The room had already been searched.

The autopsy had already been conducted.

What the investigation needed was a different way of looking at information everyone had already seen.

Ken Brennan Began Reconstructing the Room

Brennan studied crime-scene photographs, hotel records, the state of Greg's body and the known timeline.

He increasingly became convinced that the accepted explanation did not work.

If Fleniken had been violently beaten, where had it happened?

If it happened in the room, why was there no sign of a struggle?

If it happened somewhere else, how did a badly injured man calmly return to the room, resume his evening routine and light a cigarette?

Something did not fit.

Brennan and Apple returned their attention to the hotel.

Then an apparently unrelated piece of information changed the investigation.

While interviewing people connected to the electricians who had stayed nearby, Brennan heard a vague story about a gun being fired.

It was not initially clear that the story even referred to the Fleniken case.

But Brennan decided they needed to go back to the hotel.

This time, they were looking for evidence of a bullet.

The Tiny Mark on the Wall of Room 348

Inside Room 348, Brennan noticed an indentation in the wall near the adjoining door.

At first, it looked ordinary.

Hotel walls accumulate damage. Door handles strike drywall. Furniture leaves marks.

But the indentation did not align correctly with the door handle.

That mattered.

Brennan and Apple then examined the same area from the other side—in Room 349.

There they found something far more suspicious.

A small hole in the wall had been filled with material that investigators determined was dried toothpaste.

The marks in the two rooms lined up.

Investigators carefully opened the damaged areas and used a laser to reconstruct the trajectory.

The line ran through the wall and pointed toward the bed in Room 348—the very place where Fleniken had been relaxing.

Suddenly, the impossible injuries began to make sense.

Greg had not been beaten.

He had been shot.

How Could an Autopsy Miss a Gunshot Wound?

This is perhaps the most remarkable part of the Room 348 case.

A bullet normally produces an obvious clue.

In Greg Fleniken's case, the entry wound was extraordinarily difficult to recognize.

The bullet had entered through the scrotum. Because of the nature and folds of the tissue, the entry point did not present itself like the obvious gunshot wound investigators might expect.

Inside the body, however, the projectile had caused devastating damage.

Once Brennan and Apple had reconstructed the trajectory through the hotel wall, they returned to the autopsy photographs.

The pattern of damage now looked completely different.

What had originally appeared to be injuries produced by blunt force could instead be understood as the path of a projectile traveling upward through Fleniken's body.

A crucial image showed damage to the heart consistent with a bullet passing through it.

The physical evidence in Room 348, the hole in Room 349 and the internal injuries now told the same story.

What Happened in Room 349?

Investigators still needed to determine who had fired the shot.

On the night Greg died, several electricians had been socializing in neighboring Room 349.

Among them were Lance Mueller, Tim Steinmetz and Trent Pasano.

According to the accounts that eventually emerged, the men had been drinking.

Mueller had a 9mm Ruger handgun.

During the evening, the weapon was being handled recklessly.

It discharged.

The bullet passed through the wall separating Room 349 from Room 348.

On the other side of that wall sat Greg Fleniken.

He had no involvement with the men.

There was no dispute between them.

He was simply in the neighboring room.

The bullet struck him without warning.

The Men in Room 349 Did Not Call for Help

The shooting alone explains how Greg Fleniken was injured.

What happened afterward explains why the case remained a mystery.

The occupants of Room 349 did not immediately report the gunshot to police.

They did not knock on the adjoining room and determine whether anyone had been hit.

According to reporting and later court-related accounts, the bullet hole in their wall was patched with toothpaste and toilet paper.

Mueller also concealed the gun after the incident. Vanity Fair reported that he first hid it in his vehicle, later left it with a friend and eventually placed it with an attorney for safekeeping.

By the time Greg's body was discovered the next morning, police had no reason to associate him with a firearm.

The physical clue had been concealed in the room next door.

And the wound itself had not been recognized as a bullet entry point.

Two separate pieces of the puzzle—the hotel wall and the body—were effectively hiding the same secret.

Tim Steinmetz's Interview Helped Break the Case

Once Brennan and Apple understood that a bullet had passed through the wall, they could return to the occupants of Room 349 with a fundamentally different investigation.

They traveled to Wisconsin to speak with Tim Steinmetz.

Initially, Steinmetz repeated a version of events that omitted the firearm.

Investigators then confronted him with what they knew.

The strategy worked.

Steinmetz eventually described the gun discharge and identified Mueller as the person handling the weapon when it fired.

Investigators subsequently obtained corroborating information from another man who had been present.

The mysterious homicide in a quiet hotel room was no longer mysterious.

Why the Case Took Months to Solve

In hindsight, the explanation seems almost obvious.

A gun fired.

A bullet passed through a wall.

A man on the other side died.

But investigators did not begin with that knowledge.

They began with a scene containing almost none of the visual information usually associated with a shooting.

Several factors complicated the investigation:

There Was Almost No External Evidence

Greg did not have an easily recognizable gunshot wound.

There Was No Gun in Room 348

Nothing at the scene suggested a firearm had been fired inside his room.

The Wall Damage Was Easy to Overlook

The mark in Room 348 resembled ordinary hotel damage.

The Other Side Had Been Patched

The corresponding hole in Room 349 had been concealed.

The Autopsy Suggested Blunt Trauma

The internal damage initially appeared compatible with a severe beating.

There Was No Apparent Motive

Greg did not know the person who fired the shot.

There was no robbery, feud or planned confrontation to investigate.

The absence of motive was not a missing piece.

There simply was no traditional motive.

The Forensic Lesson of Room 348

The Fleniken case is frequently remembered as an extraordinary detective story, but it is also a powerful example of how forensic interpretation depends on context.

An injury can point investigators toward one explanation when viewed alone.

Physical evidence elsewhere can completely change that interpretation.

Before the wall was examined, the internal injuries looked like blunt-force trauma.

After the trajectory was reconstructed, those same injuries revealed the bullet's path.

Similarly, the damaged wall initially looked insignificant.

Only after investigators considered the possibility of a firearm did it become crucial evidence.

The breakthrough did not require a futuristic laboratory technique.

It required investigators to connect evidence from the body to evidence in the environment.

Lance Mueller Was Charged With Manslaughter

The investigation eventually led authorities to Lance Mueller.

The criminal case did not allege that Mueller had deliberately targeted Greg Fleniken.

Rather, prosecutors focused on the reckless handling of the firearm and the circumstances surrounding the fatal discharge.

Mueller entered a no-contest plea to manslaughter.

On October 29, 2012, Judge Layne Walker sentenced him to 10 years in prison. He had faced a possible sentence of up to 20 years.

The legal outcome is an important distinction in retelling the case.

Greg's death was a homicide, but the evidence did not establish that Mueller intentionally chose Greg as a victim and deliberately shot him through the wall.

The fatal act emerged from reckless gun handling.

The subsequent concealment, however, became an important part of how the case was understood.

The Cover-Up Made the Tragedy Worse

Had those in Room 349 immediately reported the gunshot, the mystery of Room 348 might never have existed.

There is also uncertainty over whether faster medical intervention could have changed Greg's fate.

Medical opinions differed about how long he might have survived after being struck. Reporting on the case noted estimates ranging from a very short period to considerably longer.

That uncertainty made the failure to check the neighboring room especially painful for Greg's family.

What is clear is that nobody in Room 349 called authorities to report that a bullet had gone through the wall.

Instead, evidence was concealed.

The following day, Greg was discovered dead.

Susie Fleniken Finally Faced Lance Mueller in Court

For Susie, the case had lasted far longer than the night her husband died.

She had lived through the initial belief that he died naturally, the discovery that his death was a homicide, months without an explanation and finally the revelation that a gunshot from the adjoining room had killed him.

At Mueller's sentencing, she addressed him directly.

Her message focused not only on the original gunshot but also on the failure to come forward afterward.

Vanity Fair's account of the sentencing describes Susie's anger at the repeated decisions to hide what had happened and her determination to discover the truth.

Her persistence had been essential.

Without her decision to keep searching for an explanation and eventually contact Ken Brennan, the overlooked evidence might never have been reconsidered in the same way.

The Wrongful-Death Lawsuit

The criminal prosecution was not the final legal proceeding connected to Greg's death.

Susie Fleniken also filed a wrongful-death lawsuit.

The suit named the MCM Eleganté Hotel, security provider Delta Security and men associated with Room 349 among the defendants.

The allegations included questions about the hotel's handling of disruptive behavior and the failure to communicate information surrounding the shooting.

Court-related reporting states that a scheduled 2015 trial was canceled after claims involving defendant Trent Pasano were resolved, with his dismissal entered with prejudice.

Because civil proceedings involved multiple parties and claims, they should be distinguished from Mueller's separate criminal manslaughter case.

Why “The Body in Room 348” Became Famous

The death of Greg Fleniken became nationally known after journalist Mark Bowden published a detailed reconstruction in Vanity Fair in 2013.

The story had almost every element of a classic locked-room mystery:

• A man found dead alone
• An undisturbed hotel room
• No apparent motive
• No obvious murder weapon
• Severe injuries that did not match the scene
• An overlooked physical clue
• A neighboring room hiding the answer
• A forensic interpretation that changed dramatically
• A widow unwilling to accept an unresolved case
• A private investigator who approached the evidence from a new direction

But unlike a fictional mystery, there was no ingenious murderer designing an impossible crime.

The truth was more random.

Greg died because he happened to be sitting on the opposite side of a wall when a gun discharged.

Why the Case Is Being Rediscovered

The story has never completely disappeared from true-crime culture.

ABC's 20/20 covered the case, while podcasts and crime programs have revisited it repeatedly.

Interest surged again in July 2026 when Casefile True Crime released “Casefile Extra: Greg Fleniken,” reconstructing the circumstances surrounding the hotel death, autopsy, investigation and eventual breakthrough.

That renewed attention has introduced Room 348 to another generation of listeners who may never have encountered the original Vanity Fair investigation.

Its appeal is easy to understand.

The solution forces audiences to reinterpret almost every earlier clue.

The lack of a struggle was real.

The lack of robbery was real.

The apparently peaceful evening was real.

Even the absence of a visible attacker was real.

The investigators were simply looking for violence inside Room 348 when the fatal act had originated outside it.

The Most Important Clues in the Greg Fleniken Case

Several details ultimately proved especially important.

1. The Warm Hotel Room

Greg liked keeping his room cold. Its warmth helped Brennan think about when he might have died after the electrical interruption.

2. The Cigarette in His Left Hand

Greg normally smoked with his right hand. The position of the cigarette helped reconstruct his final movement and challenged the idea that he had returned to the room after a beating.

3. The Internal Injuries

Although initially interpreted as blunt-force trauma, they eventually revealed the path of the bullet.

4. The Wall Indentation

A tiny piece of damage that looked like an ordinary door-related mark turned out to be evidence of a projectile.

5. The Toothpaste in Room 349

The patched hole on the opposite side made clear that someone had attempted to conceal the damage.

6. The Laser Trajectory

Investigators aligned the openings and demonstrated that a projectile fired from Room 349 would travel toward the area of Greg's bed.

7. The Witness Accounts

Once investigators knew a gun had been involved, interviews with the neighboring occupants transformed suspicion into a coherent account of what happened.

What Actually Happened to Greg Fleniken?

The final reconstruction is tragically simple.

On the night of September 15, 2010, Greg Fleniken was relaxing in Room 348 of the MCM Eleganté Hotel.

In the neighboring Room 349, men were drinking and handling a handgun.

Lance Mueller was handling the 9mm Ruger when it discharged.

The bullet penetrated the wall between the rooms.

It traveled into Room 348 and struck Greg.

Because of where the bullet entered his body, the wound was difficult to identify externally.

Greg suffered catastrophic internal injuries and died.

Instead of immediately reporting the discharge and checking the room next door, the occupants of Room 349 concealed the hole and did not reveal the truth to investigators.

That concealment, combined with the unusual entry wound and misleading autopsy findings, transformed an accidental discharge into one of the strangest homicide investigations in modern true-crime history.

Room 348 Was Never Really a Locked-Room Murder

The case is sometimes described as a locked-room mystery, and understandably so.

Greg was essentially alone.

His room showed no sign of an intruder.

Nobody needed to enter Room 348 to kill him.

That is the key.

The bullet did.

The wall allowed the fatal force to cross from one private space into another while leaving nearly all the people involved physically separated.

That unusual geometry is what made the scene so deceptive.

Police were searching for an explanation based on events that had occurred around Greg.

The crucial event had actually occurred next door.

A Mystery Solved by Refusing to Ignore Small Details

“The Body in Room 348” endures because it demonstrates how a case can turn on details that initially seem trivial.

A room being warmer than expected.

A cigarette in the wrong hand.

A shallow dent beside a door.

A vague story about a gun.

A patch of dried toothpaste.

An unusual wound that did not initially resemble what it really was.

None of those clues solved the case alone.

Together, they reconstructed the final minutes of Greg Fleniken's life.

The breakthrough also came from collaboration.

Susie Fleniken continued demanding answers.

Ken Brennan brought a fresh perspective.

Detective Scott Apple remained willing to reconsider his investigation.

The medical evidence was reviewed again.

Witnesses were confronted with new physical evidence.

And eventually the wall between Rooms 348 and 349 told investigators what had been hidden from them.

The Lasting Legacy of the Body in Room 348 Case

Greg Fleniken did not die because he became involved in a dangerous confrontation.

He was not participating in criminal activity.

He was not targeted by a stranger who entered his hotel room.

He was simply spending an ordinary evening away from home.

That randomness is perhaps the most unsettling part of the story.

But the investigation also demonstrates why unresolved cases deserve careful re-examination.

Evidence does not change simply because investigators fail to understand it the first time.

Sometimes its meaning becomes visible only after another clue provides the missing context.

More than 15 years after Greg's death, the story continues attracting attention because the mystery does not depend on an elaborate conspiracy or exotic forensic science.

The answer was physically embedded in the wall all along.

A bullet had crossed from Room 349 into Room 348.

And a tiny repaired hole was waiting for someone to realize what it meant.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Body in Room 348

Who was the body in Room 348?

The man found dead in Room 348 was Gregory “Greg” Fleniken, a 55-year-old Louisiana resident who worked in the oil-and-gas land business and regularly stayed at the MCM Eleganté Hotel in Beaumont, Texas.

When did Greg Fleniken die?

Greg Fleniken was fatally shot during the evening of September 15, 2010. His body was discovered in Room 348 the following morning.

How did Greg Fleniken die?

Fleniken was killed by a 9mm bullet fired from neighboring Room 349. The projectile traveled through the hotel wall and entered his body, causing catastrophic internal injuries.

Why was there no obvious gunshot wound?

The bullet entered through Fleniken's scrotum. The nature of the tissue made the entry wound difficult to identify, and the internal damage was initially interpreted as evidence of blunt-force trauma.

Who shot Greg Fleniken?

Lance Mueller, an electrician staying in the neighboring room, was handling the gun when it discharged through the wall.

Did Lance Mueller intentionally kill Greg Fleniken?

The criminal case was not based on an allegation that Mueller deliberately targeted Fleniken. The shooting resulted from reckless firearm handling. Mueller later pleaded no contest to manslaughter and received a 10-year sentence.

What happened in Room 349?

Several electricians were drinking and socializing in Room 349. A 9mm handgun discharged while Mueller was handling it, sending a bullet through the wall and into Room 348. The damage to the wall was subsequently concealed rather than immediately reported.

Why was toothpaste important in the Room 348 case?

Investigators discovered that a small hole in the wall of Room 349 had been patched with toothpaste. The hole aligned with damage on the Room 348 side of the wall and helped reveal the bullet's trajectory.

Who solved the Greg Fleniken case?

Private investigator Ken Brennan, working closely with Beaumont Police Detective Scott Apple, helped uncover the crucial evidence connecting the neighboring room, wall damage and Fleniken's internal injuries.

Why did Ken Brennan become involved?

Greg's widow, Susie Fleniken, contacted Brennan after the official investigation struggled to explain her husband's death. Brennan had previously worked in law enforcement and had become known for investigating difficult cases.

What was unusual about the cigarette found with Greg?

Greg normally smoked using his right hand, but the cigarette was found in his left. Brennan used this and other details to reconstruct Greg's movements shortly before his death and challenge the theory that he had been assaulted elsewhere.

Why was Greg Fleniken's hotel room warm?

Greg normally preferred a cold room, but the air conditioner had stopped during an earlier electrical interruption. Brennan reasoned that Greg may have died before the room became warm enough for him to restart it, helping narrow the estimated time of death.

Was Greg Fleniken beaten to death?

No. His internal injuries were initially interpreted as evidence of a severe beating, but later investigation showed they had been caused by a bullet traveling through his body.

What sentence did Lance Mueller receive?

Mueller pleaded no contest to manslaughter and was sentenced on October 29, 2012, to 10 years in prison.

Was there a lawsuit after Greg Fleniken's death?

Yes. Susie Fleniken filed a wrongful-death lawsuit naming multiple defendants, including the hotel, its security provider and individuals connected with Room 349. A planned 2015 trial was canceled after claims involving one defendant were resolved.

Why is the case called “The Body in Room 348”?

The phrase became widely associated with the case after Mark Bowden's 2013 Vanity Fair feature, “The Body in Room 348,” which reconstructed Greg Fleniken's death and Ken Brennan's investigation.

Why is the Body in Room 348 case popular again?

True-crime programs have repeatedly revisited the case. Interest was renewed in July 2026, when Casefile True Crime released a new bonus episode devoted to Greg Fleniken and the unusual investigation surrounding his death.

What is the biggest lesson from the Room 348 investigation?

The case demonstrates how misleading a crime scene can be when physical evidence is interpreted without the correct context. A nearly invisible wound, ordinary-looking wall damage and inconsistent small details ultimately revealed an explanation investigators had not initially considered: the fatal shot came through the wall from another room.