Hints and Reveals

Auction House Letter

Hints

• This letter serves as both a certificate of authenticity and a verification of what is included in the auction purchase. This separates what was produced for the commemorative box in 1998, and what was later added to the box from Bobby's personal collection.

• The end of the letter mentions that Bobby wanted all funds from the sale to go to the Noah Alexander Memorial Fund.

Band Contract

Hints

• According to the terms of the contract, Sewer Horse maintains rights to record sales for a period of twenty-four years. After that period, sales rights revert to Darryl, because Darryl is ["doing business as] 'FLUF'" and therefore operating as the legal entity for the band, which is assumed as a trade name in the contract.

• This means Darryl (or his estate) receives all royalties for the FLUF trademark beginning in 1998.

Band Poster

Reveals

• A recreation of the poster from the show the night of Darryl's death. It verifies the time the doors opened for the show (7:30 PM on Wednesday, November 7th, 1973).

Darryl Fanton Foundation Website

Reveals

• The website's most important feature is that the foundation lists Noah's Song as a philanthropic cause. The DFF's funding comes from Darryl's estate, the vast majority of which is comprised of FLUF royalties.

DFF Letter

Hints

• This letter connects the Darryl Fanton Foundation to the sale of the box.

Drumstick

Hints

• The drumstick is part of a limited release of Janine Fanton special edition sticks.

FLUF Album

Hints

• The album contains information regarding the musicians' views toward one another. Though Will is heard singing on the majority of the songs, most of the songwriting is attributed to Sally. It's important to take note of whose perspective each song is coming from.

FLUF Booklet

Hints

• The commemorative booklet included with the album details a great deal of information useful to understanding how events unfolded the evening of November 7th into the early morning of November 8th, 1973.

• Most evident among the relevant information is the series of statements given to the police by the various band members after the murder.

FLUF Commemorative Box

Hints

• Maroon box with gold detail. One side has the logo for the Darryl Fanton Foundation indicating that DFF was the body responsible for producing this box.

Reveals

• Beneath the velvet insert that lines the inside of the commemorative box are several documents, hidden there by Bobby. The lining will have to be cut or torn into in order to get to the documents.

Letter from Bobby to Whomever

• Bobby talks about his love of "her" though he doesn't say who "her" is. He also references Sally in a separate context. Lastly, Will notices Sally's romantic entanglements and doesn't mention Bobby. Considering all of this, it can be assumed that Bobby isn't in love with Sally, and the "her" references someone else.

• He says he was asleep during the murder, due to sleeping pills, which contradicts what he told the police in his statement. He mentions trying to "make things right" before the end. This "mak[ing] things right" has to do with the donation he makes to the Noah Alexander Memorial Fund (Noah's Song).

• If Ian was with Courtney, and Sally was with John Bjorn, then the only other "her" could be Janine, which means Bobby lied about checking in on her, and since he was not in his room with Ian, he was in fact already in Janine's room when Sally found the door locked.

Letter from Sally to Bobby

• In this hidden letter, Sally lets Bobby know, unequivocally, that she did not murder Darryl, and he should stop trying to suggest that she may have.

• She also confirms her affair with John Bjorn, explains that Darryl was "not a saint" toward his little sister, and confirms Courtney is the Snow Queen.

Note from Will to Bobby

• Will wrote this note to give Bobby a key to a coded message on www.watchfulwill.com. Will references in his blog that he and Bobby played blackjack in Vegas, and they developed an inside joke, "crash the nine," which Will references in his note. The reference is to remind Bobby of blackjack because the sequence of letters and numbers in the note are all in reference to cards in the game. Will is giving Bobby a key, otherwise known, as a one-time pad, to use in the decryption of his code on www.watchfulwill.com.

• The values in the list (face cards J, Q, and K all have a value of 10, and A can have a value of 1 or 11, though Will only uses 11 according to his blog) are all transformative values that, when applied to their corresponding letter in the cipher on Will's blog, indicated how many times to shift each letter in order to get the original message.

• Using this note to decrypt the cipher on Will's blog, the decoded message reads "Bobby and Ian were not in their room when I returned", which contradicts their police statements.

Obituary

• The obituary article for Noah Alexander reveals that Janine had a son. Her son's birthday is roughly 40 weeks after the night Darryl was murdered.

• Noah is actually Bobby's child, which is why he spends so much donating to Noah's Song.

FLUF T-Shirt

Reveals

• A T-shirt designed by Ian Callow. He hid a message in the stars that appear throughout the design, which he intended for Bobby to see. The message, once decoded reads:

  • That night I was with the S*** Queen doing drugs and making love.

• The "S*** Queen" references Courtney, who was referred to as the Snow Queen on the album for providing cocaine to Darryl. This statement is Ian's confession that he was Courtney's lover, and they were together the night Darryl was murdered, which contradicts his statement to the police.

• As an aspiring children's book author and illustrator, he would not want this information to be made obvious to the public, though he felt compelled to share with Bobby years later.

From Florida with Arts Website

Reveals

• In Mickey and George's interview with John Bjorn Encke, John Bjorn lets slip that he was with Sally, contradicting his police report and confirming that he and Sally were both away during the murder, which is what Will suspected all along.

Guitar Pick

Hints

• The guitar pick was specially designed with Darryl Fanton in mind.

Kids Music Wholesale Website

Hints

• Kids Music Wholesale operates as a for-profit wholesale distributor of children's music.

Noah's Song Website

Hints

• According to the budget summary reports, "foundations" (of which DFF is the top benefactor) provide the vast majority of funding for Noah's Song. This funding spike in 1983 and 1993, when Sewer Horse re-released Afterparty (according to Will's blog), and again in 1998, when the 25th Anniversary Commemorative Box for Afterparty was released.
• Important to compare are the total cash expense and total in-kind expense. Total cash expense is the running cost of the organization, day-to-day expenses, supplies, payroll, etc. The total in-kind expense includes donations from Noah's Song to other organizations, which is their advertised purpose. The total cash expense is much higher than the total in-kind expense, and over time the amount of cash expense leaving the organization is very high compared to how much is actually being donated.
• Beginning in 1983, the "fundraising fees, materials, and products" expense line increases and is consistently higher than the other expenses. Kids Music Wholesale begins to pop up here, and is the top vendor for the majority of the next 17 years.
• Janine was purchasing her own instruments since 1983. Between 1998 and 1999 alone, Janine pockets over one million dollars.

Novelty Case File

Hints

• This case file, created to further cash in on Darryl's murder, contains some relevant information: Darryl's police record confirms his violent past, his toxicology report verifies he had an overdose of cocaine in his system, and the murder scene description reveals that he was murdered while in a vulnerable position on the bathroom floor.

Owl Illustrations

Reveals

• The illustration, by Ian Callow, provides the key to the code hidden in the FLUF T-shirt. The mother owl speaks to the baby owl and reveals a series of stars, each shaded in a different way. The stars are connected in a sequence through the streaks in the sky, beginning from the top-left and moving to the right and then down. In this order, the stars represent the letters, A, B, C, D, and E.

• The colored ribbons on the branch next to the baby owl indicate a color sequence: white, yellow, blue, violet, and green. These colors, applied to the star shapes, reveal a substitution code for the entire alphabet:

  • White: A, B, C, D, E
  • Yellow: F, G, H, I, J
  • Blue: K, L, M, N, O
  • Violet: P, Q, R, S, T
  • Green: U, V, W, X, Y

• There is no Z.

Watchful Will Website

Hints

• Will's website correctly points to some information, though his conclusions are incorrect and based on faulty logic.

Reveals

• Will believes that the shoddy contract agreement between Sewer Horse Records and the band proves that the record company was behind Darryl's murder. In fact, the shoddy contract deal merely placed the royalties in the hands of Darryl.

• On this site, Will also discloses the police report from his run-in with the police at the Mojo Lounge the night of the murder, which helps establish the timeline of events and also confirms his alibi. Comparing this report to Will's statement in the Commemorative Booklet, the following additions can be made to the timeline of events:

  • 12:03 AM - Police arrive at the Mojo Lounge.
  • 12:15 AM - Will leaves the Mojo Lounge.
  • 12:25 AM - Will arrives at the motel and discovers Courtney passed out.

• According to the map of the motel floor plan, Janine stayed in the room adjoining Darryl and Sally's room.

• Will also points out that Bobby had a history of hiding things due to his growing paranoia.

Post 3

• Post 3 is solved by finding the song titles of the lyrics in parentheses, then using the corresponding track times from the back of the album as the key.

  • Siren with the Candy ⇒ I didn't kill anyone.
  • Baby, You and Me ⇒ Just me.
  • Bad Things ⇒ I'm sorry I got him hooked.
  • Every Day Goes By ⇒ They call me the Snow Queen.
  • A Crystalline World ⇒ I couldn't even be a princess.
  • I Dug Myself Under ⇒ I deserve to be forgotten.
  • This All Leaves Me Now ⇒ By my friends, by my love.

Post 8

• If Will believes the message is from EnTeR "after working on it for a few hours", then he must have discovered some pattern. ENTER has five letters, the same as the first line of the message.

• So, if XUQOB = ENTER, then what is the key to solving the whole message, when there are no repeated letters in the first line? It is nearly impossible to decode this cipher without knowing that it is written using the Bifid technique, where letters are given coordinates in a 5x5 grid (I/J traditionally use the same space) and the coordinates are split and rearranged.

• However, Will found this note on the ground. If someone had intended for him to read it, they would have given him some sort of key or additional clue. Will just happened to stumble upon a random encrypted poem and saw more in it than was there.

• The message, once decrypted, reads: "Enter, if you dare. No one will free you from the dark."

• The message is ominous, for certain, but the truth is that this note has nothing to do with Sewer Horse Records, Will Fox, or Darryl Fanton.

Post 10

• The note from Will to Bobby is used to solve this code. Convert J, Q, K to 10 and A to 11.

  • "Bobby and Ian were not in their room when I returned."