In late February, Valerie Wilson was murdered and mutilated in her Oxford apartment, not a quarter mile from the Square. She died instantly after being shot with a .22 pistol around 6 a.m. According to the Yoknapatawpha coroner’s report, “At least twenty-seven puncture wounds were inflicted upon the victim after death. While most of the wounds were superficial, several reached five inches below the surface of the skin.”
Her killer is still at large and the case has drawn national attention, including inquiries from America’s Most Wanted, the Houston Post and Spin magazine.
Yet what’s most compelling about Valerie Wilson’s murder is that it never happened. She’s a character in a faux “real life” murder mystery called The Crime Scene, an Internet program created by Tom Arriola, actor, waiter, and recent graduate student in theatre at the University of Mississippi.