Murder on the Seventh Floor

These are the facts. Dr. Dan Kliman, 38, was found dead at the bottom of an elevator shaft on December 1. Apparently, he was a doctor with a practice in Alameda, and a co-founder of a four year old activist group Voice for Israel. The building was the Sharon Building on 55th New Montgomery Street where he took Arabic classes. He was an active pro-Israel protester and gay. Classes were canceled on the 25th, the day that police investigators believed he died. He was found on the floor of the elevator shaft, clutching a purple pen.

At first glance, it seems like a fantastic story for a murder mystery. I would have expected such a plot from an Agatha Christie novel or an episode of Mystery. However, this is real life.

'Frisco is treating this case like an accidental death. The majority of the comments on the page on the San Fran Chronicle are made by people who believe that this was truly an accident. I can't believe people can be so naive.

Listening to Savage yesterday on the radio, I became more acquainted with the facts. He was carrying a backpack with a laptop and $1500. True, he was to go on vacation sometime soon. The camera in the lobby is motion-censored, so it caught Kliman waiting for the elevator. It went off for sometime as there was no movement. However, the camera turned on again because of some movement, but there was no one there.

Police investigators believe that the elevator, which was working perfectly at the time, had gotten stuck in between the 6 and 7 floors, or the 7 or 8. Kliman, they think, tried to open the elevator doors with his purple pen and must have fallen backwards.

There are so many points here that even we the average citizen can find something terribly wrong with.

First, if there were no classes that day, why wasn't Kliman informed? Who's duty was it to email students and tell them?
Second, if he were stuck in an elevator, why didn't he press the emergency button to get in contact with someone? Anyone as intelligent as Dr. Kliman would have known to press the button.
Third, it is impossible for him to have opened the elevator doors. On Savage, two elevator repairmen/technicians called in to say so. Even more impossible is that he tried to open them with a pen.
Fourth, if he had managed to open the doors, why would he be wearing his backpack and clutching a pen? Wouldn't he have put the pen away and throw the backpack to safety first, and him afterwards?
Fifth, if he had fallen backwards, why was he still gripping the pen? Wouldn't he had let it go to grab on to something or in the fall?
Sixth, his bones were completely shattered. He would not have been able to be holding the pen anyway. Unless...he was in what they call rigor mortis, which means that the body stiffens after, I believe, 3 hours? That's the only way he could have still been holding the pen. And if he was in rigor mortis, then he would have to have been dead some time before falling down.

As morbid and gruesome as this story is, I can't help but be fascinated by this. It's like watching a murder mystery.

My brother and I decided that if Hollywood ever made this into a thriller, the title would be something like Fall or Falling Down. Unless it was made in the 30s, then it would have been like The Great Fall.

I need to get a life instead of sitting around concocting plots. =P