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[hugo_e]

It's 1907. The body of a well-dressed young man is found on the grounds of a very wealthy private estate in New Rochelle. There is a bullet hole behind the left ear, and a revolver is found nearby. His pockets have been turned inside out. There are bootprints around the body, yet the heels of the victim's boots have been torn off and are not found.

The body is never identified. Local police close the case, and file it as a suicide.

The owner of the estate is a very well-respected banker, philanthropist, and sportsman. Several years earlier he was implicated--and then exonerated--in a high-profile international cheating scandal.

All of the above is 100% true, BTW, and was reported in the New York Times. But then things went quiet. Can anyone here come up with a theory as to what happened? The possibility of blackmail or witness tampering is fairly obvious--but it there was foul play, why would it take place on the grounds of the rich man's estate? And what about the boot heel mystery?

[Dave Freas]

He was carrying a secret message from someone (the President?) to the owner of the estate hidden in a boot heel.
He was followed from where he picked up the message to the estate by a thug hired by a faction within the government to prevent delivery of the message and whatever it would lead to. When the message carrier wouldn't give up the message, the thug murdered him, pried off the boot heels, and fled, later throwing both the heels and the message into the nearest Finger Lake.
The murder took place on the estate to throw suspicion on the owner and divert it from the primary person(s) opposing whatever effect the message would lead to. To further distance those who wanted to stop the message from the murder, shortly after (within minutes?) of him stealing the heels and message, the thug was murdered by another thug hired by the opposition and perhaps his body was thrown in the lake along with the heels and message. OR he was killed and dumped in the lake along with the heels and the message was later burned by the opposition.

[Dave Freas]

Some more thoughts:
The person responsible for the dead man on the estate could be a business rival hoping to stop something that would ruin him.
The victim is a 'go-between' for the estate owner's daughter and the man she loves. The estate owner had him killed because he did not approve of his daughter's beau