STRANGE STORIES IN CRIMINAL LAW: Gregory Fleniken

​Greg Fleniken, a landman for the company he co-owned with his brother, traveled a lot for work. When his body was found on the floor of a locked hotel room, cigarette in hand, a small wound on his scrotum and rug-burn on his cheek, but no other signs of injury, the police were initially baffled. And after the autopsy, things got weirder. The medical examiner found damage to numerous internal organs and two broken ribs, the type of injuries consistent with being beaten or crushed, yet Fleniken didn't have a bruise to be found. Announcing that Fleniken probably bled internally to death just a few minutes as a result of these injuries, the medical examiner ruled the death a homicide.

The police began an investigation which uncovered the following facts:

1.  Fleniken often spent his nights on the road watching TV, smoking, drinking soda pop and eating candy.
2. On the night before his body was found, he had called down to the hotel's front desk, noting that he had tried to cook some microwave popcorn and had tripped the breaker.
3. The hotel sent someone up to the room, but no one answered the door.
4. ​The following morning, Fleniken's wife, who had been expecting a call from him, worried when she hadn't heard from him by the usual time, so she called his work, and learned that he hadn't shown up at the worksite yet either.
5. His coworkers went to check up on him at the hotel, but no one answered the door.
6. Fearing the worst, the coworkers had the hotel management open the door, at which time they found the dead body.
7. Despite believing that someone had somehow beat Fleniken to death without leaving much of an outward mark, Fleniken wasn't reported to have any enemies, and seemed to be a decent human being.
8. ​The surveillance video taken from the hotel hall outside the room didn't show anything suspicious.
9. No one in the hotel that night had heard anything suspicious. 

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The investigation seemed to hit a dead end. ...Until the family hired a PI. When the PI and the police returned to the hotel room, the PI noticed a small hole in the wall of the room, and later they discovered another corresponding hole in the wall of the adjacent room, patched up with toothpaste.  

​When the police lined the two holes up, they reasoned that the holes might mark the  trajectory of a bullet which had gone through the wall in the electricians’ room and exited in Fleniken’s. Using a laser, the police determined that a bullet on that trajectory would have struck Fleniken bed: the bed where he had likely been laying watching TV.  

​This discovery led the police to start investigating the hotel neighbors that night, men who were coworkers, in town on electrician business unrelated to Fleniken's.

​With this new lead, the police followed up with the men who had been in the neighboring room that night.  Two of the three men cooperated with the police and Fleniken's family finally got some answers. Apparently, the three men had all been drinking and when the alcohol in the room ran out, one man sent another down to his car to retrieve more alcohol and--for reasons unknown--his gun.  When the second man returned with both items, the first took the gun, and playfully pointed the gun at the others, at which time the gun accidentally discharged, barely missing his friends.  None of the men checked the room next door to see if the story bullet had caused any damage, opting instead, to head down to the hotel bar and pretend nothing had happened.  ...But when one of them saw a gurney being rolled out of the hotel the next morning, they knew something had gone horrible wrong the previous night. 
 
The final conclusion reached by the police: while Fleniken was laying on the bed, the bullet came through the wall, hit him in the scrotum and then bounced around inside his body, ricocheting off his ribs shredding his internal organs, and causing massive internal bleeding.  

​The shooter ultimately pled no contest to manslaughter, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.