An 18-year-old prospective freshman student’s body was found by Campus Police Saturday, murdered in the crime scene house located at Pioneer Farm.

The student, whose identity has not been released, is believed to have been touring the facility.  His group accidentally left him in the partially-unfinished basement of the 3,000 square foot ranch-style house.

“I thought we had everyone when we left the house,” tour guide Gary Pork said.

With the third annual Horrific Crime Scene Revisited event happening, the Department of Criminal Justice decided to use the murder for the exhibit.

Students and visitors walked through the home, eliminating any chance of the police finding the killer, and found the student’s blood dashed all over the walls of the basement

For at least one visitor, the murder was the best scene in the house ever.

“The staged murders in the past were so phony,” Sousi Opath, a senior political science major, said. “You could smell the blood and feel the anger this time around.  They should stage more real murders from now on.”

Criminal justice students, however, were mortified.

“I couldn’t handle the investigation, so I switched majors,” Sammy Addams, now an elementary education major, said. “It was nothing like CSI: Miami.”

The students were asked to take notes and formulate theories about the murder.  System-wide cuts were part of the reason the investigation was student-driven.

“Our officers had so many parking citations to write this weekend, we physically didn’t have the amount of bodies to investigate the murder,” Campus Police Chief Scott Marquardt said.

Criminal justice professors also wanted to give their students the chance to experience a bloody scene before working in the field.

“We get so many forensic investigation units calling the department, saying our students puke at the sight of real blood,”  Derek Krafton, a criminal justice professor, said. “We thought we should ready our students for the real world, because God only knows there is nothing real about UW-Platteville.”

As usual, there are no suspect leads, and there never will be.  The UW-Platteville Police Department and the criminal justice department said the case is pretty much closed.

“No one wants to upset a murderer, just saying,” criminal justice student Angie Rohr said.