Nah, you don’t need a game of Clue to do it — or even a dusty VHS tape of the cult-classic comedy. All that’s required is the below photo

gallery that reviews some of soapdom’s most mind-boggling murder mysteries, from the shot someone just took at offing General Hospital rat bastard Drew Cain to the infamous “Who shot J.R. Ewing?” case on Dallas. Columbo trench coats on, and in we go… !

 

 

In 2011, all of Genoa City was looking to snuff out Jack Abbott’s former and future flame (when she was played by Maura West, now Ava Jerome on General Hospital). But, despite all that gunning, she was said to have been done in by a blow to the head with a rock. Whodunit? Nikki Newman was the prime suspect… until video evidence pointed to her then-husband, Deacon Sharpe (between Bold & Beautiful gigs)… until 11 years later, when the deceased rose from the grave and it was revealed that he’d helped her fake her demise.

If ever a villain had been asking for it, it was this one. Not only was he sleeping with Paulina Cory, he was also blackmailing her. And when sometime wife Marley Love learned that he was cheating on her and dumped his ass, he retaliated by raping her. Whodunit? Marley’s mother Donna confessed to the crime, but it was really Paulina who had gotten trigger-happy.

Abe Carver. Victor Kiriakis. Tony DiMera. Doug Williams. Even Alice Horton. Murder victims were dropping like flies in Salem in 2003. Whodunit? Of all people, Marlena Evans was revealed to be the Salem Stalker. She was even gunned down by the authorities, only for it to later turn out that neither she nor anyone else had died. They’d all just been spirited away to Melaswen Island by André DiMera for… um… reasons.

Jason Morgan’s biological mother made a lot of enemies in a very short time in 1982. So when she was shot dead, everyone was a suspect, from husband Scotty Baldwin to cousin Heather Webber (then Robin Mattson). Whodunit? The trigger was actually pulled by Lila Quartermaine’s first husband, Crane Tolliver, Susan’s partner in an ill-fated scheme to blackmail the filthy-rich family of her babydaddy, Lila’s philandering son Alan.

There could have been a Most Unwanted poster of the blackmailer hanging in the post office, he was so loathed around Pine Valley — with good reason, too. Lots of ’em. In fact, the night that Linda Warner’s coconspirator met his maker, Palmer Cortlandt and daughter Nina were both headed to his apartment with murder on their minds. Whodunit? Though Nina’s mother Daisy was discovered over the body holding the smoking gun — well, the bloody knife — Donna Tyler recalled under hypnosis that merry widow Marian Colby had actually offed the gigolo.

Troy McIver’s evil twin was never bound for a long life, what with his proclivity for blackmail and rape. When the mad doctor wound up dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs in 2001, stand-up guy Sam Rappaport was put on trial. But… Whodunit? It was the object of Colin’s obsession — Sam’s old flame, Nora Buchanan — who had given her kidnapper a helpful nudge toward his final resting place.

The clever millionaire thought that he’d have the last laugh by framing his much-younger wife Cassandra’s lover Paul Williams for his murder. But the joke turned out (a) not to be very funny at all and (b) on George. Whodunit? Daddy Warbucks cashed in his chips, so to speak, courtesy of Adrian Hunter, his missus’ other boy on the side.

Before General Hospital made Sonny Corinthos its untouchable antihero, being a mobster on a soap opera was akin to having a target painted on your back. So Carlo was already on borrowed time when kidnapping victim Sarah Gordon escaped, and green-eyed monster Asa Buchanan learned about wife Renée’s past with the mafioso. Whodunit? The last person we’d ever have expected: Carlo’s sweet niece — Kevin Buchanan’s girlfriend, Stephanie Hobart — in retaliation for his murder of her father.

It was murder mystery upon murder mystery in Oakdale in the mid-1980s. Marie Kovacs… Henry Strauss… Cal Randolph. All of them died before their killer was revealed to be Mr. Nice Guy Doug Cummings… who was then stabbed. Whodunit? It was neither Kim Hughes, the singer Doug had stalked, nor his fiancée, Kim’s stepdaughter Frannie, but Marsha Talbot. His ex-lover had discovered him raping Frannie and expressed her displeasure with the pointy end of a letter opener.

When the shady exec was put out of business in 2023, there wasn’t really any mystery about it. Obviously, it was wife Gabi Hernandez (then Camila Banus), whose true love Stefan DiMera he’d brainwashed to despise her. Wasn’t it? Whodunit? In fact, the killer turned out to be Connie Vinisky, who we’d have sworn was too sweet to cut a slice of bread, never mind run around stabbing people.