Murder is Academic

What happened?

The Yoknapatawpha County Sheriff's Department is investigating the death of Douglas Reed, an associate professor in the English Department at the University of Mississippi.

Assistant professor Jake Hemphill discovered the body in a meeting room at the Yoknapatawpha County Conference Center (YCCC). Professor Hemphill said he was there to double-check the preparations for the lecture he was scheduled to co-present in that room later that morning.

When he saw Professor Reed, he went looking for help and ran into YCCC Events Manager Yvonne Boyd, who called 911.

Help investigate the case

The Murder is Academic case documents are presented in reverse chronological order and are available exclusively to Case Detectives for a limited time. (Don't want to wait? Subscribe now).

• Click the Evidence, Interview, Biography, or Press tag at the top of the Case Files page to filter by document type.
• Click the Day tags at the top of the Case Files page to filter case documents by the day they happened in the investigation.

Want more info? Check out the Crime Scene FAQ

Where do you start?

If this is your first look at the investigation, you may want to start with the Case Recap or one of these case documents:

• Sheriff's Department report on the incident [Available exclusively to Case Detectives for a limited time]
• Biography of the victim, Douglas Reed [Available exclusively to Case Detectives for a limited time]
• Interview with the person who found the body [Available exclusively to Case Detectives for a limited time]
• Interview with the 911 caller [Coming soon]
• Interview with a speaker at the conference [Coming soon]
• Press coverage of the professor's death [Coming soon]