Of course today nobody wears garters anyway, but even back then nobody wore garters with tennis wear.

Notice in panel 2 that Wagner's sock had fallen down, indicating a lack of garters. Obviously, Wagner used his own garter to strangle the victim and then put his other garter on the victim's leg to make it appear both were the victim's garters.

Holy Cow!
Tiny is missing a significant part of his skull! Reason? You pick:
1. It has been planed off by Lance's razor-sharp curl.
2. Tiny has been chasing parked cars.
3. He was chasing a criminal along the top of a speeding train (they were ALWAYS doing that in those days) and didn't duck when it got to the tunnel.

Um, Doris was his favorite teddy bear, which he carried tucked inside his suit jacket.

By George, I think S has got it.

"Razzing" just doesn't convey the Wagnerian heft one would want as a motive for throttling the life from a companion, does it?

They're a candy, then they're a gum! But don't give any Razzles to Wagner. The guy will kill you as soon as look at you. Razzles just set the guy off.

When did men stop wearing garters, anyway? Man, a whole industry just disappeared in the blink of any eye as soon as socks started defying gravity. I feel bad for the garter-makers. Wonder what they did when the business dried up. Probably got in the unemployment line with the buggy-whip makers.

Good catch on the slumping sock, S! I never would have seen that one!

So in the olden days, there was only one maker, style, and color of garter? Or the athletic club rules were very specific about what kind of garter to wear on their tennis courts. Or the club had a sweethart deal with InterGartCo. The modern mind reels at the possibilities.

Plus I don't quite see how one can tie a second knot in elastic once you've cinched it down tight enough behind your head to cut off the air. You'd need a third hand to press down on the first knot. And a third hand would make you invincible at tennis, so you would not feel the urge to razz anybody about Doris.

Wait, "behind your own head"? Why would one do it that way, and why would Lance not notice this oddity?

Please don't knock the buggy whip business - automobile parts suppliers can be very successful in niche markets with few competitors.

The old town of Westfield, MA, still prides itself as the buggy whip capital of the world.

Westfield doesn't have the standing it once had as a center of manufacturing for crucial components to the transportation industry, of course, but it still ships a lot of buggy whips.

They go to the folks who give buggy rides in New York City's Central Park, to Michigan's Mackinac island. where cars aren't allowed; and, of course, to the Amish, who disdain modern contrivances like automobiles.

"I think the Amish are their biggest customers," says a former Westfield resident, Marc Santucci.

Westfield offers several important lessons for modern-day suppliers. Lesson No. 1 is that old cliches should be challenged. Westfield Whip Co. is the only buggy-whip manufacturer left in town, but it's probably more prosperous than it was at the turn of the century when it was competing with dozens of others, says Mr. Santucci. He is now president of ELM International Inc. an automotive supplier consulting company based in East Lansing, MI.

Naturally the market nowadays is much smaller, but Westfield Whip owns about 100% of the business. That's a good position to be in -- one that businesses all over the world continually covet.

Striving for domination in a declining market may not be a bad strategy after all. A major company once considered getting out of the automotive leaf-spring business thinking it was a dying technology that would be totally replaced by higher-tech suspensions by the early '80s. Then came minivans and the exploding sport/utility vehicle (SUV) market and it began selling more leaf springs than it ever dreamed of selling.

_@_v - from another article...

Yet Westfield remains; still known as Whip City, though few whips are made there. The two companies that remain from the hey-days have stories to tell, and stories that better instruct us than the best of those that disappeared. The US Whip Company suffered through nearly three decades of shrinking demand before redefining themselves. By that time, they were no longer masters of whip making. They looked at their operations and concluded that they were really in the braiding business. “What might we braid?” their management asked. At the time, in the mid-twenties, three markets seemed attractive mediums for a company with braiding expertise: sports equipment, medical supply, and fishing. In the sports equipment business, golf was growing in popularity, and golf clubs in those days had braided shafts. But this business seemed unlikely to sustain US Whip. Likewise the medical supply business, where sutures were in constant but not expanding demand. The fishing business, where demand for fishing line seemed promising, looked like the a growth opportunity, so US Whip started braiding fishing line, finally renaming themselves US Line in the early thirties. They are now a leading supplier of commercial and recreational fishing lines.

The Westfield Whip Company remains the sole significant link to Westfield’s whip making past. Nearly out of business by the late forties, a retiring newspaperman took the company as a hobby and found some markets for its products. The livestock industry supported it through the fifties and into the sixties, and today the company, which traditionally sold to distributors, has begun making custom whips for a wide variety of applications. It’s no longer a buggy whip manufacturer, but a whip maker. A look at where whips are offered for sale today shows the traditional livestock industry, but they are also offered by a trendy set of discrete sex supply shops advertising on the Internet.

All I can add to the foregoing is that I have family living in Westfield and none of them are in the buggy-whip business.

Meanwhile, between panels 2 and 3, safe from the prying eyes of his nosy readers, Lance applied one of those buggy whips to his suspect. Judiciously, of course. Lance is nothing if not judicious.

Perhaps the Amish folks have gone from their traditional rake fights to buggy whip fights. I can
see buggy whip fights as a pay-per-view option to the
UFC (Useless Flatulating Contests).

Mr. Anagram Generator translates "He kept razzing me
about Doris." as "Make out bright snazzier dope." Those are fighting words in certain parts of the tri-
state area.

Panel #1: The victim might not be dead, he could be
sniffing that locker vent in front of him.

Panel #3: Look closely! Lance appears to be cross-
eyed. (He might have been sniffing some locker vents
himself.) OR: He could be giving the perp the good
old "stink eye".

Anyway he's "Just Lance Being Lance".

And just as buggy whips have found an application in the kink industry, I suspect (I have no first-hand evidence) that the makers of men's garters are also makers of women's garters. Today, as aging baby boomers desperately seek out new forms of stimulation to keep the party going, the nylons-and-garter belts industry is probably (again I have no personal knowledge) booming.

She kept Razzling me about Buggy Whips!

Weird. The typing of those words just gave me a vision of playing some sort of Whiprazzle game. Sort of like baseball but with a whip for a bat and a razzle for a ball.
Maybe if these gentlemen had a whiprazzle date instead of a tennis date old Strangled McLockerface would still be alive...

All right, let's keep things PG in here, buggy whip fans.

It appears the victim is not wearing tennis gear. T-shirts or uncollared shirts were not proper tennis wear. I'm guessing the victim is also wearing boxers, not tennis shorts. Back then, I believe the men wore long pants on the courts.

The give away is that no one over 8 years old undresses without removing their shoes first. The victim, as other victims in the past, had his shoes on.

It would make no sense to remove a garter before removing at least the shoe on the foot.

That is pretty embarrassing to have to confess that you strangled someone with a garter.

I hope this is a two clue LL because I hate to think that "loose socks" Wagner was the only clue and not a guy wearing garters on the tennis court.

Wagner claims "fit of rage" as a set up for a involuntary/voluntary manslaughter plea, however, if he had time to remove one garter for the murder and planned the cover up by removing the second, we are talking murder one.

Hang 'em by his own garter and have Doris in the front row as a witness.

-BG Bear

This Lance is thick with overtones- Wagner with his limp socks, "making up" with the victim, "tennis" dates, "fits of rage" and getting overly upset about getting "razzed." -Not that there's anything wrong with that!!

Just be glad the victim wasn't a baseball fan (pitching, catching, etc.)

I think Doris may have been the third side of the triangle.

I'm sure S_Keeley has got it right, that Wagner's slouched sock indicates that the garters were his, but I don't see how that would hold up in court. But what's more, I don't see how this scenario could have happened in a "fit of rage." Wouldn't the razzer have had the upper hand as Wagner undid his garter? "Augh! Stop razzing me about Doris! Oh, yeah? Well, that's it! Just you wait until I take my sock garter off, then I'll exact my revenge!" I can see plenty of crimes happening in a fit of rage, but strangling by sock garter isn't one of them.

I can't tell for sure, but it does appear that those aren't dress shoes that the dead guy is wearing. And it looks like the shorts he's wearing are the shorts he's planning on playing tennis in. So, why would he need garters? As mentioned above, I believe the garters were placed on the dead guy after the fact, and the sagging sock in frame 3 is just further evidence to tie Wagner to the scene.

But Lance might be presuming too much. Just because "most" folks wouldn't wear garters to play tennis doesn't mean that this guy wouldn't. Maybe this is just a matter of a guy with no fashion sense getting knocked off.

Or, maybe the fashion police did the deed.

Really, I think if LL had to deal with actual semi-competent defense attorneys instead of criminals with premature confession syndrome, his record wouldn't be quite so good.

(Note: all this is moot if I missed something, and the solution is other than the inclusion of the victim's garters in a tennis outfit.)

Little did I know the road my fellow Buzzerati would go down, all because of my innocent mention of buggy whips!

The mind reels.

I think the dead fella (Razzer) is wearing socks with some elastic in them. Razzer's left, garterless sock is still well up on his ankle, while the murderer's (Razzie) sock has fallen - or he is wearing an ankle bracelet.

I don't think you could strangle somebody with a garter though. Some were leather and contained no elastic, but they were all pretty short. Probably best just to beat him to death with your shoe.

Next one up around the noonish area.

"You put a garter on a corpse! Have you no decency, sir?"

For a struggle involving being strangled by a piece of elastic, this is one of the neatest crime scenes I have ever seen.* I don't expect the scuffed boot prints of "No Country for Old men" but, come on, a dented locker, some tussled hair, something, act like you want to live!

*OK, I am just kidding, this is entertainment not reality. It is just fun sometimes to think of the conventions we accept when reading a book, watching a movie, etc.

-BG Bear

Benevolent Dictators know quality, you see. my friends the Home Despot and the Office Despot helped advise me.

as for garters, I prefer them on snakes.

(( now let's see what they do with THAT... ))

We didn't get to see Wagner's legs, did we? I mean, did Lance take Wagner into the other room for an old-fashioned "dressing-down," or what? (Since when does Lance have to go into another room from Tiny? Like Tiny's sensitive feelings will be hurt? Or....Swing, indeed!)

Im late on this one, but since there is no sign that he hung himself, I thought LL would advise Wagner that it is impossible to "strangle" oneself. Once you initially pass out your grip will loosen and you'll start breathing again. Crime lab tip of the day.

I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner but clearly the Turquoise Undergarment Beetle had something to do with this...
I'm thinking he ate the elastic from Wagner's sock, and also from McLockerface's socks. Giving Lockerface the need for garters with his athletic socks, and also enabling Wagner to be very neatly framed due to his apparent need for / missing garters.
I wonder if Lance can get a small insect the chair?

Good Lord, how about just wearing socks that don't fall down to your ankles?