a dead man on the floor riddle

[nutnut]

my sons friend came home with a riddle that goes ... a man is found lying dead on the floor , one side of him is a pistol , the other side is a tape recorder , the tape is played and has a suicide message on it and then a gun is heard being fired , so why was this handed to the murder squad ? its driving me mad trying to work it out , im not sure if he has got all of it right ??? anyone ?

[potterfan3]

he murdered himself?

[nutnut]

he told me the answer ! if he had commited suicide the tape would have kept running , however when it was played it was at the beginning and therefore someone had to have been there to stop and rewind the tape ....

[potterfan3]

ahhh

[Dsg]

Tape recorders do have "auto-rewind" - rewinding to the beginning if left to run on.
.
Other possibilities are :

The tape had been stopped manually after the message/shot.

The gun at the scene had not been fired.

The dead man had not been shot !! He had been killed by some other method.

[mrknowall]

The tape was voice activevated

[Postdog]

The answer does concern the rewinding - this is so old, in the days it was thought up, auto rewind didn't exist.