Club holds murder mystery for charity

City residents put their heads together Friday night to solve a murder mystery served up by the Rotary Club of New Brunswick.
The club held a charitable murder mystery dinner to fundraise for the Dictionary Project, which gives impoverished children in New Brunswick and Highland Park a free dictionary, said Michael Blackwell, a club member.
Proceeds also went to the Young Actors Program, which helps young people interested in acting break into the industry, he said.
Blackwell was pleased with the turnout for the dinner, which attracted New Brunswick and Highland Park residents as well as club members at the Elks Club on Livingston Avenue, he said.
During the course of the night, one Rotary Club member faked his death and guests were responsible for guessing how the member died and who killed him based on a set of clues revealed throughout the game.
“It’s a murder mystery. Someone’s [going to] die unfortunately, and everybody’s going to have a chance to guess how it happened and why it happened,” said Boisch, a Rotary Club member and one of the event’s organizers.
Gifts for the winning participant included restaurant gift certificates and other small prizes, he said. Restaurants including Stage Left, Old Man Rafferty’s and Harvest Moon, catered the event free of charge.
Before and after the murder mystery, club members set up tables with food and allowed guests to fraternize with their friends and meet people.
Blackwell said the Rotary Club of New Brunswick had one objective in throwing this event — to provide a great help to the community.
“Rotary is a service club in the city of New Brunswick that works on several community projects and their motto is service above self,” he said.
Blackwell said his club was far-reaching, with branches all over the United States, and is growing and expanding abroad.
Franz Gschossmann, who ran the event with Boisch, said with 32,000 Rotary Clubs around the world, the Rotary Club of New Brunswick is just one example of community service around the globe.
Because of the greater-than-expected turnout, Blackwell said he plans to host the event every year.
Richard Boisch said it took two months of planning to execute the murder mystery dinner and was pleased with event’s turnout.
“We’ve put this event together for months now and it’s really turned out to be quite a success,” he said.
Gschossmann said he hopes the event shed light on the Rotary Club of New Brunswick’s ultimate objective to promote community service.
“We are a community organization. What we do is for the benefit of the community,” he said. “We work on behalf of scholarships and we locate needy people who are looking for some financial assistance and we give it to them.”
Gschossmann said events like the murder mystery are successful is because people who do not seek any compensation for their work plan them and work only toward helping the community.