Lance Mueller was eventually charged.
The prosecution did not claim he had entered the hotel planning to kill Greg Fleniken.
It did not claim he even knew Greg.
There was no traditional murder motive.
No jealousy.
No financial conflict.
No revenge.
No relationship.
The state's case was based on recklessness.
A man drinking heavily had handled a loaded 9mm pistol inside a hotel room.
He pointed it around.
The gun discharged.
A round crossed the wall.
A stranger died.
Mueller eventually entered no-contest pleas involving manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.
In 2012, he was sentenced to ten years in prison.
The case was legally resolved.
But the story remained deeply unsettling because of how easily it could have ended differently.
Think about Greg's evening without the bullet.
He finishes Iron Man 2.
Smokes another cigarette.
Calls or texts Susie.
Sleeps.
Gets up the following morning.
Goes to work.
Drives home for the weekend.
Nothing unusual.
He does not know Lance Mueller.
Does not know Steinmetz.
Does not know Pasano.
Does not know that a loaded handgun is being handled on the other side of the wall.
There is no reason he should know.
A locked hotel room should be private.
That is what gives the case its horror.
Greg made no obvious risky decision.
He was not meeting someone dangerous.
He was not involved in a fight.
He was not carrying large amounts of visible cash through an unsafe environment.
He was watching television.
A bullet crossed the wall.
The randomness made the case famous.
But the cover-up is what created the mystery.
Had Mueller or one of the others immediately called the front desk, the investigation would have been simple.
Police would arrive.
See the firearm.
See the fresh hole.
Go into Room 348.
Find Greg.
The autopsy would already have context.
Doctors would know to look for a projectile wound.
There would be no months-long search for a nonexistent attacker.
No suspicion of a mysterious beating.
No private investigator having to reconstruct the route with a laser.
The phrase "Body in Room 348" likely would never exist.
Instead, silence changed everything.
By failing to report the shot, the men allowed the wrong interpretation to survive.
And the wrong interpretation shaped the autopsy itself.
Dr. Brown saw internal injuries resembling blunt-force trauma.
The unusual location of the actual entrance wound disguised its true nature.
Without the knowledge that a firearm had discharged next door, the pathologist did not interpret it correctly.
That is one of the most important lessons in the case.
Forensic evidence does not interpret itself.
Context matters.
Doctors make conclusions.
Detectives make conclusions.
If the first assumption is wrong, every later fact can be bent around it.
Greg's injury became "beating."
The orderly hotel room became "where did the beating happen?"
The locked door became "how did the attacker leave?"
The missing motive became "what secret enemy did Greg have?"
Every question followed from the first wrong answer.
Then Brennan noticed the wall.
Once investigators replaced one assumption, the entire case reorganized itself.
Greg was shot.
Therefore:
No attacker needed the door.
No struggle was required.
No motive was necessary.
No theft made sense because robbery had nothing to do with it.
Room 349 suddenly mattered.
The men staying there suddenly mattered.
The toothpaste suddenly mattered.
The strange autopsy injury suddenly mattered.
Everything had been there from the beginning.
The evidence had not changed.
Only the interpretation.
Susie later pursued civil litigation connected to Greg's death.
Claims were made against parties including those associated with Room 349 and entities involved with the hotel.
The matter was ultimately resolved without a public trial detailing every claim.
But money was never the most important issue.
The larger issue was responsibility.
How many chances had there been to prevent Greg from dying?
Do not drink heavily while handling a firearm.
Do not point a loaded gun around a hotel room.
Do not pull or touch the trigger.
Once it fires, immediately call for help.
Check the neighboring room.
Tell police what happened.
Every stage offered another opportunity to reduce the damage.
Every stage was missed.
And the consequence landed entirely on a man who had nothing to do with any of them.
Yet the most remarkable element of the investigation was still not the gun.
It was the fact that everything might have remained unexplained if Ken Brennan had accepted one tiny dent in a hotel wall as ordinary damage.
One dent.
Several inches away from where a door handle should have struck.
That was all.
A small inconsistency.
A question.
Why is that mark there?
And on the other side of the wall:
a hole filled with toothpaste.
The entire mystery was hiding inside something a hotel housekeeper might have painted over.