INDIANA, Pa. -- The "detectives'' all found the body hidden under the stage, but if they had been smart enough to look in that woman's pocket, they would have discovered the answer to the mystery.

	Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Brittney Shank, 16, of Bolivar, Westmoreland County, takes a picture of Dave Surtasky as he acts as a dead body at a mock crime scene during Crime Scene Investigation Camp at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Click photo for larger image.

The crime scene stretched the whole way across Fisher Auditorium, Indiana University of Pennsylvania's main theatrical venue. It included the rows and rows of red plush seats, the aisles, the stage area and the small rooms off the back.

But the largest concentration of evidence -- the stuff that held the DNA, the fibers, the skin cells and hairs -- was on-stage, not far away from the first victim -- "Dave Smith," the technical director for the auditorium, who was being portrayed by Dave Surtasky.

An employee arriving at work found Smith hanging next to a toppled-over chair. Hoping his boss was still alive, he untied the rope, and the body slumped to the floor in a doorway to the makeup room.

It wasn't until most of the detectives -- high school students from around the area and even Texas -- had been on the scene for a while that they found the second body, that of Aylish Lynch. She had been strangled with her own blue hooded sweatshirt and left dead under the stage.

Friday afternoon's double slayings were the climax of a week-long Crime Scene Investigation Camp at IUP for young people to learn about forensics, police work and problem-solving.

Because the students had been learning all week, the camp's directors knew they could use more advanced evidence at this particular scene.

Much of the evidence was easy to find -- the three crushed cigarette butts, including two with Clairol red lipstick prints on them; the water bottles with DNA; the work gloves with epithelial cells inside them; a carpet fiber inside the trash can.

But other clues were more difficult to locate. None of Friday's detectives found the gaffe tape underneath the music stands at the back of the stage -- it held hair evidence. Only one student noticed the dark drag marks across the stage floor. And only two groups questioned the witness about rappelling equipment found on top of tympani drums that had been pushed to the side.

Another student, though, was so meticulous he collected the body of a dead fly in hopes it would yield some clue to the double homicide.

Tom Slagle, an IUP nursing student who designed the Fisher Auditorium crime scene, served as both a witness and as the official information source. As such, he was pounded with questions:

"If we took that to the lab, would we find DNA on it?" asked Justine Dickinson, a 16 year old from Elderton, Armstrong County.

"Do you know what she was strangled with?"

"Does she have any fibers on her"?

"Can we take a sample of the carpet here?"

"Any known enemies?"

Each of the five groups -- there were 34 students at the camp -- had a chance to investigate.

One teen even asked: "Did Smith owe money to anyone?"

When Slagle responded, "Yes, to a bookie," another student, Brandon Millichamp, 16, of Sanger, Texas, almost broke the case by saying, "The guys who put your thumbs in jars."

But he didn't pursue the answer any further, and he lost his chance.

In the end, though students from each group examined Lynch's body -- during one of the breaks she asked Slagle to remind them to be gentle with her -- only two of them thought to look in her sweatshirt pocket.

There they found the folded-up, pencil-written note that held the answers.

"Dave had some outstanding gambling debts," it read. "He didn't pay. He got killed. Aylish was his assistant. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time."