Who Was the Murderer in Each Season of ‘Only Murders in the Building’?

UPDATE: The murderer in Season 3 has been revealed in the season finale! Find out who did it, and why, down in the final subheading!

‘Only Murders in the Building’ is one of the most popular Hulu original shows today, with Season 3 in full swing. We’re eagerly awaiting the season finale to finally reveal who murdered Ben Glenroy, although we already have a pretty good guess after the last episode. But, who was the murderer in each season of ‘Only Murders In The Building’ so far?

The murderer in ‘Only Murders in the Building’ Season 1

Throughout the next few subheadings, I will try to spoil as little to you about the plot itself and all the little twists while still answering the question you’re here to get the answer for – who was the murderer in ‘Only Murders In The Building’ Season 1? Still, bear in mind that spoilers are incoming.

The team went through many suspects while trying to figure out who killed Tim Kono, using their now-famous ‘murder board.’ They suspected the ‘Tye Dye Guy’ – which turned out to be an old friend of Mabel’s. They suspected Sting – yes, the singer Sting – but that also fell through.

Howard, the neighbor who’s madly in love with his feline(s), was on the suspect list for a while, but that also proved to be a dead end. Heck, even Mabel was under the magnifying glass for a moment there.

In the end, the real killer was revealed to be Jan Bellows, a basoonist who lived in the Arconia and who also became Charles’ girlfriend during their investigation. They never suspected her, as Jan was really sweet, and at one point, it even appeared as if the murderer threatened and stabbed her in her own apartment.

Eventually, it was proven that she deliberately inserted herself in the investigation and stabbed herself to throw the podcasters off her scent. Tim Kono was her lover, and she killed him the day after they broke things off. When she was exposed, Jan tried to kill Charles as well, but Mabel and Oliver saved him, and Jan was arrested.

The murderer in ‘Only Murders in the Building’ Season 2

Season 2 picked up not long after the finale of Season 1. Mabel, Charles, and Oliver were celebrating their success on the roof of the Arconia, drinking champagne and having a laugh. They received a message to leave the building immediately but ignored it, and Mabel went downstairs to her apartment for just a moment.

There, she found Bunny Folger – the building’s snarky superintendent – stabbed with a knife and one of Mabel’s big knitting needles sticking out of her chest before she collapsed and died in Mabel’s arms. Naturally, she was the first suspect, and ‘Bloody Mabel’ became a thing on social media. But who was the real killer?

Again, the suspect list was as long as Charles’ career as Brazzos. From Howard to the building’s new, aspiring young superintendent, all the way to Alice Banks – a young artist who just so happened to come into Mabel’s life right when sh*t was hitting the fan, and Bunny was found murdered. Even Cinda Canning, aka the Podcast Queen, became a prime suspect.

In the end, the unexpected twist came when the killer was revealed to be Poppy White, aka Becky Butler. The reveal was absolutely awesome as well, but I’ll let you watch the show to see how it transpired. It got me spinning for a bit, I have to admit.

Becky Butler was a girl from Cinda Canning’s ‘All Is Not OK in Oklahoma’ podcast that she famously ‘solved’ about Becky Butler’s murder. As it turned out, Becky wasn’t dead at all – she walked into Cinda’s life, wanting her approval and dreaming of having a podcast of her own someday.

She devised a notorious plan with her boyfriend cop to kill Bunny, frame Mabel, and make an awesome podcast to impress Cinda. In contrast, her boyfriend would get promoted for solving a super-complicated crime. Of course, our beloved trio thwarted their plans – but just barely.

Who could be the murderer in ‘Only Murders in the Building’ Season 3?

Season 3 of ‘Only Murders in the Building’ is not officially over yet. We’re still waiting for the finale to reveal the killer of Ben Glenroy – but after the last episode, Mabel, Oliver, and Charles had a major breakthrough in their investigation, so we actually have a pretty good idea about who the murderer is. Well, at least, who tried killing Ben the first time?

Ben has this thing with cookies – he just can’t resist eating them, even though he knows that his career basically rests on his looks, so getting fat isn’t an option. Still, he stress-eats a cookie just before the opening night show of Death Rattle – where he’s the lead, and Oliver’s the director.

Suddenly, Ben collapses on stage and seemingly dies. As it turned out, the cookie was poisoned – and in the last episode, the crew deduced that it had to be at the hands of Donna DeMeo – the wealthy producer of the show, who wanted her son to have his first big production.

After a critic came to the show’s grand rehearsal, she wrote a pretty damning review, stating that Ben was the show’s biggest problem. So, as our team of investigators concluded, Donna poisoned the cookie, deliberately led a stressed-out Glenroy right into the cookie, and waited as she shredded the review.

Now, it makes a lot of sense, and it will probably end up being the truth, but take it with a grain of salt before the finale actually premieres in, like, literally 24 hours. I’ll update the article as the finale gives us all the information. There could still be a twist that proves this entire theory wrong.

What we still don’t know, however, is who actually pushed Ben down the elevator shaft when he did eventually get killed. He was alive and kicking, surviving the poisoned cookie, but soon afterward, somebody killed him ‘again.’

The team’s theory is that Donna did it after the cookie thing didn’t work. After all, she was in and out of the ‘after-party’ the entire night. But something tells me that the one who pushed Ben into the elevator shaft will be a completely different person.

I believe that, eventually, it will be Ben’s brother and manager, Dickie. We already had Dickie as a prime suspect for quite some time now – even Loretta (portrayed by the brilliant Merryl Streep), who proved to be his biological mother, confessed to Ben’s murder to the police to try and protect Dickie from going to jail.

Dickie told Loretta that he was sad but kind of felt a great relief when Ben was thought dead by poisoning. Then Ben came back, still being the ‘dickie’ (pun intended) he always was, and Dickie just snapped, pushing him down the elevator shaft to end it once and for all.

Again, nothing has been confirmed yet, and we could just as easily get a supertwist in the season finale that tosses everything we’ve said out of the window. We’ll know more when ‘Only Murders in the Building’ Season 3 finale drops on October 3, exclusively on Hulu/Disney+ (depending on where you’re from). We’ll update this last subheading after the finale.

UPDATE: Season 3 is under wraps, and we finally got our killer revealed. The team was only partially right – it was Donna DeMeo who poisoned Ben Glenroy by sprinkling rat poison over his cookie. Knowing that Ben had an eating disorder and that he won’t be able to resist the temptation, she tricked him into eating it right before his big debut in Death Rattle.

However, she revealed that she did not plan on killing Ben – she just wanted to knock him out long enough for him to miss opening night. She then confessed to pushing him down the elevator shaft – but it was a lie.

Now, we suspected that it was somebody else pushing Ben down the elevator shaft, and we were right about that. However, we were wrong suspecting it’d be Dickie. In the end, it was Cliff – Donna’s ‘boy’ – who pushed Glenroy to his untimely death.

The big reveal came after dOnna had already confessed but something just didn’t sit right with Mabel. In the end, she found Cliff wanting to off himself, throwing himself from the stage rafters to his death. Cliff pushed Ben after realizing that the actor figured out it was Donna who poisoned him.

In the end, Donna wanted to protect Cliff while Cliff wanted to protect Donna – and both of them ended up in prison. The ending of the episode got us another murder of a fan-favorite character, though, so brace yourself for Season 4 of ‘Only Murders in the Building’ – likely somewhere in 2024.

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