Lewis Ringer’s suicide and the official end of the Ricks case provide an apparent solution to the murders of Edward George Ricks and Mrs. Ricks, but the resolution rests on inference rather than decisive physical proof. For Burke Devore, watching the news announcement becomes a turning point: the case’s closure lifts his immediate despair and lets him resume his own plans, even as his account of who killed the Ricks couple remains in tension with the police conclusion.

Background and the Police Case

The announcement comes on a Monday, four days after Burke’s “terrible experience” at the Ricks house. Ringer had been the police’s leading suspect from early in the investigation, but suspicion had not supplied the evidence needed to hold him. The authorities knew the murder weapon was a nine-millimeter gun; they had not found it or identified the dealer from whom Ringer had obtained it. They speculated that he had bought it earlier in a southern state using false identification and later discarded it in a nearby river or lake, but this remained an assumption, not a recovered evidentiary link.

Ringer’s lawyer demanded his release, and the police had to let him go on Saturday afternoon. They continued watching him closely, however, with a police car stationed outside his house around the clock. The surveillance was intended both to keep him under observation and to hold back crowds of curious onlookers. The case was therefore unresolved in a practical sense: the police had a suspect, but lacked the weapon and other physical evidence that could firmly tie him to the killings.

Suicide and Official Closure

By the time the news reaches Burke and Marjorie Devore, Ringer is dead. He hanged himself in his garage sometime Sunday night, in the space where his wife’s car used to be. His house was empty: his wife had left that Saturday morning, after announcing at a tearful press conference on Friday evening that she was returning to her parents in Ohio and would begin divorce proceedings.

The police explanation links this departure to the pressure surrounding the case. Their theory was that Ringer could not face the world after losing his wife, being pursued by police, and knowing the crimes he had committed. June Ricks had also told reporters that she thought Ringer killed her parents for love of her. She believed he loved her, but had gone too far. In the authorities’ account, the suicide follows from the collapse of Ringer’s marriage and the exposure of his alleged violence.

His death lets the police say that the case is essentially over. The missing gun has not been found, and the evidence that had prevented Ringer’s arrest has not been supplied by his death. Nonetheless, the suspect is gone, and the investigation can stop. Burke sees the public response as relief: the police spokesman, a television reporter, the anchor, and even June appear ready to accept a conclusion that requires no further search for a weapon, witnesses, or another motive. The case ends less through proof than through the disappearance of the person the authorities already believed responsible.

Burke’s Response and the Case’s Consequences

For four days Burke has been immobilized by discouragement. He has not simply delayed his next move; he describes himself as unable to think or take a step forward. The news changes that state. As he watches the response to Ringer’s death, Burke concludes that the Ricks case is finished and, in a moment of apparent relief, tells himself that he did not kill them. That conclusion matters to his immediate conduct: after the broadcast, while Marjorie goes to prepare dinner, he returns to his office for the first time since Thursday, opens the file drawer, and examines the remaining résumés.

He chooses to move his activity as far as possible from the first two incidents, and focuses on a candidate in north-central New York State. The case’s closure thus does more than reassure him that attention has shifted elsewhere; it restores his capacity to continue his scheme while encouraging him to think in terms of geographical distance and reduced connection between incidents. Ringer’s suicide becomes, for Burke, an opening created by the authorities’ willingness to treat the matter as settled.

That relief is complicated by Burke’s later written confession. In it, he says that he killed Edward Ricks and Mrs. Ricks, explaining that he had intended to kill Edward but killed his wife as well after she mistook him for another man. The contrast between this admission and his reaction to the broadcast—his claim to himself that he did not kill them—leaves a marked discrepancy within Burke’s own account. The official case assigns responsibility to Ringer; Burke’s later confession assigns it to himself. The event’s apparent certainty therefore depends on whose account is being heard, and on what Burke is prepared to acknowledge at a given moment.

Narrative and Moral Significance

The news item gives Burke a model of how public certainty can follow from an incomplete investigation. Ringer’s suspicion, his wife’s departure, June’s account, and his suicide fit together into a coherent explanation, but the missing gun and absent physical link remain unresolved. The ease with which the case is declared finished exposes the difference between a satisfying conclusion and a demonstrated one. Burke notices that closure spares everyone the labor and doubt of continuing to ask questions; he also benefits from that closure.

The episode sits within Burke’s wider effort to justify violence as necessary for his family and future, while identifying corporate leaders and stockholders as the real enemies behind job competition. Yet the immediate effect of Ringer’s suicide is more practical than philosophical: it breaks Burke’s paralysis, removes the prospect of continued inquiry into the Ricks murders, and sends him back to the résumés. The ending is consequently double-edged. The authorities obtain a usable conclusion, and Burke takes the case’s closure as permission to proceed, while the unresolved conflict between the official attribution and his later confession prevents that conclusion from being fully secure.