Who killed Denise in The Oval? The mystery ran so long even the recappers begged for mercy

Denise Truesdale had one job on The Oval: be the president's mistress. She was extremely good at it — stock tips, secret visits, the works — right up until the mid-season finale of season one, when Hunter Franklin stepped into the bathroom for two minutes and came back to find her dead in his bed. Not just dead. Decoratively dead, in a way we cannot fully describe on a website with advertisers.

An entire season of "wait, who?"

What followed was one of the longest whodunits in soap history. BET's own recappers were openly pleading for answers after season one wrapped with the question still dangling. The suspect board, at various points, included:

• Hunter himself, who was too drunk and too high to alibi his own evening;
• First Lady Victoria, who caught them together and does not forgive;
• Victoria's mother, on a "called in a favor" theory;
• the Secret Service, who kept covering things up with all the subtlety of a marching band.

One is in a cult and "the other is seducing the president on a regular basis," is how Melissa L. Williams described playing Denise and her twin sister Ruth — a casual mention of a twin that would go on to break several brains, but that's another article.

The reveal nobody's therapist was ready for

The answer, when it finally landed in season two: Jason Franklin. The First Son. The teenager who creeps through White House tunnels for fun. Denise wasn't even his only victim — the maid Jean and his own grandmother Maude eventually joined the list, at which point his parents' main concern remained, incredibly, the news cycle.

So who killed Denise? The kid down the hall. The call was coming from inside the People's House the entire time, and honestly, it never stopped.