Now, we’re onto something. Only Murders in the Building’s Season 5 Episode 3: Rigor takes us through what happened the night Oliver (Martin Short) found sleazy gangster Nicky Caccimelio’s (Bobby Cannavale) body hanging in the dry cleaners.
Disclaimer: This article contains major spoilers for Only Murders in the Building season 5 episode 3. Read at your own discretion.
Only Murders in the Building season 5 episode 3 seemingly builds on the clues we’ve noted from the season’s earlier episodes (Nail in the Coffin and After You), with everything slowly unfolding before the three as they connect the dots. Here’s everything you need to know.
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What’s Underneath
In the episode’s first few minutes, Charles’s narration takes us back to the 1910s, when cars had started replacing horse carriages. He mentioned that this prompted New York’s reigning mobsters at the time to transform the Arconia’s underground horse stables into a booming, albeit hidden, business location. The “Velvet Room” rose to the occasion, providing a space for card deals and even the most significant negotiations in New York history.
Charles quipped that even though the years had changed the Velvet Room’s atmosphere, one thing remained constant: the mob. Then we were taken back to the events from Episode 1’s final scenes. Now that the trio had found more clues leading to Lester’s death, they had also discovered that Nicky’s dry-cleaning business is just above the Velvet Room after hearing Oliver from the vents.
The Autopsy of Nicky Caccimelio
Not knowing what to do, Oliver pushed Nicky’s lifeless body in a laundry cart to Charles’s apartment. The group went ahead with Mabel’s suggestion to conduct an “autopsy” in search of more leads before any suspect returned to the dry cleaners for Nicky.
With a meat cleaver lodged into Nicky’s chest, it’s no wonder it was what sent him sleeping with the fishes. After putting the heavy corpse onto Charles’s kitchen counter, they were now ready to examine the body for clues: No rigor mortis, meaning the body could still be fresh, green felt under his fingernails just like with the severed finger they found, a white powdery substance on his sleeve, rope marks on his wrists, pooled blood near his ankles, and a supposed freezer burn behind his ear.
But one last detail surprised the podcast detectives — a piece of torn Arconia stationery inside Nicky’s mouth.
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Haunted by the Past
In the show’s fourth season, we saw a grieving Charles having hallucinatory conversations with his late friend and stunt double Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch). In this episode, Charles begins having another hallucinatory moment with, well, Nicky. Their imaginary chats increased with every moment Charles spent with the taunting corpse, even until early morning, when they needed to return Nicky before the store opened at 7 AM.
While rushing to the dry cleaners, Mabel noticed a familiar item when they passed by the new doorman, Randall (Jermaine Fowler). The paper from Lester’s, now Randall’s, ledger matches the Arconia stationery they pried from Nicky’s mouth earlier. Yes, the ledger we talked about from Episode 2: After You. Oliver volunteered to retrieve the ledger from the unassuming doorman, leaving Mabel and Charles to return Nicky.
As they passed through the lobby, Mabel was stopped by a not-so-friendly face, a former friend, Althea (Beanie Feldstein). Now an emerging artist, Althea or THĒ, struck a condescending chitchat with Mabel, who later learned they would be Arconia neighbors. Dreading talking to her old buddy but unable to leave, Mabel let Charles handle Nicky alone.
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More Secrets Unveiled
Struggling with every effort to move Nicky’s body behind the store counter, Charles accidentally saw a chest tattoo, “Death Alone,” a nod to a poem by Pablo Neruda. The tattoo seemingly revealed a mob boss with a then-beating literary heart.
The chatter of police officers startled Charles, who quickly hid behind hanging clothes. The cops, who happened to be crooked men in uniform, came for Nicky’s corpse on the dot, subtly mentioning framing the “Caputo Family” for Nicky’s murder.
Meanwhile, Oliver finally got the ledger after awkwardly snatching it from Randall’s hands. The group reconvened at Charles’s apartment and discovered that a few ledger pages contained names, most likely the Velvet Room’s patrons who met every Saturday at 12 midnight. Tracing the markings from a missing page, they also learned that it contained random, cryptic words yet decoded — poker terms and even bird names.
In Episode 1: Nail in the Coffin, Lorraine Coluca (Dianne Wiest), Lester’s wife, told the gang that her passionate birdwatcher husband likened each tenant to a bird. Maybe Lester wrote down interesting Arconia tenants on the torn ledger page. But what could those be about?
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The “New Mob”
Finding out that the next meeting in the Velvet Room would take place in only a few hours, Mabel, Charles, and Oliver agreed to assemble there a few minutes before the mystery guests arrived.
By midnight, the trio rushed to hide behind the gaming room’s bar, expecting to see mafia bigshots and crime families gather. To their surprise, three interesting figures and not mobsters entered the room. They identified them as Tech CEO Sebastian Steed (Christoph Waltz), big pharma heir Jay Pfluig (Logan Lerman), and multichain hotelier Camila White (Renée Zellweger). Gone were the days of definitive gangsters we see from the movies; now it’s the era of the “new mob,” new-age billionaires through and through.
As Jay approached the bar, not noticing the three crouching away, we see a bandaged hand with what seemed to be a cut index finger. Could it be the owner-less finger from Episode 1?
What’s in store for Episode 4?
Although giving us bite-sized clues to our Episode 1 suspicions, Episode 3 still leaves us hanging about the ledger, elevator crank, and even the two victims’ ultimate fates. Now that the puzzle pieces are coming together, Episode 4: Dirty Birds hints at our main trio being exposed by the billionaire suspects, with the six of them confronting each other at Oliver’s place.
Be sure to keep tabs on Episode 4, which will be out by September 16, 2025, on Hulu and Disney+. While waiting for the show’s latest episode, listen to Michael Cyril Creighton (Howard Morris from the show) dive into Episode 3: Rigor’s details and more in the Only Murders in the Building Official Podcast, with special guests Beanie Feldstein, Jane Lynch, and composer Siddhartha Khosla:
Source: Hulu, @hulu (official Youtube channel)
