Who Is Griffin Dunne’s Dudenoff in Only Murders in the Building?

The following contains spoilers for Only Murders in the Building Season 4, Episode 6: “Blow Up”.

Only Murders in the Building‘s true crime podcasters Charles, Oliver, and Mabel uncover the identity of elusive West Tower resident M. Dudenoff in the chaotic and clever documentary-style episode “Blow Up”. While Griffin Dunne’s Milton Dudenoff establishes a connection between the Westie suspects and those involved in the Only Murder in the Building film, the plot twist that he was a murder victim himself forces the team to reevaluate their entire investigation.

Milton Dudenoff Spends the First Half of Season 4 Shrouded in Mystery

When Charles first introduces Oliver and Mabel to the larger-than-life characters that occupy the Arconia’s West Tower, one resident is notably left off his roll call. The former Brazzos star has never gotten a quality peek into the padlocked pad because its blinds are consistently shuddered. While exploring the West Tower for themselves, Oliver and Mabel find that the other Westies possess a reverence for the apartment’s absentee resident, M. Dudenoff. Mabel later uncovers the source of their esteem when she learns that Dudenoff provides the Westies with a massive deal on their otherwise prohibitively expensive New York City rent.

After the intrepid Only Murders in the Building hosts crack the code on M. Dudenoff’s unoccupied abode, thanks to playing a hand of the beloved Westie card game Oh Hell, they determine that the West Tower apartment was used as the sniper’s nest on the night of Sazz Pataki’s murder. This evidence leads the trio to strongly suspect M. Dudenoff in the stuntwoman’s death, provoking Mabel to exercise squatter’s rights over his place in hopes of luring the tenant back from Portugal.

Milton Dudenoff Moves from the Suspect Column to the Victim One in “Blow Up”

The veil over Dudenoff’s various mysteries finally lifts in “Blow Up”, introducing viewers to the character through archival footage from Only Murders in the Building film directors The Brothers Sisters. An American Werewolf in London‘s Dunne portrays the sisters’ influential film professor, with the macabre duo admitting to Charles, Oliver, and Mabel that they only accepted the offer to direct the film adaptation of their podcast in hopes of reconnecting with their estranged mentor. The podcasters spend “Blow Up” investigating the Brothers Sisters as suspects, a theory that gets thrown off with the discovery that Dudenoff’s body was burned in the Arconia’s incinerator alongside Sazz Pataki. The Brothers Sisters’ seemingly genuine devastation over this news sends Charles, Oliver, and Mabel back to the murder board.

The investigators have new threads to pick up in the wake of this Milton Dudenoff revelation, one of which arrived as a tip from Detective Donna Williams. Before learning of Dudenoff’s demise, Williams informed Charles, Oliver, and Mabel that social security checks were being cashed in the film professor’s name at a nearby bodega. While this first cast suspicion on the claims that Milton Dudenoff was in Portugal, it now offers the team a strong lead on a potential killer.