 In the months following the broadcast of Part One , there was widespread debate among fans of the series as to who shot Mr. Burns . Fox offered a contest to tie in with the mystery where callers who dialed 1 @-@ 800 @-@ COLLECT were eligible and they then guessed who the culprit was . It ran from August 13 to September 10 and was one of the first contests to tie together elements of television and the Internet . Fox launched a new website , www.Springfield.com , devoted to the mystery which got over 500 @,@ 000 hits during the summer of 1995 . The winner would be animated on an episode of the show . Due to contest regulations , a winner had to be selected out of a random sample of entries . The sample did not contain any correct answers , and so a winner ( who had the wrong answer ) was chosen at random . However , the winner , Fayla Gibson of Washington D.C. , did not watch the show and opted to accept a cash prize in lieu of being animated . 
